Is It Really Worth The Effort?

The attitude you currently hold about your physical body or the value of strength training may have become reinforced by your habits and resistance to the new information that could benefit your health. Mary believes if you’re strong and healthy, you’ll live longer and be happier. A month or two after the test period, Mary told Steven with a big smile that she and her husband Peter had found a wonderful, large china hutch in a small shop. Once they purchased it, the staff told them that they didn’t have anyone who could help them load it into the truck. Mary said she was prepared to jump into action and load the furniture with her husband. She said she tested herself and found she had no problem lifting one end of the piece. The staff eventually did help them load it, but once home, Mary and Peter took over on their own, lifting and unloading the hutch by themselves without any additional manpower. We learn that we are stronger than we ever imagined when we train properly. Attitude is often an emotional response and can be a powerful force you may need to consciously reject. But as we’ve discussed, we can’t leave this up to willpower. To be successful in battling sarcopenia, you must make strength and cardio training of adequate intensity a habit versus a conscious choice, and we’ll show you how to establish this habit so it lasts. Tied into all of this are our beliefs, which are essentially mental habits or how we think about things like aging.

What Happens Tomorrow?

If you have long believed that you are doomed to the Frail Trail, then you will fail. Knowing more about how attitude, habits, and beliefs affect our brains is critical to your ability to remain mentally motivated on your physical transformation. To get off the default life path that currently has you on the road to sarcopenia and all of its consequences will require some serious attitude shifts. Even if you are ambivalent, beware. You will still need to shift your attitude. Research on social influence indicates that when we are unsure, we are likely to adjust our judgments in favor of the group standard. There is a rational desire and an emotional urge to take into account the presumed knowledge of others. This is perilous when a group is largely misinformed or uninformed on a matter, because it can cause people to adopt an observable trend as conclusive and make decisions accordingly with very little real information leading the way. This is the case with knowledge about sarcopenia and its cure today. And the downward slope we are on is psychologically slippery precisely because it is so easy to accept. How we feel about someone, something, or some topic can easily influence us more strongly and move us in a deeper way than we objectively know. Such attitudes likely originated with a negative personal health episode and were perhaps reinforced over time by further episodes.

Nothing Is Real

That was certainly Steven’s experience. His lower back went out one day when he turned as he lifted his desk. It left him bent over and in great pain. This was followed by a few more episodes where his back went out again doing much less challenging activities. Soon, he developed an attitude about being asked to lift or move things. He began to reflexively decline requests to help others, out of fear of aggravating his back. The more automatic the decision became, the more powerful the link was between his attitude and the decision. The more often he did this, the more resistant he became to new information. This downward spiral makes attitudes, particularly strong negative attitudes, difficult to change by new information alone. The special force of attitude is emotion. How we feel about someone, something, or some topic can easily influence us more strongly and move us in a deeper way than we objectively know. Interestingly, given our subject matter, studies demonstrate that the intensity of implicit attitudes may be measured by gauging muscle tension while a person is thinking about an attitude object.

White Shadows

Another form of measurement for whether something is an unconscious attitude as opposed to a conscious thought is the speed at which people react to an attitude object. Both of these are keys to understanding the power of attitude. In other words, this is an example of emotions occurring ahead of conscious awareness and therefore having the advantage of setting the mental and physiological context of thought. Little wonder it is so difficult for words of reason to move us when something has triggered a flash of anger, fear, loathing, or conversely, smitten adoration. Mentally picture an actor or a politician that you do not like. This is how attitude can act as a default basis for decision. Attitudes are useful, because they are a very efficient, nearly effortless way of determining positions and courses of action. In many cases, it works well to be quick and consistent in the way we judge and handle things, but not always. Attitudes will determine the course of your thoughts and actions unless you override them in favor of adopting another path of thought and action when appropriate. There are good and bad physical habits. Habits are the behaviors that we have repeated so often that they now launch automatically, unconsciously, whenever they are triggered. They may be triggered by time of day, place, a thought or mood, an associated activity, or a repeating circumstance. For example, brushing your teeth is likely a good habit that is part of your morning routine on a daily basis without conscious consideration. Should I brush my teeth twice again today? Is it really worth the effort? It’s the weekend and I don’t plan to go out. But, maybe someone will come by and I don’t want to have bad breath. Just dithering about the decision would become a form of suffering itself and the time wasted quickly would become a substantial problem.