How to Overcome Excuses and Stick With Your Healthy Habits

It happens to us all.

You set all of these great intentions and habits and then when the moment comes to follow through, you somehow manage to find a really great excuse for why you can’t do it. 

Raise your hand if that sounds like something you’ve done! 

Well, we’re human and making changes, even positive changes, makes our minds want to resist.

I get asked all of the time, “McKel, how do you have so much motivation to stick with your routines?!” 

I don’t — I’m not a unicorn — I definitely experience that same feeling of lack of motivation and all of the excuses you do, but I have a little trick for navigating them. 

So I’m sharing with you a super simple practice that you can do in the moment when an excuse arises to realign your actions. 

Ok so this happened to me a couple weeks ago. I woke up and I was so cozy in bed. I was cuddling with Luna and Jesse and it was rainy and gloomy. 

Easy to say, I did not want to get up and go workout. 

So in those moments when excuses start to come up in the moment, I take two steps. 

First, I ask myself, “How will I feel after I do X” — whatever it is I’m contemplating not doing. 

Focusing on my future self, and how I want to feel after I do something really reminds me of the reason why I’m doing this and I’ve talked about this so much, but the why behind your actions and habits is so important.

In order for something to not feel like another thing to check off on your to-do list, you need to tap into your why. 

So for me when I was going through this with wanting to skip my workout class, I asked myself, “How will I feel after going to class,” and that usually is energized, awake, strong, all of those feelings that I really want so I can go throughout the rest of my day feeling my best. 

So usually that little mindset flip on focusing on how I’ll feel after versus how I feel right in the moment of excuses helps me overcome them.

The second little thing I do if that’s still not quite doing it for me is to do just a little bit of it. 

I got out of bed and said, I’ll just stretch for 5 minutes and I can get back in bed after if that feels like enough. 

By the end of just a few minutes, I had totally shifted my energy and I was like, “ok, yes, this is what my body needs.” 

Making it super easy on yourself by just doing a little can give you enough momentum to follow through. You can do just a little of anything!

So to recap, focus on how you will feel after and then get yourself to do just a little bit of the thing. 

These two simple tricks can really help you push aside any excuses that are getting in the way and shift your focus and energy toward taking action. 

To take this a couple steps deeper, download my guide for creating healthy eating habits with ease where I walk you through the process for making habits that last and how to navigate when challenges come up. 

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