How This One Personality Trait Determines Your Wellness Success

We live in a society that has normalized the avoidance of anything that challenges us or pushes us out of our comfort zone. We love our routines. It is common to want to “numb” those things that make us feel, well, uncomfortable. Conversations, experiences, or just thinking “outside the box” can feel uncomfortable. How many of us are avoiding a tough conversation we’d like to have for fear of how it will not turn out?

Similarly, considering different ways to approach your wellness can be intimidating and rife with doubt.

Let’s take the example of someone who really wants to make 2022 the year of health and to feel better about their fitness/body/wellness. One way to approach the year is to try the practices they’ve tried before and see if they turn up differently this time around. Yes, it is undoubtedly possible, yet the circumstances around the often-attempted strategy would need to change to ensure “success” this time. Let’s take an example of coaching conversations I often have with clients. Often, they want to “cut carbs” or “eat clean” to see short-term results.

In this event, I ask questions like:

• How will this time be different than the other times they’ve tried the same thing?
• Is it possible the outcome will change?
• Are you able to focus more on the process than the outcome of reaching your goal so you can learn what works in the long term?
• When you “meet your short-term goal,” how will you continue your life post “cleanse or “detox”?

In getting curious about that question, perhaps a mindset shift is possible. If not, we eventually land on why it feels like “Groundhogs Day” all over again.

Another option is to try new ways to approach a practice used previously, like cutting carbs.  When we change our approach, we are also changing the way our brain behaves around that activity and goal. We are challenging the system. Trust me: our brains are used to our wellness and fitness pursuits. We talk to ourselves about it constantly. So, to make things easy, the brain continues to do the same thing.

Using the same methodology as above, a client decides to focus on consuming more fuel-conscious foods and decrease her intake of processed foods. This time, however, she paces herself, listens to how her body responds to the new way of “fueling” herself and considers the lessons learned along the journey just as important as the actual outcome for which she longs. Given the latter, she can’t lose. She will learn, and her brain will grow because she’s tried something different. She will reach her goals because she has observed what works so that she avoids the roller coaster and “Groundhogs Day.”

Both approaches are reasonable. Yet one will push them to learn more. One will live on the roller coaster. The other is setting herself up to reach her goals.