How to Start a Wellness Routine That Actually Lasts

[00:00:00] Ever feel like you know you need to take better care of yourself, but don’t even know where to start ? If you tried every challenge, diet and routine, but nothing sticks, then this video is for you. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to design a personal wellness plan that actually fits your life and doesn’t fizzle out after only a week or two.

I am Corrie LoGiudice, otherwise known as Corrie Lo. I am a professional keynote speaker, high performance coach, and after years. Of helping women overcome overwhelm. I’ve seen one truth over and over again. Most personal wellness plans fail because they’re built for someone else’s life and not yours.
I know this was definitely the case for me. At one point in time, about 10 years ago, I was on a cruise with my family and I had never taken time to actually stop to think about what I needed, and I remember my son was about 18 months old, [00:01:00] i’m strapped in the baby carrier, I am standing at the Portland Lighthouse looking at this beautiful lighthouse.
The flowers were in full bloom, it smelled like early fall and I could smell the top of my son’s baby head. And I realized in that exact moment I was fully present. And it was the first time I had been fully present and I couldn’t even tell you how long because I was so overwhelmed. And that moment made me realize that the reason that I didn’t have that level of presence was because I wasn’t making time for it, and that really started me off on a journey. I call it the ” Month of Me”. I share it in my upcoming book, as well as with my coaching clients and my speaking clients on a very simple system that I used to create a health and wellness plan that worked for me when I returned from that trip.
So when I got back from the trip, I started saying no to any kind of commitment that with [00:02:00] outside of the goals that I set for myself with my physical and mental wellbeing for
30 days. And that’s exactly what I’m gonna share with you today. This is the exact system I teach my coaching clients.
I teach audiences to create routines that stick and that are customized to you. And to get started, it actually starts off really simple.
Step one is you need to be able to rate your current wellbeing. So this is the exact exercise that I do with audiences when I’m speaking as well as with my coaching clients.
You start off by rating your physical and mental health and wellbeing. On a scale of one to 10, and this happens in five key areas, you’re gonna be under sleep, hydration, movement, nutrition and mental health. Now when looking at that scale, one is needs serious attention, you do nothing with it, whereas 10 means you feel really solid about it.
Maybe you already [00:03:00] have routines in systems for it, and you feel really good about it.
So after doing this exercise, it’s gonna become pretty clear which areas you are really lacking in, So, as an example, when I was sitting looking at the lighthouse, I knew for me in that moment, my mental health was probably my number one followed by number two movement, maybe followed by nutrition after that.
So in step two, you’re gonna choose one habit. That you’re gonna focus on, You’re gonna look at the areas that you scored the lowest and you’re gonna pick one concrete action that you could commit to for 30 days . That’s your month of me, not five days, not three. You wanna do one month full 30 days.
And the reason for this is simple. It’s because on average it takes about 21 days to build a new habit to make it automatic, So we actually go a little bit beyond that for 30 days because it’s much easier from a mental [00:04:00] capacity to commit to something that’s for you for a full month and block off that month on your calendar than it is to just say, for 21 days I’m gonna do this.
It doesn’t really have the same vibe or the same weight to it, so that’s why we shift to 30 days. So it’s the 21 days to create the habit, and then the additional week to really solidify it so it becomes no brainer moving forward. Let’s walk through what this might look like for you.
so like I mentioned before when I was looking at the lighthouse, I knew number one, my mental health was at its lowest. I couldn’t be present anytime I was at work, I kept thinking about things at home. Anytime I was at home, I was thinking about things at work. So I knew that was one area that needed great attention.
My second one behind that was just movement. I was commuting 20 hours a week to work. I didn’t really have any time for me. And the third one I would say was nutrition. those three were what really came, to the forefront for me. Now [00:05:00] I know before we said focus on one, if you feel comfortable focusing on more than one to build out a more robust.
Month of me that’s up to you. And my example, I’m gonna share with you exactly what I did and you’ll see it was one habit for each of them. So doing three things and committing to three things over the course of the month really was not as big a commitment as you think, even as a single working mom for me at that time.
When I was looking at my mental health. I was thinking for myself, okay, what’s one small sustainable win that I could do for my mental health at that time? And I sat and I really thought about, okay well, what were some tools that I’ve used in the past that I found to be very helpful for my mental health?
One thing that I love doing, I still love doing it at this time, it just doesn’t fit into my lifestyle as easily, is I loved going to Buddhist meditation classes. So the very simple commitment I made to myself was once a week for that month. I was going to [00:06:00] put those classes on my calendar and make it a point to go there.
