Four Ways We Can Change Our Health

By Mark Ackerman, PA

Change is difficult. In fact, Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa said once that change, “…always seems impossible until it’s done.” Mandela ought to know. He was a militant activist against racial segregation in South Africa who was arrested and went to jail for 27 years. There in jail, something changed in him and after his release, he became the president of his country.  As president, he was known for his peace and reconciliation, promoting national unity rather than military might towards his adversaries.

But 27 years is a long time to change. Fortunately, this is not the standard and hopefully never will be when it comes to changing our health. However, changing overnight is not the standard either- unless it is created out of some dire situation like a near death experience.  So, I think it is really important that we understand how to change, before it comes to the end of our lives and, we need to understand what needs to change.

What I see, when it comes to health, is that we need to change our lives by abstaining from unhealthy habits.  We need to stop smoking, we need to stop our substance abuse problems. We need to stop over eating, we need to stop sitting so much.  We need to get our blood pressure under control, and get our blood sugar under control. We need our psychological health to improve. We need to become physically, mentally and emotionally stronger and more adaptable. These are not self-help issues. These are fundamental issues related to our quality of life.

So, what is the strategy to changing our health?  The first thing, as above, is that I think we need to recognize that there are two basic ways to change: The first is through transformation while the second is through incremental growth.   Transformation is that sudden change where people change in an instant- think of big events in our lives, the day you graduate, the day you get married or the day you become a parent. These are big changes that actually transform you in a way that make it impossible for you to ever go back to the way you were.  And then, there is incremental change- where we incrementally move slowly towards our goal. This is much more common and often takes multiple encounters of failure before permanent change actually occurs.  Think of the alcoholic who gives up alcohol for a week and then starts drinking again. The pattern repeats itself several times before they finally stop all together.

Of course, transformation is the way we would all like to change; drop weight quickly, stop smoking in a day, normalize your blood pressure with one simple life hack etc. But few people can actually do this without sudden abandonment of their past habits.  Most of our ability to change comes through changing our beliefs slowly and then our behaviors even more slowly. This takes consistency, discipline and work.

The second thing is to recognize that situations rarely change. We make up excuses, well if I made more money, if I had a better job, well if I weren’t so anxious, then I could change.  But the truth is, we all have to recognize that people change situations more than situations change people. It is our response to situations that matter most, not our ability to control situations that matters.  From this standpoint, we can recognize that when we change, then situations change.

A third strategy for change lies in an old analogy about change that I think is beneficial here. It is estimated that the Grand Canyon was created over 5-6 million years with the water from the Colorado River- slowly hewing out the multiple layers of the plateau rock to carve the canyon.  But if the river only had to flow through sand, it could have carved the canyon out virtually overnight.  In other words, one of the factors that determines the speed and degree of change is our internal disposition towards it. The more rock-like we are, setting our jaw against change, the more incremental and difficult it will be. But the more we soften and become like sand, the more we open ourselves to transformation.

Finally, there is the knowledge that we are all capable of change. The human mind is not like a pre-programed computer. We all have a special gift called neuroplasticity. That is, our brains, can get rid of old connections and form new connections fairly rapidly.  The neuro-circuitry in our brains can rewire itself so that new patterns can form and thus habits can change. In other words we have the ability to learn, to replace bad habits for good habits, which can help us to grow and change. All we really need is the motivation to do it.

In closing, I am reminded of an old motivational set of questions that coaches ask their athletes about change; If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where? We have to answer those questions before we can ever change ourselves.