Recently, I’ve become a bit obsessed with the idea of digital printable products. So much so in fact, that I’ve launched an online shop selling them! For anyone who’s not sure exactly what digital printable products are, they’re resources that you can download and print from home. This includes things like habit trackers, SMART goal worksheets, priority matrices, reflection templates, and so on.
Printable worksheets, such as these, are extremely valuable tools when it comes to making healthy lifestyle changes, so in this article, I’m going to explain why that’s the case and how they can be used to support you to achieve your health and wellbeing goals.
Structured goal setting improves the likelihood of success
When thinking about making any lifestyle changes, I’d always recommend starting by setting some clear, actionable goals using SMART goal setting. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound – which are all the components we’d ideally want to see in a well-crafted goal. Using this approach, you can break down an overwhelmingly ambitious goal into smaller, more manageable goals that you’ll be more likely to achieve. Using a physical SMART goal worksheet, such as the one I’ve designed here, can help with this process, as it ensures no part of the SMART goal setting formula is forgotten and provides greater clarity around your plans.
Viewing long-term progress can help to maintain motivation
Ever had a day when it feels like the wheels have fallen off and all your best intentions have gone out of the window? Yeah, me too. Whilst these days can feel disheartening, they make up a much bigger picture of our behaviour over time, and so it can be useful to zoom out, and to reflect on our progress more broadly. Yes, you might have had a couple of days that didn’t feel great, but what have the last few weeks or months looked like? I’d hazard a guess that not every day feels like that.
A habit tracker is a tool that can be really useful to help you reflect on your behaviour. By recording your habits each day, you can build up a picture of your progress over the longer-term. It enables you to gain some perspective and to see how well you’ve been doing, which can help to generate motivation on those more challenging days.
There is power in the written word
Setting goals and intentions in your mind is obviously great, but the act of physically writing down these plans using printable worksheets can be extra powerful. There’s an added element of accountability that comes with writing down what you’re planning to achieve, and doing so tends to cement those intentions in your mind more so than with just mental planning. Sharing your goals and weekly progress with others can, for some people, be an effective way of creating external accountability as well, so physical resources that can be shared with other people, such as habit trackers or SMART goal worksheets, can facilitate this.
Whilst some people enjoy using apps to record their behaviours, I’d argue that there are some added benefits to using printable worksheets instead. Having a physical resource in your home can act as a cue for you to fill it in, helping to establish the habit, or as a reminder of the goals you’ve set for yourself. As useful and convenient as apps are, there is always the possibility of them getting lost amongst the chaos of your home screen.
Using resources provides space for reflection
Doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for a different result is the definition of insanity. This is why it’s important to be reflective when trying to make lifestyle changes. That way, you can start to work out what’s helping, and what’s hindering, your progress, and to subsequently make any necessary tweaks to your behaviour. Printable worksheets can be useful tools to support this process, as they can help you to structure your reflections and hopefully prompt you to carve out some time each week to be self-reflective. For example, the reflection template that I’ve designed provides space to think about what went well over the past week, what you found challenging, what you were grateful for, and structured sections to help you consider what you want to start doing, stop doing, do less of, do more of, and keep doing over the coming week.
Gain valuable insight
I think it’s fair to say that a lot of us tend to function on autopilot a lot of the time. That’s why using printable worksheets to keep track of our habits and behaviours can be so useful. Regularly recording whether you’ve completed your daily habits or achieved your weekly goals is a really good way to take stock of your behaviour and start to identify whether there are any patterns. For example, do you only find time to go for a walk at the weekend, or do you only manage to drink enough water when you’re in the office? Whatever your goals, keeping a record can provide you with valuable insight that you can use to make helpful changes where necessary.
It's not only about keeping track of our habits but also our feelings and emotions. Our internal emotional state so often influences our external behaviour, but without keeping track of what it is we’re experiencing, these patterns can sometimes go unnoticed. That’s why I’ve also designed a mood tracker and a printable worksheet to track links between food and mood, to help you better understand the impact of your emotional state on your behaviour.
Check out the goods
If you’re now sold on the benefits of printable worksheets (and let’s face it who wouldn’t be after such a compelling argument?!), I’d encourage you to take a look at my online store, where you can find all of the aforementioned resources, plus many more. The best thing about these resources is that 1. they’re super cheap, but 2. you can print them off an unlimited number of times. Once you’ve downloaded them, they’re yours to keep and use forever!
Check out my online store here, and see if there are any resources that could better support you to achieve your health and wellbeing goals.
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