Here are some phrases that describe part of my identity:
‘I am a Health Coach’
‘I am a teacher’
‘I am a good cook’
‘I am healthy and fit’
‘I am someone who lives with type one diabetes with optimal blood glucose control the majority of the time’
‘I care about the nutritional value of the food I eat, fuel my body well and eat like I love myself’
‘I am a writer’
‘I am a business owner’
I wasn’t born this way and haven’t always thought like this about myself and my identity…I BECAME these things through my HABITS!
Self image evolves to fit around the evidence we gather about ourselves from the repeated actions we take. This is really positive and means that we have the ability to change our own self image and identity by changing our own script. I started this gradual process in 2020, after a traumatic accident left me with a broken back and in a desperate situation, both mentally and physically. As I expanded my knowledge about the key pillars of health and learned new information about nutrition, diabetes management, how to overcome insulin resistance and successfully change old habits and behaviours, I began to make subtle but very consistent changes. The effect of such small changes wasn’t dramatic at first but, in time and with consistency, the lifestyle habits I implemented were reinforced and led to significant improvements in my health and how I was living with diabetes.
When it came to my health, like most people, I felt the urge to just click my fingers and try to change everything all at the same time in the quest to become someone entirely new. However, I soon learned that this was just too overwhelming and would ultimately lead to me failing to achieve any health goals as it would be unsustainable in the long term. By adopting more patience and the steadier approach to change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit, I was instead setting myself up for success. This worked for me and it is how I encourage my clients to move in the right direction towards their own unique health goals, whatever they may be.
As James Clear says in ‘Atomic Habits,’ “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it actually is big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”
I love it when this clicks with clients and they begin to talk about the subtle habit changes they make and the positive knock on effects they begin to notice. Like one lady who made efforts to hydrate more during the day by making her water more interesting adding things like mint leaves and berries to her bottle of water that she took with her to work and habit stacking by drinking a mug of warm water as her tea or coffee brewed. She started to talk about the skin at the top of her arms feeling smoother and less dry and her energy levels increasing as she consistently upped her daily water intake. She also began to realise that she felt less inclined to snack in between meals which she had been doing when mistaking hunger cues for actual signs of dehydration. Her new simple habit of drinking more water was leading to a bigger, more significant change in how she was feeling mentally and physically. Her identity shifted from “I don’t drink much water” to “I choose to drink plenty of water everyday to hydrate my body and reap the many benefits of it.” Her actions built up the evidence to support this and it became easier and easier for her to continue implementing this new, better habit.
The most practical way to change WHO you are is to change WHAT you do. I experienced this first hand when I decided to shift my identity from the type of person who fails to manage diabetes well with blood glucose levels constantly out of range despite my best efforts, to someone who thrives with diabetes and has predictable blood glucose levels the majority of time. Again it came down to focusing on those small, consistent habits, those tiny steps in the right direction towards a better lifestyle that supported a gradual evolution to better health and wellbeing that I am able to maintain today as I continue to cast votes for this type of person that I wish to be.
In my next blog post I will outline some of the ways I did this to improve my diabetes control and overall health and how I continue to put in small daily efforts in order to reach my longterm goal of living a long, healthy, able-bodied life, free from diabetes complications. I look forward to sharing this with you soon. In the meantime perhaps consider the type of person you want to become and how you can start proving it to yourself with small wins because if nothing changes, nothing is going to change.
Thanks for reading.
Anna