Small tweaks – often the tiniest of tweaks – can lead to significant improvements in your health.
We all know that habits and routines can be super powerful. Once established, they help us stay consistent with actions that have a big impact on our lives.
But here’s the thing about habits and routines – they can become stale. What once worked brilliantly may start to lose its effectiveness over time.
That’s why it’s important to remain open to exploring small changes and tweaks to your environment, habits, and routines. Sometimes, just the tiniest adjustment is all you need to completely revitalise a habit or routine.
And here’s the kicker: minor changes can often lead to unexpected outcomes.
You start with a small change and end up surprised by how much it helps. It can snowball into other tweaks and even bigger outcomes. Before you know it, what started as a small change has led to something transformative.
The easiest way to highlight this is to give you a few recent examples from my own life. This will help you see just how much only small tweaks can help you improve your habits and health.
To illustrate this, here are a couple of recent examples from my own life. These show how small and somewhat trivial tweaks have had a significant impact on my habits and health.
Water consumption
As you probably know, one of my foundational health habits is to drink three litres of water a day.
However, I recently found myself struggling to hit that target. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but I started delaying drinking water until later in the day. Gradually, it became a struggle to reach my three-litre goal. The habit had become stale.
Then, I made an unintended tweak. I bought some nice new tumbler glasses. Instead of drinking straight from my water bottle, I poured the water into one of these glasses.
I found I really enjoyed drinking from the glass. I drank the whole glass in one go and immediately refilled it. As I went about my day, I noticed I didn’t want to leave the refilled glass sitting there too long – it was more obvious how the water would get stale in a glass (you’ve probably noticed the bubbles that appear when you leave a glass of water for too long!).
The first day I did this, I drank four litres of water. It was actually too much – I was up peeing three times in the night! The next day, I had to be careful to only drink three litres. I’d gone from struggling to drink three litres a day to needing to monitor not over drinking – all from a small change in how I was drinking water.
Mindful eating
I went out for breakfast the other day at a lovely farm shop. I ordered the Greek yogurt bowl. It came in a really nice bowl and was well presented. I also noticed that the portion size was quite a bit smaller than I would typically serve myself at home.
Because of the bowl and portion size, I just felt like I should take my time with it.
Not only did I enjoy it, but I felt light afterwards. This was very different from how I usually feel after eating yogurt – I often feel quite bloated. Having a smaller portion and eating more slowly made the difference.
So, before I left, I purchased some of the same bowls from the farm shop.
And guess what? At home, when preparing my yogurt in the new bowls, I started to take more care with the presentation and mimicked the smaller portion. As a result, I ate more slowly and felt light after eating again.
This then rubbed off on some of my other meals. I became more mindful of portion sizes (I have a habit of eating overly large portions!) and found myself starting to eat more slowly.
This has had a significant impact on hitting my daily calorie targets. I’ve gone from struggling to stay within 2,600 calories to comfortably eating within my 2,500-calorie target.
Honestly, I didn’t see that coming. It was a combination of being inspired by a nice breakfast at a farm shop and purchasing some attractive bowls that led me to smaller portions, more mindful eating, and finding it easier to stay within my daily calorie target.
These two small tweaks have made a significant impact on my life. I’m now finding it much easier to drink my three litres of water daily and have improved my mindful eating, digestion, and overall food intake.
And remember, I intentionally chose the smallest tweaks I could think of – drinking from a nice glass instead of a bottle and changing the bowl I use for yogurt. There are other, more substantial tweaks I’ve made that have had even greater impacts.
There are far bigger tweaks I’ve made in my life that have had an even greater impact.
I hope this demonstrates just how powerful small tweaks to habits, routines, and your environment can be.
So, what’s the takeaway?
Stay Curious: Be self-aware of how well your habits and routines are working. Don’t get too comfortable, and don’t let things become stale. If they do, at least notice it.
Experiment: Don’t hesitate to try small or seemingly trivial changes. Even if they feel insignificant, these small changes can sometimes trigger a cascade of improvements that add up to a significant impact.
I’ll leave you with a question – or perhaps a challenge:
Identify one small tweak you can implement this week. Don’t overthink it; just do it.
Then, observe its impact!
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