Hi everybody.
Dr. Cobb here again.
I hope you’re having a great week. I’ve just gotten back from some business coaching that I was attending in Toronto, Ontario, and I really want to share with you a cool concept that we went over at the course that we were attending; applied exercise.
In the course that I was at, we were talking about three categories of how people decide to take action. It’s all based off the work of Katherine Kolbe who has developed a test called the Kolbe index. We took it years ago, and we use it in our business, but what’s really neat about that particular test is it talks about what’s called our striving instinct.
So instinctually, how will we approach getting something done.
When you keep it really simple, they break things down into three categories. I want you to take a piece of paper and write these down, because we’re going to do a little exercise with them.
The exercise is this. First of all, write down the words, “will do.” Next, I want you to write down, “willing to do.” Then I want you to write down, “won’t do.”
Now, the reason that we’re going to go through this, is that in the exercise and diet world, millions upon millions of people are trying to make progress practicing things that instinctually they just “won’t do.” We have more than that, more than that base level, we have more people that are exercising and doing things that they’re “willing to do” but it doesn’t really bring them joy.
If you’ve been around the Z-Health system for any length of time, we really are adamant about play. We’re adamant about learning to move your body and enjoy the process.
I’m going to ask you to take a little trip down memory lane. Go back to when you were a kid and think about the things you most enjoyed. Was it playing baseball? Was it swimming in the pool? Was it hiking outdoors? Maybe you enjoyed camping, or hunting, or fishing, or maybe you played tennis or did gymnastics or martial arts.
What we’ve seen over the years is that people as they age begin to move away from those activities because they don’t realize that there are tremendous resources out there for adults to continue to participate in them. We kind of get into this, “Oh well, I guess I have to go to the gym. I’m ‘willing to’ do that. I don’t really enjoy it, but I guess I’ll go do it.”
Then we have a lot of other people who really aren’t wired. They don’t like to run. They don’t like to ride bikes or do triathlons, but they do them anyway because they don’t feel like they have any options.
I want you to think about this and take a few minutes to write down, like I said, the things that you “will do”- just that you’re passionate about in terms of how you use your body. Then you make another list of, well, I’m “willing to” do these things.
Then I also want you to make your “won’t do” list because if you begin to think about how to build more activity into your life, how to build better exercise into your life, better dietary habits; trust me, it’s all going to come out of that “will do” list.
I’m going to encourage you this week; take everything on the “willing to” and “won’t do” and throw it out as potential options, at least for now, and start really concentrating on finding the resources in your area that will allow you to begin checking things off on your “will do” list.
It will be one of the greatest things you’ve ever done for yourself because it will bring joy back to movement and joy back to exercise and help you begin to define the path for yourself that you need to find in terms of taking care of your body in a better way.
So, remember that; “will, willing to, won’t.” Drop the bottom two categories. You’re going to build a new life as a result.
I hope you have a great week.
