"Indiana. Indiana. Let it go." The Sunk Costs Fallacy.

In his seminal work on behavioural economics, Misbehaving, Richard H. Thaler tells the story of a man named Vince who paid $1,000 for a tennis club membership. Even after developing tennis elbow, he continued to play. He didn't want to waste the money he had spent. He only gave up when the pain became literally unbearable.

Thaler calls this the Sunk Cost Fallacy, where we persevere with something in an attempt to mentally recoup that money (or time) already spent, or to get perceived value from it. As he points out, that money is gone, no matter what we do. Punishing ourselves in some way through our continuing behaviours doesn't help.

This, in essence, is what behavioural economics is all about. It blends economic analysis with psychology to offer insights into our behaviours, the values we place on things, and the decisions we make as a consequence.

How I fell foul of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Recently, I have fallen foul of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. A few years ago, I purchased a highly respected and expensive course in a field that wasn't my home turf. I did so because it wasn't long after COVID and my work had been heavily impacted. I thought it would be beneficial to have a backup plan.

I had a year to complete the course. I did nothing. Partly because work picked up. Partly because we had a rollercoaster of a year with miscarriages, family illnesses, and then a pregnancy. Partly because every time I looked at the course, I realised I found it incredibly dull and the learning experience (and lack of any support provided) meant I just couldn't get into it.

At the end of the year, I had a choice. I could let it go, or I could try to retrieve some value from my spent cash. So, I spoke to the 'training provider' (I put that in inverted commas because the 'training' was a series of web pages to read, occasionally clicking on a box to be able to read the text in a different place - but more on that another time) and I persuaded myself that if I swapped the course for another pathway, that would motivate me to get it done.

Eleven months later, and with an 18-month-old, a very busy work schedule, and more family and life stresses, guess how much work I'd done?

I'm sure you got it right. Nada. So, I spoke to my partner, Lou, and decided to go into overdrive. I understand the language of qualifications and what assessments require very well, and I know I can learn FAST! So I started. I ploughed through an assignment, hating every second of it and feeling like I was learning nothing of value to me (that's not to say it might not be valuable to someone else, it's just not my bag).

I began the second assignment late one evening, and I spent much of the night awake with a very unwell baby, thinking about the course and whether I should continue or not. And then, the following morning, I saw an image on my web provider's homepage. It's the one below, of the city of Petra - or Raqmu as it was called by its creators - in Jordan.

It's also the scene used in the best of the Indiana Jones movies, The Last Crusade. (In my humble opinion, but having watched each at least thirty times, I feel well placed to offer up my view.) It serves as the resting place of the Holy Grail. After the Nazis attempt to remove the Grail, the place begins to fall apart and the Grail falls into a freshly opened crevasse in the floor. Indiana Jones tries to save Elsa - his double-crossing love interest in the film - as she scrambles in to attempt to retrieve the Grail, desirous of the everlasting youth and untold powers it would bring. She can’t reach it and slips out of Jones’ grasp and into the abyss below.

Indiana, though, thinks he can reach it. Jones' father (the ever-wonderful Sean Connery) clings onto Indy's hand and repeatedly tries to get his attention, calling him Junior, much to Indy’s disdain. Eventually, Connery says,

"Indiana. Indiana. Let it go."

And that was all it took. Indiana Jones lets go. He gives up on the Holy Grail and takes both of his father’s hands, Connery hauling him out of the crevasse and the pair beating a hasty retreat before the whole place collapses. With the memory of that film scene firmly in my head, I also knew what I was going to do about my course. Let it go.

What can you learn from the Sunk Cost Fallacy in relation to your health and fitness?

The key thing is to learn to let go of things that aren’t working or don’t feel right. Yes, you may have spent a lot of money on that gym membership but you’re not going, so if you know deep down that’s not going to change, let it go.

You can decide not to go back to that diet ‘one more time’, if you know in your gut (no pun intended) that you don’t really like it.

That’s not to say you should always give up. If something feels like the right path but you just need to do some tweaking and try again, that’s cool. But don’t keep going out of a sense of guilt that you’ve wasted good money or time.

Instead, imagine those smooth Scottish tones of Sean Connery. Let it go, take his hands and let him help you out of that hole that you’ve been stuck in for some time.

The hardest mindset habit of all?

I posted this weekly Facebook feature, Monday Mindset. I thought I’d also add it to a blog post so that it was available for you to look over and use any time, because it’s such an important skill to develop.

One of the hardest challenges of all in fact, something that every single one of us has failed at many times and will do so again in the future. But that doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about and trying to find some tools to help manage it when it happens.

What is it?

It's the ability to separate our actions from our emotions. To press pause when we're about to do things that we know are unhelpful for our long-term goals and ambitions.

Have you ever eaten junk food because you felt low? Skipped an exercise session because you were mentally tired? Maybe had a drink (or two, or three) because you'd had a stressful time?

Then you know what I mean. We often want to perform better, healthier habits, especially when we have goals we want to achieve, but life gets in the way and we make snap decisions that later on we wish we hadn't. 'I wish I'd not eaten that entire box of chocolates last night!' 'My head wishes I'd not drunk both of those bottles of wine!'

So can we break this cycle? Can we get our rational brain to talk to our emotional brain, just long enough to press pause, avoid doing what we don't really want to, and stick to the plan?

If yes, then how?

The answer is different for everyone, but here are a few ideas that might be helpful. Feel free of course, to adapt them or to think up some of your own.

• - POST-IT NOTES: A client of mine used to have one on the biscuit tin that simply read, 'Are you sure?'

• - PHONE AND CALENDAR REMINDERS: If you know when you're most likely to eat the wrong things, or head to the pub with colleagues, can you prepare yourself a message, a bit like our post-its above, that just asks you if you really want to do this?

• - DISTRACTORS: If a message isn't enough, can you ramp it up by setting appointments or catch-ups that mean you physically can't do the wrong thing. Many years ago, I had a man request that I train him at 9pm on a Friday in the gym. He wanted me to work him really hard so that he was too tired to go out afterwards. The plan was to save him over £100 in booze, kebabs, and taxis, plus all the health benefits that came with it. The PT session was cheap at half the price, literally!

• - SUPPORT CREW: Sometimes, we don't have the willpower to say no on our own. That's when enlisting the help of someone else makes a difference. It doesn't have to be a PT like in the case above. It can be a family member, friend, or work colleague, maybe it's someone who's working on a similar goal and needs the same assistance.

