The Power Of Your ‘Why’

The theme of the weekend at a marketing event for entrepreneurs I attended (for me at least), was the power of reconnecting with your ‘why’ – your reason to change, your reason to commit, your reason to make awesome shifts. Over the weekend, the theme was obviously business and the same techniques can be applied to any area of your life.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to refer to it in the theme of health and fitness, or vitality and peak performance. Who wants just health, when you can have vitality?

I’ve written a few posts on the psychology for success in your health and fitness endeavours. I have been reading up on psychology since 2012 and I’ve realised that success in anything we do is 80% psychology and just 20% mechanics. I love psychology. I gobble it up. In the last few years I’ve sat an emotional intelligence course, and more recently, a very cool Tony Robbins event called Date With Destiny. They’ve all provided me with some awesome tools that I’ve applied to areas of my life where I’ve been struggling and I’d like to share some of them with you now.

It all starts with getting crystal clear on your vision of who you want to become. Conjure up an idea of your ideal body shape and level of energy and vitality that will accompany with it. The next step is to figure out your why – your reason(s) for making it happen. If you’re a parent, this is an advantage. One way of doing this is to write down 100 reasons that will make the outcome of your vision, almost inevitable. When you do this, the chances are that you will connect deeply with innate needs and desires – love, children, family, friends, security, long-term health, even financial security (ultimately we cannot be live in a state of financial abundance if we’re low on energy, getting stressed easily and feeling consistently in a negative state – which exercise by the way, immediately alleviates).

A very cool gem I learned from peak performance coach, Tony Robbins, is that we are motivated by two key driving forces: pain and pleasure. We are motivated by the need to avoid pain, and the design to gain pleasure, in everything we do. Every action we take and every decision we make is a result of one or both of these forces. Since we have a survival brain, our reptilian brain (which is designed to keep us safe), the need to avoid pain is normally the winning force, which means we will do almost anything to avoid pain. Hence why most of us never take action on big ideas or dreams we have – fear of failure prevents us from taking action. (By the way, there’s no such thing as failure – it’s just setback and an opportunity to learn and grow.)

Back to fitness. When we procrastinate, we do this because we attach so much pain to taking action, than we do pleasure of the outcome. This might be boredom. This might be physical pain. This might be emotional pain. If you’re procrastinating about taking action on a new fitness regime or committing to a really decent, nutrient-rich diet, the chances are, that you are not clear on your reason(s) to make the changes needed and you’re allowing a perceived pain of the process, to prevent you from taking consistent action. You might also be addicted to a story that you’ve been telling yourself subconsciously (or consciously) about why you can’t have what you actually want. More on this soon. (Side note: Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right – Henry Food I believe came out with that little gem of awesomeness!)

I say ‘perceived’ as we often perceive exercise, for example, as painful. We then find that when doing the exercise, we feel amazing and who ever regrets working out? I always say to my clients: “You’ll never regret working out, you’ll only regret not working out.” It’s powerful, even if I do say so myself. 🙂

Another example is related to dietary shifts: ‘Going on a diet’ is quite possibly the worst approach if you are wanting to get into peak physical shape. The first three letters of the word diet, might be a clue why this approach rarely works long-term. The idea of a diet for most people, is an immediate introduction of pain into your life. It normally means you’re sacrificing things you love. When you introduce pain, then it’s unlikely you’ll commit. However, when you reframe that to “I’m going to eat real, toxin-free, wholesome, nutrient-dense food every day that will fuel my body at the cellular level, will rid me of stress, boost my immune system, will make me feel amazing and energised, and will serve me and my family in the long-term” then it’s far more likely you’ll commit. That’s obviously just an example, but a way to reframe in a way that helps to commit. It also includes a powerful ‘why’ and that is your family – your kids – if you have any.

I’ve integrated some of what I have learned in my latest bestselling book, The Vitality Secret if you want to learn more.

I suggest doing this exercise: Get crystal clear on who you want to become, in terms of your body shape and image and the energy and vitality that will accompany it. Write down 100 reasons why you must make positive changes in your life right now. Once you’ve done that, separate them into ‘towards’ reasons and ‘away from’ reasons. Essentially your towards reasons are pursuit for pleasure reasons. Your ‘away from’ reasons are what will happen in your life, and those you love, if you do not take action now.

Another little gem I picked up over the weekend is 100% is easy and 99% is hard. It’s a lot easier to not drink any alcohol for, say a month or two, than it is to just drink a little. It’s a lot easier to not eat any sugar, than it is to just allow yourself to have a small dessert at every meal or the occasional snack, which turns into more sugary snacks, as they’re super addictive. Side note: Once you’ve had a few days off sugar completely, cravings diminish and your pallet actually changes after a few weeks and you’ll start to crave more healthy food which makes you actually feel amazing long-term with few energy highs and lows and all the stress that accompanies a high sugar diet.

Did you find this useful? Would you like to hear more like this?