Pace of Change
People often come to coaching wanting to make some sort of change in their lifestyle to improve their health-maybe it is removing something from their diet, incorporating movement, or even things like switching jobs or laying more solid boundaries in their relationships (which yes, affect your health too-I will create a future blog post to talk more about this). However, the instinct, in American culture at least, tends to be to do all or nothing.
What do I mean by this? Well, there is a tendency to make pretty big changes all at once, such as going “cold turkey” or completely removing something from your diet in one fell swoop. You may see this work for many folks on a short-term basis, such as when you do “dry January” without alcohol or “meatless Mondays” where you eat plant-based, but only one day a week. The great thing about this strategy is that it allows you to try different health choices to see how they feel in your body. The problem is that they are often hard to make a sustainable part of your daily life. What happens in these cases tends to be February first, the person goes straight to having an alcoholic beverage without thought; or you wake up Tuesday morning and go right for the bacon.
Now, there is nothing wrong with this either-some people may decide that a short or quick system reset is all they need, or they recognize that goal was maybe not the most important to them, or even that that health shift wasn’t a healthy fit for their body. However, if you are using a strategy like this for a change you want to make more permanent in your life, you might recognize you were only holding on for the “light at the end of the tunnel” if you will, i.e. when you would get to engage in that behavior again, instead of continuing to feel enthusiastic about maintaining these efforts.
So, what do we do in coaching to change this narrative? Well, step one is figuring out what goals are important to YOU-I’m not talking about the one that your significant other, or sometimes even your doctor (of course depending on what that is and how necessary it is for your health) say you SHOULD do. If you tell me you SHOULD anything, my first question will inevitably be something along the lines of “tell me more about the SHOULD in that sentence,” because often, this tells me this is an external, or extrinsic, goal or motivator. Sometimes, we do find that those ‘shoulds’ turn into things that are important to you, but taking the time to dig into this will help you connect it to yourself instead of the outside person.
Once the goal is connected to your wants, we figure out WHY you want it-how will this goal not just change your health, but moreover your broader vision of your life (because let’s face it-your health really is your life, again coming to you soon in another blog post). We use sessions to dig into your values and how this goal aligns with how you want to live your life. This will be the root you can continue to return to when you may be struggling with maintaining the goal.
Finally, we discuss how we can make the change or shift in a sustainable way that actually feels manageable. So let’s say you want to remove sugar from your diet (of course we are assuming at this point it is not a danger to continue consuming sugar medically), we may not decide on a whim that starting tomorrow, I will not eat even 1g of sugar anymore! And reminder, this is led by you-so you may decide as an example tol only have dessert after one meal a day for the first week, then limit it to weekdays because you want to reward yourself after working for the next month, then you shift it to a day you had a particularly rough day, and when you finally feel ready, you choose to only partake during special occasions–one day a year into this you realize at a special occasion you don’t even crave sugar anymore and you pass on the dessert!
Now, some of you may be thinking a few things-my guess in America the first thought is surrounding time; maybe not having a year to make this change or being worried that the longer you partake, the harder it will be to remove the sugar. This is what productivity culture teaches us-that all or nothing thinking, or that everything must happen at a fast pace to be a “success”. I would urge you to think again about what happens when you have tried a “quick fix” or to “flip a switch” on a habit in the past and that thing worked for you-I will say it does for some people! You may be at a point where something is bothering you so much that you just want it out of your life and gone; it may even be that you feel so much better having made that change and it is easy to talk yourself out of going back. However, I would guess that for most of us, myself included, that has only ever bred resentment in my own choices and difficulty in continuing that health habit, especially if my routine changes at all.
If you are worried about the pace of your change, consider looking back at your life a year ago from today-are you a different person than you were back then? If so, what has changed?? I would argue there is at least one thing, even if small or seemingly insignificant. If not though, how do you feel about that? Then give yourself some credit for this growth-did you really think you could change last year, or maybe did you even want to? Hopefully that can give you some reference for how much you can get done in a year if you’re being intentional about it.
Feel free to comment below any successes you’ve had in making changes in your life and what strengths you learned about yourself along the way!
