When it comes to practicing healthier habits, we all know that challenges abound.
The thing about most good habits is—they take effort.
And some of them take a lot of it.
And as humans—we don’t always tend to be super keen on effort.
For example—starting a new workout routine isn’t easy.
It’s going to require you to expend quite a bit of raw physical force and power.
It’s probably going to require you to step outside of your comfort zone to do different things.
And when this happens—you’re going to be tempted to quit.
But see, this is where moderation may actually be an under-utilized key to sticking to healthy habits.
See, a lot of people disregard moderation as being ‘weak’ or ‘ineffective.’
People tend to like to think of themselves as capable of doing extreme things.
But here’s the issue with that.
Extreme things require extreme discipline. And like it or not, most of us don’t have it.
Therefore, what generally happens is this.
- We decide to make a positive life change.
- We adopt (at least, in our minds) some kind of extreme ideal criteria for this change.
- We try to keep it up in the long term—and since it’s so extreme, we fail at it.
- Due to the failure, we eventually slide back into our previous ‘normal.’
And thus—long-lasting habits are not instilled, and lasting change is not accomplished.
But this is exactly where we could make a case for moderation.
If we were to use common sense moderation as a template for change, attempting to adopt healthier habits could look like this.
- We decide to make a positive life change.
- We adopt a very moderate, low-level change that’s easy to implement (doing 5 push ups, walking for an extra 15 minutes, etc).
- We easily accomplish this. And since it’s so ‘moderate’ and achievable, we probably also accomplish a little bit more.
- Fueled by our success, and motivated by the fact that we actually over-achieved on the goal, we keep it up.
Thus, lasting changes are actually made—and we slowly, but steadily, make forward progress.
This is the power of moderation.
As it turns out, starting things out ‘slower’ rather than at a ‘blistering’ or ‘extreme’ pace actually pays off in the long run.
Let’s face it—we don’t all have to be extreme athletes or masters of discipline to make progress in life.
We just have to understand that, sometimes, the human psyche needs to ‘inch toward the goal’ at a very achievable, incremental pace.
And sometimes, even though this may not seem like this would make much of a difference—very small steps forward, when compounded together, tend to offer some pretty awesome long-term progress when you stick with them.
So when it comes to health, wellness, fitness, and just overall better well-being—it turns out that ‘moderation’ may be the word of the day.
At the very least—taking this advice will help you to start out on a stable footing.
And that’s certainly nothing to scoff at.