5 Reasons Why you KEEP Failing to make lasting changes and How to get around it

Hi!  

We are the Foolish Couple, Andrew and Minna.

We are the founders of the Foco Academy, business consultants, health coaches and success mentors. We help people like you achieve success in health and relationships.  

When’s the last time you actually did something good for yourself such as starting a new good habit?

What did you do?

Did you try eating a cleaner, more organic diet?

Did you try doing exercises to lose weight or to just get in better shape?

 Did you try doing something challenging, either mentally or physically?

How did you feel?  

Did you feel good? Were you happy? Satisfied? Fulfilled? Excited? Thrilled? Did you feel alive? Strong? 

What happened after? Do you want to do it again? Did you do it again?

Were you able to adopt that as a new habit? Or did you bounce back to your old, bad habits?

 The truth is, there are many things that we would try once or twice, because we know that it would be good for us, and we probably have full intention of turning this good thing into a habit.

 But we didn’t, because of a million reasons that we made up. For some reason or other, we just weren’t able to keep up the good work. Something happens and we just went back to our old ways.

 Maybe you decided to quit drinking and you managed to stay off alcohol for a couple of days, and then a friend called you out and you start drinking again?

 Maybe you signed up for a 30-day free trial at a gym. You went twice and got so tired from that cross-fit class, you never went back again?

 What is this good habit that you know you should do, and you did for a few times, but then stopped and went back to your old ways?

Why is it so hard to do something good for ourselves? Even if it’s good for our health, finances, relationships and career?

Why do we keep failing to make lasting changes that we know are good for us?

Changing our habits is tough. Like really really difficult.

 It took us years before we figured out why everyone including ourselves weren’t able to make lasting changes. It comes down to 5 things.

 These are the 5 reasons why we keep failing at making good changes for ourselves.

 And once we know why we fail, we can now implement a system on how to develop good habits that will last.

Reason#1:

 The first reason why we fail to make habitual changes is because ”We don’t even know what we really want it, and why we want it.”

 Having a strong ‘WHY’ will motivate you to change.

Tony Robbins once said, “Change is never a matter of ability, it’s always a matter of motivation.” 

Motivation is an internal and external drive that prompts you to change your behavior. It is the ability to initiate and persist towards a chosen objective.

 We’ve talked with multiple cancer survivors and their motivation to adopt a healthier lifestyle is much stronger than other people.

 Their ‘WHY’ is huge. They’ve been through so much physical and emotional pain, the hair loss, the suffering, the long nights at the hospital, the treatments, the worried looks on their families’ faces. The pain they got was way bigger than anyone could imagine, and therefore, they are much more motivated to change their lifestyle to a healthier lifestyle.

 They are very clear about the pain they had from the illness, and they have a very crisp picture of what the pleasure of living a normal, healthy life looks like.

 And we can learn from them. You may already know someone who has been through the horrible experience of cancer treatment or dialysis or heart transplant. 

Imagine yourself in their shoes.

 How does it feel to not be able to go to work, even if you actually hated your job?

How does it feel to see your family coming to visit you at the hospital, all worried and not knowing if you’re ever going to go home? 

And now switch it around.

Imagine you living a healthy, happy life. You feel young, vibrant, you are energetic, you are full of live, and you always have a smile on your face. People around you are all laughing and happy.

 How much pleasure do you get from that experience? 

You see, no matter what you are trying to change, you have to figure out why you want that for you. 

Think about how much pain it would cause if you didn’t change? Make it as painful and vivid as possible. Really feel the pain.

Now think about how much pleasure you will get if you do change? Again, make the picture as clear and crisp as possible. Make it so real that you can smell the clean air and the flowers and you can hear your family and friends laughing and having fun.

 Having these images of pain and pleasure in your head will motivate you to make the changes that you want and also make them last.

But then what happens when motivation is not enough?

 I have an uncle. He’s been smoking since he was a teenager and he’d never stopped smoking. 2 packs a day. He told me, one time, that he was driving his daughter, my cousin, to school, and on the way to school they stopped by the gas station and he told my cousin to go into the store and buy him some cigarettes. Now this is way back when there is no age limits. So anyways, she got out of the car, walked into the store, and a few minutes later, he drove off.

 He drove off, without my cousin. Her school bag is still the car and there she was in the store, holding the cigarettes, and her dad had just left her.

 When I heard the story I thought it was funny, but if I had been my cousin I would have been very upset. But that’s actually not the main story. My aunt, the wife of this uncle that I was talking about, was a kind, hard working woman with 4 kids and she’d never smoked in her life. She cooks, she cleans, she works, she takes care of 4 kids and she is very nice to everyone. And then, shortly after I moved to the Bay area, I found out that she had passed away from lung cancer.

 Now there is no way to prove that she died from second hand smoke. But I was sure that’s what caused her death. I was sad to hear of her passing, but I was even more upset when I saw this uncle again later, after she passed away, and he was still smoking!

 I mean, watching your own wife die because of your smoking habit; is that not enough to make you want to quit smoking? How much more motivation does he need to actually quit smoking?

 So it occurred to me that sometimes, for some people, just having a strong motivation is not enough.

Reason#2:

 And that brings us to our 2^ndreason why we fail to adopt new habits even though we know in our gut that it is good for us.

And that is that because we have no capacity to change.

At some point, we feel like our live is filled up. We allocate our time between our work, our family, our hobbies, and our community. At every moment of our lives, something is going on. We are always up to something, working on something, doing something for someone.

