Small Promises Build Habits

Imagine this – a close friend has a sick child and needs to provide full time care while also working from home. She asks you a favour – can you please drop a healthy dinner meal over each night? She is exhausted from doctors appointments, working full time and caring for her child and can’t manage the extra task of preparing a home cooked meal.

By Nyanda Dennison

What do you say? Of course! – and you keep that promise to her and make the time to take over a healthy meal for her and her child each night.

We find it easy to keep promises to the people we care about, we want to help them, we don’t want to let them down, we know they would do the same for us . . . . but could we keep the same promise to ourselves? Building healthy habits starts with keeping small promises to ourselves.

It’s easy breaking promises to ourselves, we’ve been doing it our whole lives, most of the time without even realising it. Every time you say to yourself, I will eat healthy today, or I will move my body today and you don’t follow through with that – you are breaking a promise to yourself. It is only a small promise, but over your entire life – how many times have you done that? It all adds up to a lack of trust within ourselves to keep those promises.

Imagine this now – you are the mother with the sick child. You asked a friend to bring you a healthy meal each night. Your friend did it for the first night or two and then said – I’m sorry I can’t do this anymore, I’m too tired and I couldn’t be bothered. How would you feel as that mother? You might feel disappointed, you might feel hurt, you might have less trust and faith in your friend. Next time you needed something, would you go to that same person or would you ask a different friend?

To keep promises to ourselves, we need to start viewing ourselves as we do that friend with the sick child. We need to love ourselves, value ourselves and care for ourselves as much as we would that friend. Every time we keep a promise to ourselves, even a small one, we not only build trust in ourselves, we also raise our own value.

What small promise can you keep to yourself every day? Start really small, for example – drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning each day, taking 3 mins to stretch or do a breathing exercise. Even if it’s not something you do every day, if you wake up in the morning and say you are going to do something – value yourself enough to follow through. You are worth it. You deserve it.

If you’re struggling to make lasting healthy lifestyle changes, I’d love to help you. Book an appointment with me and let me show you how nutrition coaching can help you embed healthier habits to help you achieve optimal wellness in 2023.