When we are trying to make positive interventions in our lives, we often try to make many changes at once. This over enthusiasm is excellent in the sense that it is driving us to move forward and improve ourselves. However, at the same time we are shooting ourselves in the foot by failing to make real change. Real change can only be seen as sustainable change — change that is truly ingrained in our daily lives.

The Problem Isn’t Lack of Knowledge

Why is this topic relevant to resistance training? Resistance training and cardiovascular training are not very complicated. Yes, there are lots of nuances to both styles of training, but the reality is most people know the behaviours required to be in excellent physical condition.

This means that the problem the majority of people face when trying to start exercise is an implementation problem — moving from a point where the goal is to be someone who exercises to actually being the person who exercises.

That is why habit formation and making successful interventions in your life is so related to physical training, because without behaviour change there is no point even discussing the details of resistance training.

Using Motivation to Create a List of Interventions

When we are very motivated to make change in our lives, we often have an unending list of things we could get better at. We need to organise this information, synthesise it, then intentionally make a change in one aspect of our lives.

This is such a simple idea, yet how many people actually note down all the changes they would like to make in their lives, review them, and see if they are moving towards them or not?

Splitting the Changes into Categories

Once you have created your list of potential changes, you will need to break them off into categories. This will help you organise specific areas of your health.

For example, if you are trying to improve your sleep, you may need to make multiple changes that will result in better rest and recovery. This means you may have a list of five interventions you could make that would allow you to improve your sleep. Below is an example list:

-Wake up at the same time every day to increase fatigue at night

-Improve sleep hygiene

-Create a nighttime routine

-Get rid of light in the bedroom

This process is extremely beneficial as it allows you to remember all the changes you’re aiming to make in the future.

Picking One

Picking one thing you want to improve and actually doing it is so much more effective than picking five all at once and making no substantial change.

Like with most things in life, this requires both patience and adherence — both of which are challenging. When you pick one thing you’re going to improve and you nail it, making it something that happens without question, you end up accumulating change in a way that makes a huge impact over time.

Imagine if we took someone who sleeps six hours a night and, over the course of a year, increased that to eight hours through periodically making small changes. This impact is huge for the overall quality of life of that individual.

Yet when most of us, including myself, try to make positive interventions, we attempt to make multiple at once, never ending up with real change.

If any of my readers are also business owners, then this can be applied to business as well — with one significant change at a time, you can build a beautiful business.

Daily Systems

Unfortunately, humans have a habit of forgetting things. Even when change is important to us, we are amazing at finding ways around the changes we are trying to make.

This is why we need daily systems. Daily systems allow us to make good decisions on a daily basis. This means you will need to find a way to ensure that each day you remember the potential change you are trying to make in your life to become a healthier individual.

Personally, I note down the habit change I am currently trying to make in my day plan. This allows me to be cognisant of it daily.

Weekly Reviews

Okay, now we are getting a little deeper into a productivity rabbit hole — but if you’re still with me, this is very worthwhile.

At the end of your week, it can be extremely beneficial to do a weekly review of both your professional and personal life. During this weekly review, you will be able to track how many times you managed to complete your current intervention.

This is a crucial step as it allows you to understand whether you have successfully made the change, or if it still needs to be the current intervention you’re focusing on.

I tend to do this on Friday afternoon, where I will also make plans for the weekend.

Successful Interventions

Once you have successfully made an intervention in your life and a behaviour has truly been ingrained, then you can start thinking about making further positive changes.

Try not to make too many changes in a short period of time — this makes things complicated and difficult to follow. Let yourself truly adapt to the change you have made.

Back to Resistance Training

This exact formula can be used when trying to add physical training into your life.

Let’s say you currently perform no exercise at all. This means we start at the beginning with one session per week. The goal would be to perform one session a week for three months. If this is achieved, then think about adding in a second training session.

If this principle is followed, over the course of three years you could be exercising five times a week and be in exceptional physical condition.