Do any of these ideas work for you? Do you have another tool, tactic, or technique you can use instead? If so, please do share it if you're willing so that others can benefit from it too.

Whatever it is, see if you can use it to press pause once or twice this week. And please do let me know if you manage it, I'll be hugely impressed.

Self-sabotage: Why do you do it? And how can you stop?

Why do you self-sabotage? Why do you sometimes try to undo all of the hard work that you've put in with your exercise routine, eating habits, lifestyle changes, or other self-improvement goals?

It's a question that I've worked through many times with clients over the years. Very rarely do they understand why they do it. And that's one of the issues. Getting to the root cause of a behaviour, understanding what triggers us to act that way in the first place, allows us to either seek to remove the trigger from our life, or to at least recognise what's going on and come up with a plan for when it does occur.

Let's take a look at some of the most common reasons I've heard from clients over time, and some possible solutions.

Why do I press self-destruct?

1. Issues with self-worth

A number of clients I've worked with over the years have come to the realisation that they don't see themselves in a particularly positive light. This can be for a whole host of reasons but, whatever it is, in many instances it has led them to feel as if they're not worthy of achieving the goals they are after.

They see themselves as undeserving of good health or happiness or career success or whatever it is they're working on.

Action: What can you do about it?

In the first instance, you might find it helpful to talk this through with someone; a friend or family member, your trainer, or, if more appropriate, a counsellor. Understanding how you see yourself, and why, can be the first step towards changing that perception for the better.

2. Fear of, or potential drawbacks to the change

Sometimes, when I work through what went wrong with clients, they discover that they were actually harbouring some fears or concerns over the goal they had put in place.

They hadn't consciously recognised that they had legitimate concerns about the changes that would happen were they to succeed. Instead, they had let their subconscious mind sabotage their efforts so that they wouldn't have to worry about these things. Quite clever, and entirely logical if you think about it.

Action: What can you do about it?

Perform a 'Benefits & Drawbacks Analysis' on your goal. What are the potential positives for you of achieving it? What might be the negatives?

Having done this, you can analyse in more detail which of these things is most important to you and decide if the goal is right for you right now. You may find that a simple tweak is all it takes for it to work much better, or you may want to choose another goal entirely. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that it works for you.

3. Negative self-talk - 'I'll never succeed'

This can happen for many reasons. Maybe it's a self-worth thing. In which case, see Point Number One. But, sometimes it can be far simpler than that. Sometimes it's a belief that has been ingrained into your mindset over time. Let's take Newcastle United fans as an example (sorry to any Magpies amongst you). They probably go into each football season firmly believing that they're not going to win the league. Why? Because year in, year out, they don't. If you imagine their belief that they won't win the league as a tabletop, every time that belief is backed up in reality, a leg is added to the table underneath. If it happens just once, the belief is on shaky foundations and can easily be changed. But, when it happens time after time, that table (belief) has many legs and it becomes much harder to topple over.

Maybe you've tried losing weight a number of times but you haven't succeeded in keeping it off. In this instance, you can start to believe that it's never going to happen, so you say to yourself, 'it doesn't matter if I eat those biscuits, because I won't lose weight anyway.' It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Action: What can you do about it?

• Try 'I might' instead of 'I will.' Stable beliefs don't always change overnight. They may take time. I could tell you to just simply believe in yourself, tell yourself you can do it and so on and so forth. But you may just look at me and say, 'Why should I?' In this instance, it can help to start with 'I might.' I might lose weight if I didn't have those biscuits, or I might find running easier if I did 1-mile three times a week for a month. Give yourself a timescale that you're going to try it for, and see what happens. You might just notice some progress.

• Think about times where you have been successful. If you do notice that you feel negative about yourself, think back to times where you have succeeded and it made you feel good. What did you do? How did you do it? Whose help did you enlist to make it happen? What was different about that instance? And how can you use that with this goal?

• Focus on small wins. Set micro-goals. Rather than saying, I'm not going to eat biscuits this month, focus on just one day, or even just half a day. Every time you succeed with one of these little wins, you saw a negative leg off that belief table of yours and replace it with a positive one.

• Reframe. I frequently hear words like 'disaster', 'nightmare', 'failure', or 'self-destruct' from clients who struggle to maintain their goals. I even used that last one myself to title this article. But I did it because, if you're someone who experiences this, you probably use that term too. How about we try reframing it though? Maybe 'blip' or 'stumble' or 'minor setback' or 'one of those days.' Call it whatever you like that decreases its importance, because one unhealthy meal, or one day of too much alcohol, or one day of no exercise, or even a few days, or a week, isn't a disaster. It only becomes a disaster when we get ourselves into the cycle of repeating it again and again. If you had no plan to give up alcohol forever, why are you beating yourself up when you had a few drinks one night? Accept it, downplay its importance, and get back to the better habits you've been doing so well with. Do that, and it really won't make a difference at all.

P.S. Newcastle fans, has your belief about winning the league changed this week with new owners at the club? Has it sawn all of those negative legs off of your table???

4. The happiness trap - Celebrating success (a little too much)

Here's an interesting version of self-destruction. It's the one where you work really hard to achieve your goals, get exactly what you're after, and then go back to all the less healthy habits and undo it all. You get fit, then you stop training completely. You reach your weight loss goal, then go back to your comfort foods. You improve your sleep, then you start staying up late binge-watching Netflix series again!

Action: What can you do about it?

• Remember the pain. Many people come to me when they are in pain. Sometimes physical, but often emotional. The problem is, once you've reached your goal, you're not in pain anymore. You stop doing the exercises the physio gave you to make your shoulder better. You stop preparing your meals for the week and go back to snacking on the go. But, if you can give yourself a constant reminder of what it was like to be in that rubbish place, sometimes you can provide yourself with the motivation you need to not go back there. A photo of you at a weight you hated. An appointment card you had from those oh so painful physio treatment sessions stuck on your computer monitor. Anything that reminds you what it was like.

• Analyse your happiness habits and plan solutions. It might surprise you to know (or not) that many of my clients find being in a positive mood a dangerous time for them in some ways. When they are happy, they drink more, eat more of the wrong foods, stay up later, or find themselves performing less than healthy habits. If you know this is what you do, then at least you can prepare a plan of action for your danger times. If I feel like this (x)...then I will do this...(y). Preparation puts you back in control.

There are, of course, many more ways that you can find the right balance and discover a way to achieve lasting health, fitness, and happiness.

Here's something for you to think about:

Do I ever press self-destruct? If so, why? And what could be a possible solution to this in future?

