Two days a week, I run around town like a crazy person. I’m back and forth between two studios, teaching and training for six hours straight.

Yes, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busiest days of the week. I start training and teaching at 7:00am, and I teach and train straight through the morning until 1pm. Basically, I’m “on” those six hours.  And even though I end up energized from my clients and classes by 1:00 rather than drained, I used to wake up on those days and just feel overwhelmed, wondering how I was going to get all the energies!

Even though I know I’ll have fun while teaching and training, and will feel great afterward, the thought of being on go-go-go mode drained me. After realizing this – that it was the thought about my day rather than my day itself, I tried a little experience: to start my day off on a pleasureful note.

Instead of sleeping as late as possible and hurriedly leaving the house, I set my alarm an extra 30 minutes early, and start my morning with coffee, and a leisurely walk as I gaze at the mountains to start my day. I love these morning walks SO much that I now equate Tuesdays and Thursdays with peace, energy, and appreciation for my job and my clients, rather than chaos.

As another incentive to chug through, I stop and grab an iced Americano on my way back to my main studio 😉

(this picture is actually recycled back from 2011…talk about a throwback post! On another note, I need to start making my own iced coffee again)

[Tweet “How to Make Healthy Habits with Positive Association – via @TrainerPaige”]

How to Make Healthy Habits with Positive Association

But enough about me. Got a minute? I’m assuming you do since you’re reading this post 🙂 so let’s do a quick drill.

Think about about three fitness, health, and/or nutrition goals that you’d like to accomplish this year………got ’em? If you can’t think of three, that’s OK – one or two is fine – just make sure they’re somewhat specific.

Now, have you tried to accomplish these goals in the past? Were you successful? Or do you find yourself keep coming back to this goal, month after month, or even year after year?

One way I’ve been experimenting with successful goal reaching with both myself and my clients is by using positive association. The idea is to make the action items necessary to accomplish said goals be accompanied by pleasureful events. It’s basically a reward system, but using every day pleasures as the reward.

It goes like this: follow up or precede your healthy habit with something pleasureful so that you will associate the healthy habit itself with pleasure.

[Tweet “Using pleasureful transitions between healthy activities can turn them into positive habits!”]

For example, let’s say you’re trying to make morning workouts become a habit so that you’ll adhere to your fat loss exercise program. One idea might be to stop by the coffee shop near your gym and grab an iced coffee after each AM workout. Even though getting up for the workout is kind of laborious in itself, equating it with an iced coffee (or something as equally as pleasureful for you as an iced coffee is for me) will eventually make you look forward to the workout. Or at least that’s the plan.

So tell me:

do you use positive association with any of your healthy habits now? If so, what are they? If not, what could you do?

NOWFoods Giveaway winner

The winner for the NOW Foods giveaway is Shoshana! Congrats! Shoot me an email if your information, and I’ll pass it along to Alana 🙂