Spring has FINALLY arrived up here in Iowa and the world is waking up…along with dandelions, crab grass and lots of other weedy plants. Thankfully, there are also tulips, irises, rhubarb and asparagus! The trick is to keep the stuff we don’t want away from the stuff we do want. We have a huge yard and a huge garden and a busy life, which can make keeping up with yard work a bit intimidating. 🙂 However, over the years I’ve learned that if I can devote at least 20 minutes a day to working on one part of the yard/garden I can keep things looking pretty good. Not perfect…we’ll never win a landscaping award or be owners of a ‘Peter Rabbit’ garden, but I can keep it neat and productive.
As I was using my 20 minutes to weed around our asparagus it occurred to me that my 20 minute ‘rule’ is pretty much the same method I teach my 1-on-1 clients. We focus on 1 habit at a time and purposefully design those habits to fit into our busy days, which means they usually take somewhere from 5-20 minutes/day. Twenty minutes out of 1, 440/day doesn’t seem like it would amount to much, but it does! It gives us time to slow down at meals, to make a meal plan for the week, to pack a lunch for work or to occasionally pause and really think about why we’re eating what we’re eating (‘Am I hungry? Upset? Rushed? Celebrating? Bored?’). And somehow, just like with my yard, that 20 minutes let’s us make progress toward our goals and avoid the pit falls we’ve stumbled over for so many years. We aren’t turning into elite athletes, nor do we eat 100% whole foods all the time, but we’re making healthier choices and seeing results every month.
Instead of focusing on ALL the habits/choices you think you ‘should’ change to be healthier, what would happen if you picked just ONE choice each day that took 20 minutes to accomplish? In 1 week that would be 2.3 hours towards health…in 1 month that would be 10 hours towards health…in 1 year that would be 122 hours towards health. What could you accomplish in just 20 minutes? 🙂
