I think Nike were right.  Just Do It!  According to the guy who wrote the book on barefoot running,  called Born to Run, Nike were wrong about footwear,  that wearing cushioned running shoes actually causes injuries.  This is basically to do with the idea that the human body was designed to run and a part of  that design is our foot seeking feedback from the  ground that we are running on, to guide our footfall.  Cushioning gets in the way of this feedback.   I am currently running in Nike Frees and I love them-very light, but somehow feel like not as hard as running barefoot.   The only time I have been injured from running is from stretching pre-run or when the guy in the store sold me running shoes with arch support, which I didn’t need.  I was training for a marathon at the time and not surprisingly developed achilles soreness.

By the way not everyone is built to be a long distance runner, some poeple are sprinters:  horses for courses.  I know some of you will think you are neither, but the bottom line is the more you move, the more you are capable of  moving.

Anyway, that is all an aside.  What this blog is about is, how to change.   If you are going to ‘just do it’, you need strong motivation(in my view 90% of the story: most people who give up smoking or drinking alcohol just do it themselves; just make up their minds, no counselling, no drugs/medication, they just wanted to).   In fact, there is evidence that for giving up smoking, nicotine replacement makes it harder to give up, not easier to give up.

The more we do something the more we want to do it.  There is an old saying, “actions speak louder than words”.  This is so true.  Actions trump thoughts, trump feelings, trump bodily sensations and trump  meaning or perception.   We are very habitual animals.   Because we live in the sort of world where it is very easy to get short term pay- offs for doing bad things , it is very easy to  develop bad habits-habits that are not good for us and sometimes not good for other people.  If on top of that we are mixing with people who are promoting these bad things, either in a virtual internet world or in person, we can quickly think it is ok to do stuff, that previously we wouldn’t have approved of.

The upside of actions trumping everything else is that actions are the things we have the most control of.  Our thoughts and feelings and bodily sensations seem to come from nowhere sometimes and they are upon us, before we even know it!   Our actions are much more under our control and I would argue that the name of the game is to have them completely under our control.  I have spent a long time working with men who act violently.   One of my messages to them is if  you act calmly, even though your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and perceptions are violent, over time the thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and perception will fall into line with your actions.  Actions trump everything else.  Nike, “just do it”.

Why would you take the actions you don’t want to,  when every other part of you is screaming out not to?    Why would you not eat the chocolate, milk coffee, eggs and bacon and steak, that every part of you wants to eat?  Why would you not roll over in bed  in the morning rather than go for a walk or a run?   Because you don’t want to continue down that path,  you want to take the action because you are motivated.    The good thing is, that the more you take the action the easier it gets.  Here’s the crazy thing: the more you take the action like eating different food or exercising the more enjoyable it becomes!   In fact if you didn’t take those actions you would miss them and feel no good!    We are creatures of habit, we enjoy what we do:  the more we do it, the more we enjoy it.    This is especially true for eating well and exercise as there are real physical and pyschological benefits, that come from this independent of the habit and your perception.    Unfortunately, there is always a lag between starting to take the action, the development of the habit and the benefits that come from it.   For someone like me anyway the benefits of practicing guitar for example, take quite a while to show up, whereas the benefits of eating well (not poisoning yourself with too much fat, protein, salt and sugar and not depriving yourself of enough fibre and vitamins and anti-oxidants from plants) and exercising show up pretty quickly(the experts reckon give yourself three weeks).

Unfortunately also the pleasure gained by eating the chocolate and the cheese and rolling over in bed and not exercising are immediate and the pain of these choices may not show up for decades either in early death or the pain(physical and pyschological) of perhaps decades of ill-health.

One good way to tackle it is to set yourself short term goal of eating well and exercising for three weeks and then re-assess.  What have you got to lose?  At most three weeks!  What have you got to gain: your health, energy and enthusiasm and a big investment in your future.   I  don’t know who said this but “time and tide wait for no man”.   Unfortunately,  most of us need a kick up the bum, some sort of crisis, before we make changes.  Why wait until you are diagnosed with a chronic illness?   If you are currently well take a look around you at your workmates,  family and friends and see what state they are in and get some motivation!

HERE’S MY MAP FOR CHANGE

• get really clear about why you want to change: what you want to leave behind and what you are heading towards: your destination.  This is the important bit, the motivation.  If you are really clear about why you are motivated to change, why you don’t like where you are  headed at the moment and why you want to end up in a different place and what that looks like, it will be easier for you to keep on track with the other challenges of the change process, as there is no doubt changing is a challenge.  If it wasn’t a lot more people would do it!
• change  habit-identify the biggest problem behaviour and start the opposite behaviour or find ways to interrupt the problem behaviour
• resist urges/temptation-realise  thoughts and feelings come and go,  like summer rain-wait them out
• keep thoughts on track with new direction and block old  habitual thinking - oppose habitual thinking with slogans of your own making, that fit with your destination-make these slogans about building something not about stopping something
• support: who can  help in a crisis or as part of noticing change
• change picture of self