If I did any extra meditation between now and then, that would be great, but at minimum I was gonna go to those classes and I communicated to everybody around me, anybody that I needed help with at that time I had to live in au pair. So I made sure that I communicated ahead with her, “Hey, I’m doing these classes, it’s really, really important for me.” And communicated to other people around me to protect that time, to make sure that I went to those four classes that were talked about . So that’s just mental health. The other thing that I was really challenged with at that time was movement.
And there was a lot of different reasons why I was challenged with movement and big part of it was I was commuting 20 hours a week at this time. I would wake up at, 6:00 AM be on the road at seven, and I wouldn’t get home until seven o’clock in the evening. So one of the things that I decided to commit myself to was that I was gonna do 30 days of yoga . Yoga actually helped with the mental health part as well as the physical movement. So I figured, hey, this is a great [00:07:00] solution for it, and I found a YouTube 30 day program that you could do and I decided, okay, I’m gonna wake up in the morning and I’m gonna do this 20 minutes a day of yoga.
Now, from there I had to look and see, what is something that’s gonna prevent me from being able to do this every single day? And the biggest challenge for me was gonna be if I didn’t get enough sleep . So for me, I went through and I decided to, at that point, during the 30 days, I said no to any kind of
dinner plans or activities that would have me out late at night to make sure that I was in and prioritizing that sleep. So I would wake up to do the 20 minutes of yoga a day. So all in all, that one was a little bit more challenging to get going, but I did complete the 30 days of yoga. Now, the last and final one that was a challenge for me was nutrition.
I was eating a lot of like box foods, Dunkin’ Donuts, things on the run, and I thought to myself, what were sometimes [00:08:00] that I actually felt my best with my nutrition, when I felt good and I looked good and it was relatively easy for me to manage. For me personally, and this might not work for you, I had a lot of success even before this had happened, doing a whole 30, which coincidentally time in nicely with my 30 days of yoga, see a trend here?
So I committed to the 30 days of doing a whole 30, which for me was a little bit simpler ’cause I had done it so many times in the past that I had pre-done menus and I knew the routine. It was just a matter of making the commitment to myself to do it.
But what it looks like for you might just be meal prepping for, your snacks for a week and not eating packaged snacks. It really depends on what your specific scenario was. For me, I knew that I felt better doing this program, so I committed for 30 days. So when you break it all out, it was fairly simple for my month of me, what it was I was committing to.
I was committing to going to the meditation classes once a week, [00:09:00] and I was committing to waking up early and doing 20 minutes of yoga and then I was also committing to eating a whole 30 structured diet, which for those of you who aren’t familiar with Whole 30. It was, it sounds so restrictive. it’s No grains at all.
So no gluten, no dairy, no legumes, no alcohol, no sugar. So I committed to just not eating those foods. Very simple. I could eat as much as I wanted, but I committed to making sure it only fit within that. And I did it for 30 days and I set my boundaries with other people. So if I was going out to eat somewhere, I let them know, “Hey, I’m doing this whole 30 and these are my restrictions.”
Or if somebody wanted to make plans, “No, I’m sorry. I’m doing, um, my meditation class that day.” Or “no, I’m sorry, I can’t go out. I have to wake up early to do my yoga”, but it was just those three things that were a priority. And after that, to be honest, I still do this on a regular basis because of this month of me I did so many years ago.
So it’s [00:10:00] focus on the small, sustainable win that works for you that maybe might be something that you’ve tried in the past that you need to bring back, that you realize, hey that really worked well for me. Or maybe it’s something new that you wanna try to explore to help solve that, health and wellness issue for you, and try it just for 30 days.
that brings me to step three, which is build momentum and then repeat it. Once you pick up habits that feel easy, then from there, you’re gonna go back to your list in step one and pick the next lowest area and repeat the process. So for me, while I was going through all of this, mindset was much better,
I was really locked into those meditation classes, I was moving my body every single day, I was fueling it really well. The next area from there was my sleep habits . I look through what are some things I could do to create a bedtime routine or to make my room darker. So little things like that [00:11:00] and you build them and stack them in the right order.
You do ’em in the order that actually makes sense for you based on what you determine in step one, not just based on either perfection or what everybody else is telling you to do, and this is how you create wellness that lasts. It’s by honoring the season that you’re in and not biting it. Because truth is, you could do the step one analysis at any point in time.
I could do it four weeks from now get completely different results. So if you feel that something is lacking, then this is the true way that you really honor the season that you’re in.
So I’d love to know what is one wellness habit that you are willing to commit to for the next 30 days? Go ahead, drop it in the comments so that we could cheer you on.
And if you want a companion to this process, grab my month of me AI companion. An AI trained tool trained by me, and it provides you with everything from guided journaling prompts, habit blueprints, mindset shifts, everything that you [00:12:00] need to stop surviving and start caring for yourself.
You could download it instantly and dive in right away .
I hope you found value in this today. In the meantime, I will see you on the next episode. See you next time.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.