If you’re interested in improving your health, you should be considering these five factors that have the biggest impact: Breathing, Eating, Sleeping, Thinking, and Movement (B.E.S.T. Me.) If you have not read the blog I wrote on Movement, stop here and go check it out first! In this article, I delved into the phenomenon of an energy trap. We dove deep into what a physical energy trap is and what you can do to overcome it. The other piece of this phenomenon is considered a psychological energy trap. The psychological energy trap occurs in one of two ways. Either you are trapped due to the blockades of self-belief or by the scars cut from past failures.
You may incur psychological energy traps if you are not mentally capable of thinking you can be someone that you are not. This sounds odd huh? Don’t be fooled, to change your habits – ultimately means you really have to change yourself. Some are not capable of believing in themselves. I have been there as well. I contemplated changing my habits. I even took some actions to start doing things differently. However, one week later I was back in the peanut butter jar stuffing my face to get that all too familiar comfort of food. I was stuck in a psychological energy trap like a fish in a cast-net, destined for demise. I wrestled internally with myself. I didn’t believe I could be anyone but the lazy overweight person I was. I wasn’t equipped with the hardened mindset of a champion. I did not know perseverance. The pattern of someone who has this psychological trap variety will often experience some results. They will be able to instill some sort of change, but the timeline is brief. Approximately 2-3 weeks and these people are down and out. You are not alone. In a study on people who made New Years Resolutions of weight loss, approximately 80% of people who attempted in 2019 quit by January 19th, 2020. Just under three weeks later almost everybody hit this familiar wall. The common thread is this: most people focus on creating the perfect plan while little (to none) of their time spent is on developing a resilient growth-based mindset. Once the plan gets uncomfortable these people resort back to their comfort zones as I did with my peanut butter jar. As a child I was overweight, I got called out on that. People noticed I was bigger. These people had seared me with the idea that that is who I was. Not just people at school but also people at home. We were a big family. I was a big person in that family. My mindset was fixed on this crippling theory. Now working as a personal trainer for the last six years, it pains me when I see others stuck in this same spot. They will say “it’s my genetics” or “I just have big bones”. These assumptions are false, created from a mind that doesn’t have the capability to see a different future for yourself. This trap is formed from your past-self. How do you get out of a hole others have dug for you? You bury that person. You let them die. Then you can rebirth yourself to who you want to be as a phoenix would. Drop the baggage you once had into that casket. Relieve yourself of the former burdens and walk away from the opinions and doubts you once had. If you can, you can release yourself from this trap (which you may come back in and out of, as I did for years… having a sort of wavering self-belief pattern… knowing I was not my family but knowing I still had qualities attached to me from them.. overtime continuing to shed layers of myself like a snake). If you do not, you are soon to be punished by another classification of a psychological energy trap (where I soon found myself).
If you lack the ability to relieve yourself of former burdens then the other form of a psychological energy trap, which is more emotionally driven, begins to consume you. Due to previous failures, our minds become severely calloused by this (often repetitive) negative experience. This creates a negative relationship with health, wellness, habit change, and yourself (self-doubt, self-hatred, etc.). Soon these people stop believing in the basic principles of energy balance (eating less and moving more). They abstain from engaging in any form of fitness because they don’t want to fail and get burned like before (which may be necessary for some time to rebuild their psychological tolerance to change in the future). Both of these psychological energy traps are common, but they are both correctable through positive reinforcement. Our minds highlight and remember negative experiences greater than positive experiences, this is referred to as Negativity Bias. This bias severely impacts the formation of impressions and general evaluations; attention, learning, memory, decision-making, and risk considerations. Our brain is attempting to alter our behavior to lower our future suffering. To combat this you need to develop a healthy outlook. You must create a space in your brain that allows for risk, and engages in positive reinforcement of your newly adopted habits. To become fitter/healthier than who you are currently will take some level of risk, sacrifice, and discomfort. These must be expected outcomes of change. Therefore, social support (along with small successful changes) is the name of the game here. When you are feeling down on yourself you have someone to talk with who can bring your attention towards the positives, rather than where you mind will focus-the negatives. Maybe you slid back on your diet, but after you talk to someone they remind you that this is the first time you slid back for 2 whole weeks! 14 days of good and 1 day of bad is actually a decent ratio. However, your brain will set its scope to see only the one day of bad. Without social support you could potentially stop and call it quits here. In my experience, these people do take longer to see the optimal results (even me; I got into “shape” at 14, but never really as great as I could be until I was able to conquer my internal battles). These people suffering from this trap are fighting demons left and right. They often do not have the mental capacity to focus on the basic nutritional and exercise strategies because a lot of their fatigue is strained by this energy trap psychologically. This problem is known as “ego fatigue” or “ego depletion”. Ego Fatigue demonstrates that impulse control (willpower) is a finite resource that can be depleted—suppressing impulses and feelings (saying “no”) for some length of time can eventually make those impulses and feelings harder to resist (eventually “giving in” or saying “yes”). This leads folks to have a fine beginning to the day, but as the day continues they lose “willpower” to continue to make good choices. They are energized by day and sabotaged by night. You can think about it sort of like peer pressure. Except in this example, the peer is you. You want something, but you continue to say “no” out loud. Inside you know you want it. Your internal dialogue is tempting you constantly. Just like if a friend of yours continued to probe you, eventually you might give in just to satisfy the social group in order to be liked or respected by them. Soon your self-talk becomes overly heightened because you want satisfaction from the guilty pleasures. You might just give in to this, just as you might when peer pressured. If you are someone who battles with cravings consistently, especially at night (like I once was) this may describe you. The worse time to make a decision for most people is at night as this is when you face the greatest chance of suffering from ego depletion. Do not attempt to walk the grocery store after work to make your selections for dinner. The likelihood of you choosing the appropriate choice for your best health outcome is low. While the likelihood of you giving into some temptations is high, this will repeat the cycle of negative feelings (guilt, stress, self-doubt). You must accurately assess your mental thoughts. These thoughts have a massive impact on your health. They can sabotage you or they can help fortify your decisions to be a new you. You decide.
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