How to Start a Wellness Journey with an 'EASY 3' Mentality
A journey of any kind sounds daunting & long doesn't it? And the whole thought around wellness as a journey involves so many factors to encompass that you may likely procrastinate or push it off, before you even start! It doesn't need to be overwhelming right out of the gates. Stop right there ~ before your mind starts building a goal list. These aren't new years resolutions or workout goals. Your wellness is not a direct line to perfection for the perfect body you want! Your true success for better WELLTH will actually stick better, if you start your wellness journey at a slower pace.
Perhaps you've finally been driven to START your wellness journey because of a personal health scare, or you've had ongoing health issues that you just can't get corrective answers to heal from. Or, maybe you've just never paid much attention to your health & have luckily lived mostly well, but want to get proactive & more conscious about it. Your first step to creating a wellness journey, is DECIDING that you're on one. Decide, commit & mentally prepare yourself for a conscious way of living intentionally for your wellbeing.
It's been more than 20 years since I started my wellness journey & I can honestly tell you - not one ounce of my mission even included any exercise at the time. It was all about food. I didn't change my entire food intake, nor go on a diet ~ in fact, I've never been on a diet in my entire life! I didn't eliminate anything I was already eating {yet} & it wasn't even all about my own food choices. It was an 'EASY 3' food change mentality for my family.
Choose an 'EASY 3' to kickstart your wellness journey
The whole reason you are starting your wellness journey will steer you to choose what's most personal & essential to you. For my family, & having dealt with 3 cancer deaths of our parents within just a few years of eachother, I started voraciously reading about conventionally grown food. I was livid about all these pesticides in our most common foods eaten for our meals. I chose to add more organics to our young growing family of four. Watching budgets, I couldn't always choose organic but I could definitely commit to buying our EASY 3 foods ALWAYS ORGANIC. I chose our most eaten of course. Milk, eggs & chicken. To this day, I have never swayed from buying organic milk, eggs & chicken on our grocery list. 20 years later, what I started, stuck.
An EASY 3 allows you to work in little wellness batches of growth. What will your EASY 3 changes be to jumpstart your wellness journey? Consider starting with these 3 elements: food, physical & emotional (mental health). Choose an EASY 3 with one from each category or all 3 from one category, or however you choose. But don't put too much thought into this. It's called EASY 3 for a reason. If you've ever read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, you know that changes & habits take time to stick, for good! Practicing your EASY 3 commitments will solidify your intention to truly LIVE WITH IT, making it a lifestyle norm for you over time. We want it to stick, easily for 1-3 months, whatever it takes to become second nature & your new norm.
Keep on going to elevate your wellness journey
Well, that was easy. That was so doable. That made you feel so much better about starting this wellness journey, didn't it? Keep on going! Add in another EASY 3. This time maybe slightly more challenging & touching on different elements. A daily walk around the block, 4 walnuts every day, & a water glass tracker can literally change your life.
My secondary set of 3 changes revolved around my migraine headache issues, still focused on food ~ I eliminated aspartame & sugar alcohols 100%, reduced carb & gluten intake, & increased hydration with more filtered water! These EASY 3 were great to focus on, but definitely took me longer to master. I just kept at it, educating myself on nutrition & flipping my EASY 3 food games. Every time I felt better with consistency on a habit, it solidified a new me! Overall, I probably focused on food for a good 10 years before even getting started with the whole exercise element. My young kids at that time were my energy workouts!
Track or journal your progress & be PROUDLY consistent!
For your EASY 3, if you're a journal writer, or a success tracker, monitor your daily & weekly habits to stay on pace. Recording your milestones can be extra validating for living intentionally. I'm not much of a tracker myself, but I do enjoy journaling & it always helps to write out moments of success, challenges, the ups & downs, & those extra special win days when you become SO PROUD OF YOURSELF. If you need a little support with an easy to use visual, I've created a FREE EASY 3 WELLNESS TRACKER for you right here. Download it, print it & post it on your fridge or near the coffee pot. Use it daily or weekly. Your journey, your style, your timeline.
Repeat your EASY 3 over & over & over, always changing it up. Always elevating your personal wellness journey. You will definitely start to challenge yourself more along the way. That's your growth in action as you become more confident & stronger about change. Before you know it, 20 years have gone by, you're feeling amazing & living biologically younger than you ever imagined.
My personal wellness journey has evolved with such fun functional foodie plates, different workout obsessions & obviously running this wellness apparel business that fully supports & encourages myself & other women along their path to good health. Praying that your wellness journey creates a beautiful, meaningful & purposeful life for you to experience & grow with.
Starting is the hardest part. Pace yourself. Go slow whenever you need to. Your pace, your wellness journey. Make it stick. You've got this!
love care xo