Overcoming Your Excuses

With Mindset Coach & NLP Expert, Christine Corcoran.

EC. As someone who works in the health & wellness space, I hear my fair share of excuses. What are some health & wellness related excuses that you feel people may not be aware that they're using?

CC. One of the biggest challenges in the health & wellness space is that it's not a short-term thing, it's always a long-term thing. It's always existing. It's not like we don't need to work on our health. It's not like we don't need to work on our fitness or movement. It is part of being a human being and it’s ongoing.

One of the biggest challenges is that it's never finished and I think that can be very challenging for different personality types. Some people are very driven by a short-term outcome or deadline and need that pressure in order to execute and then other people actually need to build a habit or a routine, which is also very challenging if it's very new as well. Everyone's slightly different in the way that they are driven and therefore sometimes it's really understanding how you are driven and being mindful that it's about resetting that intention to work on your health or wellness, because it's something that never goes away.

One of the things people need to shift is their mindset. So ask yourself - how do I have that long-term relationship with myself to know that this is actually an ongoing relationship? It's not just a short-term thing.

EC. It’s often the short fixes too, that yield long-term damage. It's when you cut your calories really low for a short period of time, then your body adapts to that which causes troubles later down the track. You’ve got to start looking at health & wellness from a long-term approach. It's a lot like happiness - it's unrealistic to think that one day you’ll wake up and have achieved true happiness. Happiness is something that ebbs and flows. It's a work in progress for the rest of your life.

CC. 100% - you need to actually cultivate the habit, rather than expect that these external things will make you happy. It’s no different to thinking that if I get to this weight, I'm going be happy or if I win this marathon, I’m going to be happy. Often those things are fleeting. You get the outcome, but it’s not addressing the root cause. If you don't get to the root cause of what's going on and the reasons why you do the things that you do or why you don't do the things that you would like to do, then you will always come back to those excuses because you’re not actually fully invested in the outcome that you really want to achieve.

EC. How are our excuses holding us back in the health & fitness space?

CC. It's firstly recognising why you are experiencing these excuses, because it's an internal conversation first, before it's an external conversation. Often what is happening is that you are arguing for your own limitations. You're literally arguing with yourself and coming up with a reason or excuse as to why you don’t want to do it, because you don’t actually want to do that thing, right?!

You are arguing for your limitations, and I want you to be conscious of this from a place of zero judgment. This is not a judgment, this is not you telling yourself that you shouldn't have excuses. We want to address the excuses and be curious as to why they’re coming up and why you’re arguing to not make a change.

There's often an underlying reason, so we want to address that, because what's happening is a push and pull with an old identity and a new identity that you're trying to create, and the new identity hasn't been created yet. The brain loves to follow patterns, and it will just repeat the same thing day in and day out, because it’s safe, certain and predictable. Your brain will always go back to what it's always known, which is your old patterns of behaviour, old habits and old routines, because they feel safe.

As you are stepping outside your comfort zone to build a new habit or create a new routine, your brain doesn't want you to do that. It's literally thinking - no, come back here and let's sit on the couch, sleep in or continue to eat that food that doesn’t serve us, because it's giving us the short-term comfort that we need. You brain is constantly arguing with you, so it's not you. So, be kind to yourself in the process and understand it's your brain's way of keeping you safe and therefore as you are developing a new habit, can you give yourself a little bit of leeway? Make a promise that you will be kind to yourself during the next month as you build and develop this new habit. It's less about right or wrong, it's less about winning or losing. You can’t just build the habit first because your brain is constantly working against you.

You're also working against your identity. This is where it becomes hard to shift, because your identity has been developed throughout your entire life and your subconscious mind has stored information that basically creates this profile of who you believe you are, and if you've got these certain habits or patterns of behaviour. Your identity and who you believe you are often come from your parents as well. For instance, I came from a family where exercising was never talked about. Exercising wasn't part of our daily life. It was non-existent. So, doing sports at school felt extremely hard because it felt so separate to me. So, going into my adult life, I had to recognise that there were a lot of old habits & beliefs that didn’t serve me. If I wanted to get to this new place, I needed to be become someone who values health. I needed to become a person who sees themself exercising most days. I had to actually break up with that old identity and acknowledge that I didn’t want to be that person anymore and there's nothing wrong with that person. She was doing the best she could with what she had at the time, and the upbringing she had. All of that worked for a certain period of time, but now I want to try something different.

So, how do I break up with that old identity and build the new? It starts with building new habits, but it's also starting to build a new identity belief about who you are as a person. It’s adopting the belief that I am a person that works out regularly now. I am a person that takes care of my health. I am a person that considers what I put in my mouth. It’s starting to build those belief systems, because that's going make it easier for your brain to realise that's who you are now, then the action or behaviour is a byproduct of that.

EC. I've spoken about this before - if you are wanting to become someone who reads, then you need to take on that identity and tell yourself - “I am now someone who reads”. So, what would someone who reads do today? I'm certain they would read a few pages of a book. If you're someone who wants to run a marathon, what would someone that runs marathons do most days? This is when self-sabotage shows up as a way of keeping you comfortable and safe, but it’s important not to let it stop you in your tracks.

