If you want to build healthy habits, improve your health, and get in great shape, you need to have the right mindset because the biggest challenge isn’t exercise or food; it’s in your head sitting between your ears.
I don’t have the self discipline
I’m addicted to food
I can’t stay consistent
I hate exercising
Have you ever said those things to yourself before attempting to pursue a health and fitness goal?
You're not alone. A lot of us struggle to develop and maintain healthy habits for a number of reasons. Maybe your environment does not support healthy living. Every time you open the fridge you see home cooked chocolate cakes, cookies, and your favourite types of bread.
Or it could be a lack of knowledge. There's so much information on the internet when it comes to getting in shape that it overwhelms you and instead of putting the information to use, you don't take action because you're afraid you won't do it the 'right way'.
You might be missing support and guidance from someone who's done what you want to do or helped many people do the same. Having someone by your side like a coach can make the process so much easier by creating a custom plan that will get you to your goal and offer you solutions to any problems you might face along the way. Right now that support is missing.
But if you tell yourself repeatedly 'I don't have the discipline' or 'I'm bad at exercising', there's something else equally important that is stopping you from making progress towards your goals.
Your mindset.
Stanford University professor and psychologist Carol Dweck is the author of the best selling book Mindset where she talks about the differences between having a Growth vs Fixed Mindset
Here is her definition:
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.
People with a growth mindset are open to challenges and new experiences. They view problems as opportunities for growth and development.
People with a fixed mindset on the other hand often tend to place limits on their abilities as Dweck explains.
A person who says ‘I can't cook’ will view cooking as something outside their comfort zone. If they attempt to make a dish like an omelet and it turns out to look more like scrambled eggs they will feel discouraged and demotivated.
Contrast that with someone who has a growth mindset. Because this person believes she can develop new skills and improve she will view the omelet disaster as feedback, identify what went wrong and try again because she believes she can get better at cooking an omelet.
One of the things we teach our clients very early on during their transformation journey is to focus on the process rather than the outcome such as ‘losing 10kg’ or ‘weighing 70kg’.
Having an outcome goal is great as it can provide your rational brain with a destination to move towards. But focusing just on the outcome is a big mistake because simply thinking about losing weight or visualizing it won’t help you achieve it.
So if you set a weight loss goal for yourself and then check in a couple months later only to see no changes at all you might tell yourself ‘I can’t lose weight’ or ‘I have a slow metabolism'.
Those are all fixed mindset statements.
Instead you need to adopt a growth mindset and the best way to do that is to focus on the actual process that will lead you to your outcome goal. If your outcome goal is ‘lose 10kg so I can feel happier, more energetic and be an example for my kids’ then the process goals are all things you need to do on a daily basis that will move you towards that goal.
That could mean cooking and eating healthy meals at home, keeping a food journal, going for a walk, exercising daily in the morning, or turning off electronic devices 1 hour before bed.
Will you be perfect at every single one of your process goals? Probably not. But you can give it your best. You can strive for daily improvements and when you do that you become capable of creating long lasting changes to your health and body.
By shifting your focus from the outcome to the process, you automatically shift more towards a growth mindset because you have full control over the daily choices you make such as the food you eat, the steps you get, and number of workouts you do in the week.
The more you take action and the more consistent you are, the greater confidence you have and the better your results will be which will motivate you even more to keep on going.
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