Keeping Momentum: Newton’s Law for Behaviour Change

It’s the time of year when New Years Resolutions are broken – a few weeks after they were set! Another year going by where, you didn’t evolve, you didn’t follow through. As a rule, behaviour change success rates are terrible.

Not very positive start to the article eh?

It doesn’t have to be like that. You can make a behaviour change in your life – just let Sir Isaac Newton show you how…

Newton is largely celebrated for his laws of motion. I was introduced to these during my biomechanics lectures in university. Thankfully for you, I hope to share one of them with you and apply it to your situation in a far less educational boring way than I was.

The law of motion I want to discuss today is the first law of motion. It states…

 An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.

(i.e. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.)

If you have broken your resolution to exercise more, I’d guess in part it’s because of your habits. Your momentum.

How to Create Successful Behaviour Change

One of the things I have noticed in 10 years as a personal trainer is that most people will go through a cycle with behaviour change, in particular around exercise and healthy living. It looks something like this…

TRIGGER 

This is what causes the desire to change the behaviour. It may be something like…”I’m too fat”/”I hate looking/feeling like this”/”I don’t have any confidence”/”I’m so unfit”. The reasons are many, but essentially they are motivating enough for the person to initially want to change.

A trigger is very powerful – soon after the trigger, people are usually highly motivated to change. They are committed and willing to make sacrifices. Importantly though, they haven’t experienced yet how these changes will feel and impact on their lives.

START

The first action towards the behaviour change. This could look like…Hire a personal trainer/buy a gym membership/buy new training kit/buy a fitness DVD/buy healthy food/join a fitness class. It’s a start towards this healthy lifestyle and may involve the very first baby steps towards their new life – eaten their first healthy meal, put their gym kit on but haven’t exercised yet, for example.

At this point, most people are still full of enthusiasm from the initial trigger but still haven’t experienced their new lifestyle in action. It hasn’t yet become their reality.

REALITY

This is when the new lifestyle kicks in. It’s also the most important point in the cycle. What does this new lifestyle feel like? Are you still motivated to train and eat well? What about when work/life gets in the way?

The reality is this – sometimes, it’s not easy. You have work deadlines, have family commitments, your energy levels may be temporarily low. How you act at this point in the cycle will determine how successful your change will be.

Will you make changes in your life to allow your healthier approach to continue, or will you…

RETURN 

Back to your previous ways.

You tried. You failed. It was too hard, or you didn’t have the energy, or you didn’t like what you were doing, or you were too busy – the list of reasons why it failed may be long. Mostly, it boils down to one thing – you didn’t keep the momentum! 

I mentioned how powerful the trigger and the start are. That is where momentum is at it’s highest. If we refer back to Newton’s first law, ‘a body in motion stays in motion’ then the likelihood is that you wouldn’t have stopped exercising. If you just kept the momentum for a few months, research suggests that you would have kept up the exercise habit for a long time – maybe even for life!

You may have experienced this pattern before, in fact I’d be willing to bet my mortgage you have. Most people have gone through the same pattern when it comes to behaviour change.

In many cases the reasons behaviour change fails can be avoided with a little planning and preparation ahead of the new lifestyle.

Here’s how you can avoid failure with behaviour change, using our mate Isaac Newton’s law…

KEEP THE MOMENTUM FROM THE START!

Set your exercise schedule around your lifestyle and motivations. If you know that when you get home you will sit on the sofa, never to move, then don’t. Get to the gym, or on your bike as soon as you can. Keep the momentum.

If you take the “I’ll do it later” attitude to your training, it’ll never get done. Keep the momentum.

Examples of keeping the momentum in ‘real’ life…

• Exercise first thing in the morning, so you don’t miss a session due to being tired at the end of the day.
• Set yourself a challenge – one that you HAVE to train towards or you’d fail.
• Take your gym kit to work and exercise on your break – again before the tiredness sets in.
• Join a gym near home, removing the “it’s too far” excuse.
• Cycle to work – two birds with one stone, the commute and the exercise.
• Train with friends – letting someone down will often be enough to keep you committed.
• If you plan to train ‘later’, there is a good chance that when ‘later’ comes, you’ll be too tired/busy/can’t be bothered!
• Mix in active circles – if you have friends who exercise, you will too.
• Pick an activity you enjoy, otherwise you won’t do it.
• Hire a personal trainer – it makes you show up to training, KEEPING MOMENTUM!

Long term behaviour change is possible – millions of people lose weight, quit smoking, reduce their drinking, exercise more etc. You just need to make sure you keep the momentum and you do that by stacking the odds in your favour – read the tips above to show you how.

Oh, keeping track and record will help with motivation and commitment too. Try this – one of my personal training clients uses it and thinks it’s great!….