Disturbing the Familiar Order of Things
“Making change means disturbing the familiar and well-established order of things.”
Co-Active Coaching
With the New Year, come the New Years resolutions. Many of us are seeking to make big health related changes for the better. We know these changes are necessary. Yet, we are scared. We don’t know if we can complete what we started. Almost all of us have discovered at one point or another, that changing some aspect of our living habits for better health resulted in great lapsing, or regressing back to starting point.
This resistance to change is called Homeostasis.
Homeostasis is described as the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. A simple example is your body working to keep its inner temperature when the outside temperature increases or drops.
Homeostasis applies to behavior as well as physical functioning. Our behavior just like our body has a genetic tendency to stay the same, stay where it is used to. Homeostasis is part of evolution and does not have a value system. Rather, it works like a computer algorithm. In other words, it does not know when to keep the good change and leave out the bad one.
Say you have led a sedentary life-style for the last decade. With the New Year you want to get fit. During the first exercise things go wrong. You are out of breath, dizzy, maybe even a little sick, your body hurts. You feel as though this workout is very hard on your body, that you have aged, or that you no longer have what it takes.
The good news is this is not true. It is just Homeostasis at work, it is sending all the alarm signals because something must be wrong! What’s with the highly increased heart rate and all the movement? This is hard on the body which is used staying sedentary, it has not practiced in a decade!
Homeostasis resists all change.
Your sedentary life-style is the normal as far as Homeostasis is concerned.
But how to get to the other side of Homeostasis
& create new healthy habits?
1) Understand how Homeostasis works: Expect resistance and pushback from your body. You are not too old, too crazy or just plain lazy. You just have to do it a different way than trying to complete an intense 30 minute HIIT Program on your first week back to workouts! See point #2.
2) Be willing to figure out what works for you: When we decide to make a change, we want to go all out, and make it happen quickly. Since Homeostasis is at work, guess what? You need to think a different way now. Be ready for a little bit of trial and error. Realize that you have figure out what will work for you. Be patient with this process. Most people, who succeed in making changes stick, start with smaller goals. Sometimes so small that Homeostasis can’t come up with an excuse not to do stick to the “smaller goal” plan. Goals as small as walking for 5 minutes, instead of going on a 30 minute walk in the neighborhood. Over time, they are able increase the length and frequency of the new behavior. Why? It is gradual. It tricks Homeostasis because it allows the body and mind the time to adapt to these smaller changes over time, so the alarms of the Homeostasis don’t go off every time you work out.
3) Find Allies: The value of accountability partner(s), a support system cannot be overstated. If you have friends that are waiting for you for that walk, it will be embarrassing to drop out at the last minute. Seek friends you would be embarrassed to not show up for. One of the reasons why Health Coaching has become a mainstream service is due to the accountability. Not the kind of accountability that says: “Show me proof” but the kind of accountability that says: “How did it go?” “What did you learn?” This is how you change the way you think. Resilience is not about being strong. It is about learning to think a different way. It takes time. And that is why it sticks around for the long term once you master it.
Another way how health coaching helps is: when the bumps on the road like your fear, work and family issues or self-sabotage shows up, while you maybe beating yourself up, your coach will hold the big picture up for you, evaluating these issues from a perspective that will allow you to keep making forward motion. Finally, health coaching being a paid service, having some skin in the game is a motivator for you to show up at your sessions with your learnings, with the courage to trust the process and to deepen what you learned and to move forward.
4) Practice, practice, practice: Eventually, your new practice of showing up for yourself will be the new Homestasis and the alarms will go off, for example, when you do not work out at your regular time. And just like that, you have created a new habit. (Running as a sport has been an established habit for me now for many years. Things just feel off if I have to miss a scheduled run. The run is on my mind until I complete that run.)
5) Keep growing with your new habits: Once you are on the other side of this kind of learning, the empowerment keeps giving back. You have learned you can make change happen in one area of your life. Don’t you wonder what other areas you could improve?
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Aycha,
@HealthCoachOrlando