How to overcome barriers to better health
▶ Prioritizing getting seven to eight hours of quality sleep. You can’t always control how well you sleep, but having some wind-down time before bed can help, as can waking up at the same time every day.
▶ Avoiding or at least reducing excessive consumption of alcohol or drugs, including cigarettes. No fun, we know. But it’s for a good cause.
Easily, we could add stuff like prioritizing positive, nurturing social relationships, managing stress, and probably others, but just the above list is uncommonly met.
In fact, only six percent of Americans perform all five of the following basic health behaviors:1
- Meet physical activity recommendations
- Don’t smoke
- Consume alcohol in moderation (or not at all)
- Sleep at least seven hours
- Maintain a “normal” BMI
If you’re doing the math, that means close to 94 percent of Americans aren’t doing the basics.
Yet, these foundational behaviors also help us achieve a long list of common goals, whether that’s reaching a healthy weight, improving athletic ability, or just living a longer, healthier life.
So why do we struggle so much to do them?
Here are three common barriers we see among clients (and coaches!), plus potential solutions to overcome them.
By the way, ambivalence is normal.
That push-and-pull feeling you have when you think about making a change?
It has a name, and it’s called ambivalence.
Ambivalence describes the mix of feelings you have when you contemplate, say, waking up earlier so your mornings are less stressful, or cutting down on TV time.
