It feels a bit like we're all emerging from a coocoon.
Still the same people, but at the same time also different. Changed. Transformed. 
Although many of us have spent the lockdown period wishing things would "go back to normal", it's quite likely there are things that will never go back to the way they were. 

Often, major events in life change the way we live forever. The birth of a child, for example. A change in work circumstances. Losing someone close to you. What's different about this, is that it's happening all at once, to everyone. It's hard to know where to turn for support, when everyone's struggling in one way or another. 

As I've said before, I'm all about lifestyle change, but this is pretty extreme! The way we work, the way we interact - the way we live has changed forever. 

When I'm talking to people about changing their own lifestyle in some way, I focus on creating a "new normal". After all, if you're changing eating habits that weren't working well for your body, it's not helpful to keep thinking of the old way as "normal". If the old way made you unhealthy, it's not something you want to go back to. You need to create a new normal, in which it becomes your usual habit to eat in the way that nourishes you and to avoid those foods which make you sick. 

One way or another, humans love their routines. Deep down, most of us would like nothing so much as for tomorrow to be much the same as today, which is much the same as yesterday. Stability and routine make us feel safe. Losing those routines, even small, seemingly unimportant ones, makes us feels lost, and uneasy. 

In my house, I'm generally the first to get up. And I make the coffee, and start getting things ready for the day. I make the coffee in much the same way every day, like a little ritual. Relaxing and drinking that first cup in the morning is like a meditation, a pause and relax before the business of the day begins, and no matter how early I need to be somewhere, I factor that time into my morning when deciding what time I need to get up. 

If you think about it now, I'll bet you have some kind of ritual or habit like this in your day. Whether it's a morning routine, or a bedtime routine. Maybe you get your coffee at the same cafe every day on your break. (Or, some other drink, I guess... can you tell I enjoy my coffee?). Maybe you have other, longer-term routines, like a favourite holiday spot you go to yearly, or a favourite book or movie you turn to again and again. 

Our cultures and surrounding societies build our lives around routines and rituals. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Yearly celebrations, whether it's Christmas, or Passover, or Ramadan. Rites of passage - weddings, First Communions, Bar Mitzvahs. We mark the passage of our lives with the repetition of these ceremonies, seeing them happen for others in our community even as they happened for us. (and we mark nearly all of them with food in some way, but that's a whole other topic!)

Now, think about how this pandemic time has changed your routines. Daily routines, large and small, have been altered - working from home, instead of going into an office; changes to how we interact with others in the shops we usually frequent, limits on numbers, standing differently in the queue, making sure we keep apart; changes to how we drop off and pick up at schools. Slowly now, some of those things are going back to how they were. But some things, large and small, are never going to be the same. 

Embracing change is hard, for all of us. It's OK to mourn the loss of things that were - you can miss the old way and embrace the new, they're not mutually exclusive! Since things are changing anyway, can you fit something positive into your new normal?

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Far out! What a year this has been already. 
I mean, I'm all about lifestyle change, but the whole population having to make huge changes to their lifestyle all at once is a bit overwhelming. 
For some folks, these last few months have been just about surviving. Putting one foot in front of the other, putting the next meal on the table, just basically keeping themselves safe. 
For others, the challenges have been different - changing work practices, new ways of doing business, longer hours and new sources of stress. 

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If you're not familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it is a theory of human psychology which was developed by Abraham Maslow and first published in 1943. Maslow's theory was that a person needed to have the lower levels sorted out before they could move on to the things in the higher levels. 
Take a look at the lower levels - the physiological and safety needs. How many of these were threatened for you this year? 
Many people have been posting on social media about stuff that belongs in the very tip of the pyramid. Using the shutdown to work on "being the best you can be", learning a new skill, working on some aspect of personal growth. But there's no way most people can do that - they're too busy dealing with lost empoyment, insecure housing and altered family dynamics. 
A few people have come to me disappointed in themselves that they haven't been achieving the goals they set at the start of the year. Typically, a quick look at the effects on their lives of the pandemic and all that's gone with it makes it pretty clear why. 
My husband has a saying from his Army days that "no good plan survives contact with the enemy". And seriously, no one's 2020 plans have survived contact with Covid19. 
But as things ease up a bit, kids head back to school and we start to return to something approaching normal, my most frequently asked question is "How do I get back on track now?"

Even without a pandemic to deal with, everyone falls off track from time to time. It might be an injury that stops you following your exercise plan for a while. Or an illness that disrupts your eating or sleeping patterns. Or just life in general getting busy and disrupting your focus on your goals. 
Often, this is the point where people give up. Well, that's it, they say, I've blown it. I might as well just forget about it now. 

