Most mornings when I get up, I dress myself in workout clothes.

Granted, that’s both the luxury in working in the fitness industry and in working for myself.

But I do it for another reason.

My dogs are a big part of my environment - sometimes I delay myself to stop and snuggle and pet them, but I believe it makes me a better human, so there’s that…

It’s one of my hacks for getting my workouts in. Because whether we think about it or not, what we are wearing and what is on our person is a part of our environment that can heavily influence our behaviors. I don’t find leggings exceptionally comfortable, but I won’t let myself change until I’ve gotten my workout in.

Closely looking at environment is one of the places I like to start with clients in the journey of “I know what I need to be doing, I’m just not doing it.”  

Here are some of the environmental factors to consider:

Body

What are you wearing? If one of your goals is to walk every day at lunch, are you wearing shoes that will allow you to do that? Are you wearing a fitness tracker or fitness watch? Is it set to remind you to stand up from your desk and do a lap around the office?

As a note, for most of us, our phone could be considered part of our body because we have it in hand or on our person most of the time.

Reach

The next part of the environment is what is within reach?

One of my favorite stories for untangling a habit is the 20 second rule from researcher Shawn Achor. He wanted to untangle the habit of coming home from work and immediately turning on the television after sitting on his couch. He discovered that if he moved the remote far enough away that it would take him at least 20 seconds to retrieve it, he wouldn’t turn the t.v. on.

What is within reach for you right now?

Several of my clients leave some of their exercise equipment out because it’s a visual reminder about their goals, and makes it easier to just grab and do a couple of sets.

Much to Sheila’s chagrin, I like to leave whatever book I’m reading on a small table in our dining room. It drives her crazy, but because the book is already sitting on the table, when I sit down with my morning coffee, the book is right there, which helps me stay on task with my morning reading (which I acknowledge for those of you with children is a luxury…)

Room

During the pandemic, one of the most common struggles from clients trying to work out at home was the distraction of dust bunnies or piles of laundry. They would start working out and then get so overwhelmed by all the tasks calling to them that they would bag their workout.

How is your room set up right now? Is it cluttered? Organized? Filled with dog hair (or is that just my house…).

What kind of vibe does the room have?

How might it influence you and your goals?

If you struggle with sleeping, you might want to give a quick audit of the room where you sleep. Are there lots of small blue lights from charging electronics when you turn the light off? Is there laundry piled all around the bedroom? Are the shades broken?

No detail is too small, and if it bothers you now, in the middle of the day when you’re looking at your room, it will bother you later.

The Entire Place

Where are you right now?

Not only does every place contain different things and people within it, but each place also has a different cultural environment, with rules and norms that might influence your behavior.

This is the final layer of our environment we can access fairly easily, or without a lot of effort. And, it’s an environment that, to some degree, we usually still have a fair bit of control over.

I go back and forth between working out at home and working out at the gym. For most of this year I’ve been working out at the gym, in large part because I want to be in a place where other people are getting after it, and I want to listen to loud music, not necessarily through my headphones. When I’m at home working out, the dogs are constantly getting in my space (adorable but not practical), the music has to be low because Sheila is working from home, and it’s just me.

Our needs will change in terms of what we may need from a certain place, but it’s important to tune into those needs to have a sense of what factors will help us build and stick to our routine.

Mr. Lutz was my broad shouldered, silver haired vice principal who had an affinity for John Wayne, and also, weirdly, Mariah Carey.

But he also had a propensity for spewing positive quotes, much to the chagrin of the entitled, snot nose teenagers who roamed the halls around him. For every quote he offered, we responded with at least two eye rolls and a bombastic side-eye.

His favorite quote, which was included in daily announcements and eventually painted on the wall of the high school cafeteria was “believe to achieve.”

As a high schooler, I thought it was stupid.

