How to Stay Committed to Wellness Goals When Working From Home: A 3-Step Guide
You know that excited, motivated feeling you get at the start of a new year? You've set those big health and wellness goals. You're ready to get in the #bestshapeever. Your home office is organized, your workout corner is ready, and your meal prep containers are lined up in the fridge, all full of lean proteins and steamed veggies. Yum.
Then... life happens.
A deadline gets moved up. The kids need help with their homework. The WiFi decides to take a day off. Your friends invite you out for happy hour. Suddenly, your carefully crafted wellness routine feels impossible to maintain.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. As someone who’s spent over 10 years supporting people on their wellness journeys, I see this pattern all the time. The good news?
Setbacks are a natural part of life—but they’re only temporary.
They don’t have to be permanent, and they don’t have to derail your progress.
Today, I’m going to show you how to take those setbacks in stride and keep on track with your wellness journey, so you can stay adaptable and reach your goals and intentions with purpose.
Embracing the Inevitable: Setbacks Will Happen
The first step to staying aligned with your goals is accepting that obstacles are just a natural part of the journey—not a sign that you’re failing or that your goal isn’t meant to be.
When you work from home, own your own business, or are even a stay-at-home partner, spouse, or parent, the boundaries between personal and professional life can blur quickly and easily.
The kitchen (and those fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies) is just a few steps away. Your computer and all those unchecked tasks have the audacity to beckon to you during designated workout or family times. Your couch looks particularly inviting just after you decided to do a quick weight-lifting session.
Please do your best to understand and accept that these aren’t failures—they’re normal challenges that everyone faces when beginning to prioritize health while also balancing work and home life in the same space.
The Art of Adaptability: Staying Flexible Without Losing Sight of Your Goal
Staying on track with your wellness doesn’t mean rigidly sticking to your original plan or else.
It simply means keeping your eyes on the destination while being flexible about the route you take to get there.
Put more simply? Life happens. Keep going.
Here are some practical strategies to help you master the art of adaptability:
1. Create Flexible Frameworks, Not Rigid Rules
Instead of demanding of yourself, “I must do a 45-minute workout at 6 AM every single day,” try a more flexible, “I'll move my body intentionally for about 20-45 minutes at least 3-5 times a week, and I’ll do it before or after I break for lunch.” This gives you room to adapt to each day’s unique challenges and listen to your body’s needs, while still sticking to your goals.
Remember that even just taking 5 minutes once or twice a week is enough. It's more about developing the habit in the beginning rather than getting results.
2. Develop Multiple Options for Different Scenarios
The “all or nothing” mindset is one that plagues many people.
Have you ever been in a situation where you planned your meals for the day, but then your partner surprised you by bringing home a delicious lunch? And then maybe a few hours later, when dinner time rolled around, you might have thought, “Well I already screwed up my diet for today. Might as well order some pizza and start over again tomorrow!”
This is “all or nothing” thinking. The idea that just because things didn’t go exactly as planned, now all bets are off.
When it comes to movement, this can be especially hard. Miss your 6 AM yoga class? It’s not too late to get some activity in. You could still go for a walk, take a bike ride, or even put a yoga video on your TV and get in some movement before lunchtime.
It also helps to have multiple options handy for when your schedule inevitably changes. Try a strategy like having a 10-minute workout option for crazy-busy days, a 30-minute routine for normal days, and a longer practice when time allows. This way, you’re never in an “all or nothing” situation.
3. Focus on Identity-Based Habits
One of my favorite books is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In this book, he poses the idea,
“The interior of behavior change and building better habits is your identity. Each action you perform is driven by the fundamental belief that it is possible. So if you change your identity (the type of person that you believe that you are), then it’s easier to change your actions.”
So, working off this idea, how can you start to shift your identity around your goals? For example, rather than telling yourself “I have to meditate today,” you could instead tell yourself, “I’m someone who prioritizes meditation,” or “I never miss a meditation.”
This subtle mindset shift helps you start to subconsciously believe in your ability to achieve your wellness goals and find creative solutions when your original plan isn’t possible.
This is where understanding your past experiences becomes crucial. Maybe you've tried and “failed” at your wellness goals before, leading you to perceive yourself and own the identity of “someone who can't stick with it.” That isn’t true. You’ve absolutely stuck with something before, haven’t you?
The mere fact that you’re reading this means that you’re alive and breathing, so you’ve at least stuck with that. That’s evidence of your ability to be a person who sticks with it. Recognizing these patterns and beliefs about yourself allows you to address them, provide evidence to the contrary, and consciously build a new identity—not just new habits.
One of my clients and I were discussing this recently, and she put it this way: “I realized I kept setting myself up for failure with these big goals that I had to be perfect at. When I started seeing myself as ‘someone who values strength and energy’ instead of just saying ‘I need to work out today,’ everything changed. It’s a value within me, not just a ‘should’ I have to check off my to-do list. Now I find ways to honor that value even on days where it feels impossible.”
