Building Healthy Habits

I had the opportunity to talk about building healthy habits last week with The Myositis Association as a part of Myositis Awareness Month. It’s always a pleasure to connect with those in the myositis community to talk about movement and exercise. We broke down several principles from Atomic Habits by James Clear and applied them to our recently launched Choose to Move initiative to give people a platform and a place to practice.

In the book, Clear talks about the importance of identity being at the center of habit change. If you desire a different outcome, you need to consider your identity and what you believe. One gentleman I spoke with after the talk expressed how he’d never considered identifying as a person who wanted to be healthy and was always associating as one who was limited due to his diagnosis. This is a reflection of a different mindset, which will change what he does, and the outcomes he is able to get.

Speaking of healthy people, they are people who move on a regular basis. We broke down a typical week and how most people will have about 51 hours of miscellaneous time to spend on their choosing during the week and by incorporating movement into this slice doesn’t have to sabotage your schedule.

If you start in our Choose to Move - Level 1 program, you will work at building up to 75 minutes of movement over the course of the week, which will account for 2% of the total miscellaneous time you would usually have during the week. Most of the time the hardest part is getting started.

We’re here to help you in establishing a movement habit though our Choose to Move initiative and as James Clear says to create a good habit it should be obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. To learn more about what that looks like you can watch the full presentation or download the slides by clicking the button below.