As an adult with a fully developed, though neurodivergent brain, I’ve realized that not only was he right, but believing in yourself is the foundation of all behavior change. Because as that old Henry Ford quote goes “whether you believe you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

I have worked with clients who struggle to believe that they can change because years of trying has led them to believe that they can’t. My response to those clients is always the same. I’ll believe it for you until you can believe it for yourself.

So even though you and I have never met (unless the only people who buy this book are friends and family), I’ll offer the same sentiment because I think it’s so important. As a coach, I believe that everyone is capable of doing what they want to do. So I’ll believe it for you until you can believe it in yourself.

When it comes to behavior change, we often mistake knowledge as the missing component of execution. If we could just figure out what to do, we’d be well on our way to saving more money, losing weight or managing our time better.

Then, we acquire the knowledge, and sooner or later find ourselves in that valley of despair from page 14. What follows is the phrase most of us know all too well.

I know what I need to be doing, I’m just not doing it.

What comes between the knowing and the doing?

Resistance. And resistance comes in many, many different forms, including a lack of self-confidence.

Research confirms* that when we don’t believe we have the capacity to change, we don’t make as much progress implementing the change. Too often when I ask people what is getting in the way of their progress, they say the same thing.

“Me. I am the problem.”

“I can’t get out of my own way.”

Of course you think that! For those of us who feel like a hot mess most of the time, there is never a consideration that the system is broken because everyone else knows something that we don’t and everyone else is right. The system isn’t the problem, you are.

Except that’s one of the big lies that many of us believe.

You’re not the problem, I promise.

However, if you believe that you are the reason behavior change isn’t possible, then it can be difficult to believe that you have the capability to solve the problem. After years of floating back and forth between the starting and the valley of despair, you might give up on the idea that you can ever make anything different than it is.

So before you can get anywhere in this journey of making sustainable change, you have to believe that you are not your own problem, but your own solution.

Unfortunately, I can’t wave a magic wand and suddenly make you believe in yourself. But there are a few places you can start.

1.     Make a list of things that you’re good at.

Recently, I heard the term borrowing confidence. While there are a lot of different uses for the phrase, in this context, I want you to take a long look at the things that you’re good at. As someone who always thought of myself as a train wreck, this exercise was really important. While I struggled with organization, time management and list making, I was good at creative thinking, putting clients at ease, and writing. So pull out a piece of paper and make a list. What are you good at?

Are you stuck already? I know – sometimes it can feel really difficult to come up with positive attributes about ourselves. We think it makes us conceited or uppity. You know, I thought I’d get an error message when I typed uppity, but I didn’t. Who knew? Anywho, if you’re really stuck, ask your closest friend to tell you five things you’re good at. Think about what people say when they pay you a compliment. Think outside of the box.

I never thought my ability to connect with people was a skill or an attribute. It’s just something that has come naturally to me, especially as I’ve gotten older. But the tricky thing about our skillsets is that we don’t think of things that come easily to us as attributes. Because we don’t have to work as hard as other people at some of these skills, if we are paid a compliment, we are mostly likely to shrug it off and say whatever, it’s just what I do.

Yes, it’s just something you do, but it’s a skill that not everyone can do. When you learn to recognize your skills for what they are, you can begin to tap into some of that confidence you’re looking for.

2.     Comparison is the thief of joy.

It’s also one of the quickest ways to minimize whatever it is that you are doing. We all have people in our lives who are overachievers. They were probably voted most studious in high school. You and I were likely voted messiest locker (ok, that was eighth grade…).

Making comparisons is natural, in fact, social comparison theory suggests that people value their own personal and social worth by assessing how they compare to others. But if you’re not careful, that comparison can rob you of your own confidence because nothing you do is ever going to be enough. Most of us don’t have to look far to find someone who is doing some part of life better than we are. In fact, that comparison is often a huge contributor to why we feel like train wrecks compared to the mom who makes birthday cupcakes from Pinterest for her kid’s birthday while we sent our kid in with runny no bake cookies.

You have to focus on what is happening in your lane, and in your lane only.

