How To Climb a Mountain

When there's a mountain in front of you, how do you get to the other side?

When you have a major life change you want to make, how should you begin?

When you have blood pressure to stabilize, cholesterol to lower, and pounds to lose, what approach will help you make a dent?

What if you would like to be more disciplined with your time? How do you go about making it happen?

Sometimes the road ahead holds daunting obstacles. Just thinking about making it through is exhausting. How can we get from point A to point B without losing our minds or giving up?

While it might seem overly simplistic, putting one foot in front of the other is how big things get done.

Taking a step in the right direction lets you approach your goal without it being overwhelming. This also minimizes distractions by allowing you to focus intently on one aspect of your larger goal.

When you're aiming for a really big target, ask yourself what components make up the big picture.

For instance, with health and wellness goals, you know that exercise, drinking water, eating fruits and vegetables, sleeping well, and many other pieces contribute to good general health. You can break your big goal into these pieces, addressing each one with a specific strategy or action, such as drinking more water or going to bed earlier. Over time, these smaller steps become new, ingrained habits. You can then stack habits on top of each other so you're not only eating drinking more water and sleeping better, but you're eating fruits and veggies and getting regular exercise, too. Before you know it, your blood pressure and cholesterol have improved, your weight is trending downward, some nagging digestive issues have resolved, and you find yourself in a better frame of mind.

You may even find that you need to break the smaller habits into even smaller habits.

Say you notoriously sleep poorly. You have for years. You're starting to understand the connection between the quality of your sleep and your appetite and mood. You decide you're going to tackle sleep first. You identify some smaller steps that enable good, quality sleep. Since it takes about three weeks to incorporate a new habit, you decide for the first three weeks, you'll get some early morning sunlight. This will help reset your circadian rhythms, so your sleep and wake hormones work in better balance.

Next, you acknowledge your current sleep routine does not exactly encourage sleep. After you've made the morning sunlight routine a habit, you decide to tack on a new habit: winding down. You buy yourself some comfy jammies and start a new face care ritual. Every night, at 9:30, you get into your PJs, put on relaxing music, and take time to remove make-up and moisturize your skin with natural face care products.

After three weeks of practicing the new face care ritual, you begin to feel a little drowsy after you've moisturized your face. You take your glowing skin to bed by ten. Usually, you'd surf Instagram for an hour or more before falling sleep, but you've noticed this wakes you up a little. For the next three weeks, you eliminate electronics and read a hard copy book before sleep. This makes you tired and helps your brain shut down. By the end of week one, you realize you don't feel as tired each morning when the alarm buzzes you awake. You feel downright restful.

Feeling good about where your sleep is going, you turn your attention to food.

What are the steps you might take to make nutritious eating a consistent habit?

It might seem obvious to take things out of your diet, like processed foods or added sugars. Or you could work to bring in more nutritious foods like fiber or antioxidants. Your three-week goal could be to eat 5 different-colored fruits and veggies each day. Or, each week, you could choose a new veggie-centered recipe from Pinterest. Using habit stacking, you could do one and then add the other.

I'd be willing to bet you could rattle off at least three things you can do right now to improve your health. The beauty of baby steps is that you don't have to do them all at once. Pick the one you're most likely to stick with (or the one you're least adverse to) and give it the three-week try. Then stack the other habits on top. In nine weeks, you will have significantly improved the way you eat, sleep, move and/or manage stress.

Watch for symptom resolution as well. Your body's equilibrium is health and, if you take away enough offending factors, it will naturally return to health.

As the new year unwinds itself in front of you, you may find setting your intentions and tackling goals more accessible with the baby step and habit stacking approach.

It doesn’t have to be perfect or pretty. In fact, it’s more likely that it won’t be either, but a little stubbornness will go a long way. If you fall out of a habit, just start again.

Be compassionate with yourself. You have everything it takes to accomplish your goals this year and beyond. I believe that whole-heartedly…and so should you. After all, belief is half the battle.

Happy new year, you beautiful soul!