"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.

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.

Choice: The good and the bad

Eighteen years ago, a much younger me (with less grey hair, and much more of it) did a Fitness Instructor qualification and began working in a gym for the princely sum of £5 an hour. At the time, I was under the impression that my courses were about gaining knowledge - learning about diet and exercises and that I'd then be able to go out into the world, tell people what to do and they’d get fitter and healthier as a result…

How naive and wrong I was!

Adults are essentially taller children. If you tell them what to do, they rebel just as much as their five-year old son or daughter would. Over the years I read everything I could about behaviour change, psychology and neuroscience, trying to understand how the brain works and I how could apply this knowledge to help people change. I came to the conclusion that my job was to let people choose their changes for themselves, so I started balance to coach them through this. I was convinced that my job was never to tell people what to do, just to be there to support them in making choices for themselves…

How naive and wrong I was!

What I’ve essentially discovered is that choice is hugely important to people and that any programme where you are told what to do will eventually fall down, but that providing people with too much choice can be overwhelming and leave them feeling paralysed…it’s all about finding the right balance. Here we’ll take a look at why choice can be both good and bad, and how you can use this knowledge in your quest for balance.

The bad

The amount of information we process in our brains each day has increased to unbelievable amounts in recent years, more than five times what it was just 30 years ago. Estimates put it at the equivalent of 174 newspapers every 24 hours…that’s a lot of reading! Comparing to computers (which of course, your brain is an extremely high-tech model of), it’s though we each process around 34 gigabytes of data a day. As a kid, my dad would have salivated at the thought of owning a device so powerful…which funnily enough, he did, it was just between his ears.

Right, that’s quite enough extra data for your brain to process, what’s my point? Even the highest quality computers begin to work more slowly when they’re overloaded with data. Have you ever gone shopping and been unable to choose between the 78 different breakfast cereals on offer, the 146 different loaves of bread, 24 different suntan lotions and 16 types of apples? It gets worse if you shop on the internet. Many a time I’ve tried to buy a new pair of trainers, book a hotel or a holiday and spent an hour or more trawling through comparison sites, links to special offers, Amazon, Google searches, eBay, villa listings and the myriad of other sites where choice is endless. All i often end up with is a headache. Back in the day, there’d be a handful of trainer brands and I could choose between black ones or white ones. With holidays, I’d go to a travel agents where they’d do the searching for me and narrow it down to about three for me to choose from. All this meant that my brain hurt a bit less.

It’s clear that choice can be bad. In fact, it can be paralysing. When you try to multi-task, your brain repeatedly switches between each of the things you’re trying to do; back and forth, back and forth, and each time it uses energy to achieve this, making it very tired. In much the same way, having to switch from option to option, trawling through page after page of 3-star hotels in central London, hoping to save £20 or get the nicest looking room and breakfast included, fatigues your brain and makes choosing seem much harder.

If you’ve watched Kirsty and Phil on Location, Location, Location, you’ll know what I mean; they’re often introduced to couples who’ve seen 50 houses or more but, as of yet still haven’t been able to pick one to live in. And if you’ve sat in a restaurant where the menu is so vast you don’t even know where to begin, pawing over it for some time before eventually choosing the dish you always have because it requires less thinking, you’ll know what I mean. Choice can be tiring and lead to inaction. It’s no coincidence that people who are stressed often talk of being unable to make decisions; their computer is full and no longer has the processing power.

It’s no wonder then that diet plans and exercise programmes that restrict choice are hugely popular, they save us having to make yet more choices about what exercise to do or what to eat for breakfast, mid-morning, lunch and dinner every single day. The problem is that one of the fundamental traits of being human is our innate desire to control our own destiny. And when we feel like the ability to choose has been taken away, we rebel. We don’t stick to the calorie-controlled diet, we don’t continue to cut out caffeine, alcohol, sugar or whatever else it is we’re not supposed to be having, and we don’t do the exercises our personal trainer told us to. We choose to take back control…isn’t that what the whole Br**it thing is about?

The good

As I’ve just mentioned, we don’t like to be shackled. We’re independent creatures and our desire for free will means we like to make our own choices. Choice is empowering and it also helps recognise that we know ourselves best and can often decide what’s in our best interests. Choice allows us to do things that fit with our values and beliefs, it allows us learn and to change things when they’re not working

The fact that each of us has our own unique genetic blueprint and our own mind creating unique thoughts every second of the day means that choice is a must. Because humans are all unique, programmes designed for the masses can never exactly fit our needs. I could no sooner write an exercise programme now that would work for 50 different people as I could walk to the moon for a nose around.

The balanced approach

So what takeaways are there from this very deep, philosophical wandering of mine?

1) Choice can be both helpful and unhelpful, so choose your choices wisely.

If you waste all of your brain power deciding what brand of couscous to buy in the supermarket, you’ll have very little left for making decisions like which mortgage to get, who to marry (if anyone) and the other big stuff!

Daniel Levitin, in his book The Organised Mind, suggests limiting less important choices to a set number of options, say three. Browse the stationery sections of three websites for a new diary and pick one from the selection that best suits your needs. It might not be perfect, but unless you design your own, it probably never will be, but it’ll save much needed energy for other big decisions and it’ll prevent you walking away with nothing.

