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Hello, and welcome to the Own Your Health Podcast, I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to help you step into your health power. So last week we talked a little bit about the significance of making changes and how something that is seemingly as simple as just get up earlier has a whole lot more to it.
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And if you didn't catch that episode, I encourage you to go back and take a listen, because if you've been here for a while, I think you will relate. Now, this week we're going to talk about change fatigue and how what one seemingly simple change can actually sink the whole ship on your New Year's resolutions or your efforts to create new habits in your life and for your health.
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So too many changes at once cause something called change fatigue. And they don't have to be huge changes. In fact, a lot of little tiny changes can create that same level of fatigue as having a massive change in your life.
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So when I start to talk to clients about what are your goals for health this year? What are your thoughts? What is it you want to change? What do you want to leave behind? As we've talked about in the past, what do you want to give up? What do you want to bring in? How are we going to create room for that space?
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And exercise is always a popular topic, especially at the beginning of a year. Also, very often I'll have a client say, I am going to go to the gym three times a week. Now, on the surface, this sounds fairly reasonable.
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They plan on working out for an hour, and three times a week seems doable because it's not. It's not the same as saying, I'm going to work out every day, which can be a huge challenge. But when I say to them, okay, how many times a week are you working out now?
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If they say one or two, then incrementally adding a day could be a relatively straightforward, simple change. But if they say they're not, that's a red flag.
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Now, most folks will tune into advice and they will hear something simpler, like three times a week is probably too much. Start by going once a week or start by going twice a week. But what's lost in that recommendation is the number of changes that still will most likely have to take place.
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The little changes that could potentially add up to the change fatigue that would result in someone not going to the gym at all and just giving up. So what do I mean by little changes? Well, if you're going to the gym and you haven't before, you probably have to change your routine, your schedule.
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Maybe that means getting up earlier. Maybe it means leaving work earlier or starting work later or taking a longer lunch. When are you going to fit that in? So that adjustment, that change in schedule can bring a change that has stress associated with it.
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If you're going someplace other than home and the office, or the office to the grocery store and then home, it may require a change in your driving patterns, a change in routes, which may mean a change in traffic patterns. Not a huge deal by itself, but again, incrementally, one more little change that we add on.
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What about a change in showering and getting ready routines? Are you going to go to the gym first and shower there? Are you going to go after work, take your clothes with you? How many things do you have to haul?
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What do you have to pack the night before? What do you have to get ready in anticipation for this? Again, each one of these things individually isn't a tremendous amount, but you can see they're starting to stack up. And that's where people experience change fatigue.
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It also may represent a change in social life. If you typically went out with friends a night or two a week, it's fabulous that you want to do something for your health rather than that, but it represents a change in that you're not going to be connecting with those people.
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You aren't going to be seeing them for good or for bad. It is a change. It may also alter the time you have with family. It may alter other people's schedules as well. So if you usually come home, make dinner, everybody sits down to eat.
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If you choose to work out, if you, if you're going to stop at the gym after work, then there may be a delay in dinner getting on the table. Someone else may have to cook dinner and put it on the table. And all of these could actually be very positive changes.
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It could be some of the best things that happen for you, your health and for your family. But it is change. So we've stacked these up here. We've stacked scheduling, location, traffic patterns, showering, changing, packing up clothes, patterns, social patterns, meal schedules, time with family, and then that all important one, sleep. Your sleep schedule.
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So we can't automatically create that hour in our day. And if we really look at it, it's probably not an hour, it's probably closer to 2 by the time you get to the gym and change clothes, do your workout, clean up, shower, either get ready for work, get ready to go home, it definitely is going to be longer than an hour even if you're real quick.
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So how do you create that time? And many people borrow from sleep. And if you're already one of the many, many, many Americans who does not get enough good quality sleep, that could sink the ship right there.
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So none of this should be discouraging. In fact, it should be very encouraging to have this list so that rather than starting working out one day a week instead of three, you start implementing some of these smaller changes little by little until you've created that space.
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And then working out will just automatically fall into that. Going to the gym will become automatic if you change your route to work, if you get the family used to preparing a meal for themselves several nights a week, if you get used to cooking, prepping meals ahead of time so that you don't have to be there for that, if you get used to packing a bag, all of these things, they can be tremendously positive and very exciting if you tackle them one at a time or maybe two of the tiny changes at a time that will lead up to this big, incremental, significant change in your life of going to the gym three times a week.
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Now, this is all for the benefit of your health, so I support it wholeheartedly and I want to see you successful. And if you want help figuring out what that list is for the change that you want to make to own your health, I'm your gal.
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Reach out. The information is below in the show notes. We can do a jump start three sessions to get you going on the ultimate change that you want to make. So thank you very much for listening.
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I've really enjoyed our time together and all of the comments and I appreciate you by all means like, continue to send your comments and if there's someone you know who has this resolution or one like it, please share this video with them.
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I love to get my message out to more folks. So I will be coming back with more of these kind of step by step revealing these tiny changes that lead up to the big transformations that we want to make when we own our health.
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Until next week, let's go out and own it.
