When something throws off your progress (and what to do)
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You were finally able to create an exercise routine, but you got injured. How would the story continue for you?
a) I work to get better and find alternatives that help the injury and allow me to keep moving my body until I recover.
b) I stop working out and will start again after recovering from the injury.
A few years back, my answer would definitely have been B. That way of responding to events rippled to other areas of life.
How many times something similar has happened to you?
You finally found the motivation and focus to have a stable routine with something you want to incorporate into your habits. Be it an exercise routine, a diet, a self-care practice, or a hobby. But then life happens, and something interferes and throws you off that routine. The next thing you know, weeks or even months have passed. You haven't been able to get back to it, which makes you feel bad about yourself and your 'lack of discipline' and 'inability' to follow through.
Today, let's see the main reasons this might happen and how to overcome this setback.
Understand what happened
Your mentality
Your mentality—how you view and think about this habit you're trying to build (and everything around it)—will determine your success in being consistent, adaptable, following through, and resuming when an event makes you 'fall off the wagon.'
All-or-nothing:
All-or-nothing thinking is a sneaky negative thought pattern that leads to giving it up altogether when we’re not able to do something perfectly; there’s no gray area or wiggle room to adapt to the circumstances.
You know that time you had been consistent with exercise, but one day you weren't feeling well, so you didn't? What was the result? The forced day off of exercising made you think that you had already broken your streak, so why bother starting all over again?
Or that time you were following a diet and 'being good' until you had a terrible day and couldn't help but reach out to your comfort foods. As you started, you thought you had already eaten something you shouldn't have; you had already ruined your 'clean eating,' so why not keep going for the day? Or days, or weeks, until you try again because you want to feel normal around food, but the cycle perpetuates.
An all-or-nothing mentality gets in the way of our progress by sabotaging it when any challenge arises. Because there is no in-between, strengths, efforts, or accomplishments are completely disregarded to focus on flaws and mistakes, as there are only two possible results: perfect or terrible. This all-or-nothing thinking makes us our worst judges, sets unreasonable rules for ourselves, and sets us up to feel hopeless, as negative situations tend to be the focus.
Perfectionism:
One extreme of all-or-nothing thinking is perfectionism, and it's worth discussing because it can hold us back from starting or restarting anything we want to accomplish. This might be news for you, but… perfection does not exist!
Many of us struggle with accepting mistakes, and it's more than just pride. Perfectionism is about the internal pressure to perform well, with the thought that not doing so is unacceptable and affects one's self-worth. If it's not perfect, I'm failing, but as perfection doesn't exist, we are pursuing something that will never happen because there will always be something to improve.
It's often linked with a fixed mindset, which means that when perfectionists don't perform how they want, they believe there's room for improvement; therefore, starting again would mean failing again.
“What the heck” effect:
From all-or-nothing thinking comes the "what the heck" effect, which is the thought you have when something interrupts your habit or routine and makes you believe that everything you did until that moment is pointless and useless. In your mind, any little setback erases your progress and brings you back to square one, so as soon as it happens, you'll engage in the exact behaviors you were trying to avoid or change as if everything you’ve accomplished so far hasn’t happened.
How many times have you overeaten a certain food or kept eating other ‘fun foods’ (aka ‘bad foods’) just because you felt you were breaking the rules and thought, ‘I’m already doing something I shouldn't, so why stop?).
The habit
You are used to doing things a certain way. Your routines and habits are like automatic responses; you don't have to put much thought into them; you just do them (brush your teeth, eat breakfast, etc.).
Our brains resist change (the unknown is perceived as a threat, even if it's healthier than the current behavior). When we want to introduce a habit, we're rewriting our brain, which means we need time and repetition for the new habit to stick.
But there's more than time and repetition because when what motivates that habit comes from outside of us (it's expected of me, for example), or the habit is not aligned with our values (following X diet is making family dinner less enjoyable), it's going to be much more challenging to make the habit, a habit.
This is the reason why, for so many people, it's challenging to create an exercise routine. Suppose you work out to lose X lbs to look better in your swimsuit on your vacation. What happens when that motivator (the vacation) is not there anymore? Also, by working out and focusing on the outcome, you're focusing on something you can't control (many factors contribute to weight loss). Because the result needs time to become apparent or doesn't show how and when you expected it, it will be natural to feel frustrated and have a 'what the heck' effect because you have nothing to show for your effort. I'm not saying it is wrong to work out to lose weight. Still, if it's your only focus and reason, there is a lower chance of converting it into a sustainable and enjoyable habit.
How to get back (and be consistent)
Now that you know a few things that might have prevented you from resuming whatever habit or routine you were trying to implement, it's time to assess different aspects and make changes so that next time something like this happens, you know you have the knowledge and mental space to not let one event ruin all the progress you've made to this point.
Analyze the habit/routine
Your brain is used to doing things a certain way, and when you want to introduce a habit, you better have a good reason that motivates you and pushes you to take action so that when something you can't control gets in the way, it doesn't stop you. Because your brain likes what it knows and tends to avoid change for its survival, you need to show your brain that these new things you want are important to you.