CC. Absolutely! It’s less about judging yourself and more about being conscious and figuring out how to bring back choice, because with any form of self sabotage, it's like being on autopilot. Your brains just doing this habit without actually giving you the choice. So, bring as much awareness to this as possible …

A common excuse is knowing you should exercise in the afternoon, but you tell yourself that you’re tired, exhausted and would rather just sit on the couch! So, you had a conversation with yourself and your old identity convinced you that it’s easier just to sit on like couch. It’s too hard to put your shoes on and get to the gym. Your old identity told you that you’ve worked really hard and should probably just rest, right?

Your brain is literally working against you and so if that worked, and you did actually go and sit on the couch, you might then recognise later that day, that that’s not really what you wanted to do. You self-sabotaged yourself in that moment. How can you not judge yourself for this though? How can you actually work through unpacking this to figure out where you could have interjected to stop that from happening?

Sometimes it's catching it beforehand, because the momentum has often already built up. Imagine, you were standing at the top of the hill with a car in drive and you pushed that car down the hill. If you stood directly in front of that car (even at the bottom of the hill), it would squash you because the momentum has already built up. So, it’s thinking to yourself - I know that I have a habit of getting to the end of the day and instead of exercising, I eat chocolate and sit on the couch. So, how can I set myself up to build momentum towards the other direction, instead of the direction towards the couch? How can I build the momentum to get to the gym instead? This might be laying your activewear out hours earlier or putting your shoes next to where you walk in from work. It might be drinking plenty of water in the afternoon, so you feel really good. You want to schedule this into your calendar and make it a non-negotiable. So, what are the things that you need to put in front of you to support that new direction?

It comes back to you choosing again, because what can often happen is that we get so down on ourselves because we've chosen the opposite or have chosen self-sabotage and then we feel shame. Shame is a low vibrational emotion, which is really hard to shift. When we feel shame, the brain then associates shame with that new behaviour, which causes self-sabotage again, because we don't want to feel shame. So, we do anything to numb ourselves from feeling that emotion.

We want to acknowledge that perhaps you chose not to prepare your day effectively to exercise, therefore your thought pattern may need to start in the morning - how can you set yourself up in the morning, so that you wake up and get your activewear laid out? Your intention has now become that it’s actually happening today. This is who you are now. This is your new way of being. Now, you’re more likely to get to the gym.

It’s about building momentum early on and not waiting to make decisions in that moment. A lot can happen by the afternoon, including your dopamine depleting. We don't actually have enough of the chemicals left in our brain to make a positive decision for ourselves. We're actually making decisions from a place of feeling tired and depleted and will have 50 million excuses as to why you shouldn’t go to the gym. So, we want to set ourselves up more effectively early on to build momentum in the right direction.

EC. It’s setting up your environment to succeed. It comes back to the people that you surround yourself with and what is in your physical environment to increase your chances of succeeding. It’s also about not focusing on the outcome itself. If you were sitting on the couch and really didn’t feel like exercising, don’t focus on the end goal just yet. Don't think about having to complete a full workout. Just do the bare minimum to build the habit, then once the habit is formed, you can increase the output …

CC. I absolutely agree with you. Once you become that person, it’s much easier to achieve that next level goal. Stop being hard on yourself, because then you build an association that you give up on yourself. The new habit is that you give up on yourself and do the self sabotaging behaviour. You judge yourself and that feels terrible, then you don’t want to do that again. So, you don’t set new goals or commitments, which results in a downward spiral to becoming the person that you don't want to be.

You need to rebuild that trust with yourself, because every time you choose a different option, you're building the ability to do that. You're building the new habit, but you're also building a new belief system that you can do that. The next time you find yourself on the couch, instead of feeling shame about it, ask yourself - what could I have done differently in that moment to speak to that new identity? That new identity may have got up and did five push ups or that new identity would have put her shoes on and walked anyway without putting on activewear. The more you do that, the more you leave that old identity behind.

The other thing that plays into this as well is coming back to your emotional why, because your emotions drive everything, right? We are emotional beings. You are a human being. You have emotions and emotion drives behaviour. Our emotion is energy in motion. How can we make sure that we're utilising our emotions in a really powerful way to support us moving forward? So, making sure that you're attaching your new habit or commitment to an emotional why (the reasons you should make that change) because that's more likely to drive you in those moments of self sabotage or doubt. Remind yourself of this & you're more likely to choose something different.

A great way to do this is to get leverage on yourself. How can you leverage something that supports you in making this a new habit? This new habit may take you a month to achieve, so how can you get leverage on yourself for that first month? There's many different ways to get leverage on yourself, but it could be declaring it publicly (that's a really good motivator), getting someone else to keep you accountable or maybe promising yourself that if you don't achieve it, then you have to do something you don't want to do - eg. if you said you’d achieve this new habit by the end of October and you don’t, you’re going to gift someone $5000. What's the likelihood that you'd make that happen? You would move mountains! Find leverage. There are so many ways to do this and realise, it's actually just a catalyst to help build the habit.

Once the habit is formed, it's much easier to attach new habits to that same habit. If you can find that emotional why though, then get leverage on yourself, it's more likely to continue on long-term.

Follow Christine Corcoran on Instagram - @christinecorcoran_coach