Autumn Reset: A New Year’s Vibe
By Brite Coach Karen Thibodeau
After reading last week’s blog that spoke to the importance of “creating space,” I was inspired to contribute a few of my thoughts on how to tackle this. This theme landed with personal relevance as I am a mother, slowly stepping out of the trenches of the newborn phase and feeling the desire to create some space for my own goals. I’m also a new home-owner, which brings with it thoughts of how to create a new environment, once we move in, that reduces friction in reaching the next set of goals.
I don’t necessarily think such major life shifts need to occur to inspire change. I believe the simple fact that many endurance athletes are currently starting their “off/down” season, and may not be so time-starved, makes now an ideal time to explore new ways to support positive habit change.
We all know that when the New Year rolls in, goal setting is an easy conversation, but often the habits to support new goals are not, and they quickly fall by the wayside. I challenge us all to create the space now to explore our habits and to set up an environment, and corresponding systems, that will allow our New Year goals to flourish.
We know that habits and behaviours, implemented over time, lead to outcomes. Yet the short-term task of laying the groundwork for these habits and behaviours is generally uncomfortable. For instance, getting back into a strength routine or hitting the track will make you sore. Heading back to the pool might make you feel frustrated by reminding you that gains are slow. These are the reasons we often put off re-engaging in hard or unpleasant activities until we are more imminently pressed with a goal. But what if we instead created the space and patterns for these habits and behaviour more proactively? How much more could we get out of ourselves? How might the ceilings for our athletic goals be raised?
First, I want to take away any shame or guilt you might be feeling around struggles with positive habit creation. Research shows that our brains evolved to seek immediate gratification due to its advantages in our prehistoric days. We evolved to prioritize the thing that would provide immediate fuel and chase it, and to seek cover with the conditions were unfavorable. Life was too harsh to delay gratification. So in all fairness, we are not built to think about the “long” game. And yet ironically here we are, as endurance athletes, participating in and trying to excel at a thing that is strongly rooted in the long game. Where it takes not only weeks or years but maybe decades to realize our potential.
So how do we make habits stick?
1. Surround yourself with your “why” - Look around your current space and notice what it’s designed to encourage. Are there cues that remind you of your goals and why they are important to you? This can be anything from a picture of your favourite athlete to a picture of yourself crossing a finish line or anything else that genuinely moves you and reconnects you to what sparked your goals in the first place.
2. Make habits more satisfying - What would that hard thing look like if it were more fun? One of my favourite training partners and now closest friends established the routine of getting a croissant after almost every swim workout we did together. She told me it was sometimes the only thing she could find that would motivate her to show up for a nearly 60 min hypnotic swim workout. And I soon found myself looking forward to the same shared routine. Although croissants are delicious, I think if you exposed the actual reason this was enjoyable, it was more about the opportunity we had to talk, with our heads above the water, as we walked to the bakery. It added joy, meaning, and connection time to the workout, creating positive memories and associations, in addition to the positive reinforcement of sharing athletic goals (and progress toward them) with another human who was supportive and encouraging.
3. Make it convenient - Look at the pool schedules, know the times for length swimming, and pay attention to closures so that you’re not wasting time driving to the pool twice. Have your swim bag packed and at the door or in your car at all times so that you’re not running around looking for things at the last second.
4. Make it satisfying - Know what you are trying to accomplish during a workout. For example, learn how to use a swim pace clock so that you understand your current baseline and have a point from which to monitor progression. Even if your times are slower than you’d like to start, measuring your progress will provide ongoing reinforcement and rewards for your efforts. STOP obsessing over your Garmin (how many swimmers did you see wearing them in Paris?). Know that you can complete 10* 100 meters on 2’10 today and work towards 10* 100 on 2’00 six months from now.
5. Habit stack - Think of a habit you have that feels solid in your life and see if you can use it to support a habit you would like to put in place. I’m planning on attempting this myself when I return to work following maternity leave next month. I’m super good at always taking my lunch break at work. I saw the degree of burnout early in my nursing career and decided I needed to put systems in place to avoid being another victim. I therefore rarely work through my lunch hour. However, I realize now with two young children that I can no longer use all my mornings to get workouts in. It would be unfair to place all morning responsibilities on my partner. So this means I need to find pockets of time, such as my established lunch hour, that can be leveraged for athletic goals. Instead of walking to my favourite podcast during lunch, I plan to be running intervals. I will still get the mental health break, I’ll just be a little more sweaty when I return!
6. Be honest with yourself - If you avoid Tuesday mornings swim by convincing yourself you’ll do it later in the day, how often does this really work out for you? If you’re noticing that Sunday rolls around and you’ve somehow managed to accumulate three additional workouts on that day, maybe it’s time to call yourself out. Stop lying to yourself, and stop using so much bandwidth on juggling your schedule around to accommodate bad decisions made earlier in the week. If you commit to swim Tuesday / Thursday mornings, and honour your commitment, the time and energy spent planning is dramatically reduced. Pick up your packed swim bag from the night before at the front door and leave your excuses in their place!
In sum, while creating new habits is hard, you will love the person you become on the other side. Few things are as rewarding as establishing routines that allow us to trust ourselves and foster growth toward the best version of ourselves.
These ideas are mostly rooted in behavioural psychology and the techniques outlined come from its research findings. I suggest James Clear’s book Atomic Habits or Dr. Maya Shankar’s podcast ‘A slight change of plans,’ if you wish to take a deeper drive into this content.