Why is it that even though when we know what to do, we very often still don’t do it…?
This is a really important question because it almost seems like a bit of a mystery doesn’t it!?
On paper it sounds so simple…eat healthy, go to the gym, prioritize sleep, save money…insert whatever behaviour that you’d like to carry out…
We’re all well aware that a nice piece of salmon with some spiced up rice, a side green salad and some fruit for dessert is a whole lot healthier than ordering in…so why in spite of that do we still order take out so regularly?
We know that working out and hitting our 10k steps per day has us feel and perform better, so why do we resort to living a sedentary lifestyle? We know that getting great sleep is like wearing rose coloured glasses all day long, so why do we watch an extra 2 episodes on Netflix knowing that we’re going to feel tired and a little grumpy the following day?
Before you dig into the meat of this episode, I’d recommend having a quick read of previous article (How to stay fit in a society that wants you fat and sick) because it explains the evolutionary wiring or human programming that has us make the food and exercise/movement decisions that we make, but here’s a really quick 2 sentence summary…
Humans are wired to turn calories into babies and the most effective way to do that is by eating more and moving less…
The kicker is, our ancestors food environment fit that wiring perfectly because food wasn’t abundantly available and they had to work really hard to get it, however now we’ve got what’s called an ‘evolutionary mismatch’ on our hands because food is incredibly abundant, yet we don’t need to expend virtually any energy to get it…but, we have the same ‘eat more move less’ programming because evolution takes time to adapt and our technology has outpaced our genes.
For the sake of this episode, we’re going to put the evolutionary wiring component to the side for a second because we’re going to go a layer or two deeper…and the first concept or truth that we’re going to acknowledge is that knowing in and of itself is not enough to create real-world behaviour change…
Everyone at this point knows that smoking directly causes cancer among a whole bunch of other health issues and yet, some folks still smoke.
Doctors literally see patients with weight problems that are causing all sorts of downstream health complications every single day and yet, many doctors are overweight…
Everyone and their Mom knows that alcohol and other drugs are not health promoting in the slightest and yet, we still partake on a regular basis…
How many times have you said to yourself, ‘I know I should do ‘x’ while you’re literally doing ‘y?’ You may have even been telling yourself that you ‘should’ eat a healthy meal while you’re in line at a fast food joint or putting a handful of fries in your mouth, I’ve been there!
Knowing something isn’t enough to create change for the vast majority of people and so the question becomes, what is enough? What separates someone who does make lasting nutrition and lifestyle change from someone who doesn’t?
One or both of the following things is required in order to get started…
The first one is hope…
For example, let’s say that you’re overweight, you’ve got some digestion troubles and your energy is just not where you want it to be…in order to have the desire or even interest to take action and actually follow through, you need to at least hope that what you are going to do is going to yield you the change that you’re seeking.
On the other hand, if you’ve decided that whatever you do isn’t going to make any difference to your weight, digestion or energy, you’re not going to take action because what would be the point?
You know that acquaintance/friend of yours that you ask to go for dinner 10x and they always say no, at some point you just stop asking because you run out of hope that they’re going to say yes…folks run into this same issue via failed weight loss attempts, they lose hope and they simply stop trying.
The second thing belief…
A belief that you can actually make the changes that you’d like to make for example, you believe or at least a part of you believes that shifting your behaviours will result in the changes that you want and it’s worth mentioning that you don’t need to believe whole heartedly 100% with no reservations, there can be some doubt present, that’s totally normal, but some belief needs to be there as well.
Also, I want to repeat this because it’s super important, you don’t need hope and belief in order to create change, they are somewhat similar, however only one is required…both is obviously going to be better, but one or the other is totally sufficient!
So…let’s say that you’re interested in losing fat and getting healthier and you’ve got at least one of the two requirements i.e. hope or belief, what’s next?
Now we’re at the ‘where is this desire coming from step,’ for example, I hear folks say ALL the time that they ‘should’ change, they ‘need to’ change, they ‘have to’ change and the truth is that there is no should or shouldn’t, there is no need or need not and there is no ‘have to’ here.
The should isn’t relevant because it’s your life and you get to do and be whoever you want to be.
The need doesn’t fit because if you don’t change, you’re just going to continue on the trajectory that you’re already moving on…none of your friends or family are going to die because you don’t get in shape and lastly…
Have to doesn’t apply either because have to for what? Nothing…
The reason that the ‘where is this desire coming from stage’ is so vital is because this stuff is all a choice and if you come from a place of ‘I need to, should or have to’ it’s not going to feel that way because there’s some external ideal driving your behaviour, which isn’t sustainable from a long term change standpoint…choosing is key.
So, now that we’ve put the shoulds, need tos and have tos aside, we can establish what we truly want or simply put, what are your priorities?
We can have just about anything we want, we just can’t have everything we want because time is a limited resource, there are only 24 hours in a day so…such a straightforward question, ‘what do you want?’ But kinda tough to answer right!?
We’re often quite clear on what we don’t want, for example…
I’ve used some online dating apps and it always cracks me up how often women will list off in their profiles exactly what they don’t want, it’s like…
No one night stands!
No smokers!
No short men!
Point being…
Once you sift through what ya don’t want, there’s still clarity to be had as far as discovering what you do want. Now, if you’re still having trouble, I’ve mentioned this many times and I’ll do so again now…
If you’re unsure about what you want, just look at your calendar and your visa statement, they will tell you everything that you need to know about your current priorities, for example…
If you thought that you wanted to get leaner and healthier, but your visa statement says that you hit a fast food joint 10x last month as well as your favourite bakery another 10x and your calendar doesn’t show any time allotted to walks, workouts, hikes or movement of any sort…getting leaner and healthier wasn’t as much of a priority as ya thought it was!
