Do your daily or weekly habits support the goals you have for yourself? Or do they prevent you from reaching your goals? These are important questions to ask because we shape our lives by making choices again and again, moment by moment, year after year. Every day we face hundreds of small discreet tiny choice points to engage in this behavior or that, this habit or that.
Take the goal of weight loss, for example. This goal just happens to be one expressed by many of my coaching clients.
Most of us find it easy enough to identify some of the “eat less exercise more” habits we wish to develop. We can envision what a healthier lifestyle would look and feel like. We can picture the thinner “healthy and fit” new me, and we really WANT it.
For some of us though, ditching our persistent negative habits in exchange for positive healthy habits is difficult. We do it for a short while and then quit, captive again to our old patterns. Even with strong desire and motivation to change, lasting lifestyle shifts can remain maddenly elusive.
What holds us back from sustaining healthy habits? What prevents us from making the very changes we know we need to make and very much want to make?
I believe it is entirely possible for us to be sincerely committed to the lifestyle changes we say we want to make AND, at the same time, sincerely committed to” saving” our live as we know it, i.e. maintaining the status quo. When we’re committed in both directions like this, we are living contradictions, with one foot on the gas pedal to move forward and the other foot on the brake to protect ourselves from change. Until we are willing to take a closer look at our devotion to the status quo, to preserving the current way we see ourselves, we are likely to keep getting in the way of reaching our stated goals. We will remain captive to ourselves, tethered to our familiar negative habits.
Some personal change goals-especially those we have trouble accomplishing -require more of us than simple technical change. Such difficult change goals often require us to “adapt” by thinking of ourselves and our place in this world differently. They require us to grow, to “get bigger” as people, in order to stop being our own worst enemy. Such growth involves two things:
1) Becoming aware of the fears, beliefs and assumptions that are keeping us so committed to preserving life as we know it, and
2) Challenging and letting go of the fears, beliefs and assumptions that have served an important protective purpose in our lives until now.
One of my personal change goals-although not exactly a weight loss goal- may help illustrate:
For the past 5-7 years I’ve wanted to do a triathlon. Just a small one, and if I survive, perhaps another longer one after that. I can already run and bike but don’t know how to swim and am, in fact, absolutely terrified by the thought of open water swimming. Last year I signed up for swimming lessons at a YMCA and made 3 out of 5 lessons. By the end, I could put my face in the water and “sort of” do the crawl across the deep end of the pool even though I was in total panic mode and gasping for air by the time my hand could finally grab the other end of the pool. I had intentions of practicing the crawl at the pool 2x/week after that, but this habit never developed. The only thing I ever really did was go to Big Creek State Park one time with a friend who had a kayak. I treaded water there in water over my head (right next to the kayak) for 11 minutes before quitting in panic after an accidental swallow of “dirty green algae on the top” lake water.
Fast forward to this year: After turning 57 in February, I decided to resurrect my goal of completing a triathlon. I signed up for swimming lessons at the Y again and like last year, made 3 out of 5 lessons. Progress is slow but sure, because I can now swim in decent crawl form across the entire length of the pool with only 75% panic and gasping upon reaching the other side. I can do this now, 20-24 times in a row with 30-60 second rests between each length to re-gain my breath and courage again.
I still don’t know if I’ll ever reach my goal of completing a triathlon, but I’m moving towards it and committed to a new habit of swimming 1-2x/week. Triathlon or not, I figure swimming is a great form of exercise and a habit well worth forming.
Here are some of the fears, beliefs and assumptions I am in the process of facing and challenging:
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“I will be out of control, helpless and drown” (this is actually the worst one!)
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“Seaweed will entangle me, fish or other sea creatures will bite and I’ll freak out”.
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“I’ll be cold, wet, uncomfortable, scared, and won’t be able to tolerate”.
As I face my fears and challenge the way I think about myself in the water, I am gradually becoming a person who can tolerate being cold, wet, uncomfortable and scared in the water, a person who is not helpless, who has personal control over the swim stroke and kick movements. The more I become this kind of person, the more I’m excited and able to make swimming practice a habit and the more I’m going to be able to reach my goal. The idea of seaweed still scares me though!
Back to you now. If you’re having trouble developing and sustaining healthy lifestyle changes, start by asking yourself this question: When you think of eating healthy and exercising regularly, what is the most uncomfortable, worrisome, or outright scary feeling that comes up for you? How might you be committed to protecting yourself from facing this feeling?
The coaching relationship is a safe place to explore these questions and can help you reach your goals!