CHANGING YOUR LIFE BY CHANGING THE JOURNEY

Why don’t traditional health programs work? Why do quick-fix diets fail? Why can’t we simply decide to transform our lifestyles, snap our fingers, and make it happen? Because all these approaches are based on a huge but extremely common mistake. They involve thinking about health solely as a destination, about the place where we end up.

This kind of destination thinking causes even health professionals to get it wrong. Take, for example, what I’ve already described happening when you go to your doctor with a headache. You complain of a symptom and the doctor tries to treat it. Of course, it seems perfectly reasonable to focus on the symptom because that’s the cause of the immediate distress. If someone is experiencing pain or discomfort, then that’s what will naturally draw our attention. But this is the mistake. These symptoms are usually just the destination of a long journey that the patient has been on for one, five, ten, or even twenty years. While pain reduction is obviously important, the real problem is not the destination the patient has ended up at but the journey they’ve been on.

Take depression as another example. The symptom of low mood might be treated with an antidepressant. But low mood is just the current complaint. It’s the destination where you've found yourself. Your mood problems might have their roots somewhere else that’s not immediately obvious. It could be a lack of quality sleep. Poor food choices might be a significant contributory factor. It could even stem from a lack of real-life human connection or an absence of meaning and purpose.

It’s precisely the same style of destination thinking that undermines our attempts at getting healthy. When we decide to turn over a new, healthy leaf, we visualize the person we dream of becoming. We fix that image in our minds and try to become that person. We see that beautiful beach body holding a perfect yoga pose or that muscleman breezing through his ten-mile run and we think, That’s who I’m going to be. We fill ourselves with hope and motivation and aim ourselves towards that distant ideal—and then are surprised and disappointed when we lose hope and fall flat on our faces. Why do we fail? Because we’re focusing on the destination rather than the journey. But that’s not how we get anywhere.

A typical health journey is made up of thousands and thousands of little daily steps. It’s these daily steps that the Feel Better in 5 program targets. You’re probably thinking that my promise sounds too good to be true.

Surely you can’t transform your health in just fifteen minutes a day? The amazing news is you can.

If you’re doubtful, think of it this way. If I were to tell you I wanted you to start smoking nonstop for five minutes a day, then eat rich chocolate biscuits for five nonstop minutes, then drink as many liters of sugary pop as you can physically swallow for five solid minutes, and that I wanted you to do this five days a week, every week, you wouldn’t be at all surprised when this started changing your health. After a week or two of this madness, you’d start to feel worse. You'd have less energy. You’d start coughing. You’d start craving more and more sugary foods. The shape of your body would begin to change. After a month or two you might experience the first symptoms of more serious problems. And after a year? Two years? You may well be on the road to suffering a life-threatening disease.

Good health works in exactly the same way as bad health, yet we don’t think of it in the same way. It’s the journey you're taking—the small, regular, daily steps you’re choosing to make—that will end up having the most dramatic long-term effects. Feel Better in 5 is all about this journey. It’s about changing your steps and taking you to an amazing, happy and healthy long life. What I’ve discovered in my clinic, time and time again, is that when I pay attention to my patients’ journeys, it’s amazing how many of their problems just vanish.

WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO MAP OUT YOUR OWN HEALTH JOURNEY?

ASK YOURSELF WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON IN YOUR OWN LIFE OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS.

HOW HAVE YOU ENDED UP AT THE HEALTH DESTINATION WHERE YOU FIND YOURSELF TODAY?

WHICH PART OF YOUR JOURNEY ARE YOU HOPING TO CHANGE BY STARTING THE FEEL BETTER IN 5 PROGRAM?

WHAT DAILY STEPS HAVE YOU BEEN TAKING OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, AND HOW CAN YOU REPLACE THE UNHELPFUL ONES WITH NEW AND IMPROVED ONES?