STARTING SMALL

Now, what if you’re a person who hates drinking plain old water? No problem. Simply find what you need to make your water more “happy.” For instance, have plenty of lemons or other fruit on hand and make pitchers ahead of time in your fridge and then fill up those bottles throughout the day. Or grab sparkling waters (or better yet get a soda stream) to help break it up and add “fun” to this routine. The idea is to make drinking more water easier and more enjoyable.

WAY is here to help you step-by-step through shifting from old, unhelpful habits to new routines. We’ll get into more details later, but for now, it’s time to set our water drinking plan in motion. Ultimately you must do what works for you, but here are suggestions that work for us.

SOUND THE ALARM.

If you respond well to alarms, then download a free water tracking app or set alarms throughout your day. Or set a mid-day alarm to check where you are with your water intake. If you aren’t ½ complete, it’s your time to catch-up and drink up! Then you can do the same towards the end of the day.

KEEP IT CLOSE.

The most important thing is to have an active water bottle right next to you throughout the day. I put mine next to my phone on my desk so it’s always in eyesight. For me, the easiest thing was buying two water bottles that made up all the ounces I needed to drink each day. The math was easy and I didn’t even have to count much!

ENLIST A BUDDY.

Find a reminder buddy for a midday check-in. Tell each other that at 1:00 pm each day you’ll text the ounces you drank or send a photo of your empty bottle. Just that extra check-in can make all the difference.

15 The idea is to get ultra-specific and prepare each step to work within your own day. We’ll get even more detailed in the next section so stay tuned.

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STARTING SMALL

CHASING THE SILVER BULLET

Often, we get caught in the trap of feeling like we need to make big sweeping changes in our life (usually because we are so fed up.) Maybe it’s the drama queen inside all of us letting herself be known, but the real key to self-improvement isn’t to think bigger, but to think smaller. This means setting up small routines that can build up exponentially over time.

Change rarely happens in one big moment. Change is slow and gradual. People fail at so many of their goals because they can’t think small and long-term. They get caught trying to find that one magical solution that will change everything - that elusive silver bullet. And then when it doesn’t, they give up on selfimprovement entirely. If you’ve ever given up on a goal, it’s likely because you weren’t thinking small enough and thus went back to your former habits when you weren’t able to make the big change you wanted.

Let’s say one of the things you want to change is your diet. You could completely overhaul your diet, throw out everything in your kitchen and go shopping for “healthy” foods that you’ve never eaten before. Or you could start much smaller. Instead of trying to change yourself completely overnight, focus on a tiny change, such as:

Substitute water for all of your soda intake.

Change your midday snack from potato chips to kale chips.

16 Stop eating or snacking after 7:00 pm. Feel free to padlock your fridge! I didn’t padlock my fridge, but I closed both of

my kitchen doors and turned off the lights so I’d be less likely to head there to mindlessly eat at night. Something about having to push the doors open and turn on the light made it feel like someone was watching me, so I became inhibited. Well, at least that’s the story I told myself ;)

There are good reasons why focusing on tiny changes is way more effective than focusing on instant big changes. Here are just a few.

1. It’s easier to make a tiny change. It takes less willpower and less energy, so it’s more achievable. 2. Accomplishing that tiny change will buoy up your confidence and prove to you that change is indeed possible. 3. Success in making a tiny change alters the way you think about yourself. It really does!

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Once that change becomes consistent and conscious, you’ve changed your identity and how you see yourself. Now you’re no longer that person who drinks soda at every meal, snacks on potato chips, or binge eats until all hours of the night. Now you’re the type of person who drinks water with every meal, snacks on yummy, crunchy kale chips, or gets herself in control of late-night eating. When that tiny change influences you to see yourself in a new way, it opens up new opportunities for change. You think, ‘’Hey, I stopped drinking soda, so why can’t I stop late-night snacking, too?

Gradually you see yourself as a healthy person who does healthy things. That’s just who you are now. You’ll be surprised by how much you can change in your life through nothing but tiny, gradual changes. Your inner drama queen might be a little bummed, but the Wicked Awesome You will be high-fiving herself in the mirror.