Finding motivation to do anything can be difficult. Especially when you don’t see any value in what you are trying to do or achieve. Although most of us would say that staying healthy is a top priority, why do we find motivation to make the necessary healthy changes difficult to find?
This New Year, as we turn the page on 2020 and get ready to face whatever 2021 has in store, I’m offering up some food for thought about how we approach our health and why we may be having problems staying motivated. This advice is made based on years of observation and working with a lot of patients struggling with all kinds of health issues. No one has it all figured out and everyone struggles with motivation at certain points. But what keeps one person going while another finds it hard to even get started is something I’ve been interested in my entire career.
There is a lot of advice out there about tangible things you can do to form healthy habits, and those are all valid. But if you don’t know what you are working towards, you can easily get off track. What is you definition of “getting healthy?” It will likely depend on your life circumstances at the time.
Know how you define “health”
If you are going through chemo, perhaps being healthy means having the strength and resilience to handle the rigors of chemo. If you dealing with diabetes, perhaps your definition involves lowering the amount of medication you need. If you have an autoimmune condition, perhaps you want to increase your energy and decrease your pain. We will all have different definitions and that’s good! But it’s important to know what your definition is.
Once you know what your goal is and why, you then need to internalize the idea that you won’t be perfect 100% of the time and that you are worth the work it will take. It will take work, not because being healthy is inherently hard, but because it will take time to reprogram a lifetime of habits and thought patterns. Doing that takes time and patience, but you are worth it!
When you know what you are working towards and you know you are worth the work, you are then in a much better position to take on all the tips and tricks out there to make 2021 your healthiest year yet! To learn more about more about my thoughts on the subject, check out the video above and let me know your thoughts!
In good health,