Should you need any help at all with this, remember that I'm only an email, phone call, smoke signal, or carrier pigeon message away.

Paul

paul@balancehealthandfitness.co.uk

0775 200 1203

Fuel for thought: What the petrol 'crisis' can teach you about forming healthy habits.

We had to travel quite far to find some petrol last week! ;-)

Sometimes, things happen during the week that spark my brain to life. (Not very often, I'll admit, but it does happen!) And, when it does, I can instantly see a great connection between whatever it is and the important messages that I try to pass on to you in my newsletters and blogs about how to make your healthy habits stick.

Bizarrely, you might think, this week's fuel 'crisis' was one such moment. Here's how my little grey cells connected a lack of petrol and diesel with lasting weight loss, improved energy levels, better sleep, less stress, increased strength and all-round wellbeing for you.

1. URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!!!!!!!!

We take action when things are urgent. When they need our attention right away. That's why we got on board with the vast changes to life that we felt were required at the start of the virus. That's why people raided petrol station forecourts this week like packs of hungry wolves.

And, it's also why we're often so slow to react when it comes to things like the environment or our own health and wellbeing. These changes happen slowly over time. So slowly, in fact, that we barely notice them. And so, when it comes to taking action, it feels like something we can put off until tomorrow. We have time for that, but there's more urgent stuff that needs attending to first.

How can you use this to your advantage?

In reality, unless you've had a major health scare, it's difficult to make prioritising your wellbeing feel urgent. But, there are some things you can do to help bump it up the priority list:

• Set frequent short-term goals with fixed timelines/dates in which to achieve them. Yes, the big goal may be some time away, but breaking it down into more bite-size chunks helps to keep it higher on your list of priorities.

• Be accountable to someone for the progress you're making on these short-term goals. If you have to report in, this creates a sense of urgency, much like projects at work with set dates and the need for weekly updates to your boss. You get these things done!

2. DON'T PANIC BUY!

A message you've heard many times in this past week. But, what do people do? They top up their tanks, just in case. Sometimes because they are very much panic buying. Sometimes because they think, 'well, I best fill up anyway because everyone else is stupid and they definitely will.'

Our brains just don't really compute the word 'don't'.

Whatever you do, don't think about pink elephants. So what did you just do? You imagined Dumbo in a nice shade of candyfloss pink, didn't you? For your brain to process the negative 'don't', it has to imagine the very action it's being told not to perform.

As I heard those messages this week, all it brought to mind for me was Private Jones in Dad's Army saying, 'Don't panic Mr Manewaring' in that increasingly agitated manner of his, working himself up into a lather and a state of absolute panic. The irony wasn't lost on me.

How can you use this to your advantage?

When you're trying to improve your health and fitness, focus on the habits you want to form, rather than those you don't.

Instead of saying, 'I'm not going to eat biscuits', try 'This week, I'm going to snack on fruit, nuts and seeds during my breaks at work.' Rather than saying, 'I don't want to feel tired anymore', try, 'I want to have the energy to get through my day and still have time to do something fun with the kids in the evening.'

3. IT'S REALLY NOT A BIG DEAL. THAT'S WHY WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT THE FRONT PAGE HEADLINE EVERY DAY AND START EVERY NEWS BULLETIN WITH IT!

Think logically for a second. We're told that it's all fine, that there's plenty of fuel to go around if we all just fill up normally. But, at the same time, we're informed every day that it's a 'crisis'. I don't know about you, but if something is a crisis, then I imagine that it must be pretty bad.

It's always in the news. We're reminded of it constantly. Why would they keep going on about it if it wasn't a problem, right? I'm sure the media knows this, and they also know that they can essentially create a story by reporting it before it's even happened. They talk about it enough, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How can you use this to your advantage?

You want to do something. Find a way to remind yourself of it constantly. Keep it in the forefront of your mind and you can make it happen.

Very often, people assume that they fail with their health and fitness goals because they weren't motivated enough. It obviously wasn't that important. But it probably was. It's just that every day their brain got deluged with millions of pieces of information and endless life and work and family tasks that they had to do as well, many of which were 'crises' or needed urgent attention. Their goals simply got pushed to the back of their minds.

In order to keep them at the front, you have to create constant reminders. Alarms on your phone telling you to drink some water. Meetings in your diary for gym sessions. Post-it notes on the kettle or laptop informing you to have a piece of fruit.

You can think like any good media outlet. Keep your health and fitness story front-page news in your life and you'll make the headlines you want to read.

Be a collector of healthy habits

When I was a kid, I loved collecting all sorts of things. I had collections of stickers, playing cards, beer mats, small china animals (the type you get from gift shops in seaside resorts), and Liverpool FC badges. Each time we went to a game at Anfield, my dad would buy me one from the stalls that lined the streets on the way into the ground. And yes, I was also a rather avid collector of stamps! But, to be fair to me, they were special ones - the First Day Covers that commemorated the release of a new set of stamps or that marked special occasions like the anniversary of D-Day or the Queen's birthday.

OK, that's probably too much information about stamps. But there is a reason why I'm telling you about my geeky childhood - healthy habits.

As I'm sure you know by now, I'm a big believer in developing healthy habits. Why? Because of the principle of 'Reversibility'. Or put more simply, the 'if you don't use it, you lose it' principle. Mostly you hear about this principle in relation to exercise. If you stop being active, then you lose your hard-earned fitness gains. But, the truth is it applies to every single healthy habit going. You cannot store physical or mental health, fitness, and wellbeing for very long. It's a bit like looking after a plant. You must feed and water it regularly to ensure it survives and grows. In the same way, you must keep feeding and watering your body and mind with healthy habits. Only that way can you thrive.

So what? That sounds fairly obvious.

It does. And it is. But that doesn't mean that we humans are very good at following the principle. On the contrary - we often find ourselves trying hard to take up one healthy habit or another, only to give it as soon as something goes wrong.

If you want to find lasting wellbeing, you have to find another way. I believe that way lies in thinking of yourself as a collector. Your challenge in life is to collect as many healthy habits as you can along the way. You might review how you're doing in the same way that children compare their sticker collections in the playground: 

    'Got, got, got, need.' (Children of the 80s and 90s will know what this means).

Take a moment to look at your lifestyle - highlight the healthy habits you already have in place, and then pick a new one, a 'shiny one', that you want to collect next. I say a 'shiny one' because those were the stickers we desperately wanted for our albums when we were kids. It was always football stickers that I collected. The shiny ones were usually the club badges, and I thought they looked amazing!