 When we fill up a 100% of our lives, we often feel like we don’t have any more room to do anything more. We don’t have any more time to prepare healthy meals for the family. We don’t have any more money to buy organic groceries.

 If your glass of water is already filled to the top, you simply cannot add more water to the glass or it will spill out.

 And it feels like a burden to add something new to our lives, even when we know that it is a good thing for us.

 The trick is, rather than adding something to our lifestyle, try replacing something in your lifestyle.

If you want to exercise more, you’d have to replace some of your TV time with exercise time. If you want to eat more vegetables, you’d have to replace some of the food on your plate with the greens. If you want to give up soda drinks, you’d have to drink something else like sparkling water.

 So what is the thing or the habit that you want to replace? What will you replace with? Share with us in the comments below.

Reason#3:

 The 3^rd reason why we fail to adopt new habits is a bad support system.

 Julie, is a young married woman. She has been overweight most of her life but she never really saw her weight as a problem. Her and her husband were hoping to start a family but that never happened. So they went to see a specialist, and she was told that her body weight is a factor in her not being able to conceive. She was given options to either lose some weight and see if it helped, because she was still young and otherwise healthy, or there were other more medically intense, artificial options that they could consider.

 So Julie decided to lose weight. And she was all gun ho about it. She changed her diet immediately, dropping all the processed carbs, desserts, soda and alcohol. And she felt great for 3 days and was seeing some progress. Until on day 4, she was running late from work so she was going to make a salad for herself and asked her husband to pick up some dinner for himself.

 And guess what, he brought home a large pizza.

 The aroma of that pizza was just too hard for Julie to resist. So she reached for that pizza, and ate it.

 And from then on, she fell off her diet and after a while, they decided to take the other medical options to try to have a baby.

 Why pizza? Well, that’s what he always buys for himself. But he’s not thinking what that pizza does to Julie. And what kind of support Julie needed in order to stick to her new eating habits.

 All of us, no matter how independent you are, need support from the people around us.

And the best way to get support is to ask for it. Talk to your husband or wife about what you want and tell them how they can support you, and how they can keep you accountable.

So far we’ve talked about your why, your capacity to change, and your support system.

The thing to remember is that we are all neurologically tied to our habits.

Reason#4:

 The 4^th reason we fail to adopt new habits is because we link our bad habits to things we find pleasure in, like smoking or drinking. And we mentally link exercising and eating healthy to be painful, boring and hard.

 So in order to switch our your bad habits and develop new, good habits, you must switch your thinking as well.

 Tie immense pleasure to these new habits, and put a tremendous amount of pain onto the bad habits to drive yourself to make changes that are good for you.

Sometimes though, we overdo it. We try to run before we can walk.

 Maybe you turn 100% full on vegetarian when you used to be a meat lover.

 Or you went from 2 packs of cigarettes a day to zero.

 Basically, you shock your system.

 You suppressed your craving for smoking so much that you become miserable!

 Or you worked out so hard at the gym that your body ached for days.

 Just remember, take baby steps. If you can barely walk a mile, don’t start trying to run a mile. You’ve got to work your way up.

Cut down your cigarettes from 2 packs to 1 pack, and then ½ pack, and then quit.

 Walk a mile and time yourself, add in some short runs before you do a full mile run.

 As long as you are making progress, you are doing just fine.

Just make sure that you reward yourself. Remember, it is about tying pleasure to your new habits.

Reason#5:

 And, finally, Reason #5 is that

you think you only need to make a temporary change, that the new habit may be hard but it’s only temporary and not permanent.

 This one by far is the worst one that can mess with you.

 We see this all the time with Pro Athletes. Pro Athletes know that diet and exercise is critical to stay in peak form, to win games and championships.

 However when they retire, they let it all go, gaining weight and in most cases stop exercising altogether.

 Look at Basketball Great Micheal Air Jordan, he was fittest in his career but have gained massive weight after he retired, Charles Barkely also another basketball great that has gained lots of weight after retiring.

 And since we are watching the World Cup Soccer now, The Soccer fans will remember Diego Maradona. The retired Argentine footballer was known for his exceptional ball control, vision, and reflexes during his prime. He was one of the best in soccer players in history but he has gained so much weight after retirement he was forced to have a Gastric Bypass operation to save his life!

 Pregnant mothers are usually very careful about not drinking and watching what they eat during their pregnancy. But after the baby is born, they would start drinking again and get back to bad eating habits. To them, quitting drinking and eating better was only meant to be a temporary solution and not a lifestyle change.

 And that really ties back to Reason#1, which is your WHY. What are you trying to accomplish here? Is your new habit something that you want to sustain for a long time? Or was it just a fling?

We know that developing new habits is not easy and we are here to help. Helping you develop your health, relationships and habits is a big part of what we do.

 If what you want is to get healthier but you feel stuck because you don’t know where to start or who to listen to, we are here to help.

We have a free 3-video mini-series that we named it ‘Why we are aging faster than our Grandparents’. Now it’s a fun title but the underlying issue is serious and it is impacting our health in ways that you are probably not even aware of. We suggest that you sign up and watch these 3 videos, which would at least give you a strong reason to why you should get healthy. And we will also cover some simple things that you can do to get healthier and happier. It is absolutely free but it will only be available for a limited time so make sure you sign up now using the link below and you will get instant access to the mini-series.

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  Until next time, love what you live, and live what you love.