One Small Step

Father Mike Schmitz said in a homily recently, “We prepare to face the future when we live today well.” Which got me thinking…What small step can you take TODAY that will help you in the future?

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Confucius

Have you heard of the complexity bias? It’s the subconscious tendency of humans to overlook simple solutions. We naturally want to make solutions harder! We believe that a complex answer is better than a simple one because the complex inherently requires more knowledge and effort to achieve the outcome we desire. Here are some examples:

• A woman wants to lose weight and is convinced imbalanced hormones are behind her ever-increasing waistline. She goes to her doctor and demands a blood test. At the same time, she overlooks eating potato chips and drinking beer every evening while watching TV.
• Another person requests their doctor test their thyroid because they’re constantly fatigued – while they ignore the fact they are binge-watching their favorite show until all hours of the night to destress from their stressful job.
• A man wants to decrease fat and increase muscle mass but believes exercise doesn’t work for him, but the truth is he has never stuck to his fitness goals for over a month.

Indeed, life will sometime dictate that we go down a difficult path, but are we making being healthy harder than it needs to be? If we focus on the things we can control and create healthy habits, we could change our path. We could be healthier and happier without making it more complex than it needs to be.

We can focus our efforts on the foundations of food, movement, sleep, and relationships. These are all areas within our control that we can impact positively—no need to tackle them all at once. Pick one area to focus on and then move to the next, building the positive change for your future wellness.

Baby steps over time add up to BIG change!

So… What is one small step you can take TODAY that will help you in the future?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Drink more water. Commit to drinking 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water daily.
• Instead of skipping breakfast, have a super nourishing smoothie.
• Bring a salad for lunch instead of going through the drive-through.
• Commit to getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
• Move your body every day for at least 20 minutes.
• Practice deep breathing.