Stop Optimizing Your Health & Start Building Better Habits

When trying to achieve lasting well-being, many of us hunt for the "best" practice, or try to cram five different wellness routines into an already packed day. We listen to celebrity influencers who aren't actually experts in the area they're influencing, or we take advice from a friend or family member insisting "you really need to do this," instead of relying on good, authoritative sources of information.

But according to well-being researcher Matt Bloom, Ph.D., lasting well-being typically doesn't come from a major overhaul. It comes from small, specific habits practiced consistently over time.

Bloom has spent his career studying people in highly demanding profession—physicians, teachers, clergy, and humanitarian workers. He expected them to be stressed every day, but he found that most of them aren't overwhelmed by their work. They've adapted to their circumstances, and the ones who flourish over the long haul are those with simple practices built into their days.

The people who struggle are often the ones who throw themselves into the deep end with unbridled passion and a commitment to serve, without finding ways to regulate those intense emotions.

Bloom used anxiety, a growing problem in the U.S., to show the difference between big and small changes. He often sees people jumping straight to medication, squeezing an hour of four or five practices into the day, and talking to friends about it daily, which leaves people feeling more overwhelmed than they began.

He suggests starting with one small habit called the "worry window," a practice he credits to Elissa Epel, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. With the worry window, you spend five minutes letting yourself worry about everything on your mind, then you bring it to a stop. According to Bloom, research shows that doing this daily leads to less worrying overall after a couple of weeks.

My one tip is to do it earlier in the day rather than right before bed, so your mind has time to process and release those worries. Once that's working, Bloom layers in a five-minute "tranquil practice," such as a walk or focusing on your breath while stopped at a stoplight.

Bloom admits he's prone to analysis paralysis, where he gets so caught up thinking through a problem that he keeps circling it instead of acting. It is one of the reasons he considers an accountability partner to be essential.

He describes an accountability partner as a companion on your journey to well-being who knows you well and is willing to be both caring and candid. They'll let you vent, then help you gain perspective or tell you when you're overthinking. For Bloom, that's his wife and one of his good friends, who will point out when he's looping on a problem and ask what step forward he wants to take.

Bloom also said talking through health practices with people he trusts also helps him resist bigger overhauls. When he recently thought about wearing a continuous glucose monitor for a couple of weeks, he raised it with a physician friend, who asked him, "Well, what do you hope to learn from that?" His physician had already said he was healthy, his blood work was good, and he had energy. She helped him see that there was no need for to tangle himself up in that information.

Lasting change rarely needs a new plan so much as one five-minute practice matched to a specific need. Small, intentional habits are the most effective for achieving true well-being.

Before committing to something bigger, run it past someone who will be candid with you. And when the urge to optimize hits, ask yourself what the true goal is, and whether the information will actually make you healthier, or just give you something new to worry about.