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.