Support Your Health

When you are doing something in life, you ask the people around you for support. When you accomplish goals, what do you say? You say that it was a result of those around you. You couldn’t have done it without their support. It is true and that is why support is one of the most important ingredients in any recipe that you want to be successful.

Support is not something we can do without. Support is vital to success in all areas. Health is no different. We have discussed the importance before, but let’s get into more detail about how support can be used and who can be your support system.
The reality is, anyone can be supportive. If they are in your life and interested in your success, anyone can support you. Let’s think about the roles that people can play in your life to help you succeed in health:

Family
Your family is the biggest support system available. They are there for you whether you like it or not. They are offering suggestions, asking how they can help and even participating with you on your journey through life. It doesn’t matter what your goals are. If family is aware of them, they will be there to help you reach them.
Using your family as a support system is the oldest and easiest way to get yourself on track. Telling them what you want to accomplish is a start. Helping them understand why you want to accomplish it will help them get on board and even help you along. Sharing the experience with them is the ultimate way to get on track and stay on track.

Friends
Your friends are like an extension of your family. In many cases, they are around more and are even closer to you and your goals. Friends are there for each other and health is something that requires this support in order for you to be successful.
Friends are the best way to come up with ideas for future plans. They are also a good way to evaluate those ideas before you have problems. Friends can have a way of asking what you are doing that will help shape the way you answer. If you are wanting to be active and you know your friend is going to ask you about your activity, you will work to make sure that you are able to tell them YES, you are indeed active. If not, you know that you are telling them one thing and doing another. Just as you are telling yourself one thing (I want to be active) and doing another (Not being active).

Co-Workers
No matter what company you work for, unless you are the only one in the company, you have a group of people that you spend a lot of time with. Coworkers have become even more important as we see ourselves at work and in offices for longer and longer days, weeks, months and years. Work is something that consumes a lot of time and energy.

The more time you spend with someone, the more support they can offer you. With as much time as we spend at work, we get to know our coworkers pretty well these days. Couple that with the fact that we are working on common goals and you can see how important they can be to your success in health. As health becomes part of these goals, you can really utilize the common bond to keep things moving in the right direction.

The moral of the story is: Your success in health depends greatly on the people around you. Without support, healthy habits are difficult to get started with and they are even more difficult to stick with. Support can be a workout partner. It can be a reminder from another person. Support can even be as simple as sharing an idea with someone so that they know what you are trying to do. When they know, they can help you. When you know that they know, you can use that to make sure you are sticking with it and not going against what you have told the people around you.

It’s funny how much easier it is to stick with something when others know what you are doing. If you don’t tell anyone, you are just letting yourself down. If you are telling others and still not doing something, you are letting them down too. No one wants to let anyone down. The people that are supporting you don’t want to let you down either. If you reach out and use the support around you, you will be successful in health. You will be supporting your own health by utilizing the people around you.

Fix Today

When you hear someone say that they are worried about the future or nervous about what may happen tomorrow, you usually see someone that is not prepared for what is coming. The worry actually makes sense. If you are not ready for tomorrow it will be difficult. The worry is not just about how scary tomorrow is. The worry is more about what they are not doing today to prepare for tomorrow.

Each day stands alone in terms of action. But each day has an impact on future days as well. If you do something today, it will put you in a better position for tomorrow. This is easy to see in the work environment. If you put off a project or a follow-up, it is still there tomorrow and you will have more work to do because of the other tasks that come with the job.

Unfortunately, it is not always as easy to see how one day impacts another when it comes to health. If you don’t work out today, there is technically nothing that will make tomorrow harder to work out or to get as much done as you want to. It just doesn’t work that way, so when we put off exercise on one day, we are in fact building the habit of not doing it and it becomes more difficult to get started when we finally want to do it.

“If only there was some way for you to make yourself do it.” I’ve heard people say this. I’ve heard people ask me if I can make them do it. I’ve yet to make anyone do anything. In fact, I’ve yet to see anyone make anyone else do anything that they didn’t want to do. Health has to be a choice and if it is something you want to do, you will find a way to do it. You may not be able to force yourself, but you can support yourself and find others to help support you. You can also plan and set your schedule so that it supports you. When you do that, health can fit in and become part of your routine.

If you don’t make health part of your regular routine, you will constantly be worried about what tomorrow looks like. You won’t know when you are going to get your workout in. You won’t know what you are going to eat or when you are going to eat it. You likely won’t have any goals. You may have a wish or two like: “Someday, I want to be healthier”, but it will be difficult to get started.

Tomorrow is something that we are trained to think about. We are trained to prepare for tomorrow. We are also taught to use today to make sure tomorrow is as we pictured. This is the concept that we need to apply to health to make sure that we are achieving it. What we do today makes tomorrow what it is…or isn’t. If you do what you set out to do, you will be reaching goals. If you do not do what you set out to do, you will not be reaching goals. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

In order for tomorrow to look like you want it to look you have to do something today. You can look ahead all you want. You can try to think of the reasons that tomorrow will be a challenge. You can worry and you can sweat the details of tomorrow. If you do that, I can assure you that you will be right.