As kids, we never gave up until every gap in our sticker album was filled. And that's the way you have to see collecting healthy habits. It's a lifelong quest to collect more and more. And unlike stickers, you can also refine the ones you have already collected. If there are no new habits that you want or feel able to work on right now, is there anything you can do to improve an existing one just one per cent more?

Working on healthy habits has to be a lifelong quest because, as I've already mentioned - if you stop practising any one of them, you lose the benefits. Yes, you have the choice to give up, to stop one healthy habit or another, or even all of them. But are you sure you want to? Or do you know that in a few weeks, you'll regret it and want to start again? Only with even more work to do to get back to where you were - like a real-life game of snakes and ladders.

In reality, your wellbeing is one giant game of snakes and ladders. Sometimes you're doing well, climbing the rungs each day, and feeling great. At other times things are tough, and you're sliding down the back of that slippery serpent. When that happens, you have to learn to go again. Winning comes from being determined, stubborn, never giving up, trying with everything you have, forever. 

What will you collect next?

That's my question for you today. And I don't mean stamps! What's next on your healthy habits list?

Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Or does it?

Is it a good idea to give things up when you’re trying to be healthier?

There’s often a view that abstaining from things is bad - and can end up making you crave them more. People are told that if they give up chocolate, or caffeine, or sugar, that they may end up desiring it so much that the urge becomes uncontrollable and they end up gorging on it in huge excess. But, is that true?

I guess my answer is the same one that I would frequently give to new Personal Trainers when I was taking them through their courses and they’d have a question they wanted answering about some aspect of health and fitness…

‘It depends.’

Giving things up - foods, drinks, or other unhealthy habits can be both extremely helpful, and also a very bad idea. Let’s have a look at when it might be good to abstain completely, and when it might not.

Addiction

For people struggling with addictions - to alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, or gambling, giving up can be the only way to break the cycle. They have to adopt a zero tolerance policy, because for any of a number of reasons - some related to their personal circumstances, and others to the way their brain is wired, they are not able to exert any control over that particular habit. They cannot judge sensible levels, and so abstaining completely is the only safe way for them.

Whilst many of us will talk of being addicted to things - coffee, or sugar for example - unless it has exerted a terribly negative influence on our life, then we may not feel that total abstinence is the right choice for us.

Values

The most common example I can give of how values impact health behaviours is that of having children. Instantly, many mothers will go without all sorts of foods and drinks in an effort to ensure that their unborn baby is healthy. And you’ll frequently see both mums and dads packing up smoking completely once they learn they have a child on the way. They may have tried to quit a number of times before but, for some reason, they’ve never managed to make it stick. Until now.

Why? Because they suddenly have something that is vastly more important to them. Now it matters. The same sometimes happens when people are diagnosed with an illness, or a close friend or family member is. It doesn’t always work like this, but it’s still a powerful influencer.

That doesn’t mean that when people try to abstain from things they deem unhealthy, but fail, that they don’t think it’s important. The very fact that they’ve tried to give up means they must see the benefits of doing it to some degree. The challenge often lies in the fact that things aren’t black and white - we can see both benefits and drawbacks in a habit at the same time, and we can get stuck in the middle - giving up, starting again, giving up, relapsing, and so on. Here’s an example:

John wants to give up chocolate. He feels it would help him to have more energy in the long run, and there is a family history of type 2 diabetes, so he’s concerned for his long-term health. But, he works hard and a chocolate bar sometimes gives him a quick boost of energy when he needs it. He also loves the taste, and he sometimes has some chocolate in the evening as a reward after a hard day at work in a demanding job.

It’s easy to see here how John might decide to give up, but then slip back into old habits because he feels that chocolate gives him some important things.

Swaps

For people like John, a swap is often the best option, to ensure that he gets the benefits of giving up, whilst finding a healthier way to retain the benefits of the chocolate bar. Here’s how he might do it:

• Discover other ways to increase his energy levels during the day - maybe swapping chocolate for a quick 5-minute walk outside. Or he might choose to drink some water, or have a piece of fruit, or do some meditation, or have a cup of tea. T

• He might also make a list of things he really loves the taste of that he feels are healthier - natural yoghurt with raspberries, maybe even a simple swap to darker chocolate, or a homemade healthy energy bar.

It doesn’t have to be like for like i.e. food for food - just something that gives you the same feelings/benefits/rewards. The choices are endless, and it’s up to John to choose what’s best for him to feel like he’s moving in the right direction towards better health.

The swap is such a powerful choice because you’re still getting the thing you ultimately desired - energy. comfort, social interaction. I’ve frequently heard the latter as the reason people go out with colleagues for a fag break, or to the pub. If you can find a way to still get what you want, without resorting to the healthy habit, your brain will likely be very satisfied and refrain from trying to tempt you into old ways.

Your mindset

Finally, choosing to abstain or not will depend very much on how you view things. For example, I’ve worked with a number of clients who said they wouldn’t be able to reduce the amount of a certain food. If they were going to have a biscuit, they knew they’d end up eating the entire pack. Some people might choose to take a packet and split it into smaller portions, or share them with a friend. But this person knew they wouldn’t do that - so zero tolerance was the only way for them.

And it can work. In the same way that it works for the smokers and drinkers that we talked about earlier on. With foods, some clients find that they just stop thinking about them when they don’t have them, or sometimes that their taste preferences change completely, and when they do have some, they find it too sweet, or too strong, or just don’t like it anymore.

In summary

• Abstinence is a great tool if you feel you have an unhealthy addiction to something. In fact, with addiction, it’s frequently the only option.

• For most people, taking the time to work out what they like about the thing they’re trying to give up, and swapping it for something healthier that gives them the same, is a very good idea.

• Everyone is different. Don’t be afraid to try giving something up. If you find that you can’t, don’t worry about it - you’ve learned that it’s probably just not the right method for you. Try a swap instead. Whatever happens, keep trying. Remember , there is no failure, only feedback.

Getting to grips with the Locust of Control

The locust of control - naturalists, don’t look too closely, it may be a grasshopper!

When things are bugging you, it’s well worth hopping to it and working on this quick, simple task about your locus of control. That’s locus, not locust, and I promise not to plague you with any more bad jokes based on the similarity between the two. ;-)

What is locus of control?

It’s all to do with how much control you have over something - I use it a lot with clients when looking at things they can do to improve their health, fitness or wellbeing, and in particular when discussing stress management. That’s because one of the main aspects of feeling stressed is that we can feel out of control - anything that helps to tip the scales back in our favour a little bit can be helpful.