If you want a change, you need to have a strong 'why' for that change; you need to be clear on what you want to get out of it, what it will do for you, and the consequences of not doing it.
So here are important questions to ask yourself whenever you are starting (or restarting) a habit:
- How do you feel about this habit/routine you're trying to implement?
- Why do you want to implement this?
- Why is this important to you?
- Is it something you want, or is it something you think you should do?
- What would happen if you were to create this habit?
- What will happen if you don't?
- What do you make it mean about yourself if this habit does not align with your values?
Observe the event that interrupted ‘your streak’
Life happens, and different things can make us sabotage our progress. It's important to see things as they are and assess their impact on our lives. What do I mean by this? An injury can interrupt your workout routine, and it's expected that you need time to get back to it. But if you were sick for a couple of days, for example, you might not need a week to go back to the routine you want. Does that make sense?
We can choose how we react to the events that happen in our lives. Does that mean we should always smile at everything, good or bad? Absolutely not. We have all kinds of emotions, and it’s important that we feel them; life is not happy 100% of the time, and it's not meant to be.
We tend to attribute emotions to neutral events that happen to us. And we tend to entertain certain emotions and thoughts for longer than they need. As a result, we get in our heads and can fall into 'victim mode,' where we think there is nothing we can do to change our situation. Even though sometimes it's true, something we can always do is change our attitude towards the event. You can't change the fact that you broke your leg, but instead of seeing it as the worst thing in the world that ruins your exercise routine, you can (after you feel all the hard emotions you need to feel) look at it as an opportunity to slow down and maybe look inward and focus on all the things you can do or try doing during your recovery.
Knowing this, is worth it to spend some time asking yourself empowering questions:
- Is this event permanent, temporary, short-term, or long-term?
- Why has this event had such a significant impact on your routine?
- What does this mean about your mentality around this routine or the event?
- What does it mean about the routine/habit itself?
- How did this event make you feel?
- What attitude have you chosen to have towards this event?
- How did you deal with the emotions surrounding this event?
Adapt or modify the routine
Now that you have a deeper understanding of the routine you were trying to establish and the events that got in the way, you can make better and more intentional decisions that set you up to succeed in creating a habit and making it a part of your lifestyle.
- How can you take smaller steps to achieve the goal you want?
If you want to start practicing meditation, starting with 30 minutes each day will probably feel too overwhelming, and there's less chance of following through. Instead, if you start with just a few minutes, a couple of days a week, and increase progressively, then you’ll have higher chances of being consistent and staying motivated.
- How can you make the routine more enjoyable?
If you want to start running, do it while listening to music or a podcast you enjoy.
- What could be a plan B if something else were to throw you off of your progress?
For example, if you suffer from lower back pain, instead of not moving at all and waiting for it to pass, you can find alternatives to help you with that specific problem, like stretches or yoga focused on lower back pain. Then, as you feel better, you can start reincorporating your normal workout routine.
Work on your mentality
We looked at ways of thinking that get in the way when an event interrupts the creation of a habit. Most of what happens in our minds happens in the subconscious, which means that just telling yourself, 'Next time I'm sick, I'll get back to exercising as soon as I feel better' is not enough for your brain to change its patterns.
Here are some things to work on, not only when trying to reestablish a routine but also in our daily lives to grow and improve our health and well-being.
Learn to focus on progression, not perfection:
- Celebrate every little win every time you take action
- Two minus one equals one, not zero, meaning that if you take two steps forward and one back, you're still one step ahead than at the beginning.
- Practice self-compassion
Change your perspective toward the situation
- What would you see if you saw the situation from an outside perspective?
- What would you tell a friend in your situation?
Draw the learning lesson from the experience
- What could this situation be trying to teach you?
- If you had chosen to go through this experience consciously and voluntarily, why would that be?
- What is the strength or value you had to tap into?
- What is something positive that came out of the situation?
In a nutshell:
It is common to 'fall off the wagon' when trying to start a new habit. When we're not resilient and struggle to manage our emotions, events can stop us from doing the things we want, from an injury to receiving bad news to having an argument or simply having a bad day.
There's nothing wrong with taking a break. However, factors like our mentality, our routine, or our attitude towards the event that made us stop can potentially hold us back from accepting, moving on, and restarting what we had set ourselves up to accomplish.
When this happens, we feel stuck, and our self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem are all affected by the thoughts that we're unable to stick to a routine we’re trying to incorporate, at which we keep failing. You know now that the problem is not your lack of discipline or willpower.
As you work on the factors that are preventing you from being consistent, you’ll be able to succeed at whatever habit or routine you want in your life. It is in our hands to take responsibility and assess what happened so we can make the necessary changes and keep moving forward with our goals.
When we emotionally eat, food becomes an added problem. The way we handle events is by turning to food, which makes us feel even worse about ourselves and perpetuates this mentality that keeps us stuck. If you're ready to finally be able to handle hard emotions in a healthy way without food so you can create healthy habits that work for you and focus on what's important, let's have a chat.
Send an email to coaching@mindfulhealthwithduna.com
