Why you’ll likely give up in the next two weeks
“Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I’m possible”
September always feels like a fresh start for me, and I know many of you feel the same. Holiday season is coming to an end and we’re returning to a normal work or back-to-school routine. It seems like a perfect time to get back into those ‘good habits’ around diet, exercise and self-care that may have gone by the wayside over the summer. But just like all those resolutions we set ourselves in January, our September good intentions to eat better, move more, practice mindfulness or book in some self-care time, will quickly be forgotten if we don’t go about making changes in the right way for long-term success. The good news is that, with the right strategy in place, anything is possible.
In this week’s blog post, I’ll share the reasons why you’ve failed to make long-term changes in the past. Then, next time, I’ll share what simple steps you can do to boost your chances this time around and make real change happen.
Reasons why change is only short-lived
Relying on motivation alone – many of us rely on motivation alone to make a change. We are super-motivated when we start, the first week or two go well, but as soon as we hit a complication such as a couple of bad night’s sleep, a stressful episode at work, or a family drama, our motivation runs out and we revert to our old habits.
Setting up for failure – When motivation is high it allows us to reach for the skies and so we aim for the ‘big’ goal right from the off: “I’ll lose a stone,” “I’ll meditate for 30 minutes every day”, “I’ll go to the gym three times a week”, “I’ll do something just for me every week for an hour”. The first time we don’t manage to do this, we start to see ourselves as having failed. We beat ourselves up for not having the willpower to stick to our goal, this makes us feel bad about ourselves and it all just feels too hard and so we give up trying.
Not knowing our ‘why’ – We often set our goal without really understanding why we want to achieve it in the first place. It may seem obvious that we want to lose weight to feel better about ourselves and be healthier or to practice more mindfulness because this will help us feel calmer and cope better with stress, but often these are only vague concepts. Unless we have a clear understanding of what difference ‘feeling better about ourselves’ or ‘coping better with stress’ will make in our daily lives, we won’t have a strong enough emotional connection for them to really inspire long-term change. It can also be very common for us to set a goal that we think we ‘should’ want to achieve because we think it is what someone else desires of us or is accepted by society as the ‘right thing to do’ but deep down it isn’t really what we want for ourselves.
Not being specific enough – once you have a clear understanding of your ‘why’ it makes it much easier to create an action plan that will reflect this and move you closer to your goal in manageable and achievable chunks: “I am going to eat more healthily to lose weight” doesn’t actually set out how and when you are going to do this – you need to get specific to be successful.
Your goal should serve you, not punish you – chances are that the way you have set about achieving your goal involves elements of sacrifice on your part, giving up things you love, giving up time you feel you don’t have spare or something else. It can end up feeling more like a punishment than something you want long-term in your life to make it better. Nobody wants to feel like we are continually having to give up on the pleasures of life, so this method won’t be sustainable long-term.
Habit change is actually a skill in itself and once you’ve learnt it, you can apply it to any change you want to make in your life to improve your wellbeing and always make steady progress towards your ultimate goal. It is something I can teach you as a wellbeing coach and I’ll share some top tips with you in my next blog.
If you can’t wait until then to start making achievable, sustainable change then do book a personal wellbeing review and let me know what goal you want to achieve for yourself.