I train a husband and wife in the gym in their apartment building. The gym has a TV. Turn the TV on and the whole gym hears whatever is playing. There is no individual audio options. So whoever gets to the gym and/or turns the TV on first pretty much decides what everyone else is watching. I bring this up because I was there for 2 hours this morning (I train the couple back to back, not together) and I spent 1 hour with Morning Joe in the background and the other with Fox & Friends. If you're familiar with these shows you know they're supposed to be news shows. However, they are "news" shows. "News" is in quotes because if you watch for at least 5 minutes you'll see that each of these shows puts their own slant on the news. If they were actually reporting news, you know fair and unbiased, then there would be a good amount of overlap between the stories on the shows. There was none. Now it's possible this was a result of me only over hearing (again I was training clients, not actually watching TV) each show for an hour each, I can't say what was covered when I wasn't watching.
What does this have to do with health and fitness? Well if you only watch one of the above shows and not the other then your idea of what is newsworthy (and by extension how you react to that news) is going to be different than someone who only watches the other show. The same goes for your health and fitness. If you only have fresh fruits and vegetables in your home and no processed goods, guess what you're going to eat more fruits and vegetables. You don't have to be a rocket man to understand this.
My point is that the environment you put yourself in is going to have a huge impact on your actions. Your environment is the physical space you're in but also the people/things you surround yourself with. People set goals and decide to change all the time but they often fail to consider their environment. If you fail to consider environment, (eventually) you're going to fail. Read that last sentence again.
You might think you have infinite amounts of will power. You don't. Will power is a finite resource and should probably be thought of in terms of a threshold. What I mean is that for every time you use will power it will be just a little harder to use the next time. Also you only get one bucket of will power for everything you encounter. Meaning if you spend all day at work keeping yourself from telling your coworkers how stupid they are, it's going to be hard to not to eat those snacks sitting on the kitchen counter. You used up all your will power on stupid coworkers and now you've eaten a whole bag of chips.
So in order to reach any goal or make any change you have to, at the very least, consider your environment. In the above the example that could mean changing to a workplace with no stupid coworkers or not having snacks at home. And, to be clear, changing environment doesn't always mean taking things away. You may need to add something/someone in order to get the desired result.
Let me know if you have ever made any environment changes that have made achieving a goal easier. If you like this article then "like" and share with your friends.
