Empowering women leaders to reclaim their time, rediscover wellness, and rewire their brains for the better.

The Life Delicious is an evidence-based curriculum of sustainable practices – grounded in pleasure – to liberate ourselves and others from suffering.

by Catherine Roscoe Barr, neuroscience-based wellness coach

Was it hard for you to be consistent with healthy habits in 2021?

It was hard for me.

I was grieving some personal losses, working through some physical injuries, still renovating our townhouse (#moneypit), pivoting my business to the online world, trying (and what felt like mostly failing) to be a kick-ass mother and wife – in addition to our collective and heavy experiences of the pandemic, the climate crisis, and social injustice.

I have felt lonely and languishing and lacking my usual zip.

There have been, however, many silver linings – and I hope you’ve felt the same.

For me, one of the silver linings has been my work.

In writing, speaking and coaching, I’m constantly reminded of all the gems I’ve picked up from experts and experience.

As this year comes to a close, I have so much hope for 2022.

I know that I have the tools to practice better self-care – and therefore better self-regulation (see last week’s post for more on that: Co-Regulation Is The Best Gift You Can Give: 5 Tools To Help You Offer Safety, Love And Connection).

And why would I keep those tools to myself?

I wouldn’t!

Here are 10 steps to hardwire healthy habits, following The Life Delicious’ MAGIC FORMULA:

DISCOVER: BUILD AWARENESS

1. Outer awareness: Why does it matter to you?
Add some fuel to your fire and learn something new about the benefits of your habit. Search for the latest articles, books, podcasts and YouTube videos from trusted sources to build more outer awareness.

2. Inner awareness: Metacognition
It really excites me when concepts I love become popular, and metacognition – thinking about your thoughts – is so hot right now! Being aware of our thoughts is extremely important because they often slant pretty negative or are completely untrue. Something I want to highlight here in terms of habit formation: the pleasure-pain spectrum:
     Destructive Pain → Constructive Pain (AKA delayed gratification) → Destructive Pleasure (AKA crappy habits) → Constructive Pleasure

If you try to adopt a healthy new habit but think of it as “hard”, “uncomfortable” and “time-consuming” you’ll subconsciously define it as painful and in effect be repelled from it, making it so much more difficult to practice. All it takes is a quick reframe to focus on all of the benefits, and at worse define it as a constructive pain, so that you’re drawn to practice it! The same goes for unhealthy habits you want to quit, make sure you see them as they truly are, destructive pleasures, and focus on their negative effects to repel you from them. Which of your habits need redefining today?

DIAGNOSE: IDENTIFY ISSUES

3. Barriers: What barriers are present?
What’s keeping you from practicing the healthy habits you know will serve you? I’ll use my fitness routine as an example. I like to work out before everyone else wakes up but if I don’t plan ahead and leave gear, water, music, etc out the night before it’s easy to talk myself out of it because there’s “too much prep” and it will probably wake everyone up to get everything together. Other barriers are what to wear, which equipment to use, and what to do (which is why I’m a huge fan of naked, barefoot, zero-equipment workouts – check out my YouTube channel for inspiration… and don’t worry, I’m fully clothed in those videos ;)

4. Boundaries: What boundaries are missing?
What boundaries do you need to put in place to practice the healthy habits you know will serve you? My inner boundary is that I will stick to my fitness schedule and not look at my phone until my AM ritual is complete (self-trust is so important!), and my outer boundary is that my family knows my early morning practice.

PRESCRIBE: CREATE PLAN

5. Personal: Personalize habits
Let’s keep going with my fitness routine. It’s so important to do things you find pleasurable (or that you at least recognize bring you pleasure) and personalize them to your life! I’m mostly a lone exerciser and don’t like long distance running, so I focus on doing the things I like, in a timeframe I enjoy (shorter is generally better), usually by myself.

6. Flexible: Flexible framework (have a schedule!!)
“Being a pro is about having the discipline to commit to what is important to you instead of merely saying something is important to you,” says journalist James Clear in his book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. And pros, he says (and so do I), have a schedule – and stick to it.

