It's All About (Decisional) Balance

We hear the term “balance” in relation to health -- a “balanced” diet or “balanced” living. The concept of balance applies to health behavior as well, and it underlies everything we think about health and all of our health behaviors. 

 It’s called decisional balance. Take any health behavior at all -- eating more vegetables, quitting smoking, getting more sleep, etc. In the back of our minds are ever-circling reasons to change and reasons to stay the same. We don’t necessarily articulate these reasons or frame them as a list of pros and cons, but they ultimately shape our feelings about whether to change a behavior and if so, how ready we are to change. 

 Let’s take a hypothetical example of a woman who wants to add some exercise to her day. Her inner dialogue may sound something like this: 

 “My doctor just told me my blood pressure is a little high. I’ve got to think of ways to lower it because I don’t want to take a prescription for it if I don’t have to. I haven’t been exercising very much, and I know it could help. Work is so stressful, though. Okay, it’s all right to take baby steps. Maybe I can go for a walk after dinner. It would probably help me feel better and improve my mood in addition to lowering my blood pressure. Sometimes I don’t get started on dinner until late, though, and with the winter months it’s colder outside now and gets darker earlier. There’s still got to be a way I can add more steps into my day, though.”

 This inner dialogue probably doesn’t come as succinctly and neatly packaged as I’ve written it; rather, it may be drawn out over time. External circumstances may tip the scale in one direction or the other on any given day. There is an ambivalence, a back-and-forth that precedes behavior change. If we were to enumerate the pros and cons in this example, they’d look something like this:

Reasons to start exercising

— Lower my blood pressure

—  Feel better

—  Improve my mood

—  Set a good example

Reasons to delay exercising

—  Hard to find time

—  Exhausted after work

Notice that the reasons for behavior change may be weighted. The fact that four items are in the “change” category and two in the “delay” category, doesn’t necessarily mean that the change side prevails. Time and exhaustion may outweigh the reasons to change because those problems feel more immediate and formidable. One of the beauties of health coaching is that it helps us to strengthen our reasons for changing a behavior, and it includes brainstorming, practical support, and accountability to overcome obstacles.  

As Dr. Henry Cloud, a prominent psychologist has remarked, “We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.” Health coaching can leverage our long-term desires for our health and wellness, and use that vision as a motivation for overcoming more immediate challenges.

Schedule your free phone consult here to learn how health coaching can help you to achieve your goals.