The Special Ingredient Required to Form a Self-Care Habit

berate | verb | to rebuke or scold harshly and at length

champion | verb | to support the cause of

Keep these two definitions in mind. We’re going to use them in a moment.

Before we do that, think of a self-care habit you want to form. Maybe you want to drink 60 ounces of water a day. Maybe you want to walk for 45 minutes four times a week. Maybe you want to write one chapter of your book a month until it’s done. Maybe you want to catch up with your sister every Sunday. Whatever self-care habit you have in mind, let’s work with it.

The first thing you have to do in order to form a self-care habit is to commit to doing so. You might declare, “Starting this week, I’m going to walk for 45 minutes four times a week.”

Awesome, you’ve made a commitment. But every time you make a commitment, do you keep it to the letter?

Probably not. Especially when you’re working on something that’s not currently a strength for you, there’s a good chance you’ll slip.

Slipping is inevitable, and handling your slips gracefully is crucial to forming self-care habits.

When you slip, you have two options. Your first option is to quit. Your second option is to recommit. Your options look like this:

1. Commit → Slip → Quit
2. Commit → Slip → Recommit

Clearly, if the self-care habit you’re working to form is important to you, then commit-slip-recommit is what you want to be doing. In my work with my clients, much of the success they have comes from finding ways to recommit after slipping.

When you slip, it’s very helpful to remind yourself why this self-care habit is important to you. Keep reminding yourself what this habit brings to your life.

But that’s not all. There’s a certain special ingredient that makes this process work even better.

Before we get to the special ingredient, let’s talk about the surefire way to make this process go down the toilet. This big mistake is one you surely want to avoid if you want to form a self-care habit.

Let’s go back to our first word of the day: berate.

berate | verb | to rebuke or scold harshly and at length

The commit-slip-quit cycle typically isn’t emotionless. Most people, when they slip, mistakenly think the key to committing again is to berate themselves. They say things to themselves they wouldn’t say to their worst enemy. Then, most of the time, they quit. It looks like this:

Commit → Slip → BERATE → Quit

Not only does berating yourself usually result in quitting at that time, each time you play out the commit-slip-BERATE-quit cycle, you’re less likely to ever try again. It’s humiliating—and extremely anti-motivating—to be berated. Doing it to yourself doesn’t make it any better.

If someone you know said to you, “You suck. You failed again. I knew you’d fail. You always fail,” how would you feel? Motivated?

Most people would find this kind of berating talk from their boss, their life partner, or anyone else in their life to be completely unacceptable, and for good reason. Yet, in the quiet recesses of our own minds, many of us have spoken to ourselves this way. I certainly have. And I’ve learned it isn’t very motivating.

Let’s get back to our second word of the day: champion.

champion | verb | to support the cause of

We often hear of people championing important causes. “He champions human rights.” “She champions environmental stewardship.” I love this use of the word champion. It carries with it a great deal of conviction. A great deal of standing for what’s important. A great deal of “Nothing is going to get in my way!”

When working to form a self-care habit, championing yourself is what it’s all about.

Slipping is inevitable. How you respond makes all the difference. Championing yourself is the key. It looks like this:

Commit → Slip → CHAMPION → Recommit

Have you ever heard a chef say the special ingredient in their signature dish is love? It’s the same special ingredient that makes the process of forming a self-care habit go a lot more smoothly.

When you berate yourself, you’re leaving love out of the equation. When you champion yourself, you’re bringing the love, the self-love, big time.

Remember:

Commit → Slip → CHAMPION → Recommit

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.