There are two parts to your locus of control:

1. External locus - This is the stuff that’s impacting your health, fitness or stress levels that you have no control over. You can’t change it or do anything about it.

2. Internal locus - This is the stuff that you absolutely can do something about; the things you have the power to change.

Taking back control

For the following task, I’ve used stress as the example, partly because as I’ve already mentioned, long-term stress is often connected with feeling out of control, and partly because I know many of us are finding things challenging right now.

You can use it for any health, fitness or wellbeing goal you have though, and in fact, in any aspect of your life where you want to make some changes.

Step 1: Identify the things not in your control

There will always be things we can’t do anything about. With someone struggling with stress, this might be things like:

• Health issues for a loved one

• An existing medical condition of their own

• The state of the economy and possibly even the financial situation of the company you work for

• What the housing market is doing if you’re trying to sell your house

• A worldwide pandemic of a previously unheard of virus

Make a list of the things that could affect your goal that you feel you can’t do anything about.

Step 2: Practice acceptance

I’m not saying this is easy and it won’t work all the time, but if there are things you can’t control or do anything about, there’s no point worrying about them. I’m well aware that this isn’t how stress and anxiety works - it’s not rational and we can worry about things when we know there’s no need. It is still worth practising the art of acceptance though. The same goes for health too - our age, gender, genetics and more can all affect our health and we can’t control them, so we just have to keep practising acceptance that that’s the case.

The simple act of making the list of these things can help you to realise that they’re not within your power and help you to begin letting go some of the worries you have about them. Practising acceptance of them does also, in a strange way, give you more control over them, proving that nothing is truly out of your power to influence positively.

Step 3: Focus on your internal locus

Now it’s time to make your list of the things that are within your control; the things you can do something about to help you achieve your goal. This is the foundation of all of the work we do here at balance - recognising that so much of our health and wellbeing is within our reach by doing the right things. There’s plenty of research to show that the more in control you feel, the better you feel about your wellbeing - you start to see yourself as the pilot of your own destiny.

For stress, this might be things such as exercise, practising coping mechanisms like meditation or breathing techniques, getting into nature, listening to your favourite music and so on.

Whatever your goal, write your list now. Start it as broad as possible - no idea is a bad idea, just get it down as it may well come in useful.

You’ve now got an action plan of things you can do to help yourself, which can feel incredibly empowering.

It can also feel a little overwhelming, as you might have a number of things on your list and not know where to start. Here’s my advice on how to deal with this:

1. Pick the easiest thing on the list to do first

2. Focus on this one thing until you feel you’re on top of it, before picking the next easiest, and so on.

Picking something easy guarantees a quick win, and quick wins will give you a good boost of dopamine, providing the motivation to move onto the next one and keep the ball rolling. It’s that snowball effect; you start small and once it’s rolling, it keeps picking up pace and size and all of a sudden, it’s no longer difficult to do these helpful things, in fact, it’s hard to stop doing them and you feel great!

We’re often tempted to go with the biggest change first, or the one we feel the most pressure to change, like we think that’s what others would expect us to work on, but start simple and get into the habit of being successful.

Step 4: Maintaining momentum

Changing just one or two things on your list might be enough to help you achieve what you’re after, so it’s entirely up to you how many things you work on over time - it’s all about finding the right balance for you. Do consider that it’s always good to have a goal and to be challenging yourself - it’s what gives us the motivation to improve.

If you do happen to master all of the things on your internal locus list, you can always revisit your external locus list and see if there’s anything on there that you now feel you have more power to be able to change for the better..

Coming back to this task frequently and over time, gradully building the size of your internal locus list will allow you to feel like you are more in control of your own destiny. And with more control, comes less stress and a feeling of balance.

Have a little.....................………patience

The stripes would fill the screen, constantly changing colour, accompanied by the noise; a mix of screeching, beeping and static, like some sort of futuristic rave. There were no drugs involved here, just the simple insertion of a cassette tape into the Spectrum ZX. The hope was that at some point in the future, it would finish loading and I’d get to enjoy the modern wonder that was the home computer game. Sadly, this didn’t always happen; with personal computers in their infancy, the error screen (like the one above) was all too common. When this happened, my mom would simply say ‘never mind, you’ll have to play it tomorrow instead.’

And this way I learned the art of patience. Fast forward 30 years and that art is all but lost. The mobile phone, not much larger than a credit card, has 15 times more memory than the Spectrum, is thousands of times quicker and more powerful, and with the advent of the internet, means that almost anything is available in seconds at the touch of a button. Where shall we eat later? Who played that character in Lord of the Rings? When can I get that delivered by? Oh, it’ll be here this afternoon.

We live in an instant world and it’s reflected in our behaviours and attitudes. We’re frustrated when we see the dreaded buffering symbol, when the image pauses, even briefly, whilst streaming a video. We send texts, emails and WhatsApp messages and don’t feel it’s unreasonable to expect an instant reply. Our phones tell us when a message has been read and when someone is online, making us irritated when the person appears to be ignoring us. We have no idea of course what they might be up to at that moment; they could be working, spending time with their family, delivering a baby by the side of the road or saving the planet, but we’re free so they should be too.

But wait, there’s power in patience

Take That told us to have a little, Yoda informed Luke that he must work on it and Guinness said that if we could wait for just under two minutes, good things would come. Science suggests they may well be right.

In 2007, Sarah Schnitker and Robert Emmons showed that people who demonstrated more patience tended to experience less depression and negative emotions, possibly because they could cope better in times of stress. The same authors showed in a separate study that people who demonstrate more patience towards others were more hopeful and satisfied with their lives. Those who get less stressed by traffic jams, queuing and malfunctioning technology also report better mental wellbeing in general.

In a 2012 study, patient people reported putting in more effort and making more progress towards important life goals, and it’s even been linked to less incidents of ill health; coughs and colds, ulcers, headaches, acne and poor sleep. At a physiological level, this may be because they have a better balance in their autonomic nervous system. One half is made up of the well-known, ‘fight or flight’ response, known more technically as your sympathetic nervous system and responsible for the increase in hormones like adrenaline during times of stress. This should be balanced by the parasympathetic nervous branch, your ‘rest and digest’ system, that releases hormones like melatonin to help you sleep, repair and recover. When these systems are not well balanced and you’re spending more time on your accelerator and less on the brake, you’re more likely to suffer physical and mental health issues.

