Motivation and wanting to change behaviour

ARE your New Year resolutions beginning to fall by the wayside already? It could have a lot to do with your motivation.

“You hear lots of people saying, ‘I want to lose weight’. But how many of them actually do it? Not many, because they don’t even understand why they really want to do it,” says Tim Drummond co-author of The 30/30 Body Blueprint and a personal coach and mentor, specialising in health.

For instance, his brother’s wife had tried for 10 years to quit smoking without any joy.

“Then the day she got pregnant, she stopped straight away,” says Drummond.

“And the reason for that was because she suddenly understood why it was so important to her.”

Damian Hughes, a business consultant and author of How To Change Absolutely Anything, believes it’s all about changing behaviour.

Though what is being changed may vary greatly, the underlying foundations at the heart of whether or not it’ll work in the long-run remain the same.

“People often talk about motivation that comes from within and motivation that comes from the outside, but I believe there are three types of motivation,” he says.

“You either act through desperation; that you ‘have’ to do something. People often say, ‘I have to lose weight’. Or people act through rationalisation, so they go, ‘Oh, I should lose weight, really’, or they act from a place of inspiration, which is where they go, ‘I really want to lose weight’.

“All three of them are applicable in different circumstances, but the most sustainable one is where you really want to do something.”

Just saying you really want to do something won’t cut it either – as Drummond pointed out, you have to understand where this is coming from, why you want it.

That’s about looking at the emotions attached to your aims.

“A lot of my clients say they want to lose weight because they want to walk down the beach feeling proud of themselves and confident, or to be able to go shopping and know they can pick something off the rack and it will fit them,” says Drummond.

“These may sound like simple things, but actually the emotion attached to them is very revealing.”

But making a change – and sticking to it – is still a daunting and tricky process. It helps if you break things down into small steps.

“Research shows that it takes around 28-30 days to break a habit,” says Drummond. “If you can continue a new behaviour pattern for that long, then chances are you’ll be able to stick with it. Breaking habits is hard – our brains don’t like it. The only way to change those patterns in your brain, is by repeating something over and over until it feels normal.”