In the context of health and fitness, you might weigh up two or three choices of gyms, footwear, trainers or apps and go for the one that seems right. The great thing is, if it’s not right, you can always choose to change your mind.

2) Delegate choices to others who can help

Joining Weight Watchers or hiring a PT is doing exactly this; you are choosing to pass on some of your choices to someone you trust. They can then provide you with the diet or exercise routine to follow so that you don’t have to make all of the choices. You have 34GB of data floating around your head so there’s no room to pick between the rower and the cross trainer or the myriad dinner options in the supermarket.

The growth of the meals delivered to your door industry is evidence of this delegation of choice; either you get something that’s ready to go, or you get all the ingredients and a recipe card, no need to think, just follow the instructions. If you love your exercise classes, you’re choosing to be told what to do, maybe because it just removes the stress of choice.

The key comes in point 1; take time to choose the best person or service that will meet your needs, that’s the most valuable choice. And hey, if you chose the wrong one, don’t be afraid to choose another.

I myself am using this knowledge to guide the structure of my latest book, working title ‘Think: How to achieve changes and make them last.’ In the past, I’d have left it completely open to you how you worked through it and that may well have left you overwhelmed by choice. This time around there’s a set, step-by-step structure to follow, allowing you to be guided through the process of change without having to make too many choices. The option to rebel and read it in a different order will of course always be there.

Why is your brain so addicted to quick wins?

You may have seen my post on Facebook yesterday about that moment when you achieve something that wasn’t even on your to-do list, add it to your list and then tick it off straight away! It seems ridiculous doesn’t it, but there are powerful factors at play here that lead you to behave this way, and these things also heavily influence your approach to your health, fitness and wellbeing. Before we go on, here’s a link to the Daily Planner I took a picture of yesterday to use alongside my post, as there seemed to be a lot of love for it!

Ok, hands up, who clicked on the link straight away? Keep your hand up if you bought it. Why did you do that? Instant gratification. It’s highly powerful, addictive actually and it influences the fitness regimes you choose and your love for online shopping. Plus it was half-price so your brain loved it even more!!!!! Here’s what happens…

Your brain is hard-wired to look for quick wins and it loves stuff that’s shiny and new too. If you can get something done quickly, like buying an organiser with 1-click so that you feel like you’ll be more on top of your busy life, or you can lose four pounds in a day just by using the latest weight loss programme, a part of your brain known as the nucleus acumbens in your limbic system lights up. It’s the same part of the brain that lights up when you reach the next level on that addictive game, the same part that lights up when you tear open that chocolate bar and wolf it down in one go, the same part that lights up when a gambler wins a bet, the same part that lights up when a drug addict takes cocaine, and the same part that lights up during orgasm.

In any of these situations, you release a neurotransmitter called dopamine; often referred to as the ‘happy hormone’. Put simply, it makes you feel good, and boy do we like to feel good. Daniel Levitin, in his wonderful book The Organized Mind, notes the addictive nature of this response. He talks about gamers in China and South Korea who were so compelled to keep playing and receive their next dopamine hit, that they died having gamed non-stop for up to three days. He refers to this desire for a quick hit as hyper-immediacy and notes that it is an ever-increasing phenomenon in our technology-driven modern society.

Take your phone for example - the perfect place for quick wins. It lights up, beeps or plays a cheerful little jingle when you receive a text, email or any one of a raft of announcements. You often feel compelled to reply instantly to messages and you’re rewarded with a different sound when you do, the swooshing of that text zapping across cyberspace in an instant. And how do you feel? You feel like you’ve achieved something and so as a reward, your brain provides a nice little shot of dopamine. You get an even bigger rush when your clear your email inbox, you feel like you want to parade around the office holding your laptop aloft and throw an impromptu party.

This why tech can be so addictive. How many times do you check your phone to see if someone has liked or responded to your social media post? It’s the desire to send off that little rush of chemicals and make you feel good. And this desire for quick wins now pervades all aspects of society.

Take the email or text thing; do you get frustrated when someone doesn’t reply immediately? That wouldn’t happen in days gone by as the expectation that it was possible simply wasn’t there. Nobody posted a letter and expected a handwritten reply the very next day, nobody ran out to intercept the postman early in their rounds, wrestled them to the floor and tore open every envelop addressed to them in the desire for the response. They waited patiently; it probably took them a while to write it and get it sent off and so the same speed was often applied to reading the reply once it arrived.

Not today…compose message…send…stare at screen (hoping to see the little dots come up at the bottom to tell you the other person is reading it NOW…get frustrated if those dots disappear and the person hasn’t replied immediately). They may be trying to escape a burning building at the time, wrestle a bear escaped from the local zoo, be in the middle of a work meeting or making dinner for three kids, but that doesn’t matter to your limbic system, it wants that dopamine hit now!

What’s this got to do with your health and fitness?

Health and fitness goals are no different; you’re not daft, you know that what you want will probably take some time, but that’s not exciting for your brain as it doesn’t offer the instant gratification it has come to crave and expect.

So it’s no wonder we continuously fall for ‘9-day detoxes’, ‘lose 2-stone in a week bootcamps’ and ‘6-pack abs in 6 weeks’ articles in magazines. Those things light up your brain in the same way that your over-zealous neighbour lights up the entire street with a Christmas display to rival Blackpool illuminations.

