The title sounds a little complicated but, it’s such a common issue that I am faced with as a Holistic Nutritionist. People come to me for personalised nutritional advice that will get them results. We discuss things and work out a plan of action and they return as scheduled in a week with their progress - sadly I would suggest that approximately 30% of people, haven’t made a change and when I delve into “why”, it is largely because they didn’t want to make the change. They didn’t want to change their breakfast or they didn’t want to pull out the daily alcohol or they didn’t want to try carbohydrate backloading. They can see all the sense, science and evidence and often already know the steps they need to take to make a change to their health, body composition, vitality but knowledge doesn’t seem to be their driver.

I’m tempted to stick to the notion that, whatever people do - however bizarrely against their own interests - at least part of the reason for continuing to do it, is that they get a positive benefit somewhere along the line, even if they are unaware of what that is. I’m not going to delve into all the possible benefits here in this post but the first benefit that often stands out is that they get to stay in their comfort zone. They get to do what they’re familiar with, even if it doesn’t bring the results they want or need. Doing something different just appears to risky.

In order to want to make changes, we have to experience the “new”. By experiencing the new change, this then adds to, and changes our old beliefs and feelings, and these changes in turn result in modified behaviour. We then discover that we get more new experiences and benefits as a result of doing the modified behaviour and that tends to reinforce the new beliefs and feelings and that reinforce the new behaviour in a virtuous circle. Perfect!!

How do we then make that “first step” to experiencing the new?

Here is where I extol the virtues of meditation. It has without a doubt been my best tool in these situations that leads to success in the initiation phase. Sitting each day for at least 8 to 10 minutes, makes a huge difference in how you approach life, how personally you take things and how you interact with others. It allows you to see things more clearly (including yourself), enhances compassion, and assists in creating a sense of calmness.

Meditation provides us with a little bit of a portal in understanding where our minds are at and you are then able to get immediate feedback as to the sate of your internal functioning. From there, ideally, you are able to then make adjustments. Without meditation we can become much more reactive and resistant to change. We can be pulled into the common state of doing - going about our days and performing under default mode. This is a mode in which we aren’t really conscious of our decisions and possibly someone else is making them for us - ie advertisements, social influences and/or trends.

Meditation allows us to see ourselves and everyone around us from a clearer perspective. http://how-to-meditate.org/breathing-meditations is a great resource to get you started.

Let me know your thoughts ….