Worth the wait

Back to my Spectrum ZX; I remember the joy and excitement when the game had finally loaded. It was extra special because I’d had to wait for it and because there was always that chance that I wouldn’t get to play Space Invaders or Manic Miner. When you think about it, there are countless wonderful examples of where patience is just better…

• Opening your Christmas or birthday presents without already knowing what they are

• That feeling when the ketchup finally starts to drip out of the bottle and onto your plate, even though the palm of your hand is a little sore from all the tapping

• When you counted the cash in your money box and you were finally able to afford the toy/sweets you so desperately wanted

• Waiting for a letter from your friend in response to the one you sent them ages ago

• The first leaves growing on the plant you’ve been caring for from a seed

• The day you notice those muscles poking through underneath your skin, a little more defined than before for sure, or when you get up that hill without stopping and it takes you by surprise.

What about you? Can you think of things that were just more enjoyable when you’d waited?

Getting fitter and healthier requires plenty of patience, firstly to get there, and secondly to keep it up. If you haven’t been active for a while, changes can happen relatively quickly to begin with, but the fitter you are the slower this change becomes and you’ll have to test those Jedi mind powers to the max. Always remember, your health is the sum of your most frequent, recent habits. You can’t get fitter and then just stop, it doesn’t work like that. Your health, fitness and wellbeing is a lifelong quest and the going isn’t always easy, patience is a must.

How do you stay patient?

In his brilliant book, Misbehaving, Richard Thaler discusses the infamous ‘Marshmallow Test’. In a series of scientific studies, children were offered either one marshmallow (or cookie) now, or they could have three if they waited for 15 minutes. Agonisingly, they were then left alone in the room with the single sugary treat calling to them, tempting them to scoff it down. And of course, many did. Thaler points out that if they’d been offered one cookie at 3pm tomorrow, or three at 3:15, they’d have no problem in waiting the extra quarter of an hour. It’s the immediacy of it that makes it challenging; they can have it NOW…so they do.

The human brain isn’t particularly good at waiting when it can get instant gratification and that’s an important message. It means that if there’s an option to eat all the sugary treats straight away, you probably will. Willpower works on making yourself feel bad for wanting to eat it all and guilt isn’t always the best motivator. Thaler gives the example of a man trapped on a desert island after a plane crash, with only ten energy bars for sustenance. In an ideal world he says, he’d have ten safes each locked and set to a timer, meaning only one bar would be released each day. That’s not the case on a desert island though, so he has to use willpower to restrict himself to just one each day, reminding himself about the long-term benefits of doing so, But our brains aren’t wired that way; studies where people are offered a set amount of money now, say £100, or £120 in a month’s time, often find that people take what’s on offer straight away.

What does this mean for you?

• If you buy lots of sweets, biscuits or crisps, you’ll probably eat them all more quickly than if you just bought one smaller portion at a time

• You have to set up the environment to make it less convenient for you to eat too much or poorly - portion things out into individual containers or even place them in different cupboards. Make it less simple to over consume. As well as being impatient, we’re also lazy. Studies have shown we’ll eat less peanuts if we have to shell them, so buying things like chocolates in individual wrappers will likely mean we eat less.

• When it comes to wanting to achieve big goals quickly, our impatience will often lead us to seek quick fixes, even when we know they’re not healthy and they probably won’t last.

Utilise the psychological tools I talk about so frequently, split the big goal down into smaller chunks and focus only on that. Watch how professional sportspeople talk about taking one game, round or stage at a time. They want the big prize, but they know that patience is the way to get it.

Involve someone else to assist you. Give them your portions of food treats to look after and ration out for you, or report your daily exercise or eating/drinking to them.

Put up visual prompts to remind you what you’re working towards. Bring it back to the forefront of your mind at every opportunity, or else it’ll fall somewhere down the pecking order, likely behind that big glass of wine.

And in life in general, next time you can’t remember what film that guy was in, leave your phone in your pocket and stay in the present enjoying the conversation with your friend or partner. When you’re stuck in traffic, take a breath, put a song on the radio, relax and remember that good things come to those who wait.

How long do habits take to form?

It’s 21 days right? Everyone knows that. Those of you who are qualified Personal Trainers and/or have studied the Stages of Behaviour Change model might be saying ‘isn’t it 6 months until you’ve made a permanent change?’

A study of 96 people at University College London came up with some different answers. Participants were asked to choose just one health behaviour to turn into a habit; maybe adding a piece of fruit to their diet or increasing their daily step target for example. On average it took 66 days for a habit to become automatic; one person took just 20 days for drinking water with a meal, a 10-minute morning walk took 50 days for another, whilst one had’t manage to form a habit of sit-ups in the morning by day 84. Indeed, simple habits seemed to be formed very quickly in a matter of weeks (18 days was the quickest), whereas harder ones were estimated to take just over eight months. Missing single opportunities to build new habits did not affect the overall chances of them forming; this is great news as it means there’s no reason for you to give up if you don’t manage a perfect transition to your newly desired habit straight away.

So where does the 21 days thing come from? In the 1950s a surgeon, Dr Maxwell Maltz, was interested in how long it took patients to get used to the effects of their surgery, including everything from nose jobs to amputations. The answer? About three weeks. He then observed that this seemed true of many habits in his own life and the seed was sewn in much the same way that we believe that body language makes up 55 per cent of communication (that’s definitely not always true, but that’s for another time). He didn’t do any formal studies into it so it’s impossible to say how accurate his observations were. Single scientific studies, or even a sentence (or just part of one) can easily be picked up and become catchy soundbites that spread to all four corners of the earth. What Maltz actually said was that it probably took AT LEAST 21 days, so even he recognised right from the outset that the time it can take may vary.

How is a new habit formed?

A new habit is said to be formed when we reach automaticity; that’s the ability to do it without really having to think about it. All habits have three distinct stages:

1) A stimulus - the thing that causes us to initiate the habit. For example, your morning alarm can trigger you to perform a variety of actions.

2) A response - that alarm first and foremost will act a stimulus to get up; and that in turn can be the stimulus to head to the bathroom and brush your teeth, or to make a morning brew

3) A reward - you’ll be rewarded for brushing your teeth with that clean feeling and in the longer term, with healthier teeth and gums and Colgate advert modelling potential. Your tea or coffee will reward you with that kickstart you need to face your day.