You’re not daft, you’re not really fooled into thinking this is the solution I’ve been craving, but you can’t resist the gratification you’ll get from quick results. And for the PT industry, sometimes we struggle to understand why people continuously choose the path of least resistance. But why wouldn’t you choose quick and easy over the long road? It’s far more pleasurable after all and so when the quick fix falls by the wayside, you think, ‘I won’t do that again’ but then that 21-day detox comes along and your nucleus acumbens just can’t say no.

Don’t think that us PT’s don’t do it too; over the last few years there has been an explosion of fitness business gurus and online courses offering ‘6 easy steps to £100k a year’ or ‘earn what you want in just 8 hours a week’. And guess what, PT’s get lured in as their brain reacts like Charlie when staring through the window of the chocolate shop, tongue out, anticipating the instant pleasure from that Wonka Bar and the chance to get his hands on a golden ticket.

Becoming a ‘Haretoise’

Is there a more balanced approach, one that blends the addictive power of quick wins with something healthy that yields lasting results? I think there is, and here’s what I’d suggest.

Do you remember Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare? Well then you know that the tortoise is content to take things slow and steady, aware she’ll get there in the end (in the spirit of modern times, I’ve made the tortoise female as she’s the sensible one who’s good at long-term planning). In the same way, you can use your inner tortoise to good effect. Identify the desire, the long-term or big goal - whatever it might be…losing a stone, dropping two trouser sizes, running a half marathon or lifting 100kg for the first time.

The problem with this of course, is that it’s going to take some time, and your nucleus acumbens isn’t going to stand for that, it wants satisfying much more urgently.

So you break the big desire down into smaller chunks. Why do you think Weight Watcher’s and Slimming world have been so successful? Because there’s a weekly weigh-in, a chance for gratification for your efforts every single week.

But even that’s too log these days, so you need to invoke your inner hare and ensure he’s getting quick wins every single day (yep the hare is a man, short-term thinking for instant gratification required). How can you do that? Here’s where you can use your behaviours to good effect. Most fitness and weight loss regimes focus solely on the outcomes; your brain lights up when it sees the scales tell you you’re lighter or you see your ab’s poking through when just a few weeks before it was more like Play-Doh. You can get the same sense of achievement by setting and achieving daily targets around behaviours, as long as you bring a few tricks into play:

Let’s use cutting down alcohol as an example. You set yourself the challenge of booze-free weekdays and you use the following tools to get that dopamine release you need to stay motivated and keep going towards your long-term desire (the boring health and weight-loss one that the tortoise is slowly plodding towards).

1) Record it visually - it might just be a piece of paper stuck to your fridge or desk that you can tick each day. You get a pleasure hit from the act of ticking it and even more when your family or colleagues see it too and give you praise or the odd high-five

2) Go high-tech - You might prefer to use an app, like the DrinkAware one, that allows you to set goals, track what you’re doing and gives you awards for achieving them. If you’ve ever used a Fitbit, you’ll know how addictive it can be to hit your steps and get the fireworks display on screen or receive a new badge for total distance covered or floors climbed. That’s because the same fireworks are happening inside your brain at that moment

3) Share goals and updates with a family member, friend or colleague - why do you think people post their latest run on social media or Strava became so popular? People like getting recognition; it keeps the hare happy with quick pleasure hits.

4) Check on the progress of your tortoise - much like Weight Watchers (sorry, WW as of recently), the progress check provides you with another source of feedback that can set off your happy chemicals and keep you on the path to success.

If you can strike the balance with the quick wins for the hare, whilst allowing the tortoise to move along gradually towards her big desire, you have a recipe that satisfies your brain and allows you to achieve lasting change.

Lessons from a long run

As many of you know, last weekend was my marathon in Frankfurt and I was excited to be feeling fit and going for a PB. You might also know that it didn’t really go to plan, and I wondered if there were some lessons I could share that might be useful for you in your own quest for better health and fitness.

This isn’t a blog about running marathons necessarily, or even a blog about running. I thought I’d focus more on trying to perform at your very best, the important things to consider and what happens if it doesn’t quite work out this time around.

When you’re trying to achieve something, be that a race time, a new strength PB, a weight loss goal or even personal and life goals like running a business or learning a new skill, it’s unlikely that you’ll have success every time.

Often, we have lots of success in the early stages as we start out from a low level of skill or knowledge. With my marathons for example, last Sunday was my 6th and up until now, I’ve run a PB every time I’ve done one. Sometimes only by a matter of seconds or minutes, but the improvement has been gradual. As you reach the peak of your abilities though, it becomes less likely that you can simply get better every time you do something. You’re bound to have failures along the way.

At this point, you essentially have two options as far as I can tell:

1) Give up trying to get better

2) Review what went well (repeat this in future) and what didn’t go so well (change it next time).

If I think about the run last weekend, there were loads of good things about it; I had zero issues with uncomfortable chaffing which I’ve never achieved before, so I know my clothing, footwear and voluminous application of vaseline were right for me. I never felt hungry or thirsty which has always been a problem for me, so the plan regarding food and drink was good.