Understanding Your Past So You Can Create a New Future
Our previous experiences shape how we respond to challenges. If you've started and stopped health routines multiple times in the past or since you’ve been working from home, you might have developed limiting beliefs about your ability to change.
Grab your journal or jot a note down in your phone and take a moment to reflect:
What patterns do you notice popping up in your past attempts at sticking to your wellness routines?
What were the specific events, thoughts, feelings, or situations (we can also think of these as triggers) that knocked you off course?
What stories do you tell yourself when things don’t go as planned? What does your self-talk sound like?
Drawing attention to and understanding these patterns doesn’t mean you’re doomed to repeat them. Quite the opposite, in fact—awareness is the first step to creating a new path.
The key to remember here? A new way of doing things isn’t just possible—it’s necessary. The same approach that didn’t work before won’t suddenly work now.
If you want to stay on track with your wellness goals, effectively becoming the person you really want to be, you need new strategies tailored to your unique circumstances, challenges, and work-from-home lifestyle.
The Compassion Connection: Being Your Own Best Ally
Self-compassion, positive self-talk, and being your own biggest cheerleader aren’t just for spiritual gurus and self-help authors. It’s an essential practice that everyone must employ for long-term success, happiness, and wellness.
Research shows us that people who practice self-compassion after setbacks are more likely to get back on track than those who criticize or talk down to themselves. Yet for many ambitious, motivated, high-achievers, self-criticism can sometimes feel more natural than kindness.
If you find it easier to tell yourself everything you did wrong today than to name one thing you were proud of, this is an area you’ll want to prioritize in your wellness routine.
Try this simple self-compassion practice when you feel frustrated with your progress:
Place one hand over your chest.
Take three deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Imagine yourself not as you, but as a good friend. Speak to yourself as you would speak to that person facing the same challenge.
Acknowledge the difficulty without judgment: “This is a hard moment. But it’s okay. Everyone struggles sometimes. That’s what it’s like to be human.”
Remind yourself of your why. For example, “I’m committing to this goal because my well-being fuels the version of me that’s ready to rise, adapt, and move through life’s challenges.”
This takes less than 60 seconds, but can go a long way in completely shifting your mindset from defeat to determination.
Get Out of Your Head: Simple Grounding Practices for Busy Days
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is step away from the work and reconnect with your physical, tangible environment. As one of my favorite sayings goes, “If you’re too busy to go fishing, then you’re just too busy.”
For work-from-home professionals, especially if you’re also an entrepreneur, finding grounding activities that fit into your day can feel like a difficult task, but it is essential for your overall wellness.
Try these simple practices for getting out of your head and back into your body:
5-minute nature break: Step outside and tap into your five senses. Focus, and notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.
Desk-side stretch: Set a timer for 3 minutes of gentle stretching between calls.
Mindful tea ritual: Take 5 minutes to prepare and savor a cup of tea, without multitasking.
Quick sketch session: Keep a pad of paper and your favorite pencil beside your desk for a 10-minute creative break between tasks.
Plant care: Take a few minutes to tend to your houseplants as a calming break from screen time.
The specific activity doesn’t matter as much as the intention behind it. These moments remind you that wellness isn’t just another task to check off your to-do list — it’s about creating space to reconnect with yourself, even on those busy days.
Celebrating Progress, Not Just Results
When you’re working toward long-term health goals, the day-to-day progress can feel slow. It can feel easy to gloss over “simple” achievements while keeping your eye on the prize. That’s why intentionally tracking and celebrating small wins is crucial for maintaining that momentum.
Consider keeping a “wins journal” where you note even the smallest victories:
“I chose water instead of a third coffee today.”
“I took a 10-minute walk between meetings.”
“I prepped healthy snacks for my workday tomorrow even though I was tired.”
These seemingly small choices add up to significant change over time. By acknowledging them, you not only reinforce your positive behavior and increase the likelihood of making similar decisions again, but you also build confidence in your ability to change your identity in service of your goals and stay aligned with your values even when life gets complicated.
Remember Your North Star
When setbacks happen, returning to your deepest “why” can reignite your motivation to get back up and keep going.
I recently shared this reframe with a client, perhaps it will help you, too:
Instead of “Get better at managing my health so I can be happier,” try “Make choices that will create moments of happiness in my health today.” Notice the subtle, yet powerful differences between those two statements?
This puts your ultimate purpose—your North Star—at the center of each decision. When your compass always points north, temporary detours can’t lead you astray for long.
As you’re all too familiar with, working from home while prioritizing your health is a unique journey with its own challenges and opportunities.
If you're interested in receiving support on your journey and could benefit from personalized wellness strategies that work with your lifestyle, not against it, I’d love to connect. Book a free, 20-minute discovery call to explore how wellness coaching could be the support you need to stay adaptive and aligned with your goals, even when life gets in the way.
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