So it might sound overly simplistic, but the first step to getting back on track, is to plan to do it and to believe that you can.
Take a look at your goals, and readjust. Is there something there that is no longer possible or realistic, like a trip that's no longer possible or a purchase that's no longer affordable? Let those things go. Be kind to yourself - it's OK to mourn those things that now will not be, it's OK to be angry about it, or frustrated, or sad or however you feel. You're going to feel that way anyway, feeling bad about your feelings only makes things worse. Then get determined. "OK, I can't do that. I'm going to do what I can"

Focus on the absolute basics - food, shelter, health, family. The bottom tiers of the pyramid. 

Maybe you're working a ton of overtime right now, and also trying to teach kids at home and manage everything on a tighter budget. So that January goal of getting into the gym is not reasonable - even when the gym reopens, you may not have the time or the money. That's OK. Don't beat yourself up. But also, don't give up. Instead of thinking "well, that's all out the window", see if there's something you can do. We've all got to eat. Maybe your step one towards your health goals is making sure you remember to eat something in all the chaos! If you're grabbing quick snacks on the go, maybe you need to make sure you have some fruit on hand, so you can grab an apple instead of a biscuit? (A  bag of whichever apples are on special typically costs about the same as a packet of sweet biscuits)

It's not going to be perfect. Nothing is! Make what little changes you can right now, and as things improve you can start to add to them. 
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The most  important thing is not to give up, and not to beat yourself up. 
If you're working your butt off each day just to sort those bottom two levels of the pyramid, then you my friend absolutely rock. Don't ever forget that. 

Do you talk to yourself? First sign of madness, right? ;-)
But really, the thing that is likely to lead to madness is not the fact that we talk to ourselves, but how we talk to ourselves. 

Now, anyone who knows  me will know I'm not about to tell anyone that everything will be OK if they just think positively enough. 
But the opposite may well be true: if you think really negatively about yourself, things are almost guaranteed not to be OK. 

When people come to me wanting to change their lifestyle, many will be quick to tell me that they have failed in various ways, and how upset and frustrated they are with themselves about this. 
"I'm lazy". 
"I have no self-control"
"I probably haven't tried hard enough"
I hear these things all the time.
At this point, you may be thinking "Yes, but it really is my fault! I've eaten poorly and I don't do enough exercise and I never stick to diets, I'm just telling the truth". 
Like everything, it's a balance. Taking responsibility is important. Introspection and self-reflection can be powerful tools to improving habits and behaviours. If you can't look at what you've done and identify what you've gotten wrong, it's pretty hard to make a positive change. 
However, the point of the exercise is not to identify your shortcomings and then beat yourself up about them. 
Let's imagine for a minute that you want to start exercising more. You think about the great healthy habits you want to have, and set your alarm for 5am to get up and go walking or running. 5am rolls around, the alarm goes off and you wake up. It's still dark, it's a bit cold and you're tired. You decide to go tomorrow, and catch a bit more sleep. Now, let's say you've done this a few times. What are you saying to yourself about this? On the one hand, you could be saying "I'm lazy and no good, I keep not going out and exercising. If I was a better person I'd be getting up early and exercising". On the other hand, you could think "This plan to exercise early in the morning has not worked out. I wonder if there's another way to approach this that might work better?" You're still acknowledging the shortcoming: you made a plan to get up early and exercise, and you haven't followed through. But instead of beating yourself up, try owning the mistake and then thinking about how to change it.

Sometimes, if you really think about a problem, you can see that some elements of it are not even in your control. For example, if you start work early in the morning, so that exercising before work would mean getting up super early, that may just not be realistic for you. Your work hours are out of your control, so you can't change that. So, you think about what else you do with your day that is in your control. Maybe, you could get to bed earlier, so getting up early is not so hard. Or, maybe you need to schedule exercise for after work instead?
Sometimes, it's our own expectations which are the problem. If you're expecting yourself to start running every day when you have done little exercise in years, you're likely to be disappointed with the results. The key piece of thinking to do in this case is to really consider your plan, work out which bits are genuinely not realistic and which bits are do-able with a little effort. Be honest! Then maybe you're left with the conclusion that going out walking every day is realistic and achievable, whereas running is something you'll have to work up to. 

