Cycles of Health-related Behaviors
Have you ever noticed that when you are doing well with something, you tend to get even more motivated about it? When you start a new habit such as eating in a more healthy manner, each day that you do well motivates you the next day to do the same. The same is true for exercise.
Conversely, when you make one bad decision, you experience less motivation to make a better decision. It is as if our brain thinks, well, I messed it up this time so why try?
These chains of decisions are actually spirals: each decision motivates a new decision in the same direction. Over time, you move closer to or further from your life goals. Your health gets progressively better or progressively worse, depending on which spiral you are in.
Of course, the issue is to move from a negative spiral to a positive spiral. This is much easier said than done because of the motivation problem. If you are in a negative spiral, you probably have a lot of negative thoughts that are barriers to making better choices. So, if you are in the negative spiral of depression, you not only have the entropy of depression. To move in a better direction takes determination.
Fortunately, there are some ways to get started. In order to start a more positive cycle, all you need is one very small step. If you are trying to get into a better habit of exercising, just doing something for five minutes can be the activity that motivates you to do seven minutes the next day. The feeling you get from exercising even this small amount of control in your life could also motivate you to take some small, positive steps in another new direction, such as eating at least one piece of fruit a day to improve your diet.
One barrier we often erect for ourselves is the idea that we “should” be able to do better than what we are doing. It doesn’t matter what we have done in the past or what we “should” be able to do. What matters is what we are doing and the difficulty we have in doing something different. To judge ourselves negatively actually creates one more psychological barrier to making better choices. Instead of judging, figure out a small step that could be taken in the right direction.
One thing leads to another. When we understand how this tendency works in our minds and activities, we can make better health-related choices.