Perfect Self-Management in 52 Weeks: The Secrets to Successful Behavior Change

Perfect Self-Management in 52 Weeks: 
The Secrets to Successful Behavior Change

Behavior change is one of the most challenging and universal issues we face in trying to improve our health and quality of life.

As we follow a diet or exercise plan, and/or try to stop drinking, snacking on junk or smoking, we look at these issues as separate and distinct from one another. In fact, there is a lot of overlap in terms of the way we need to act to improve any or all of these issues. The same changes that help us to eat more healthfully or improve our mood can help us stop smoking, manage our diet better, and so on.

Partly due to an environment that isn’t always conducive to healthy living (think of the abundance of fast-food restaurants and the amount of time many of us spend sitting at work or in front of the TV), our lifestyles often don’t serve the best interests of our health. That is where behavioral medicine comes in. Behavioral health professionals work to help people to identify long-standing barriers to living healthy lifestyles. They help people to follow the behavioral recommendations that accompany many medical treatments, take action to prevent diseases, and develop a road map that moves you toward health, and not away from it, with each decision you make. The goal is to develop a strategy to improve the overall quality of your life, not just to target one specific issue.

The first thing you need to do is to identify the areas that need work. When you have identified areas to work on, go through a number of steps to create short-term and long-term goals and set up the conditions for success. Finally, visualize what you want your life to be like so that you can stay motivated to stick with your plan through life’s ups and downs.

Day 1: Identify barriers and strengths.

Think about what barriers there are to making improvements in your life. You want to be aware of anything that will make change difficult for you. Also think about what strengths exist in each area — what is currently going well and contributing to good health. These strengths can be built upon and expanded to become most supportive of your health commitment.

When identifying barriers and strengths, it is helpful to ask, “Does this particular thing move me closer to good health, or farther away from it?” For example, some common barriers include being overscheduled or finding it difficult to ask for help. Examples of strengths include being organized, managing your time well, and communicating effectively with others. Different people have different barriers and strengths, and yours will be specific to you and your situation.

Barriers:

Strengths:

Day 2: Make a realistic plan.

Now it’s time to come up with a plan for developing your strengths and eliminating barriers. Once you have identified a particular strength, set goals to keep that strength moving forward, growing and building it in a way that will last. 

An excellent approach to goal setting is to have a main plan (Plan A) and a plan for tough times and setbacks (Plan B). Think of Plan A goals as those you feel you can realistically pursue most of the time, assuming there are no roadblocks. Plan B goals, then, are the ones you can pursue when the road isn’t as smooth.

For example, let’s say your Plan A goal for exercise is to walk or jog after work three days a week, but you find yourself skipping your workouts because your workload is keeping you late at the office. In the long term, you may need to find ways to lighten your workload so you can meet your Plan A goal. In the short term, your Plan B goal might be to take a short but brisk walk at lunchtime during days that don’t allow for a full workout. Short walks may not be ideal, but at least you get some exercise. On a good day, you might even end up getting both the lunchtime walk and the longer after-work exercise session.

To address the barriers you’ve identified, you will need to take a problem-solving approach that reduces or eliminates the barrier and helps you build strength in that area.

Day 3: Find your motivators and milestones.

You may hear all kinds of experts telling you not to set New Year’s resolutions because they don’t last. You may also hear you shouldn’t use other special occasions (such as weddings, anniversaries, or swimsuit season) as motivators. Don’t believe it. Changing habits is hard enough without throwing out perfectly good motivators! Instead, we need to grab all the motivators we can and use them to our best advantage.

As you may have experienced, the problem with event-related goals is that once the event passes, you tend to go right back to your old habits. But that doesn’t mean the motivator was bad — it simply means the plan wasn’t something you could stick with. As long as you put a healthy, realistic, and sustainable plan in place to achieve your goals before the event, and then develop a well-thought-out “next step” plan for afterward, you will be fine.

Think about competitive athletes: They follow a fairly intensive fitness and training regimen to prepare for specific competitions. Then they transition to a realistic “off-season” fitness effort that keeps them moving in the right direction until their next contest or season. They don’t just “pig-out” until training starts again. You may not be a professional athlete, but you can apply this ongoing self-improvement cycle to the goals you are trying to achieve.

Day 4: Practice self-awareness.

We are so busy and so distracted by the way we choose to live our lives these days that being present in the moment appears to be as obsolete as floppy disks. We multitask to the point of absurdity.

The path to health and well-being requires us to pause occasionally and become aware of ourselves without distraction. We need the opportunity to self-examine and to understand what we truly need emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. So, for example, the next time you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed and are tempted to grab that cigarette or doughnut, skip that workout, or distract yourself on the Internet or with social media, pause and ask yourself, “What do I really need right now?” A moment of self-reflection can help you understand why, in that moment, you are so deeply in need of a distraction or are about to make a decision that moves you away from health. Perhaps, rather than reaching for a quick fix, what you really need is to pay attention to an emotion, to sit with a negative thought, or to process some problem you are struggling with. If you practice self-reflection regularly, you may find you are no longer so tempted to make unhealthy decisions. This allows you to become more aware of how to meet needs in healthful ways.

Day 5: Expand your horizons.

This step is fun. List all the ways in which you spend your time: hobbies, modes of entertainment, sports, and so on. What specific activities are you doing? Do you enjoy your activities? Are you in a rut? How can you shake things up and make your life more exciting, more interesting? How can you explore new things and think outside the familiar “box”?

Some people go so far as to reinvent their lives in this step, and others simply add one or two new and fun activities to their routine. There are so many things to do in our free time, yet many of us have not tried anything new for many years. Maybe it’s as simple as exploring your local parks and recreation department Web site and choosing one new thing to try each month, whether it’s an exercise class, a “Shakespeare in the park” performance, new walking trails, or a paddle-boat rental.

Just commit to doing the activity once. If you like it, go back; if you don’t, then simply try something different next time. The whole point is to find activities that expand your world, get you away from the TV and computer, and really add to the quality of your daily life.

If you want to get the most out of this work, do the following exercise. If not, take off to an exciting weekend. Perhaps doing and enjoying something completely new?

Envisioning a healthier life

Now, take a moment to reflect on all the problems and solutions you have identified through your use of the exercises outlined above. Reflect on what you have learned about yourself, your life, and your strengths and barriers. Here is where you bring it all together and try to picture a newer, healthier version of yourself. Try to imagine yourself acting differently in the face of your most common barriers.

For example, if you have trouble saying no and find yourself overcommitted as a result, close your eyes and picture yourself confidently and realistically setting limits, delegating tasks, or asking for help. If you always seem to be struggling to “fit in” exercise, imagine yourself as someone for whom exercise is not a daily negotiation but rather a way of life. Envision yourself as a healthy person who makes healthy choices. As you practice this sort of visualization, your new outlook on your health will begin to feel more like a part of you. Old patterns are tough to break, but with effort, you can make changes over time.

As you carry out your plan to strengthen your commitment to good health, you will notice that there is overlap among the areas, and that progress in one area influences the others. You will see how your goals may be fine-tuned and interwoven to create a smooth plan for living your life comfortably, productively, and happily.

You may want to start keeping a journal to record what you have learned about yourself. This way, you can look back on your progress at various points along the way, such as when you accomplish goals and set new ones. The process outlined here is not a one-time deal. You can come back to it as often as you like, perhaps on a monthly or quarterly basis, as suits your needs. 

Now off you go for an exciting (or relaxing) weekend.
What are you looking forward to the most? Go for it!

(Info: Dr. Martin Binks)