Dr. Andrew, here! Hopefully you’ve heard this phrase before. It’s one of my favorite quotes.

Your environment, including the people who you surround yourself with, is the clearest indicator of who you are and who you are becoming. I was thinking about this quote one Sunday as I was prepping my lunches for the upcoming week. It makes my mornings really easy for me each day of the work week. I just reach in the fridge, grab my stuff, throw it in my lunch bag and hit the road without having to do a lot of preparation on a daily basis.. because my environment is stronger than my willpower.

Is what you’re doing in your daily life serving you towards accomplishing the goals you have set for yourself? Are you setting yourself up for success? That’s one of the things we talk about with clients all the time in our office at Physio Room; setting themselves up for success!

So let’s take food prep for example. If you’re prepping your food in advance, you’re taking the guesswork out of what your meals are going to be throughout the week and you are much more likely to stick to whatever your dietary plan is for that week. That’s because the decisions are already made for you. Like, “oh, yes, I’m eating this for lunch every single day because I prepped it.”

Now, I have a little bit of variety built into mine. I sort of altered some of the ingredients and the spices in some of my meals so that they don’t taste exactly the same and to prevent me from getting bored. But a lot of the decision making is gone for me. So now the likelihood that I’m going to stop at a fast food place or on the way home because I’m hungry is virtually eliminated.

It’s virtually zero. Because unless I go through the food significantly faster than I planned on, I already know what I’m going to eat for the week. So I’m not going to get what we call “decision fatigue”. And I’m sure you’ve all been there. Say you’re at a party or something and you go into that party hungry and there’s a bunch of really good food, healthy foods, vegetables, fruits, proteins, and things to choose from.

But then there’s that dessert table sitting there too, and you’re hanging out at the party. You nibble on some fruit and nibble on some vegetables, and you’re making really good decisions early on. But how hard is it to keep that up? The decision fatigue starts to set in and the more decisions you have to make, the harder it is to continue to make the really, really good, healthy decisions over and over and over again.

If you can set your environment up so that those decisions aren’t really there, you’re going to be so much better off.

Here’s another example with people who exercise on a regular basis. Part of their lifestyle is that the people who are the most consistent with their exercise routines are the ones who work out in the morning. Now, you might say, “Andrew, my lifestyle and my responsibilities don’t accommodate me working out in the morning. I would have to wake up at 04:00 a.m. in order to do that.”

And that might be very well true.

I’m just saying what the statistics show and it’s that the people who are the most consistent with their workouts and not missing them are the ones who work out in the morning. Well, one of the reasons is.. it doesn’t allow 💩 to hit the fan throughout the day that derails your plans to go work out. Say, for example, I’m planning to work out after work. I get up, get dressed, go to work, have a normal day, and then I drive home. I’m planning to get home, change clothes, and then go do my workout.

But right when I get home, the phone rings and it’s something that I have to take care of right at that moment. It’s a semi emergency. Maybe it’s not a real significant emergency (like someone’s health or anything like that) but something very pressing distracts you from what your plan originally was. So say that takes you an hour to take care of that issue from that phone call. What’s the likelihood that you’re still going to change into your workout clothes and get your workout in that you had planned on?

Maybe, maybe not! But now, your environment is making it challenging for you to prioritize your workout and you will need to rely much more on your willpower.

Remember, your environment is stronger than your willpower every single time.

Your willpower is like a muscle and eventually it’s going to fatigue and you want to be able to fall back on your environment when you need to.

If you’re looking for some guidance, our team at Physio Room can definitely help you. We are more than healthcare providers. We’re your support system! We’re here to make your life better and set you up for success. Contact us anytime.