A flamingo a day keeps the Dr away!
How balancing might just save your life!
Life is complicated, a continuous roller coaster of highs, lows, and the occasional tub of popcorn! Perhaps that wonderful weekly yoga session is not an option and your diary feels full to bursting before Monday lunchtime.
If you’re always on the run, tight for time and struggling to prioritise your health and happiness here is one thing that you can do on the hoof (or the webbed foot of a flamingo leg to be more precise)! This simple practice will help you to keep a little more balanced in both body & mind and so a little more able to cope with the inevitable challenges of life.
Let me introduce you to the genius of Foggs Tiny Habits. Fogg, not of the Phileas Fogg fame, adventuring around the world for 80 days, but BJ Fogg, behaviouralist and general Mr Nice Guy. Over the past 20 years, Fogg has been encouraging us all to establish new habits that last and are TINY. Teeny tiny steps forward that are manageable, sustainable, and best of all, can be done with a few toddlers hanging around your feet or a board meeting in less than 5 minutes.
Here's the genius part, you simply link an established habit, such as brushing your teeth, with a new habit, like standing on one leg, flamingo style. Or maybe waiting for the kettle to boil while doing a sit-up. The idea is to incorporate something meaningful into your day and build on your success till you’re regularly dropping for 10 sit-ups or balancing like a pro.
You get to choose what matters most to you. Is it a physical goal you want to master or maybe you’re keen to keep your cool and not fly off the handle whenever it gets a bit much with the kids or colleagues at work?
You might be interested to hear that this technique has been echoed and supported through many therapy and coaching methods including ACT where Steven Hayes suggests we make our goals small and then ‘smaller still’. When we start small it’s easy to achieve success and our bodies experience a little drop of dopamine as a reward. This chemical hit means we do it again for the joy of it and before we know it, we’re hooked, one press-up turns to 10 and 1 minute of meditation rolls effortlessly into 20.
It’s amazing what can be achieved this way. Take the incredible achievement of John Naber who won gold in the 1976 Olympics by deciding to improve his time by one-fifth of an eye-blink for every hour of training. Now that’s TINY and equally mighty!
Try it and see, here’s how:
Choose a goal, or two, that matter to you. Perhaps choosing one to support your physical and one to boost your mental health
Decide what would be a realistic outcome and how you will know you’ve achieved it.
Break it down to something tiny, and then smaller still, perhaps a jump for joy every time you flush the loo for example!
Link it to an action you do every day as an established habit.
Commit to it! Maybe write it down somewhere, tell a friend or if you’re very brave, share it with the kids!
START
Let me know how you get on; I’d love to hear all about your tiny successes that will lead to big wins.
Finally, remember that if you can carve out some much-needed and well-deserved me time we have a brilliant timetable of yoga classes at Flow. Take a look here - Yoga Classes at Flow.
Did you know?
Doctors have used balance as a test of health for years! Our balance can quickly diminish after the mid-50s increasing your risk of falls and other serious health outcomes. You can help boost your fitness levels both physically, as well as mentally, by ‘doing the flamingo’, making it one of your Tiny Habits and seeing the improvements daily. Just increasing your balance by a few seconds every day could make a huge impact on your overall sense of feeling ‘balanced’. Try it and remember that the kids will love to do the flamingo too, make it fun, ready, steady, go!