Even when I started to break physically, my mental state remained relaxed. I never became frustrated, I just kept my focus on one mile at a time (something I’ve never mastered as well before), blocking out the fact that there were more to come afterwards. This allowed me to re-evaluate every mile and meant that once I had broken, I was able to just relax, hobble on home and enjoy the music and the ridiculousness of marathons. I’d love to say I could enjoy the scenery, but apart from being flat and good for quick times, Frankfurt marathon is actually a bit dull in terms of spectacles. The skyscraper skyline is the main attraction, but the truth is that in marathons it’s often busy around you and looking up is not really an option, you have to do quite a lot of staring at the floor to ensure you don’t trip yourself or anyone else over.

My training went pretty much to plan, managing more than I’d done before and at faster speeds. Vicky’s expert planning also meant we were only a few hundred metres from the start so I could warm-up in the hotel gym beforehand and crawl back quickly afterwards (more Vicky’s wonderful organisation than mine but I credit myself for marrying her)!

So all in all, there were a lot of positives to take and that’s why I’m not disappointed. When something you’re trying to do goes wrong, list the positives from the experience. If you can frame it as learning rather than failure, it starts to feel useful.

Ultimately, I didn’t run the time I wanted and so, whilst it’s important for me to take the good stuff from the day, I also need to evaluate what stopped me getting what I wanted and do something about it for next time.

What was it? My issue lay in my biomechanics. By 12 miles, I was feeling tight in my left hip and lower back, by 14 miles this had stopped me being able to bend my left knee properly and not long after that, this led to my right hip and knee hurting a lot as they did more of the work. I believe the problem stems from the major injury I sustained when I was 18, tearing my right quadriceps off my leg completely. The muscle re-attached itself, half way up my leg and by the time I’d discovered exactly what had happened, I was told that surgery could likely cause more problems and I should learn to live with it.

I’ve spent the last 19 years feeling discomfort in my neck, back, hip and leg on the opposite side, essentially because the muscles of the left leg are longer and more of my weight shifts to that side. I never actually have a problem with the muscle I tore. Over the years, I’ve managed it pretty well and achieved some cool things fitness-wise, but running marathons has always seemed a bit too much for it to take; it’s always joint discomfort on this side that slows me down as opposed to fitness or fatigue. I think this time I was too optimistic that it would be ok; often I can manage it pretty well but a few weeks before the race my back locked up and I should have seen a masseuse or osteopath to release it. Better late than never though; I’ve spoken to an osteopath friend and I’ll see him ASAP, and I’m considering seeing a specialist to see if I can re-balance my stride through having some orthotics made.

The point here is that if you’re trying to achieve something and it goes wrong, you need to look for solutions. In performance terms, we’re only as strong as our weakest link, which in my case is my wonky leg. To be as fast as I want to be, I need to be less wonky! For health and weight loss, it’s about looking at the thing or things that are holding you back. It might be that you’ve improved consistently, but now you’ve stopped. What’s the next step that can take you to the next level?

Here’s where we have our choice; I could feel dejected, stop doing all the good things I’ve been working on and know for sure that I’ll never achieve my marathon goal, or I can persist, try to sort my mechanical issues and see if that’s the difference that makes the difference. The only thing that we can ever guarantee is that we give up, we won’t achieve what we set out to do; if we try again, keep the good bits, learn from the not so good and change things, maybe, just maybe, we might.

I will caveat this from a performance perspective by saying that you also need to listen to your body. There will come a time when the risk of pushing yourself to the max for a given event, carries more risks than benefits. I personally don’t think I’m there yet, but we’ll see how it goes once I’ve worked on my biomechanics.

You’ll also often spend the weeks following a race that didn’t go to plan considering doing another one straight away! I'll be honest, I’ve already looked at the marathon calendar to see if there’s something in November or December to try. From experience though, this is often a bad idea, especially after longer races. Your body is tired and a bit broken and it needs time to heal, especially if it was some sort of injury that stopped you reaching you goal. Let it go, regroup, rebuild, recover and then try again.

Remember…

1) Even when it hasn’t gone to plan, highlight the positives - what’s good that you should keep doing?

2) Change from a mindset of failure to one on learning - what can you alter for next time?

3) Persistence pays off - the only true way to achieve what you want is to keep going.

You have the power

1) Your health, fitness and wellbeing is mostly influenced by your most frequent health behaviours; the things that you do day-in, day-out that affect you for better or worse. You can get a bit fitter and healthier in 7 days, even more so in 21 days and achieve even more in three months, but you also have to keep doing these things to stay that way, and that never changes. It is a lifelong quest, the ‘game’ of life if you like, and you have to learn to play in a way that works for you, one that’s sustainable and allows you to do more of the better things, more often, so that you feel good the majority of the time.

2) You have the absolute power to control these behaviours, and therefore to control your health, fitness and wellbeing. For some of you, there are absolutely things that impact your health and nothing you can do about them. The key is in accepting that some things are beyond your control and focusing on improving and expanding the bits that are. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

3) There is no failure, only feedback. Change is not the same for everyone. Sometimes making a change is quick and easy, at others it’s long and complicated. We will not always succeed in our attempts first time, second, or even third. We will however succeed eventually if we keep going. We definitely won’t if we give up. Even staying the same requires persistence; you might have a ‘bad’ week because of a holiday or a celebration, but that’s cool, it’s just about learning from it and as mentioned above, accepting it and moving on.

