In this solo episode of the Own It Podcast, host Nicole Hollar guides listeners through a practical, step‑by‑step approach to building and sustaining healthy habits. She begins by urging listeners to clarify which aspects of their well‑being they want to improve—sleep, nutrition, activity, reading, or quiet time. She then prompts them to uncover the specific obstacles that keep those habits from happening, encouraging a deep dive into why other tasks dominate the schedule. Using a "stop‑and‑start" framework, Nicole illustrates how to identify behaviors to drop (late‑night screen time, caffeine, alcohol, bedtime TV) and new routines to adopt (earlier wind‑down, phone‑away rituals, using Do Not Disturb and call‑override features). She stresses the importance of diagnosing whether perceived barriers are genuine or merely perceived baggage, and then designing an environment that sets the habit up for success—aligning habits with personal chronotypes, leveraging accountability partners, and preparing meals in advance. Nicole emphasizes focusing on the single high‑impact habit that will deliver the greatest return, such as meal‑prepping instead of an extra workout, to avoid overwhelm and ensure sustainability. She acknowledges that wellness routines naturally ebb and flow, recommending flexibility and substitution rather than rigid adherence. Finally, she highlights the ripple effect of modeling healthy behavior for family, friends, and coworkers, and closes with a call‑to‑action to engage with her coaching services and social platforms.
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Welcome to the Own It Podcast with me, Nicole Hollar, where we're going to talk about stuff to help you get out of your way, take charge of your life, and, well, other stuff too. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Own It Podcast. Today I want to talk a little bit about establishing and maintaining healthy habits and the recognition that sometimes it feels like it's really hard to do. And if you think about habits, You know, I think about things like rest or just relaxing. And too often we see taking time for ourselves as the thing that's a reward for getting all this stuff done that we want to in a day. But if you're anything like me or most people, I think that list is always full. I mean, the reality is that there's always something to fill the space, isn't there? I like to say that it's like an elevator. That the elevator is always full. If you think about it, if you can imagine an elevator and your task list or all the things that you want to get done in a day, they're very similar. As the crowd of people from the elevator exit the elevator, the rest of the people fill, or I should say, move in order to fill the space. Well, Sometimes our task list and all the things we want to accomplish looks the same. As we let things go from our task list, somehow they— more things seem to fill it. It seems to grow, or, you know, the cascading level of things that we need to get done just keeps evolving. So if you're somebody who's finding a difficult time establishing healthy habits for yourself, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. And the first thing is, what is it that you want to change about your well-being? Do you want to get more rest? Are you hoping to have better or more frequent eating? Maybe more activity, whether that's getting up more often during the day or actually engaging in some type of structured exercise. Perhaps you're somebody who wants to Do a little bit more reading, or just have quiet time. So what is something that you want to change about your well-being? And then the second thing to ask yourself once you've established the things you want to change about your well-being is: What is it that is preventing you from doing more of what you want to do that would enhance your well-being? Like, why are all of the other things a priority, and all of these things? That could enhance your healthy habits? Why, why are they to the side? We have to ask ourselves those questions. So what's preventing me from actually doing things that are good for me? You know, and then the next 2 questions really go together. What is it that you need to stop doing? And what are the things that you need to start doing? If we look at sleep, for example, Like, what habits can you stop? Some of the things that I hear from people is they go to bed late. Well, is it because they just enjoy going to bed late? Are they not seeing how early they need to get up? Is it just a habit? So are you staying up too late? Are you somebody who's accustomed to watching TV in bed? Like, is this a habit that you might need to stop because that blue flickering light and the noise is something that really is disruptive to sleep. So even if you think you're sleeping, the quality of sleep is diminished with all of the flickering light and the background noise. Or maybe you're somebody who drinks caffeine too late, or you regularly drink too much alcohol at night. I've had a lot of people tell me in the past, like, oh, well, I like to have a drink at night because it helps me sleep. It might help you wind down a little bit, but it actually affects your sleep cycle. And I think a lot of people don't really recognize that, although I imagine I imagine most people at some point in their life have gone out and had a bender. They know they slept terrible. If nothing else, they were super hot, kept getting up, and then the next day they were wrecked, right? Now, the other part of that 2-part question is, what is it that you might need to start doing? Do you need to start winding down earlier? If you know you need to get in bed at a certain time to have a reasonable quantity of hours of sleep, and that number is say 10 PM, starting to wind down at 10 PM isn't going to work. You're going to have to start whatever your bedtime process is maybe a half hour earlier. In my case, it involves is breakfast made for the next day because we make it the night before. The dogs have to go out to go potty. You know, what are those things that need to be done before I actually get In my bed. So you want to look at those types of things. Maybe you need to wind down sooner, or maybe it's that you need to put your phone away, right? So I have to start putting my phone away because it's become a distraction, whether it's because you're on socials too long or you respond to emails very late, so your mind is still whirling. So you need to start giving your body that wind-down process. And another thing that I always recommend to people, I actually have a whole thing about it in my book, Feeling Stuck, which is using the do not disturb function on your phone. If you're somebody like me who does have their phone in their room, it's my alarm clock. I don't look at it in the night and the do not disturb function is on. It's on because I don't wanna hear the pings and dings of whatever it is. Now, mostly for me, I don't have that many notifications. That are audible, but I don't want to have any of them disrupting my sleep in the night. And I've had these conversations with people before who might say, well, I hear the email ding or that text, I can ignore it. Well, I promise you, your