With intelligent design and environmental consciousness as a priority, La Pochette creates gym and travel accessories designed to be by your side no matter where your plans happen to be taking you - rather than hidden away in a gym locker for days. Read on to join La Pochette in exploring the importance of creating regular, manageable habits to assist busy lifestyles, and how to do just that.
Creatures of Habit
As humans, we’re creatures of habit. Whether we realise it or not, we are what we repeatedly do, and it’s this we’re told that influences our ability to achieve life’s goals.
Conventional wisdom teaches us to ‘reach for the stars’ and ‘focus on the end goal’ to achieve results. This is all well and good, but how do we actually get there? Whilst our aim may be to possess the abs of Zendaya for example, we need to know how to get there.
In his bestseller ‘Atomic Habits’, James Clear acknowledges the impact habits have on our achievements in life. As creatures of habit, he states we can take ownership and structure our habits to enable us to reach our goals. Whilst this may sound like a lot of work, the action or habit which helps us arrive at our goal can be small. Research has proven it’s more likely we’ll stick to something if it’s ‘doable’, or a nudge, rather than a gargantuan chore. After all, changes that seem small and insignificant compound to form consequential results over time.
Health and Wellbeing
Dr Becky Gillaspy, a US based science and nutrition specialist, has taken this a step further. Far from thinking about habits as predominantly bad or unyielding (Ed Sheeran!), Gillaspy talks about making habits work for you, particularly when it comes to health and wellbeing. This is where brands like Innermost, and luxury lifestyle accessories brand La Pochette can help, providing solutions that make creating new and healthy habits effortless.
Referencing Clear’s book, Gillaspy cites the example of a test group who wanted to increase their exercise levels. Whilst the entire group were given material on the benefits of exercise, half were also asked to commit to planning when and where they were going to exercise. In other words, they were asked to come up with a plan, or ‘how’ to achieve their end result. In doing so, this group realised double the exercise time of the group who weren’t asked about their intent. This is known as ‘Implementation Intent’, and improves the likelihood of following through on an intention or idea.
Making It Stick
You might be thinking, this is great in theory, but how do we make it stick? As Clear states, we need to ensure we make it easy by removing any potential barriers, and giving ourselves mental cues.
One way of doing this would be to pack your gym kit in your La Pochette Sweat Bag, or La Pochette Shoe Carry the night before a workout, and to leave that kit by the door ready to go. Practical, water resistant, antibacterial and machine washable, both provide clever functionality without compromising on style.
Think about booking into a class ahead of time, and paying for it, making it far more likely you’ll attend. Roping a friend in too means you’re more likely to commit and make it happen.
Keep your swim kit with you in the waterproof La Pochette Wet Bag, and squeeze in a swim session during your busy day knowing so are always ready to work out, no excuses.
Behavioural change comes about when habits are not only easy, but also attractive and gratifying. This gave rise to Vogue labelling the La Pochette brand as their ‘Gym Bag Hero’, because as well as being chic, the collection utilises sustainable materials. The products themselves also enable sustainable practices, replacing single use plastic bags used post-workout or swim.
Today’s hybrid living means multiple transitions throughout the day from offices to gyms, to our social lives, and with it the burden of carrying all the kit and equipment necessary to achieve that day. La Pochette provides intelligently designed, stylish, environmentally sound solutions to enable you to become a creature of good habit.
As renowned Philosopher and Sage Confucius once said, (and who better to take life lessons from), ‘All people are the same, only their habits differ”. Let’s grab our bags, book that abs class and go….
To hear more about the La Pochette story, and to visit the shop, go to https://lapochette.co/
References
Clear, J (2018) Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, Penguin Publishing Group, USA
Dr Becky Gillaspy (2019) 2 Habit Hacks You Can Use to Exercise More | How To Stick To Habits
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed-8URqxyH0&t=154s (last accessed 16th May 2022)
