You don’t need more discipline and willpower. You need a better environment.

You don’t need more discipline and willpower. You need a better environment.

Discipline. Motivation. Willpower.

Everyone knows these things are required for making a change.

Specifically, we’re going to discuss making a change in your health and fitness.

But as much as many of us try to be more self-disciplined, we often fail.

And most of us have good intentions.

But we don’t fail because of a lack of desire to change. We fail because we don’t set ourselves up in an environment conducive to success.

Sure, discipline and motivation are important, but they’ll get you only so far.

To be successful in making a change your health and fitness, you need to prime your environment for success.

So how do you actually set your surroundings up for success?

Ensure you’re spending time with people and at places conducive to success.

And make sure those places breed health.

Avoid or minimize time spent with negative influences.

Ever heard the late Jim Rohn’s quote “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with?”

It’s so true. If you hang out with people who don’t practice healthy habits, you’re going to have a much harder time practicing healthy habits yourself because eating healthy and exercising aren’t the norm.

On the contrary, if you hang around individuals who eat well and exercise regularly, you’re going to be more likely to practice healthy habits because exercising and eating healthy are the norm.

Make it easy and obvious for yourself to practice habits of health.

If you want to drink more water, put full water bottles in places you go often throughout the house. For example, you can put a full water bottle on a kitchen counter, in a bathroom, on a side table by a couch and on a side table by your bed. You’ll have water everywhere you go, and it will be easy to remember to drink often.

If you want to go to the gym early in the morning, but you haven’t done it in the past, set your alarm clock across the room so you’ll need to get up to turn it off.

That will get you out of bed.

Then, put your shoes, gym bag, water bottle and everything else you would need to take in an obvious place so all you need to do is grab those items in the morning on your way out to the car.

Make it easy for yourself to get up and go in the morning.

Want to avoid buying junk food? You can order your groceries online so you won’t be tempted when you walk by unhealthy foods at the grocery store.

Also, you can eat before you go to the grocery store so you’re not hungry when you’re shopping. Create a list of foods you need to get from the store ahead of time so you’re not “winging” it.

Now, what if you have other family members in your house who want to have junk food?

First, have a conversation with them around the reason to buy that type of food in the first place. If others in the household are on board with what you’re doing, they may not want the junk food in the house either.

You would be making it easy for them to help you out because you informed them of your desire to eat healthier.

Otherwise, if you do have these items in your house, you can make it difficult to get to them.

You can put things like fruit and vegetables in easy-to-access places like the counter instead of having a bowl of calorie-dense nuts or trail mix out. Put things like ice cream in the back of the freezer so you won’t see it every time you open the freezer door. Put things like cookies in a high-up place you can’t reach unless you get a stool or chair.

Because you’ve made it challenging to access these items, you’re going to be less likely to consume them.

Having self-control is important, but it’s not going to be the best strategy in the long run.

Willpower is a finite resource, and eventually, it will run out.

If you walk by a bag of tempting potato chips at a party enough times, you’re likely going to cave and grab a handful (or two or three) eventually.

Instead, you would be better served moving into a different room that doesn’t have potato chips.

The people who have seemingly the most self-discipline rarely need to use their self-discipline because they’ve set themselves up for success.

Think about your surroundings.

What are your triggers? What are your temptations?

Find ways to minimize or eliminate those triggers or temptations, and you’ll have a much easier time succeeding in whatever area of your health and fitness you choose!