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1. Get Ready To Change
1a. What is Readiness
to Change?
Readiness to change is how ready you are to take
action to reach your goals. You are doing something to reach
your goals by being on this site.
Being ready to change not-so-healthy
habits to healthier ones includes
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Relaxing the "just do it" mentality.
When you try to get back on track toward your goals, you may
encourage yourself to "just do it." Although this sort
of encouragement works some of the time, it can also create guilt
if you don’t fulfill your goal. According to research by Dr.
James Prochaska, only 20% of people are ready to take actions to
make their goals a reality. That means that 80% of people start
new health habits and fail to reach their goals because they jump
to action too soon.
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Thinking about your past failures and
successes. Readiness to change includes how you feel about
your past attempts at eating healthy foods and exercising. If you
didn’t meet your goals, there were reasons. Thinking about your
past failures and successes at establishing new, healthy habits
will help you meet your goals in the future. Being ready to change
involves your current "stage" of change, that is, how
ready you are to take action, your confidence in your ability to
meet your goals and your attitudes about changing.
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To learn more about Getting Ready to Change,
read about Confidence and Attitude
and visit our Tools section.
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1b. Find your Stage of
Change
To increase your success at developing healthy
habits, you will need to
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Know where you are in the process. You
must be interested in creating more healthy habits or
you wouldn’t be at this site. But, be honest with
yourself. Are you just starting to think about
starting a healthy habit or have you taken the next
step, such as started to learn more about how to eat
healthy foods and exercise? There are positive things
you can do at each "stage" of change. Our
Quick Readiness to Change Assessment will give you an
idea of where you might be with respect to your stage
of change.
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Commit to working with yourself
from where you are. When you know your current
stage of readiness to adopt a healthy habit, make a
solid commitment to yourself to accept where you are
and go from there. If you are sitting on the couch and
wishing for motivation to exercise, you are in the
precontemplation stage. There are exercises you can do
to help you think about your ambivalence. There’s a
reason that you aren’t getting off the couch and
exercising. Directing your attention to thinking about
these reasons will go farther in the long run than
repeating to yourself that you should "just do
it."
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Caution Areas!
The following are common mistakes that can cause
people to get off track by not being ready to change their
habits. Be mindful of these and address each directly if needed
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Being unconcerned with your stage of change
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Telling yourself to "just do it"
to early
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Doing the same thing over without thinking
about why it failed before
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Believing that you can’t change
To learn more about Getting Ready to Change,
read about Confidence and Attitude
and visit our Tools section.
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