These are the three tenets of the new balance book and online challenges/games that I’m working on. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of my thoughts around these with you in more depth; coping and behaviour change strategies that I use with clients to help them discover a mindset that makes the changes they want more likely.

Let’s start at a really important place; your ability to control your health, fitness and wellbeing. There’s this thing called Locus of Control; nope not locusts, they’re giant insects! It’s all about whether we feel we have control of something, giving us an ‘internal locus of control’ or if we feel it’s beyond us to manage right now, meaning it has an ‘external locus.

I’ve not lost the skills I developed in A-Level art! Luckily, with practice, I know I can get better so it’s in my control. ;-)

So, for example, health behaviours that have an internal locus of control for you might be:

• I can choose to swap an alcoholic drink in the evenings for a non-alcoholic choice; I know I can as I’ve done it before and it was easy

• I know I can walk or cycle into work as I have all the kit and there are showers and secure bike storage there

• I have an hour spare in the evenings where I could do a workout at home or go for a run.

Whereas things in your external locus of control right now might be:

• I have an ongoing medical condition; it’s genetic and some days it can leave me feeling too tired to do anything

• I have to get the kids to school in the mornings and then get to work so I know there’s no time for me to exercise there

• I don’t buy the food shopping so I can’t control what we have in the cupboards

The aim over time should be to increase the size of our internal locus of control, whilst reducing the external locus. If it helps to remember it, imagine you’re on ‘I’m a Celebrity’, slowly eating one Locust at a time so that you have more and more inside you. And if it doesn’t help, stop that thought right now.

This chap has increased the size of his internal locus of control, shrinking his external locus. No bugs were harmed during the process.

A little question to ask yourself

Get a pen and a piece of paper. Make two columns:

1) Internal Locus - Things that affect my health/fitness/wellbeing (or whatever your specific goal is) that are WITHIN my control.

2) External Locus - Things that affect my health/fitness/wellbeing (or whatever your specific goal is) that I CANNOT control right now.

Study the list…

Is there anything that you said was within your control that you’re not doing to the best of your abilities right now? Could you go back to not drinking in the week or using that free hour to get on your exercise bike whilst you watch TV? If there’s a couple, just pick one to work on for now, the others can come later.

If you’re already nailing your Internal Locus bits, ask yourself,

‘could I do anything to gain more control over something on my External Locus list?’

It can be a very small thing; you may do some of the food shopping yourself, or even just sit with your partner and make the list together so you have more influence on what they bring home. If it seems hard to find something, think about the things you’re already controlling and see if any of the things you do there or the skills you possess that enable you to achieve these could be transferred across.

Control is confidence

You’ve chosen something. How does that feel already? It’s unlikely you’ve done it yet as you only chose it a few seconds ago, but still, you’ll often find it brings a sense of relaxation, a confidence that you can achieve things. This positive mindset also brings with it a sense of resilience, a change in thought-process, which means that even if you try and it doesn’t work first time, it’s not the end of the world, you’ll keep tweaking it and trying again until you get there. We’ll look more at the mindset of persistence very soon; it can be learned and it will help you achieve awesome stuff!

You can repeat this process at regular intervals; weekly is good, each time seeing if you can take charge of one more behaviour, increasing the size of your internal locus of control and bringing you step-by-step closer to better balance.

Stay balanced and enjoy the journey,

Paul

The important stuff - how your values impact your health and wellbeing

In the last few weeks I’ve been working very hard on the upcoming balance book. There’s been a lot of planning, writing, editing, re-writing, researching and tea drinking. The structure is now complete start to finish and I’m busy filling in the bits of content.

I thought I’d share some of these bits with you as I go along, to give you a flavour of what the book is like and to offer you some useful help with your health, fitness and wellbeing. This first piece comes from the very start of the book as it has the potential to impact everything you do from setting goals to making changes. It’s all about your values; I hope you find it helpful.

Values - what’s important to you in life?

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.” 

Brian Tracy

What is important to you in your life? What do you believe in? What guiding principles do you wish to live by? These might seem like strange questions to ask here, but they’re hugely important to the lifestyle changes that you are considering making. Why you might ask? Let’s take a look.

A former client of mine, Emily, wanted to lose a stone. We’d agree targets and actions but when we came to review her progress, she’d never achieve them, saying she just felt that she wasn’t the sort of person who could lose weight. This went on for a while, until in one of our sessions, she mentioned that she had a young daughter who’d suffered with an eating disorder, although she was now much better. 

We discussed how the impact this had on her and she realised that she was worried that her losing weight might set her daughter off on the wrong path again. To Emily, her daughter was the most important thing in the world and she constantly worried about her. She realised that she was so concerned for her daughter that, whenever she was around, she would eat in order to try to encourage her to do the same. 

We talked about how eating too much and being overweight could also be unhealthy, and she said that she would talk to her daughter about her weight-loss goals. As it turned out, her daughter wasn’t worried about it in the slightest and actively encouraged her mom to get fitter and healthier, which she duly achieved over the next few months. Emily’s strong family values had at first hindered her progress because she hadn’t found a way to reconcile them with her other health goals. Once she had, she was in the right place to achieve them.