Building habits in your brain is like creating a path through a field of corn. At first, there’s no discernible route through, but once you start to tread down a path, it gets easier each time to get across the field. And then why would you bother trying to make a new path. In the same way, the more a stimulus leads to a set response and the reward is consistently reaped, the more defined the neural path becomes, reaching a point where it fires instinctively as soon as the stimulus is sensed. This can be good, in that it stops you having to consciously think about something you do every day, saving time and energy, but also detrimental if you want to make a change. The habit is engrained and it can take time to build a new path.

You might be sat there thinking, ‘I’m not very good at forming habits’ - oh yes you are! Your whole life revolves around them. Do you go to work every day? Remember to take the kids to school? Eat dinner, always watch your favourite tv show, put your clothes on? Then you’ve formed plenty of habits. It can just take time to blend new ones in when you already have so many in place.

Some changes come instantly; for example if you touch a hot stove when you’re a child, it doesn’t take you 21 days to learn not to do it again. If the motivation is high enough, it is possible for new habits to form straight away. It’s usually the exception rather than the rule, with most taking time to bed in to your routine. Elliot Berkman PhD, Director of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon considers that there are three main things that determine whether a new habit is likely to be formed…

1) The availability of an alternative - he notes that it appears much easier to replace a habit with another one than to merely stop doing something. Good examples are Vaping or chewing gum rather than smoking, or having a soft drink with dinner rather than a glass of wine.

2) The strength of motivation - using smoking as an example again, some people find that they’re able to quit when they hear they’re going to become a parent, and weight loss can be inspired when you can no longer fit into your favourite clothes.

3) The ability to change - you may need certain skills or resources in order to change. If you have these or they’re easily available, change can be quick. If planning and effort are needed, say you need to buy things or learn a new skill to make it happen, change will be slower.

The good news

As the University College London study mentioned earlier showed, failure to perform a new habit perfectly from the off is not fatal. Author Toni Bernhard refers to doing something differently just once as laying down a small groove towards changing the neural pathway. Think of it like this - imagine a river flowing through a valley. It has a set pathway, but it begins to erode a small section off to one side. At first, only a tiny bit of water flows in, the rest holds it’s course. Over time though, the new flow begins to further erode the bank, sending more and more water along the new path, until eventually a whole new route is formed. If you can work away, bit by bit, you can form a new route too. And along the journey, if you’re doing something more than you were before, then you’re improving your health, fitness and happiness.

Remember the 3 pillars of balance:

1) Your health is largely the sum of your most frequent, recent behaviours - what you do each day makes the biggest difference.

2) You have the power to change - new habits can be formed at any time in life. Sometimes it will be easy, sometimes it won’t, but it’s always possible.

3) There is no failure, only feedback - it’s not about trying once and giving up. Change is an ongoing process; you learn from your mistakes and you improve. Even then, you’ll never be perfect. Some days will be better than others, but the aim is to work towards more balanced days, more often.

Look out for the launch of my free online animated challenge coming soon; Habits for a Healthier Planet (working title) where I’ll be inviting you to join me in making small changes that help to protect our wonderful world.

Why do habits stick?

Behaviours are things you do; habits are behaviours that you get into the ‘habit’ of performing time and again.

I’ve written a lot recently about the importance of building healthy habits in order to find your balance. That’s because health and fitness aren’t permanent, they improve as your health behaviours do and they worsen if you start to spend less time down the gym and more time up the pub.

Essentially, all of my work with clients is in helping them work out how they can increase their healthy behaviours, decrease their less healthy ones and turn these new actions into habits. But what is it that makes this most likely to happen?

The three bits of habits

Habits share three things in common:

1) They’re triggered by certain cues

2) After the cue, the behaviour (doing bit) occurs

3) They stick long-term because there’s some sort of reward for doing them

Cues (and behaviours that follow)

When you see a traffic light change to red, you hit the brakes and come to a stop (hopefully)! The colour of the light is the cue for your habit of pressing the middle pedal.

Cues come in various forms:

• Times - for example, it’s likely that most of you will brush your teeth just after getting up and going to bed, and when we eat certain meals and types of food is cued by the time of day

• Places - the dancefloor in your favourite club is likely where you’ll bust your moves, less likely is that you’ll get your groove on in the Post Office (unless you’ve watched the Full Monty recently)!

• People - it could be that your mate at work is the trigger for you to go for a pint after work, or your nan could be the trigger for cake consumption. Equally, you might have a running or gym buddy who’s a trigger for healthier habits

• Emotions - food and mood for example are inexorably linked. In fact, there are two types of hunger - homeostatic hunger is what you feel when you actually need calories; hedonistic hunger is when you want to eat because of your mood, it could be stress, tiredness, being upset or even feeling great that triggers you to chomp down the calories.

• Rituals - it’s Monday, you get up in the morning and go to work. You don’t debate it, even though you’d like to, you just go. Going to work has become a ritual and you have plenty more things that you just do because you always do. Some are routines that you do on autopilot because it’s much easier to spend most of your time not having to think about what you’re doing - driving being a great example. You change gear when you need to, indicate when required and know to put the handbrake on when you park.

Every day you’ll receive thousands of cues that lead you to respond in an almost automated way. You’ve programmed yourself to carry out specific behaviours in response to each one, and they’ve become habits.

Rewards

Rewards come in many guises; medals at the end of a race, the tingling of your taste-buds when you eat something you really like, the sense of satisfaction when you complete a challenging task like decorating a room, the happiness you get from helping others, that sense of relaxation when all the things on your to-do-list have been ticked off, or the buzz on your phone that lets you know your friends have contacted you.

They can be tangible things or feelings; and they may not always appear obvious. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what they are, as long as you feel they bring some gain, something positive to your life. When a behaviour leads to a rewards, much like in the original Pavlov’s Dog experiment, we repeat that behaviour hoping for and eventually expecting, the same outcome.

This reward mechanism is what makes certain habits so addictive; drugs, alcohol gambling, sugary foods - they all lead the brain to fire off a series of powerful chemicals including neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and endocannabinoids. The latter have a role to play in mediating the effects of cannabis, hence their name and are also thought to play a significant part in ‘runner’s high’, the state of euphoria that many people feel from exercising. And by the way, the reason why they can become addicted to it and over-train - they love the reward so they repeat the habit regularly.

