If you read no further and remember nothing else, commit the next sentence to memory. The two primary elements leading to behavioral change are importance and confidence.
Now for an exercise. Stop and think about something you want to change. Don’t pick the most significant change in your life, but something small: major hair change, making sure you clean the kitchen every night, etc. Why haven’t you done it yet?
Maybe you’re scared that if you go from brunette to fire engine red it won’t look good. Maybe going to bed is simply more important than a clean kitchen. See what I’m getting at here? Confidence and importance.
For the vast majority of high functioning people (like you all out there), the primary barrier to change is confidence. Most of us can look at a behavior, determine it’s level of importance and adjust accordingly.
For example, I would very much like to have a clean kitchen every night, but sometimes I leave the dishes in the sink. I don’t feel bad about this decision; I’ll get to it eventually. It is simply not important, so my behavior will not change.
On the other hand, my health is very important to me. Working out is important to maintaining my mental health more than my physical health. I will avoid doing other things to prioritize working out, particularly if I’m feeling stressed. I will change my behavior to make working out a priority. Makes sense right. Important = change, not important ≠ change.
Too bad this isn’t a simple equation (math!) The other variable is confidence. How many times have you invited a friend to come to class at the gym and they won’t? They may value working out, they may value health, but there’s still no way they are going to try this awesome, high-intensity, constantly varied, functional movement workout. Likely you’ve heard the reasons related to fear of what they will be asked to do and their ability to do it. That’s confidence my friends. Fear of failure keeps us from making behavior changes.
So here’s the full equation: importance + confidence = change. You need both.
I share all of this information because as these times have changed because of social distancing, so has the way in which Recursive delivers services. We have rolled out Remote Coaching, Virtual Personal Training, and even a 21 Day Transformation Challenge – all on-line. The reason people won’t choose to make the transition to one of these new programs is fear.
People worry about the consequences of changing how they work out. (What will my neighbors think? What if I didn’t do enough when it is time to get back to the gym for classes?) The other fear is their ability to sustain the change (How will I keep myself motivated to workout alone every day?) Changing how we workout is hard, especially if we’re generally okay, trying to take it to the next level can be exceedingly tough.
So what to do? Own it! Find a program that works with an accountability piece so that you can learn to make sustained change over time. Recursive offers a lot of different options depending on your needs and budget. Schedule a complimentart Virtual No Sweat Intro to discuss your options further.