What I saw with Emily was the she placed the thing most important to her at the top of her list. Her daughter was more important to her than her own health. And it’s the same for everyone; we all have things in our world that are vitally important to us. For some people, it’s family, for others it may be friendships, success, health, wealth, trust, adventure, compassion, or learning. The difficulty comes when we want to do something to improve our health, fitness or wellbeing, but we feel in our heads that this may in some way negatively impact on our values. 

Not everyone places health high up their values list, nor should they. Your values are unique to you; they began forming at a very early age through life experiences and the influence of those close to you and changing them is hard. The great news is, you don’t have to change them, all you need to do if you want to get fitter and healthier is find a way to balance the changes you feel you should make with your values. For example, if relaxation is an important value for you and you currently smoke to help you relax when things are stressful at work, giving up smoking may not work unless you find an alternative way to unwind. Equally if career success to ensure you can look after those dear to you is your most important value, it can be hard to find time to fit exercise and healthy eating into your daily routine. Recognising that being fitter and healthier can help you achieve career success through increased energy, concentration and motivation is an important step, as is making changes that still allow you to work as hard as you feel is needed. 

Interestingly, I know that my own values often cause challenges for me in a different way. I place being fit and healthy at the very top of the tree as I feel it helps me with everything else, but sometimes I’ll prioritise doing a workout over my tax return or getting more sleep over meeting a deadline. The key is to find the right balance.

What are your values?

Step 1: Check out the task in the link below, created by William Miller and colleagues. Miller, along with another colleague called Stephen Rollnick, created a form of coaching known as Motivational Interviewing which has been hugely successful in helping people to change, with a recent review of the scientific studies done on the topic stating that it ‘outperforms traditional advice giving in the treatment of a broad range of behavioural problems.

You can add any values that you feel are missing, or even skip the task and simply make a list of the things you feel are extremely important to you in your life.

Whichever way you do it, you should finish by selecting the FIVE most important values to you overall.

https://www.guilford.com/add/miller2/values.pdf

Step 2: Look at your five most important values. Might they in any way negatively impact your health, fitness and wellbeing?

Step 3: Do they positively impact your health, fitness and wellbeing at all?

Step 4: How might being fitter and healthier help you to live more in line with your values?

You should now have a good idea of what’s important to you and understand how these things might be both problematic and beneficial for your health, fitness and wellbeing. Being able to link any lifestyle changes back to your personal values can be a fantastic tool to motivate you to stick at them and maybe even make more changes in future.

A balanced afternoon

Here's a quick quiz to see how balanced your afternoons are. Score one point for yes, zero for no.

1) Do you eat lunch away from work or stresses in a relaxed environment?

2) Do you get up and move for at least five minutes every hour during the afternoon?

3) Do you get outside for some fresh air for ten minutes or more across the afternoon?

4) Do you stop drinking caffeinated drinks by late afternoon?

5) If eating snacks in the afternoon, do you choose healthy options?

6) Do you feel alert and energised across the afternoon?

7) If you do feel tired, do you give yourself a short break to just sit quietly and relax or use power naps to give you a boost where you can?

8) Do you drink water, squash or herbal tea regularly through the afternoon to stay hydrated?

9) Do you have strategies in place to ensure healthy options should you suffer the common mid-afternoon lull?

10) Do you avoid sitting in the sun during the hottest part of the day, or at least where enough suntan lotion if you do?

Less than 3 points shows there's plenty you can do to improve your balance, 4-7 points means you're on the way to balance and 8 or more means you're well balanced.

Why Stoptober works...and what you can learn from it

Stoptober is in full flow, with people quitting for 28 days initially.

Recent years have seen a boom in one-month challenges, including Stoptober, the quit smoking for October challenge from the NHS, Dry January or Go Sober for October, Veganuary and the infamous Movember.

So just why are they so successful?

1) It's only a month.

Quitting smoking or alcohol forever seems like a pretty daunting task. Take it down to just a matter of weeks and all of a sudden it appears much more doable. As Stoptober say on their website however, quitting for 28 days makes you 5 times more likely to quit for good.

What can you take from this? When you want to make a change, why not do a trial run of it first, setting yourself a goal of doing it for a short period of time to begin with.

2) In it together.

Knowing that you're part of a group aiming to achieve a shared objective can be highly motivating. You feel like you don't want to let others down or be the one who falls first.

What can you take from this? Find someone you can share your change joinery with, a friend or a family member, or maybe even a group of people. Helping others and getting help when you need it can make a real difference.

3) Taking on and overcoming the challenge

The public nature of these events leads people to tell others they're getting involved, and we all like to feel good when people praise us for achieving things. 

What can you take from this? If you want to change something, maybe making it known to others will spur you on to make it happen, partly through a fear of being seen to fail but also because you'll feel great when others praise you for your efforts.

4) Expert support

Many of the charity challenges have advice and support on how to make the changes from qualified experts. This means you go into them knowing you have help from reliable sources.

What can you take from this? Look for advice on making your change from a source you trust and who can help with your particular challenge.

5) Raising money for good causes

Charity can be a real motivator for change, and when people have sponsored you to do something, you often feel very motivated not to let them down.

What can you take from this? Even if it's not a major charity fund-raising change, maybe you can add some value to it. Make a bet with someone that you'll pay for dinner or drinks if you don't succeed, and they'll pay if you do. Or reward yourself by purchasing something you want (it's best if it's not food as this can lead to a link between food and mood which isn't always helpful) or by putting money into a jar towards a bigger dream purchase if you manage to succeed. For example, you can put any money you would've spent on alcohol or cigarettes into a jar towards a holiday.