The three bits of habits in action

Take brushing your teeth as a simple example of a habit that sticks for most people. What are the cues? Well, early in life when the habit isn’t as well embedded, one of the main cues is your mum pestering you to brush your teeth. There’s also the visual reminder of the toothbrush and paste often sat in the glass in front of the bathroom mirror. You’re bound to see it when you visit the bathroom in the morning and before you go to bed, and it acts to remind you what you need to do. There’s also the time of day; you probably don’t brush your teeth when you go to the loo mid-morning do you, but the same visual cues are there, it’s just not the right time for the teeth-brushing thing.

On the rewards side, there are a few reasons why you continue to brush your teeth. The smile is a hugely important part of body language, hence why marketing companies have been able to sell us more and more things that help to keep our teeth white and our breath fresh. We like to be seen to have white teeth, it’s a sign of beauty and health; we want fresh breath when we’re talking to colleagues at work, when we’re with our friends and if we’re out on a date. So brushing your teeth might reward you with confidence, with self-esteem, with a successful outcome at a job interview, or on that date! You’re also rewarded by doing something to move away from the fear of having yellow teeth, or worse still, no teeth at all. Fear of cavities and gum disease is a big part of the reason why we brush twice a day. Then of course there’s the knowledge that your mum would be proud of you!!

What does this mean for your health?

We often focus our efforts on the specific health behaviour that we want to work on; drinking less alcohol, going to the gym more often; eating more vegetables, but maybe we spend less time on the other two parts of the habits triad - the cues and the rewards.

Try the following:

1) If you have a specific behaviour that you’d like to turn into a habit, create a cue for it. Here are a few ways you might do that…

• Anchor it to an existing habit. Your physio gave you some calf raises to do to help with that sore Achilles. She suggested doing them twice a day but you just haven’t gotten round to doing them. Try linking them to something that you know you’ll definitely do twice a day, like for instance, brushing your teeth.

• Use visual or audio reminders. Post-it notes, phone alarms, placing fruit on your desk at work or a water bottle on your bedside cabinet. Better still, put stuff in the way - kit bags in front of the front door, fruit on your car seat so you have to move it to sit down; anything that makes it impossible to ignore.

• Get others to cue you - go to exercise classes with a friend so that they’ll text to ask if you’re going or pair up with a work collage to act as support partners in the fight against the office cake culture.

2) Next, spend some time ensuring there’s a strong reward system in place for your new behaviour…

• List the rewards that you’ll get from doing the behaviour and remind yourself of these regularly. You can even print them out and stick them somewhere you’ll see them - that way they can act as both the cue and the reward

• Be accountable to someone - and make it someone who you want to impress. Being able to tell them that you’ve been doing well will fire off all this mood-boosting chemicals, rewarding you with your own happiness high

Get these two things in place and the behaviour itself is much more likely to happen, until eventually you perform it instinctively and then you’re in the habit.

Stay balanced,

Paul :-)

Three tips for balanced New Year's Resolutions

Here we go again!!

Christmas has been and gone and it’s January, the time of year when we we all feel like we should decide to do something differently. Maybe it just seems like a good time for a fresh start; the past can be filed away under ‘well, that was last year’ and new goals, opportunities and dreams feel like things that can take its place.

But you’ve heard the scare stories right? People fail when they set New Year’s resolutions. One often quoted piece of research from Scranton University claims that just 8% of people stick to resolutions, a poll for BUPA in 2015 reported that about 12% of Brits successfully kept to resolutions that year, with 66% giving up inside a month. Then Strava said last year that the second Friday in January was the day when motivation was likely to wain, lovingly referred to in the press as ‘Quitters Friday’.

It’s as if they’re trying to tell us that goals set at the start of a year are somehow less likely to succeed. Why would that be? What mystical powers does the month of January hold that doom our plans to fail? Maybe our resolutions are over-reactions to a few weeks of unhealthy behaviour; we determine to banish ourselves of these heinous habits and then, after a few weeks of doing so, balance is restored and we simply return to the middle ground. In that sense, we’re not failing, rather we’re balancing out (mentally at least) the unhealthiness of December.

Or maybe it’s how we’re setting the resolutions. Maybe we’re being overly optimistic and trying to change too much in one go. Possibly we’re not being clear enough about what we want and so it’s hard to judge if we’re being successful or not. Only you’ll know the reasons why yours have or haven’t worked, but below I’ve offered three suggestions that might help you to be a little more successful with this year’s attempts.

1) Have a good reason

If you’re going to make significant changes to your lifestyle and stick to them, you need strong motivation to do so. Setting yourself a challenging goal for the year ahead can kick your bum into gear to do the things you need to. It might be entering a race of some kind, setting a weight loss target, a strength goal or health-related. If there’s an important reason behind it; raising money for a charity close to your heart, building your self-confidence or staying healthy so you can enjoy time with your family, there’s a strong driver at the wheel steering you towards your goal.

2) Forget New Year’s Resolutions; think Weekly or even Daily instead

One of the things I like most about New Year’s Resolutions is that they’re generally focused on things we’re actually going to do. As you know, one of the three key principles of balance is that you are the sum of your most frequent recent behaviours; put simply it’s the things you do regularly that determine your health, fitness and wellbeing.

The problem is that by thinking of them as tasks for the year ahead, they begin to feel daunting. A year seems a long time and so our confidence in sticking to resolutions is often low. This is where the art of ‘chunking’ comes in to its own, breaking the year down into smaller, more manageable parts. Not eating chocolate for a day or taking part in Dry January all seem a bit more doable and there’s lots of evidence that people who take part in shorter challenges tend to continue behaving more healthily after they’ve finished.

I’ve set myself a target to cut down on the sugary foods I enjoyed daily over the Christmas break, targeting no more than 3 per week. My first and only goal is to achieve that this week, then I’ll evaluate ahead of the following week.

3) Be like a rubber ball; develop bouncebackability

Another of the key principles of balance is that there is no failure, only feedback. Giving up always guarantees you won’t get what you’re after, but by utilising the chunking technique I’ve just discussed, you can wash over bad days and even bad weeks, reset and go again. Say you only manage to drink more water on three days in the first week, that’s still three more than before. Next week target four, and so on. If you’re halfway through a week and the plan has gone horribly wrong, challenge yourself to see how many times you can achieve it in the remaining days.

Groups like alcoholics anonymous often use the ‘one-day-at-a-time’ mantra and it’s brilliant, it means that every day can be New Year’s Day, a fresh start.

I wish you all the very best with your goals and challenges in 2019. If I can be of any help, please do get in touch. Oh and if you fancy taking on a fitness challenge, remember we have a range of walks and rides you can take on and help raise money for some fantastic charities in the process! Check them out here.

Here’s to a balanced year!

Paul