So…once your priorities are sorted, now we’re at the execution stage and fortunately, going off of the title of this episode, you already know what to do meaning, now it’s just about doing it! I’m fully aware that that’s easier said than done and a highly underrated/underutilized aspect around the action piece is accountability…
This is something that I’ve altered my view on in the last few years…I used to think that some folks were fully internally motivated and accountable, but I don’t believe that anymore and I’ll use myself as an example…
I thought of myself as a super internally accountable individual when it came to my fitness and health, however, I was completely overlooking the fact that my business itself keeps me accountable. You also keep me accountable because I’m the fat loss guy and who is going to trust and work with an overweight fat loss coach…walking the walk matters!
So…accountability is vital for everyone and it doesn’t necessarily matter what that accountability happens to be, but rather that you value it, for example…
It could be checking in with a friend or family member and keeping them updated on your weight loss goals or it could be a coach that you employ…the who isn’t the most important piece, however valuing that person or thing is because no matter what you’re wanting to be accountable to, if you don’t value it, it’s not going to work…let’s get more specific…
If you get one of your friends to be your accountability buddy and you’re sending them your progress pics and scale weight once per week, if you just stop sending them that info and you say to yourself, ‘ahhh it doesn’t really matter, they’re not going to care’…that’s not valuing that form of accountability and therefore, it’s not going to work.
If you sign up for a half-marathon and that date does nothing for you from a follow through standpoint meaning, ya don’t go on your runs and ya don’t improve your nutrition, that race as a measure of accountability is useless…so just be sure that you value whatever you put in place to keep on you track and honour it.
Now I want to run through 2 super common mental pitfalls or roadblocks that folks tend to stumble into along the way, followed by the most important question or concept in this article.
Let’s say that you go through all of the above steps that I’ve laid out and then ya fall off the horse and ya don’t get back on, the primary things to consider are…
One, your perceived payoff or payoffs aren’t big enough meaning, the actions that are necessary to get what you want aren’t worth the effort or input…it’s actually a really simple equation.
If a + b = c and the behaviours are a and b and the result is c…if you don’t perceive c to be worth doing a and b…it doesn’t make any sense to continue to engage in those behaviours, for example…
If the benefits of one of your relationships just isn’t worth the effort that’s required to maintain that relationship, it’s just a matter of time until it’s over…it’s simple math, the input isn’t worth the output in your eyes.
The second mental pitfall or block is that the perceived cost isn’t big enough or bad enough yet meaning, you don’t perceive your current situation to be quite detrimental enough in order to do something differently, we’ll use our relationship example again…
The relationship isn’t bad enough yet for you to leave it.
Those are the two key things to keep an eye out for as you progress on your journey, so your perceived payoffs and your perceived costs, but moving on to the ultimate question which is…
Am I worth it?
This is also where self-sabotage pops up and weight regain comes in because we see it all the time…folks lose weight, they feel so much better, they quite literally their life and then they revert back to their old habits, regain the weight and circle back around to exactly how they were feeling before they started to begin with!
Why?
Because on either a conscious or subconscious level, these individuals don’t believe or feel that they are worth the changes that they created, for example…
You say you want to get in shape, you put in the work, you reap the rewards and then some sort of narrative comes into the picture and you tell yourself that you got bored or you felt too restricted or whatever the justification happens to be and the truth is, it’s simply a lack of worth packaged in some sort of old story or outdated belief.
This is something that we’re all required to work through if we want more out of life, I’m working through it currently…
About a month ago I was walking down the steps in my apartment building in Playa Del Carmen and as I got out the front door I felt the sun on my skin, it was so nice and warm, it was a beautiful Saturday morning and I was heading out for a nice stroll…I felt great and then…
Feelings and thoughts of…’life is good’ were directly piggybacked on thoughts and feelings of…do I deserve this? Do I deserve to have a successful business, work from anywhere in the world that I want to, feel content and enjoy my life this much…?
All of these feelings of essentially inadequacy, am I worth it and do I deserve all of this came up...and I had to check myself and stay super aware not just to self-sabotage in terms of carrying out specific behaviours that may have me feel less content (eating poorly, not moving enough, de-prioritizing sleep etc), but also to be mindful of not self-sabotaging in terms of my old thinking patterns because the truth is…
I’ve worked really fucking hard for the life that I’ve created and man, it has not been easy. It may appear that way on the surface or from the outside, but no one other than me has seen the early mornings and the late nights, working on holidays and through the weekends, the 10, 12, 14 and 16 hour days, the hundreds and hundreds of hours of 1 on 1 therapy that I’ve done, the decade plus that I’ve invested in my business, the 500 hours of yearly learning that I do to be sure that I’m growing, improving and being the absolute best coach that I can be.
The selling of all of my stuff and hitting the road scared as shit with a one way ticket, a carry-on sized backpack and a dream of living a nomadic lifestyle…
Am I worth it?
What makes me so special?
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had folks say to me over the last 4 years, ‘you’re living the dream’…2 people just said this to me yesterday…what makes me so fortunate?
These are difficult questions and they’re all rooted in ‘am I worth it’ and by saying yes to that question, it inherently requires us to do the work in order to live that yes, not just say it because talk is cheap and if we don’t put in the work, we will find some way to self-sabotage and revert back to an old way of living that we feel as though we do deserve.
What kind of body are you worthy of?
How do you deserve to feel?
Are you selling yourself short?
Are you settling?
If you died tomorrow, would you have any regrets?
What do you want to make of this…beautiful, tragic, fun, painful, fascinating, dull, mysterious life that you have…
What are you worth?