Why do you try to do too much and fail, and what can you do about it?

I'm an optimist, always have been. I firmly believe that I can do more in the time I have available than I actually can. I always think it will take less time to get somewhere than it does, that the roads will be traffic-free and a smooth journey awaits. I also believe that I'll be able to get through the list of ten things that I set myself to do each day, and that I'll also fit in two exercise sessions around this, and do the housework, and have time to read my favourite book in the evening.

But I don't.

And I'm not alone. Many of us will take on too many things at once, try to fit a new course in around a busy work schedule, imagine that we'll have time to cook all of our meals for the week ahead on Sunday afternoon, or tell the gym instructor when we join the gym that it'll be no problem to go seven days a week. Stand up if this last one is you. Now sit down again, at least you've got a squat in today even if you haven't quite squeezed in that workout.

Now I'm not saying optimism is a bad thing; we need it to motivate ourselves and research has often found that working towards something positive is more effective than working away from something negative, and that people with a strong belief in themselves are often more likely to achieve. But sometimes we go too far and this can be as problematic as being too negative; what we need instead is to strike a nice balance.

So let's look at why it is in our nature as humans to overload ourselves with things to do and then repeatedly come up short? And after that we'll look at some possibilities to change in future.

Optimism feels good

It takes us to an imaginary place where everything is how we want it to be and that makes us feel good. Because we feel good we decide that's where we'd like to be instead and so we rush to get there, attempting to do everything all in one go. This can lead to a mismatch between our dreams and desires and our current situation and abilities. I'm sure you know it, I call it 'X-Factor Syndrome'. "I want to be the next Mariah Carey." And ok, that's cool, what's sometimes forgotten is how long and hard the journey is to get that far, let's just settle for singing in tune first and go from there; if we still want it, we keep working at it step-by-step, often for a long time to really master it.

Memory is always rose-tinted

If you've ever done something silly like a marathon, or other suitably big challenge, you'll know what I'm talking about here. You finish the race and you say it, you always do...'never again', and you mean it. You feel terrible, exhausted, your whole body hurts and you can't stomach food or drink. But as the days pass these aches and pains become less and you start to think, 'maybe it wasn't that bad?' Within two weeks you're trawling websites looking for future marathons because you're sure you can go faster, and then boom, you've entered! 

The same happens here, we forget that we took on too much and it didn't work, or we push it to the back of our minds or assign the failure to maintain our change as down to chance or something beyond our control. It may well have been; what we often don't do though is to look at why it didn't go as planned. What have I really learned? What needs to be different this time for me to get there? These are deep and painful questions sometimes, and we don't like to recognise 'failures' on our own part, although it is helpful to do so and even to look at them not as failures, simply as learning. 

We prefer it to feeling 'negative'

Even if we've had a go at something and it hasn't worked out, it's better not to be down about it, right? If we start saying things like 'I can't do that' these days, it's easy to be labelled as a pessimist or just being negative. Society puts a lot of pressure on us to be cheerful and upbeat, when sometimes we don't want to be, and actually, it's not always helpful to be. As with most things, it's about striking the right balance, it's not about saying 'that's impossible' or "I can never achieve things', it's about saying 'what's realistic to do right now given what's going on in life/work/at home.' In the long run, this can help us more than blind faith and endless positivity.

Thinking positively is a start...but it's doing that actually makes things happen

One thing I've discovered over the years is that sometimes we just don't feel very positive. Some days I wake up and think 'I can't be arsed to train today' or 'that plan I have for the business is useless.' I've worked with many clients too who turn up for sessions feeling down or tired or lacking belief they can achieve their goals. We work on the mantra of 'let's just do it anyway.' So we do some exercise or we eat well even if we're not feeling it, and lo and behold, our mood improves and we start to feel a bit more positive about things.

If you struggle with positivity, taking the 'just do it anyway' approach might help. It's certainly better than thinking positively but not doing something about it, that's just praying for luck and whilst sometimes it can happen, what you want becomes much more likely with doing.

Optimism prevents us from examining potential problems,  barriers and drawbacks

Being positive and believing things will work out in the end can stop us from examining why we haven't got there already. A reality check allows us to look more deeply at why we've not achieved the goals we set, and most importantly, create an action plan for the future.

So we've established that for many of us, it's in our nature to be overly optimistic and set ourselves up not to achieve. In fact, did you know there are even different types of optimists! Check them out here to see which you are, then come back quickly so we can do something about helping you to achieve lifestyle changes, or whatever else it is you're after.

What can we do about all this?

Firstly, let's state that it really depends on whether you think it's a problem or not. Are you happy as you are and the change you want is just an added bonus, but not that important? Or does it really frustrate you that you can't get to where you want to be? In which case, you must understand the things that bring about change. Change comes when:

1) I am confident that I can do it.

This is our self-belief. If we have high self-belief, sometimes known as self-efficacy (confidence in our ability to do a certain thing) then the likelihood of success increases. As we've been talking about in this article, it's not just about this though. Some X-Factor contestants have very high self-belief, but they lack in the other areas below, namely point 4! 

2) There is a reason or reasons for me to do it.