This sort of problem solving starts with changing the guilt-trip into a positive thought. Rather than "I failed, I'm hopeless, I'll never  be able to do it", you think "I've failed, I need to change my approach, this is a problem I can solve". 
If you're telling yourself that you can't improve, you are more likely to give up easily, and continue to feel bad about it - after all, it just reinforces your idea that you're not good enough. 

You'll notice that I've used the word "fail" a few times here. Often, in self-help literature and inspirational positive memes we are encouraged to believe that this is a dirty word. Sentiments like "If you try hard enough you cannot fail" or "Failure is not an option" are often seen in gyms and Facebook feeds.
I'm going to say something a little different about that. This sort of relentless positivity is just as unproductive as being totally negative towards yourself, because it's completely unrealistic. Of course it's possible that you'll fail despite your best efforts! It's possible that all sorts of things might get in your way, because that's life. 

Failure is normal. 
Failure is a part of life. 
Failure is not the end.

It's actually OK to fail at something, and to honestly acknowledge that you have. The important thing is what happens next: do you analyse the failure for reasons to feel bad, or for lessons learned? 

So, back to talking to ourselves, this time without going mad. 
Take out a notebook and a pen. Or, just have a talk with yourself in a mirror, or contemplate things quietly over a cup of coffee. Ask yourself, what could I realistically have done differently? What went wrong? Was it something in my control? Was my plan realistic? Did something else interfere (like an illness)?

Then, talk kindly to yourself. Imagine you're talking to your very best friend who had encountered the same setback. Would you tell them they were just useless and no good? Or would you talk to them about how to get back up and try again, using the lessons learned. You'd probably offer them some support or help to get past their obstacles. So try offering that to yourself. "OK, self, we're going to get past this. That last attempt did not go well. We probably didn't plan it out terribly well, and we've learned a few things. So, here's the new plan. Ready?"
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I was reminded this week very strongly about why I do this work. 
I was talking to a young person who was struggling with a few things in life. One of her frustrations was that she had been repeatedly told she was not doing enough to help herself. But having tried the things others told her worked for them, and found they did not work for her, she felt at a loss. Well meaning friends and family responding "of course that works, it worked for me, maybe you should just try harder" were only adding to the sense of failure. 

There is no one right way to look after your health. If there was, everyone would be doing it. Instead, there is an almost infinite array of diets, exercises, different types of meditation, supplements and other products all marketed at us as being the Great Way Forward in our journey. Each person responds a little differently to each one. The thing, or combination of things, that works best for each person will be just a little different to the next person.

For myself, it was always my weight. I struggled for years with trying to diet. I tried fad diets. I tried "miracle" supplements. I tried teas, I tried herbs. I spent hours in the gym, doing exercises I hated, and feeling like a failure as my results were very limited. Occasionally, I'd try something that worked for a short period, only to slip back again. 

Eventually I found a form of exercise I loved - karate. I built up over a few years to a point where I was training 6 days a week, as well as running regularly. And while I was getting fitter and stronger, my weight still would not budge. Still I kept on trying. 

Finally, after many years, I found something that worked for me. Hallelujah! This must be the one perfect way to eat, right? With the zeal of the converted, I told everyone who stood still long enough about how wonderful my new diet was. How I felt happy, and fulfilled, never hungry, full of energy, had stopped taking medication and worn clothing I had previously only dreamed about. 

Then a couple of things happened. Firstly, I recommended my newly discovered perfect diet to everyone and a few people tried it... and some of them found it didn't work. And second, I started doing more study in the area of nutrition and lifestyle management, and came across studies and case reports of completely different things working for people - things that I had tried which never worked for me.

And as this went on, a pattern emerged. Everyone who experienced great success with changing their lifestyle, either for their weight or energy levels or overall health, had "tried everything" and then found a thing that worked amazingly well for them. Once someone found their thing, the results that they had been looking for happened quickly and easily and they wondered why they had never done it this way before.

Like my young friend being told to "just meditate, it worked for me", people who are struggling to find a healthy lifestyle for themselves don't need to be told to eat this one way and do this particular exercise... they need to be helped to find what will work for them.

The people who find this easy, aren't looking for help. The people who are looking for help have generally tried a lot of different things. What is needed is not "just eat less, move more". It's not "just go keto, that fixes everything" (or paleo, or vegan, or low GI, or whatever). If you're anxious and you've tried meditation, and that doesn't work, the answer isn't to meditate harder! Try Tai Chi, or yoga, or hypnosis, or swimming, or running.... you get the picture. 

There is no one right way that suits everyone. But there is a way that will work for you. Let's find it.