Is Your Health Journey Off Track Again?

Inevitably we will all veer off the path on our health journey and find ourselves somewhere we never expected to be. We hit a bump in the road, take a wrong turn, get stuck in a storm and suddenly we are a little off or sometimes very far off from where we wanted to be.

Based on the title of this post you are probably expecting me to talk about some kind of change to your diet, sleep, exercise routine, or something of the like to get you back on track.

Sorry to disappoint you but I don’t think you should change anything to start

Or if you are following the likes of David Goggin’s you might be expecting me to give you some tough love and tell you to suck it up and try harder.

I am not one for tough love either, just trying harder is not particularly helpful in most situations.

Instead, I think we should do the first two things we are taught to do when you are physically lost.

1. Stop
2. Try to figure out how you got to where you are

Stop and Assess: The First Step When You’re Off Track

The thing is we all set out with the best of intentions and a lot of motivation to reach our goals, but inevitably motivation fades, things get in our way that we never expected to happen and a few months later we are nowhere near where we thought we would be.

It is common at this point to immediately stop and reboot. To go right back to what we were doing before we got off track and restart our journey. That is all well and good, but what happens the next time motivation starts to fade? What is going to happen when something else unexpected comes up again?

Most likely you will find yourself right back where you are now…off track wondering how you got there.

Why?

You didn’t change.

In order for you to stop this cycle of repeating the same mistakes over and over again you need to learn what is causing you to veer off track to begin with and come up with a plan to try and prevent it in the future.

Let’s make this more concrete with a real world example.

A Real-World Example: When Life Gets in the Way

Say you set the goal of being consistent with exercise and you start out with a goal of exercising 3 days a week and going on a hike or bike ride with your significant other one day a week. In fact you get super specific and say that you are going to strength train 2 days a week before work, do 1 day of high intensity exercise and use your hike or bike ride as a day of low intensity exercise.

Love it!

You start out very consistent with this goal but about 2 months in your significant other ends up having a big work project come up and they can no longer join you on your bike or hike. You find it quite boring to be hiking or biking by yourself and quickly you find yourself making excuses not to do it.

Then a month later you leave for vacation for a week and temporarily you stop your exercise routine (rightfully so), but say you will jump right back in when you get back home.

However after returning home, you come down with a cold and are laid out flat in bed for a week solid.

Now it has been 2 weeks since you have been to the gym to strength train or do your HIIT session and even longer since you have gone on your hike or bike ride.

It has also been 2 weeks since you have been at work and you return to a massive amount of stuff to catch up on. To make things worse, you gave your kids your cold and now they are home from school. With so much on your plate your energy is drained and you have no motivation to do anything else. In fact what sounds really good now is ordering some pizza, having a couple cocktails, and watching TV.

Raise your hand if you have gone through this exact situation before? 🙋

The Power of a Growth Mindset In A Health Journey

When these things happen the best thing you can do is treat them as a learning experience because this situation is going to happen over and over again throughout your life. As much as we would like to think this is the universe conspiring against you in the past several weeks, it’s likely not an isolated incident. If you think back, I am sure you can identify many similar situations that have happened in the past.

The process of learning from your setbacks is part of a larger practice called having a growth mindset. I first heard about the power of a growth mindset in the midst of my own health struggles several years ago. It was suggested that I read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. At the time when I read the book I understood the main takeaway was that many people are stuck because they have a fixed mindset….they don’t believe, or avoid doing, the things that would lead to change.

In the book Dweck gives several real life examples and cites several pieces of research that shows how when you instead believe in your power to change, aka have a growth mindset, that you can break free from the things that have held you back in the past and experience real growth.

On the surface, and at the time when I read the book, having a growth mindset sounded more “woo woo” me. Even as I type those last few sentences it sounds like I am saying you can just will yourself towards change.

I am not denying the power of the mind in outcomes, your mindset plays an important role, but I am also a fan of physical actions to reinforce that mindset. So on the topic of having a growth mindset there are some actual actions you can take to practice having a growth mindset. One of those is learning from your failures.

This infographic from Precision Nutrition outlines this process very nicely

We can apply the steps in this infographic along with the concepts of having a growth mindset to our (not so) fictional situation above.

Putting Growth Mindset into Action

First step in the infographic is to remind yourself about your growth mindset. The week that you returned back to work after being away for 2 weeks was not the time to “suck it up and go all in” on your exercise routine. It is understandable to not want to go back to your exercise routine, in fact in this scenario it may not have even been possible with kids home sick. So here is where the growth mindset piece comes in.

You know you can’t go back to your exercise routine right now, so instead of doing nothing and throwing all your energy into work and dealing with sick kids you instead stop and ask if there is anything you can do that is both physical in nature but restorative? In other words, is there something you can do that not only gets you moving and provides more energy when you need every ounce of energy and focus you can get?

Yes the pizza, a couple drinks, and a night of watching TV sounds great but is that helping you in any way? No, in reality it’s probably making things worse.

Stumped, you decide to go with option 3 in the infographic and get some support by reaching out to some friends for some ideas. One of your friends tells you about a yoga class provided by a local studio that has a 30 minute yoga class in the morning at a local park twice a week. While it’s not your normal exercise routine, the yoga does sound relaxing and being outside allows you to get some sunshine and fresh air. Plus your significant other can watch the kids for an hour giving you some time to commute, do the class and get back home.

The 2 yoga classes that week give you an extra boost of energy, gets you some physical activity, and allow you to be even more productive as a parent and at work so by the end of the week you feel like a superhero!

In addition by the end of the week your kids are feeling better and are back in school and life is whole again.

Now the following week you can get back to your normal exercise routine.

Learning and Adapting for Long-Term Success

But wait there’s more!

You also realized that you made another mistake even before going on vacation that got you off track….you were becoming inconsistent with your bike/hike because you found it boring by yourself.

Again employing a growth mindset you seek to make changes to correct this problem. While on Facebook you come across a local Facebook group of people who also enjoy hiking and every week do a group hike at a local trail.

Perfect!

On week’s where your significant other is too busy you will just join the local hiking group instead!

These two small changes, help to keep you on track and weather the storm that could have sent you veering off into a ditch!

Moving Forward: From Fixed to Growth

When we find ourselves off track we often fall into that fixed mindset.

“Here I am again, I am such a failure, there is no hope.”

I completely understand feeling that way, it is natural. What is important though is what you do next. If you have a fixed mindset you will either not do anything and ignore those feelings by eating pizza, drinking alcohol, and mindless TV watching. However if you have a growth mindset you will look for what you can do differently next time, you will learn from failure and grow to be a different person.

However there is more to this story of having a growth mindset. It is great to learn from your failures but sometimes what we choose to do after our failure is setting us up for another failure down the road. This is where #1 and #2 in the infographic above comes in. We need to know what actions and what changes to make to our environment that will help avoid the same failure in the future. Next week I will discuss how to go about deciding how to choose what changes and what actions to take. To be the first to know about when next week’s post is available, sign up for my newsletter using the form below and I will email you as soon as it is available.