Seeing the values change brings can help us to change. It may be that we'll gain something important from doing so; energy, health, self-esteem, or we lose something by doing it; embarrassment, anxieties, a feeling of worthlessness, a health issue. 

3) It is important for me to do it.

This is the motivation bit. Knowing that there are benefits is not enough though; many people know that quitting smoking is good for their health, but they still don't do it. That's often because the thing they get from smoking they value more than their health, or at least equally as much. The change you want to make has to fit in with your values as a person for it be important enough to make the effort to change, or you must at least see how it benefits the things you value in a roundabout way. For example, someone may not value their health, but they may highly value their family and feel it's important to spend quality time with them, so they're driven to change because they know their family are worried about them or they wish to be able to continue to provide for them.

4) I have the skills and resources to be able to do it.

The final piece in the jigsaw is about the things you can actually do, your skills. I can believe that I can win the X-Factor all I want, but if I can't sing there's a fair chance it ain't going to happen (I might still make the final 12 in some years though)! It may well be that I need to develop some skills, or at least consider which ones I'll need to use. I need to think about the resources I have to do the job; do I need time, money or support from someone else with the skills I lack?

Bearing all of this in mind, here's your 5 point change checklist. Try it for me now with a lifestyle goal you're looking to work on; grab a pen and paper and follow these steps:

1. Pick a change (remember, less is more, get this one done first and then come back to do the others later)

2. Ask yourself how confident you are that you can achieve it on a scale of 0-10. Write down why you chose this number and not a lower one?

3. Write down all the good things you'll get from this change.

4. Write down why you want to make the change now.

5. List the skills and resources you need to make this change. If you don't have any on your list, write next to them how you can get them or who you'll need to help you, there's nothing wrong with asking for help.

A few other pointers for you too; look back at what's gone wrong in the past when you've tried to do this (or something similar if doing it for the first time). Be honest, or better still, ask someone you know to tell you why they think you didn't succeed. Then come up with some ideas for how you can get over this hurdle this time.

And if you're sat there feeling like you can't achieve your goal, you can always change it you know, or change the answers to any of the questions, or just crack on and do it anyway like we said before, as you get closer so will your belief rise.

I'd love to hear how you get on with your goals in the comments box below, or if you have any questions you'd like to ask.

Even though I know it's not good for me, why do I still do it? Exploring the mindset of giving things up

Everyone has been there in some way, shape or form. Some of us really want to give up smoking, but we just can't seem to resist when colleagues invite us outside for the mid-morning break. For others, we so desperately want to say no to the cake on offer but it's hard when it appears to be somebody's birthday, promotion or leaving do nearly every day, and even harder when our folks have bought it especially for our visit...it is our favourite after all. Others of us are determined to stick to a 'two drinks only' plan on Friday night, but somehow that turns into seven and we're not quite surehow.

The reality is that change is not black and white. It's often not as simple as saying "I really want this and therefore I'm going to completely give up that." We see benefits to making changes but we also see benefits to doing the things we currently do, or we wouldn't be doing them in the first place.

This concept is known as Ambivalence. It is, according to the dictionary, 'the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something.' Here are some examples...

'I want to lose weight'...BUT...'I really like wine as it helps me to unwind after a stressful day.'

'I'm determined to give up cigarettes as I know they're bad for my health'...BUT...'As bad as they are for me, I know they're the one thing that helps me keep weight off.'

'I'm constantly getting ill and I'm sure it's because I eat too much sugar.'...BUT...'When I get tired in the afternoons I need something to perk me up quickly to make it to the end of the day.'

We could go on with many more examples; my bet is you're sat there now thinking about your own. And there are a few things we should say about this thought process:

1) IT IS COMPLETELY NORMAL. No matter what the person you follow on Instagram says about #Gainz #AthleteLife #CleanEating #NoExcuses or any other 'motivational' saying, they often think about unhealthy things too, find it hard to resist them, often don't and feel really bad if they do.

2) It is useful. Ambivalence allows you to explore your choices, and make no mistake about it, change is absolutely a choice. You need to decide if there are more pros to changing than there are to staying the same, or if the drawbacks you currently experience are worth making the effort to change, even though you know it might be tough.

3. When you change, it can still be there. In fact, once you've decided to give something up, it's possible that your mindset starts to change to focus on all the things you miss about it. This is the tough time...sticking to what you've gone for or going back. If you do go back, you're not a failure, a loser or a lesser person, you just made a choice that now wasn't the right time for you to make that change, and that's ok.

So how do you start to work through ambivalence? Try this simple little too. It's known as a Decisional Balance Sheet. We like the name of course!! :-) 

As with the example above, divide a piece of paper into four even squares and label them something like 'Good things about changing', 'Bad things about changing', 'Good things about staying the same' and 'Bad things about staying the same.' Then for the change you're considering, put all the thoughts you have about it into the box that best corresponds.

How do you analyse the results?

You can just look at the volume of answers. If there are lots in the benefits of change and drawbacks of staying the same boxes, then you might well want to go for it. Sometimes though, it's more about quality than quantity, so it's worth going back through to look at which answers you feel are most important. You can do this by numbering them 1-however many, and it may help you decide what's right for you right now.

Needless to say, it'll be a balanced decision and right for you.

Next time...we'll look at how you can stick to the changes you decide to make.