Find Motivation For Healthy Habits
By Professor Rick Botelho, Family Physician
How can you improve your healthy habits? Do any of these beliefs ring true for you: Motivation is all you need... It's just a question of will power... Take control and charge of your life... Set goals and put a plan into action. If only life were so simple and rational.
Why do you resist healthy behavior, despite your best intentions? Emotional resistance is the crucial component that drives your unhealthy habits. If you don't understand the strength of this negative force, you will underestimate the complexity of behavior change. Learn how to lower your emotional resistance before you can develop effective motivation to change.
Explore the challenge of changing your unhealthy habits. What are you emotionally up against? If you underestimate your challenge, you may become overconfident (I can quit drinking any time). If you overestimate your challenge, you may lack the confidence to change (I feel hopeless about quitting smoking).
STEP 1 -- Understand Your Challenge
Use a decision balance to clarify your issues about change. Identify the issues that hinder and help your prospects of changing. Then, assess your resistance and motivation based on what you think and how you feel. "I think that I should change but they don't feel like it" is a universal human experience. If you only listen to your head (I can quit drinking any time), you may fall into the "good intention" trap. If you only feel resistance in their heart (I feel hopeless about quitting smoking), you may think that you will never change, a discouraging, self-fulfilling prophecy.
Assess your competing priorities.
What are the competing priorities in your life that make it difficult for you to change? Is your life out of balance, with too many tasks and too little time? How could you go about changing your priorities, especially if you are running on empty? Where do you begin?
Evaluate your energy level to change.
How much energy can you devote to making changes in your unhealthy habits? What is draining your energy... worry, anxiety, or depression? What would help restore your energy level so you can really work on change?
Examine your motives.
Why are you changing? Are you feeling like you are apathetic about changing? Do you think that you must, should or ought to change? Are you changing because other people want you to? Or, are you changing because it is really important to you? Or is it a mixture of these motives. Do these motives change over time? Where are you now?
STEP 2 -- Mastering the Process of Change
Is your head (I think that I should change) and heart (but I don't feel like it) working against one another. Learn how to U-turn your emotional resistance into effective motivation so your head and heart on working together on change.
Explore your perceptions about risks, benefits and harms.
Do you maximize the upside of your unhealthy habit?
Do you minimize the downside of your unhealthy habit?
Do you maximize the downside of change?
Do you minimize the upside of change?
Understanding how your perceptions perpetuate your unhealthy habit is essential before you can effectively change these perceptions. Do you avoid thinking about how you are wasting your health for short-term emotional gain? What would it take to invest in your health?
Lower your emotional resistance
Learn how to:
Minimize the upside of your unhealthy habit
Minimize the downside of changing your behavior