It may sound a bit contradictory to say that not thinking about tomorrow is a good strategy. How can you set goals today that impact tomorrow and say that tomorrow isn’t important? Well, I’m not saying that tomorrow isn’t important. What I’m saying is not as important as today is.

Tomorrow doesn’t matter until you get to it. Tomorrow may not even come. I don’t mean that as a doom and gloom outlook that suggests that we could all die today. It is more about the fact that tomorrow will look completely different in the way it plays out.

If you have a clear plan and can take action based on that plan, you have some control over your future. In fact, you have a great deal of control over your future. If you simply let today happen, tomorrow will keep changing on you and before you know it, you won’t know what to expect. How can you succeed when things are changing and unexpected? Well, it is very difficult.

That is why today is the only day that matters. We’ve talked about the importance of getting started today. Clearly, that is something that rings true. If you don’t start, you can’t move forward. If you don’t take a step today, when tomorrow comes, you won’t be anywhere but the same place you are now.

It all comes back to the day you are in. The only day you can control is today. You can’t control what happened yesterday. You can’t control what will happen tomorrow. Well, there is the gray area that can mean the difference between success and failure. If you don’t take action today, you are determining what tomorrow will look like. Likewise, if you are taking action, you are determining that tomorrow will be different based on the actions you are taking.

So, I guess you can actually control tomorrow. Short of developing super powers, the only way to be in control of tomorrow is to take control of today. By taking action today, you are taking the steps you want to take. That will lead you on your path toward the goals you’ve set. By planning today what you will do tomorrow, you are preventing unforeseen issues from derailing tomorrow’s actions. You can’t take tomorrow’s actions until tomorrow, but you can set yourself up to take them.

In other words, you can take today’s steps today and that gets you on the right track for a successful tomorrow. The only way to insure a successful tomorrow is to fix today.

Faith

When it comes to health, there is a lot to know. One thing that I have learned is that it doesn’t matter how much you know. I know this sounds odd, because I pride myself on educating people on health and ways for them to make it part of their lives. Well, I’m telling you now, that no matter how much you know, it means nothing if you don’t believe you can do it.

A recent holiday made me think a lot about faith. Faith is something that I don’t discuss very often. It seems that in the business world, we don’t seem to discuss it much. My personal life involves faith, but it is still not a conversation that I have very often. It is interesting how health and faith mix, but usually an emergency or it is too late. Either we are praying for someone to pull through or faith is a comforting thing to have on our side after we lose someone we love.

I’m not here to have a religious debate. In fact, I don’t even want to bring religion into this. I am talking about faith. Not faith in a higher power. Not faith in any particular religious practices. I am talking about faith in health. More specifically, I am talking about faith in one’s ability to create and maintain health.

When someone gets on a new routine to change their health, there are stages that they go through before they get to where they really want to be. They start by thinking about what they might do. They move one to talking about what they are going to do. Once they are able to get started, hopefully they are able to stick to it for a while. Once they have stuck with it for a while, they are likely to keep going.

Each of these stages takes a certain skill and a thought process that will help you get from one to another. The goal is obviously to progress through them until you are an experienced and confident person that will always do the things you have started doing on your new routine.

This is a nice thought, but unfortunately, many have not been able to do this. Most people don’t get from one stage to another on their first try. In fact, many are continually starting a new routine in the first stages and falling back to square one as they find that it just doesn’t work for them.

This is very common, but it doesn’t have to be. We have talked a lot about the stages of change.

The first stage is contemplation (thinking about doing something)
The second stage is preparation (talking about what you are going to and getting ready to do it)
The third stage is action (getting started)
The fourth stage is maintenance (maintaining after getting started and keeping it going)
(There is also a stage called pre-contemplation- before you are ready to do something)

Each of these stages has something that you need in order to make it successful and get on to the next stage. There is one thing that across all stages becomes the most important factor. Clearly, you need motivation. Clearly you need goals. Clearly you need resources around you to support your new habits in order to start them and keep them going. I have written many articles and had many conversations about these things.

The one thing that I have not talked about yet is the one thing that you need in order to get started. It is not only what you need to get started, but it is also needed to advance from one stage to another. In other words, there is one thing you need to get started and that same thing is also needed to keep you going.

What is that one thing? What do we need to get started, keep going and be successful in health? We need faith. We need to believe that we can do it. We need to believe that what we want to do is possible, what we are doing is going to work and what we have done is possible to do again…and again.

Faith is not often talked about when it comes to diet and exercise, but it is very important. Without faith, you won’t even get started. Think about it:
If you don’t think you can start running or start eating healthy foods, you won’t start doing it. If you think that you have a realistic possibility of doing something, you will believe that it is possible and therefore you will be likely to go for it.
While faith is not the only factor, if you don’t have it, you can’t move forward. Some people find it natural to have faith in what they are doing. These people are usually successful. They aren’t perfect. They still run into challenges and have off-days, but they are able to keep going because they trust that it will work out for them even when it is difficult.

If you are looking to get started, have a little faith in your ability. If you believe you can do it, you can. If you believe you can’t do it, well, you are right on that one too. In order to do healthy things, you have to see yourself doing them. You have to trust that you can make them happen. In other words: the more faith you have in yourself, the more health you will have in your life.