It was only when I started encouraging my patients to try five-minute health snacks for themselves that I really got a true sense of their power. I already knew that small, regular habits could rapidly build up and ultimately have much greater effects on health than large interventions that were less frequent and would inevitably be abandoned after a few weeks. But a second force came into play that I wasn’t fully expecting. It would amplify the effects of Feel Better in 5 to a sometimes life-changing degree. I call it the “Ripple Effect.”
I see the Ripple Effect again and again. It happens when the tiny changes in routine I recommend trigger new, positive changes in other areas of my patients’ lives. For example, a patient who starts doing a five-minute Body health snack will begin to feel the difference that regular exercise is making and find themselves motivated to stop eating junk food. Another who finds themselves less stressed after doing a daily Mind health snack will find that they’re sleeping better, which means their performance at work improves, their self-esteem starts to rise, they feel less need for caffeine, and have more energy for exercise.
Of course, I shouldn’t really have been surprised by this. I’ve been talking for years about the fact that our minds and bodies are all part of one connected system. Tweak one small part of our health and other pieces of it will also begin to change and improve. What this has taught me is that the lives we live work in exactly the same way as our health. We don’t have a working life and a sleeping life and a gym life and a love life and a sex life and a food life and a fun life, as we often imagine. We’re not compartmentalized. All these different domains are just parts of one single life. Improve one piece of it, and the benefits will spread into many different areas. It’s only when you see the power of habits working in combination with the power of the Ripple Effect that you understand the true life-changing potential of the Feel Better in 5 program.