Values

Change your values to change your results
With Amber Kay

In today’s video, Amber shares an important mindset tool that is essential if you’re struggling and want to reduce your body weight and improve your health further. 

It’s all about the need to consciously link health to what you value most in your life so that you move effortlessly in the direction that you want to go.    

You can read the transcript for this video below:

Transcript: Post-Surgery Program - Week 8: Mindset (Values)

Do you find yourself putting others or your career or your commitments ahead of your health?

Is it sometimes a struggle to make time for physical activity, for cooking nutritious meals or for rest and recovery?

Hi, it’s Amber from Fresh Start here again, and today I’m going to explain how we prioritise our lives so that you better understand why you might not have been making time for the actions that will improve your health. I’m also going to show you how you can change this so that you move more easily towards your health and weight goals after WLS. I’m going to be talking about your values i.e. what you value most in life, and it’s important to understand your values because they act like your gps system and they help determine the decisions you make and the actions you take. 

So if you’ve been struggling to make time for your health - for cooking healthy meals, more movement or rest then it’s really important to look at your values so that you can set your gps for the direction of a healthier life. This will help make those actions that will give you better health, a much easier and more natural choice for you. 

Now I know how busy most people are and I don’t want to minimise any challenges you may currently be facing - depending on what’s going on in your life, it’s generally always going to be challenging to find ‘more time’. I do however want to say that if you’ve been saying to yourself “I don’t have time for healthy cooking or for more movement or rest” then I want you to change your language slightly – because how people spend their time, in our modern world, is largely a choice. Now i’m not talking about when an emergency is taking place, but during normal day-to-day living, we generally have a choice and “I don’t have time” often actually means “it’s not a priority”.  

If you think about it, that’s often more accurate language. For example, I could tell you that I don’t have time to clean my car, but if I’m honest with myself that’s not true – if you offered to pay me $10,000 to go and clean my car then I would get to it pretty quickly! But as that’s not likely to happen, I can admit that it’s not really a matter of lacking time, it’s that I don’t want to do it. I don’t value washing my car (that’s what the rain’s for!) and so I don’t prioritise it. 

So if you haven’t been making time for healthy food, moving your body more or getting enough rest, then it’s probably because you haven’t been valuing it enough and so you haven’t been prioritising it. You’ve been prioritising something else instead. 

What I mean by this is that in life we tend to spend our time and energy on the things that we value most. So if you’re not focusing on health enough now, it’s not that you have less time than anyone else in the day – we all have 24 hours - it’s how you’re choosing to spend that time.  

If your highest value is family then you’ll be putting your family first and family matters will be more of a priority than healthy cooking, movement or rest. If your highest value is your career then you’ll put work ahead of health. If your highest value is supporting your friends then you’ll probably put your friends ahead of health.  What we value really influences our choices and the actions we take. 

So the way to make healthy actions, such as good nutrition, more movement, or more sleep, happen is to  start linking health to what you value most. For example, if your highest value is family, how will focusing on your health more help your family? If you write down all the reasons why focusing on nutrition, movement and rest will help your family then you’ll soon have that internal desire and motivation to start doing those actions more. For example, one reason could be that focusing on health will give you the energy to be able to look after your family even more. Another reason is that you’ll live a longer life and be able to spend more time with them. You’ll also be a role model of health for your family so they are more likely to be healthy and live longer. You’ll be in a better mood and so your interactions with your family will be better. You get the idea. As soon as you start linking health to your highest values – you’ll realise that taking those healthy actions is a MUST not a should – and you’ll start to find new opportunities to make them happen. 

I want to give you an example of how effective this strategy is and how linking health to what you value most can make healthy actions happen no matter how busy you are. My example is Barack Obama. Did you know that when he was president he was interviewed by Men’s Health magazine and when they asked him how he keeps in such great shape,  he told them that he exercises for 45 minutes per day, six days a week. So here’s the guy with arguably the most stressful job on the planet and he exercised 45 mins per day, 6 times a week! How did he do it? It’s because he  linked health to his highest values. Now he didn’t say what his highest values were but it’s pretty clear that serving his country and also his family were high up there as his highest values. He knew that the only way that he could serve his country and be a good husband and father and handle all of that pressure and keep up his busy schedule and have the energy to give his all, was to look after his health. If he didn’t look after his health then he probably would have cracked up under all of that pressure. He had clearly linked health to what he valued most or there’s no way that he would have found time to do it with his hectic schedule.

So I want to do a quick exercise with you that will help you to get inspired to focus more on your health – so that you choose to prioritise it more – so that no matter how busy you are, you’re more likely to find time to fit healthy actions in. 

Firstly I want you to write down some of the things that you value most in your life. To work this out, have a think about how you spend your time and what comes first for you.  Is it your family, is it your friends, is it your career, is it a hobby like gardening or playing music, is it helping a particular cause or charity, is it your religion or connecting with nature, is it travel and experiencing new places? Write down some of the things that you value most in your life. 

Once you’ve identified what you value most (and it doesn’t have to be 1 thing, it could be 2 or 3 things), then I’d like you to write out as many reasons as possible why healthy actions (good nutrition, movement and rest) will help you more in these areas. The more reasons that you can come up with, the more drive you will feel to take these healthy actions. Write down at least 10 reasons, but if you can come up with 20 reasons then that will be even better. 

The final step is to put this list of reasons somewhere where you’ll see it regularly - to remind you of why focusing on your health is important and needs to be a MUST not a should.

I want to finish by telling you about one of our most successful clients who completely transformed her life after WLS. When we interviewed her and we asked her what motivated her to make all of the changes to her lifestyle, she said that it was simple…  It was her young daughter. She knew that she needed to get her health right to be a role model for her, to have the energy to be with her and to live a long life so that she could enjoy time with her. She linked health to her daughter and this made focusing on her health a much more natural choice for her. To help this along she put a picture of her daughter up on everything connected with health. For example, she put a photo of her on the fridge door to inspire her to make the right choices and she put a photo of her on her treadmill so that she would move her body even when she didn’t particularly feel like it. She linked health to what she valued most in life, her daughter,  and it really helped to make those health actions happen. 

So, today’s aim is firstly to get some awareness of your current values, then to start linking health to those values and then to remind yourself of these reasons.  Enjoy the differences you notice and experience as a result of being someone who truly values their health and wellbeing! Thanks for joining me today and I look forward to speaking with you again soon with some more mindset and lifestyle tips.