Since sharing my post on the dietary changes I’ve made since discovering I have an #autoimmune illness (#hashimotos), I have had a number of messages from people wanting to do that same thing, but unable to make the necessary changes.
We are all conditioned to think that change is hard.
But is it? Or is it simply that we’re looking in the wrong direction for how to make change happen? 
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The last 4 years for me as a health coach have been transformative. When I first moved from personal training to health coaching, I was stumped at the number of women who I wasn’t able to help. There was a puzzle piece missing and I couldn’t figure out what it was until I opened my own mind and became curious about how it all works.
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What I’ve seen is that it’s more about unpacking the layers of habits we have innocently created over our years in order to feel safe, in order to feel comforted, in order to feel relief from those feeling that are uncomfortable.
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My quest to be able to offer more to my clients around this (and to offer myself more too), has been like an awakening, and I feel like I have still only dipped my toe into the vast potential that comes with being human. Our world can change dramatically simply by understanding how it works.. even if nothing else changes around you.
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So how does understanding how we work as humans help with making lifestyle changes? Because habit change is what lifestyle change is. Seeing beyond the thinking and behaviour patterns that have been innocently created, and feeling the freedom that is possible when we can understand our part in all of this.
For me it was a journey that required me to ‘unlearn’ a whole lot of stuff… the opposite to what we think we have to do.
Our minds all work in the same way. We have a thought (conscious or subconscious), it creates a feeling, we act on that feeling. How often do you give ‘thought’ to your thinking? It’s amazing what you start to see when you become more aware of this connection in your own life. It’s like an invisible force – a lot like gravity. We can’t see it, but we know it’s at play (well if we start to become more aware of it we will!).
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This is why I know you.. and me.. are always doing the best you can in everything you do.. given the thinking you have in that moment.
So when we set out to make a change in our life, and we don’t end up doing what we wanted to do, it isn’t because we lack willpower or we’re not disciplined enough. It’s nothing like that at all.
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It’s because in that moment the thinking that we had led us to that behaviour… and in that moment we didn’t feel like we had a choice to engage and act.
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But the coolest thing to see is that our thinking has huge potential for change. Huge! And… did you know that we actually don’t have to act on the thoughts we have going on in our head?
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We may not have a choice as to the thinking that comes in to our head (in fact we definitely don’t.. thought it pretty impossible to change and sounds like super hard work to me)… but we always have a choice as to what we act on.
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Until someone pointed that out to me.. I didn’t know that! How could I not see this?? I felt like I was always being dragged around with that inner voice telling me what to do, and I had no choice in the matter. Drinking at 5pm every night.. eating that block of chocolate.. don’t tell me I had a choice in that.
Because at the level of understanding I had – the level of awareness I had around this – I actually didn’t have a choice.
Until I saw that I did. I had an ‘INSIGHT.’ And once I had insights, change just started to happen. No willpower required.
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Showing people this potential is my greatest joy. It’s forms 80% of my coaching work, and has transformed the lives of many who have trusted me enough to point them to this potential within them.
Change is always possible. First you have to want to see something new. Then you just have to turn your attention to a different place to where you may be currently looking (and where I looked up until 3 years ago!). And lastly, you just need to be curious. That is all. 