Vibrant Health - Pain or Pleasure ?

Debbie Schroeder RN, BSN
9/14/2007
Professional Health Coach
www.HealthCoachTeam.com

Would you like to enjoy vibrant health?  Most people when asked
this question say yes.  If everyone wants vibrant health, why do
most people not have it?

I believe the answer lies in what motivates people into action.
People are motivated by two things either pain or pleasure.  Of the
two, pain is the bigger motivator.  If we believe doing something
will cause us pain, we will avoid taking action to avoid the pain.
We usually do this unconsciously, so we aren't even aware of it.  

Recently, while working with a client, the power of the pain
motivation became apparent.  She has reached a plateau with her
healthy living plan.  As we delved into what was going on for her,
it became apparent that she associated more pain with creating a
healthy lifestyle than maintaining her current lifestyle.  As I
probed deeper into her feelings about creating a healthy lifestyle,
we discovered that she associated exercise with having to lose
sleep, causing muscle pain, inconvenient, hard work, time
consuming, and not fun. 

Through a process of asking her questions about such as:
·How does not exercising and being physically fit affect your life?
·What are all the benefits you will gain by exercising?
·How will it enhance your life?
·How will exercising create greater joy or happiness?

We discovered as she answered these questions, what pleasurable
benefits exercising could have for her.  I could feel the shift in
her energy level as she began to focus on the pleasure of
exercising.  She was getting excited about all the possibilities
that exercising and becoming fit would have on her life.  She was
verbalizing how she will feel more energetic, be able to play with
her kids and not feel short of breath, fit into her favorite dress
she had not worn for a long time, how she will look when she is fit
and healthy.  She was now ready to commit to exercise and commit to
focusing on what she wanted. 

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