One of the premises upon which I base my nutrition coaching (and my life in general) is that in order for behavior to change, outlooks must change.
We've all seen pictures like the above, of a sun indeterminately setting or rising. When we look at it, it asks us a question: do you see a sunset or a sunrise?
Without thinking, take another look at it and decide based on the first thought or feeling that pops into your head.
Regardless of what you chose, this little test illustrates the importance of outlooks. Obviously there is only one painting, containing only one depiction of the sun. But your outlook determines whether the sun is rising or setting, to you.
And it's not always a simple relation to one or the other, like a glass-half-full type situation.
Consider the implication: maybe you feel the sun is rising. Maybe this means a sense of new beginnings and promise, the mystery of morning light and that space between sleeping and awakening.
Or, maybe a sunrise means something else: another day of toil is about to begin. Another opportunity is coming that you're afraid you will squander, like so many others. Tired and unfocused, you have a whole eighteen hours before you can lie down again and do what feels best: nothing.
Alternatively, maybe the sun is setting. Maybe your outlook sees your opportunities as shrinking, or that the time to give up is rapidly approaching. Maybe you see life itself as approaching its end, not well or badly, but simply inevitably.
Or perhaps the sun is still setting but you see a new tomorrow approaching. You see a night of calm and focus and unwinding and dreaming ahead. Maybe the setting sun is the cue that tells you you can stop thinking and worrying and deciding for the day, and now is the time to take some time for yourself.
As you can see, each visual interpretation—rising or setting—can have positive, negative, neutral, or combined emotional interpretations.
It is highly subjective.
If one of these interpretations describes your outlook, it is reaosnable to assume that this outlook affects your behavior. Hope, promise, opportunity, or the lack thereof can greatly inform our sense of what's possible, and hence what's worth doing.
Now back to nutrition. Many people try to alter their behavior without changing their outlook. After a lifetime of finding carbs or fats or sugars enjhoyable and soothing, they one day "decide" that they are bad and undesirable.
After having no set eating schedule, they suddenly decide that they will eat only after 11:00am until 7:00pm, and only four meals at such-and-such times, because eating "whenever," which was good and fine and enoyable on some level yesterday, is unacceptable tomorrow.
What I'm geting at is, it's possible to change your thoughts about something, but it is harder to change your beliefs, and hence your outlook.
This is why so many dieters fail. Thoughts can change in a moment. But beliefs are built up over a lifetime. They are harder to change.
And your behaviors flow more freely from your beliefs than your thoughts. If you've spent a lifetime believing that brushing your teeth is important, it would be very hard to quit just "because." Similarly with reading before bed, drinking coffee or OJ at breakfast, or sleeping with the TV on.
But Mark, you might say, these aren't beliefs. These are just habits.
That's right. Your habits are your beliefs. Your beliefs are your behaviors. that's my whole point.
It's when habits become A) totally automated and seemingly impossible to alter, and B) harmful and counterproductive to our health or health goals, that they start to act in contradiction with our thoughts, thoughts like "why do I do this?" "Why did I eat that?" "why am I like this?" "why did I stay up so late?" "I need to not drink like that."
In order to change a behavior like this, you must change your beliefs—deepseated and often complex and conradictory—about the thing. This is rarely easy.
The question, though, is: is it harder than living in contradiction with your own thoughts? Against your deeper feelings and instincts, and what your heart tells you?
Is it harder to live with your heart and mind constantly shouting at each other, with your body taking the heat, getting killed as the messenger?
Is it harder to see yourself pushing your new nutrition or lifestyle goals further and further into the future and hence further out of reach, to see your time in which to achieve them dwindling, and to watch yet another year pass, another doomed effort fail, further cementing your idea of yourself—your outlook on yourself—as someone who fails, who quits, who simply "doesn't want it enough"?
And hence, doesn't deserve it?
How does THAT outlook affect your life, do you think?
But the sad truth is that many people find it easier to live this way than to even BEGIN to TRY to alter their beliefs and hence their outlooks.
That would mean questioning their core basic understandings of the world, of themselves, of thier lives and lifestyles, of their strengths and weaknesses in a sober, meaningful way (and by "sober," I mean neither grandiose about the strengths nor racked with self-reproach toward the weaknesses).
It would mean taking responsibility for the times in which they came up short. It would mean putting aside all excuses, not by simply denying how hard life can be, but by learning from each failing and ultimately to GET RID of your excuses and render them INVALID AND INAPPLICABLE, finally. This is very hard to do.
This is why I focus on outlooks in my work. It is not good to you to alter your behavior in the short-term when there is no basis of an outlook that supports it. That's what a lot of other coaches do. They give you a meal plan (that they probably got from Google) and tell you to follow it. If you don't, that's your problem.
And most people follow it for a day or two, a week at most. Before their outlooks corral them back to where they are comfortable and familiar.
In a way, if this happens, it IS your problem, but in what way did that hypothetical coach try to help you address it? Not at all. So what good are they?
And what good are their "meal plans" besides spreadsheets or pdfs that—after that week is up—will just live in some obscure part of your phone's memory for the rest of time, just like your goal or dream or aspiration lives in some obscure opart of your heart, seemingly forever, unseen, unadressed, and unrealized?
Who needs that?
Because no matter how you see the sun, it is in motion, as are you. The difference is, you can't control the sun; you can't control the way the world moves and changes, sometimes in your favor and sometimes against it. All you can control is how you see it: whether full of promise, mystery, and uncertainty, or devoid of it, stagnant, and inevitable.
So imagine now a painting of yourself. Of you. How do you see it?
Is it a picture of someone who believes in what they're doing, who understands it, who has the audacity to honor their own goals, to listen to their heart and make it an ally of the mind instead of an enemy, working in tandem with a healthier, happier, more comfortable body?
That's what you can control, if you can go there.
And, as someone who knows of the strength, insight, and courage that lies within all of us, I believe that you can.
Komen