unconscious isn't ignoring it and it's wondering what's going on. So use the do not disturb feature. And if you are somebody who's concerned that somebody is going to need you in the middle of the night, ask yourself, how many times that's happened. And also recognize that it doesn't matter if it's an Android or an iOS, like an iPhone, they all have some type of call override, meaning if it's on a favorites list or some type of call exception. On mine, I have enabled that if you call me more than once in 15 minutes, it'll ring through. So these features are available To help to eliminate some of those concerns. So once you establish the things that you need to stop doing or start doing, I want you to take a look at each one and determine why it is you believe that you can't do those things. Using the do not disturb example I just gave you, that's a reason a lot of people have told me. It's like, well, what if somebody needs me? Okay. Well, Are those real issues that are limiting your success or is it something else? Like, that's a legitimate issue, but here's what we can do to alleviate that. Or do you have some particular baggage around why you can't go to bed early? Because, well, I've always done X, Y, and Z. There might be some baggage around there. And those are the things that identifying why it is you feel that you can't start or stop something. Is important so then you can have a better understanding of what the real roadblock is. Because once you identify the real roadblock, you're going to have a better ability to move past it. Now, another thing that's really important to do is to set yourself up for success. I've done a lot of success coaching with people and not necessarily about healthy habits. It could just be about life management. If you know that you Pay your bills late. You know, that's a normal thing for you. So you think Saturday mornings, I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna pay my bills, and that's what I'm gonna do. But the reality is that you like to go to this one class on a Saturday morning that's more important to you in that moment, then you aren't setting yourself up for success. So using working out in the morning as an example, If you just are not a morning person, I mean, I get up, my feet hit the floor, I'm ready to go, but I do like to sleep in the morning too. I've been in fitness and personal development for a long time. And I gotta tell you, I'll get up for a client at any time, but I don't really wanna work out in the morning, like 6:00 AM. I could if I had to, but it would not be my preference. I'd rather do midday. So if you're somebody who just has a hard time getting up, But you want to establish a morning workout routine, are you setting yourself up for success? Is it possible for you to go in the evening instead? And if it's not because, you know, work parameters, whatever it might be, maybe because of family time, can you establish some type of routine in the morning to help you? Maybe you hire a trainer. Maybe you find a workout buddy who you can have as an accountability partner. So you want to set yourself up for success. We can't go into any habits that are healthy or work-oriented or whatever and already be behind the 8-ball because now we're going to basically just throw out hopes and goals and dreams with no true proactive ability to attain them. And then finally, I want you guys to focus on what will make the greatest impact. Because if you think about healthy habits, it probably has a task list, so to speak, much like that endless task list you have. Well, I wanna work out better or more. I wanna eat better. I wanna eat more frequently. I wanna plan and prepare. I do wanna rest. I wanna read. I wanna do all these things. That's awesome. When you try to do it all at once, you might be successful because you're making this massive push forward. For a brief period of time, but then you realize you can't sustain it all for a long period of time. So what I'd like you to do is decide what is the thing that will make the most impact right now and start there. Like, if you're thinking about health and fitness and it means food and exercise, like I've told fitness clients, if you have limited time on Sunday, for example, because this is something I've been told. So I went and worked out and then I didn't have time to, plan and prepare my food for a week. I'll tell them straight out, listen, you need to do the thing that's going to set you up for success the most. In this case, I'd rather them eliminate that Sunday workout and use that time to plan and prepare their foods for the week. Because what's going to happen is if you don't do that, that maybe 300 calories you burned in the workout, is going to be demolished during the week because you aren't set up with quality foods, good foods, anything around you. You're going to be maybe picking at this or that, ordering out, not eating at all. So that 300-calorie sacrifice from your workout on Sunday actually has a much greater return on your investment if you see what is going to help you in the biggest picture, right? The greatest good utilizing that space. You know, well-being is not something to squeeze in, guys. We need to take care of ourselves. In fact, it should be a priority because if you aren't taking care of yourself and you aren't healthy, well, and stable, you aren't going to be able to accomplish all of those things that you really want to for yourself. Or the people around you, and yes, you know all of our health and wellness is going to ebb and flow. Sometimes we're really focused on one style of activity, and then it falls off. It's sort of like sometimes I'm really into eating cottage cheese, and then I never want to see it again, at least for maybe six months. Things ebb and flow, but then we need to know what is it that we can do. In order to continue the health— healthy habits, but just replace them with a different one. You're going to find that you're more or less committed, but there does need to be some level of commitment to you and your focus on being healthy and well. If you don't take care of yourself, nobody else is going to be as committed as you are to your well-being. And remember, you are a modeling example to everybody around you. So you're probably going to find that if you have a partner, coworkers, best friends, even for your kids, if they see you taking care of yourself with a good me-centric attitude that my wellbeing is important, they're more likely to support you and to also have that same style of attitude as well. I'm going to leave it for today. As always, guys, thank you for being here for my podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Please, if you haven't already, go ahead and give it all the likes, thumbs ups, and feel free to comment if you can on the platform that you are listening or watching on. And you can find me on most social media platforms at Nicole Holler Coaching. And of course, check out my website, nicoleholler.com, where you can learn more about my personal development coaching, fitness training, as well as request guests for the podcast and make recommendations for topics. I hope you have an awesome day. And remember, this is your time.
