4 Reasons Why You’re Stalled

Has your health stalled? Were you finally seeing improvements only to plateau? Or, have you just seen no improvements at all?  We’ve all experienced one of these at some point. It’s frustrating to just stop improving, to see things moving along nicely only to have them seem to stop improving or slide backwards.  Sometimes, this just happens. Sometimes we’ve come as far as we can go without taking new steps.  Sometimes, we are doing one (or more) of these four things that can cause us to stall.

1. You’ve changed nothing, but expect things to change – It’s really difficult to make changes when you are sick. You feel like crap and there’s always the risk that a change might  make you feel worse. This is especially true when it comes to things like diet change. Often, food is our comfort so we can’t imagine giving it up. I know that was the case for me.

I had the same reaction with exercise. The doctors kept telling me to exercise more but I didn’t really understand why AND every time I even thought about trying to move, I felt exhausted.

For change to happen, something has to change. We have to change something. It doesn’t even have to be a big change, it can be a small change. Small changes can build on each other to create huge rewards. The Kaizen Plan covers this idea of making small changes.

2. You’re waiting for the perfect time to make the change – here’s a secret there is never a perfect time, and things will never be perfect. The stars will not align. You’ve just to go to do it.

This is true for everything, not just health. If there’s something you want to do, at some point you just have to stop waiting for the perfect time and do it. I’ve seen so many people who want to start a blog or a business or an exercise plan but they are waiting for the perfect time. They have an idea that things have to happen in a certain order, and if one thing is out of alignment, they can’t continue.

The longer you wait to make a change the less likely you are to ever make it. You’ll talk yourself out of it before it can happen. The best way to make a change is to just go ahead and make it.

3. You are focused on yesterday instead of today – Yesterday is over. You can’t change it, but you can change today.

Stop worrying about what you’ve not already done, or what didn’t happen. Focus on what can happen and what you can do today. You can change your situation. You can improve your health. You have to make the right choices going forward and not worry about the choices you made before. 

4. You are unwilling to take a risk – In order to see change, you have to weigh the risks and the rewards. You have to be willing to take a risk to obtain the potential rewards.

I’m a bit of a gambler. I love to play poker.  To be a gambler you have to be willing to take a risk. But, to play poker you have to understand calculated risks. You weigh the risk you are taking against the reward, and against the potential of losing something.

We have to do the same thing with the changes we make to our health. We have to weigh the risks of making the change against the rewards. Too often we only look at the risks, without weighing the potential rewards and realizing that the risk is worth taking.

Has your improvement stalled? Is it time to take a risk and change things up?

• It’s time to stop complaining and do something
• 10 Reasons We Resist Healthy Changes
• Get Back Into Whack with Sue Ingbretson
• 9 Changes you can make to feel better this year