The Power of Habit
A question people often ask me is, “Why is it so hard to achieve my health goals? I want it so bad!” They know exactly what to do and they still can’t achieve it, or they can’t maintain their new outcome. Most people hit the wall in achieving their health goals when they get what I call a snap-back effect. Have you ever been on your way to achieving your goal, fired up, and EXCITED – but at the same time you begin to feel something pulling you back the opposite way, getting stronger and stronger? Then there’s a point where you get snapped right back to your old ways and you say, “How come this always happens?”
If you’ve been in this place, I’m going to share with you a distinction that I’ve made that changed thousands of my patients and me forever. Once people get on to the road toward achieving their goal, they soon realize it’s not a smooth ride, because eventually they begin to hit some major bumps, dips, and roadblocks. These bumps, dips, and roadblocks are your old bad habits. Are you familiar with these? There is no way around them. They’re out there, and they’re going to get you! You’re going to come up against them – it’s just a matter of time. In fact, this is where most people get snapped right back to their old ways.
In order to get to where you need to go, you need to first replace these old habits with new habits. Over 90% of our day is habitual: it’s automatic, and you don’t have to think about it. If you don’t change those habits, they’re going to slingshot you right back to your old ways, and this is the reason why most people fail, even though they want to succeed so much!
Now, I understood this for a long time at the level of science, but it was not until I had my own experience that it really shifted the way I look at this process. This experience happened early on in my practice when I taught a class on the power of habit. About three weeks before the class, I was thinking about what was one of the most challenging things I deal with when I’m working with patients?
I immediately realized what it was. I’ll do an exam, and I’ll figure out exactly what the problem is. I tell the patient, “This is what you need to do…” For example, I’ll give them an exercise they need to do every morning or a dietary regimen they would need to follow if they wanted to achieve their goal. So, I’m excited and I’m thinking this is going to happen! I’m thinking that we’re going to handle this in short order. (Now, remember, this was early on in my practice…) So, the patient comes back a couple of days or week later and I go, “How did you do?” and they say, “You know I exercised once, and I slept in the other days. I had to feed the kids. I had to take out the trash. I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store. I’m going to start next week.” And my brain was at that point frying, because I’m thinking, “What’s going on here?” But there was an even bigger challenge waiting for me!
It wasn’t just one patient, it wasn’t two or three – it was hundreds of patients that I noticed over a period of months. So I thought ”Okay, I got to figure out what’s going on, because I am not getting this. I see value here, but there is clearly something I am not seeing.” And I knew that in order to help patients, I needed to be in their shoes. I needed to understand what they were thinking and what they were feeling. So, what I did, and I reluctantly did it but I knew I had to do this… I stopped the thing I love to do most and that is my training, my own ritual of exercise every day. I stopped because I was committed to figuring out what my patients were thinking and feeling in order to really be of service to them.
Now, the first couple of days that I stopped exercising, it was actually kind of cool. I slept in a couple of extra hours, and I was catching up on stuff that I never did. I was watching cartoons that I didn’t even know were still on the air. I mean, who still watches Tom and Jerry? I was watching Tom and Jerry. It was insane! But about a week into it, I was getting stiff and I was getting achy. Do you ever feel like that? Where your body is going, “I need to move!” But I said, “No, I’m not doing it. I must understand this. I am never going to help more patients until I’m really in their shoes.” So I held.
And in just two weeks – two weeks! – my body became habituated. My body began to want to sleep, sleeping a couple of extra hours a day, catching up on the news, and I mean it was a wonderful three to four hours, literally, it was great! So, at the end of two weeks, I thought, “I now know what patients are feeling. Their life gets busy. I’m just going to go into that class and tell them what’s going on, that I understand, and I relate with them.” Uh-uh! Nope.
It wasn’t until the next moment that I had the game changer. Because in the next moment when I thought I knew everything, I opened my cell phone and I set my time for the next morning’s training. Now, the time I wake up is when the world is sleeping – really, really early. So the moment I set my alarm, I had the most interesting thing happen. When I set my alarm, I felt this intense amount of resistance in my body. I felt this huge weight and nausea. It was so strange!
I didn’t know what was going on. Then, the next moment, my brain said this: “Do you really want to get up that early?” I was like, WOAH! What did I just say?!! I didn’t even wait for the next day to come. I immediately put my gear, put on my sneakers, and I went for a run that moment. And I’ll tell you, I had a ping-pong match in my head, “Do you really have to do it? Do you really need to do this? Do you really want to get up that early?” Have you ever had this ping-pong match in your head trying to exercise?
But, I’ll tell you. I did not stop! Because I knew on the other side was pure energy. Vitality. Strength. Everything I knew I needed and wanted back in my life. Nothing was as good as how fit and healthy felt. Nothing! Not even Tom and Jerry. And when I got to the other side, I never had to do that again, because I finally knew what it felt like to be habituated to something I-did-not-want!
At that point, I knew what my patients were dealing with. And you know, it isn’t easy – I know it isn’t easy – BUT IT’S WORTH IT! And most importantly, my team and I are right there with you to help you every step of the way. This is why I want to give you the opportunity to see how we can support you in developing powerful habits of health. This is where we help our patients the most. We support patients, helping them shift from where they are to where they need to be. We know that there’s a conditioning process to get you to your goal in developing these new habits. We understand which new habits are required to achieve your goal. So we develop a strategy and a plan of implementing and conditioning these new habits based on your health goals.
If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and how we can best integrate natural medical modalities along with your current health care, in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.