The caveat I’d like to add is having a flexible framework. Back to my fitness example: my schedule is that I strength train on MWF, do cardio on TuTh and Sat/Sun, and also practice yoga 3-5 days per week. My preference is to exercise at 6am, before breakfast (Plan A), but if I miss that (because I’ve had a bad sleep or choose to cuddle in bed instead) I’ll exercise at 11am, before lunch (Plan B), and if I miss that I’ll exercise around 3pm (Plan C). Ideally I’ll work out for 30-60 minutes, but on a rushed day I can just do 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes and still stick to my schedule of daily exercise.

PRACTICE: TAKE ACTION

7. Constructive discipline
What’s your relationship with the word “discipline”? I love it! I’ve loved it ever since I heard kundalini yoga guru Gurmukh’s definition: “Discipline means to be a disciple of your true self that lies within.” Discipline honours your best, true, wise self. The Life Delicious is an evidence-based curriculum of sustainable practices – focused on pleasure and indulgence, rather than pain and deprivation – to liberate ourselves and others from suffering. I like to use the term “constructive discipline” kind of like training wheels (to highlight the pleasure and indulgence angle), if you’re learning to love the word too.

8. Activation energy
While it does become easier, it may never consistently feel easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to drag yourself out of bed to exercise on a cold, dark morning. Recognizing the fact that it takes energy and sometimes feels hard makes it easier. Here are 3 sources of inspiration for activation energy:
Glennon Doyle: We can do hard things – yes you can! “We can do hard things. You're not doing life wrong; you're doing it right. If there's any secret you're missing, it's that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that's what they're for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you're doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes."
The Tools by Phil Stutz & Barry Michels: Jeopardy – spoiler alert: there is no magic pill to exonerate you from life’s struggles (once you accept this, life feels a little easier!).
Mel Robbins: The 5 Second Rule – make it easier to do the little things that will improve your life.

PAUSE: EXAMINE RESULTS

9. Self-directed neuroplasticity (hardwire habits)
Only when I began to journal with parameters did I start to experience significant transformation. The work of neuropsychologist Rick Hanson made me understand the science behind why my Mood, Food & Fitness journal changed my life: self-directed neuroplasticity. By reflecting, recording and rating how my thoughts, words and actions made me feel – and then reviewing that document on a weekly and monthly basis – I was slowly rewiring my brain to magnetize it to healthy habits and repel it from healthy habits. Practically magic!
This is probably one of the most overlooked steps to habit formation but one of the MOST IMPORTANT! Don’t skip it.

10. Intension & Vision
Set daily intentions (how do you want to feel? what do you want to accomplish?), and regularly revisit and revise the vision you have for your life. I am a huge fan of making vision boards and was recently introduced to psychotherapist Linda Graham’s Wiser Self Meditation, from her book Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster, by my amazing business coach, Brenda Rigney. I had done a future self meditation before but the wiser self meditation was so much more impactful and real to me – I saw, sat with, and talked to the version of myself, 20 years in the future, that has been disciplined and consistent. Wow, it was so real! And incredibly motivating to have seen what’s truly possible for me in the future (rather than something less tangible like my usual experience of goal setting).

Here’s a quick review of the 10 steps:

Discover: build awareness
1. Outer awareness: Why does it matter to you?
2. Inner awareness: Metacognition
Diagnose: identify issues
3. Barriers: What barriers are present?
4. Boundaries: What boundaries are missing?
Prescribe: create plan
5. Personal: Personalize habits
6. Flexible: Flexible framework (have a schedule!!)
Practice: take action
7. Constructive discipline
8. Activation energy
Pause: examine results
9. Self-directed neuroplasticity (hardwire habits)
10. Intension & Vision

I hope this will help you form habits that stick in 2022 so that you can walk in the footsteps of your wiser self!

Want to create your own personalized plan over a luxurious long weekend at Canada's #1 hotel?

Join me for my all-inclusive, co-ed Wellness Retreat at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel from January 28-31, 2022!

Only a few weeks left to register.