3.     Be kind to yourself.

If you follow my brand, you know that my tagline is be strong, be kind. Most folks wonder what the hell being kind has to do with fitness. Well, self-compassion is an essential part of recognizing your human-ness. Self-compassion means that when you do make a mistake, and when you do come up short, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you and you are not broken.

For many of us, it’s habit to automatically shame ourselves whenever we make a mistake. And when it comes to making personal change with habit change, many of us have had periods of time where we’ve made progress, but we also have come up short. It can be very easy to let these previous efforts let us think in absolutes. That we will never have success, or that we can’t workout in the morning or learn to food prep.

Not true.

4.     Practice Positive Self-Talk

Ok, let’s just get this out of the way straight up. Everybody of my generation who had any access to Saturday Night Live in the early 90’s is permanently, at least somewhat, ruined on the idea of positive self-talk.

Al Franken’s brilliant character of Stuart Smalley, who spoke with a lisp and looked in the mirror while reflecting the daily affirmation of “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me” spawned a generation of people like myself, who struggle to take daily affirmations seriously.

However, the longer I’ve been in the coaching game, the more I’ve recognized negative self-talk as one of the primary reasons that people, and many women specifically, struggle to see lasting results.

Negative self-talk disrupted me and my progress for a long time. The thing is, I didn’t recognize what I was doing as negative self-talk.

Because humor.

Specifically, self-deprecation. Ain’t nothing that can crack a room full of people up quite like making fun of yourself. It’s a great way to break the ice, and it does make for an interesting title for a book.

But that humor comes at a cost.

And that cost is the ability to really, truly believe that you are capable of not always being a train wreck. Because while you might think it intellectually, you won’t actually be able to make change if you don’t truly believe in your bones that you are capable.

The first time I remember running, intentionally, just for the sake of running and not because I was playing hide or some other game with the neighborhood kids, I was in elementary school.

Our gym teacher Mr. Stock was explaining to the class that President Reagan was very invested in how long it would take us to run a mile, and as such, we needed to run four laps around the track that we were standing on, while he stood at the finish line with a stop watch, shouting out our finish times.

Beyond having a stitch in my side and chaffing from jeans, all I remember is that I hated running.

Fast forward to college and eight years in to organized sports, my lacrosse coach had us running something called heart attacks. All you need to know is that they worked hard to deliver on the title.

I hated running.

My mindset around running was that it was something that caused great pain, that I had to do as quickly as possible (I was slow), and was often used as a punishment in practices for being late or under-performing.

Of course I hated running.

During my junior year in college, I came across a book about Holistic Spirituality, and low and behold there was an entire chapter on the meditation and spirituality of running. I was a really self-reflective kid, and really interested in anything that might help me understand myself better.

In this book, running was positioned as a chance for some alone time. An opportunity to be out in nature. A chance to be present and mindful in your body. Time to pray and meditate.

This was the first time running was presented to me in a different light. Where for most of my life, it meant being punished in sports, was all about going as fast and as hard as you can, suddenly someone was putting a new hat on the idea of running. 

There would be no stopwatch. No timer. Just whatever music I had on my Sony Walkman (remember when the battery was dying in those?) and some peace and quiet.

I write this not because I'm suggesting you take up running (though I still enjoy it, for the above reasons). But I am curious about what your mindset is or has been around your fitness and nutrition journey. Has it been filled with shoulds? Misery? Someone else's terms?

We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves in all areas of our lives and fitness and nutrition is no different. Most of the coaching that I do isn't around the nuts and bolts of exercise or even nutrition. It's around mindset.

I created the image above for my clients when we talk about having success in their fitness journey, and especially in this world of virtual training. Most of our work happens between the "life got life-y" and "ok, now I see how this works" part of the journey.

The part where we begin to not only see how movement and healthy habits can fit in our lives, but we believe that we can make it work. My high school vice principal always said "believe to achieve." And that is perhaps the biggest shift you could have.