Social Wellness

Whenever I read books about money, investing, business, or even psychology, I find myself making connections to health and exercise. It is probably a slightly strange habit, but I notice it happening over and over again. The topic may be completely different, yet I keep underlining the same passages and thinking about the people I work with. The details change, but the questions often feel remarkably similar. Why do people make the choices they make? Why do some habits seem easy for one person and difficult for another? Why do intelligent people continue making decisions that they themselves know may not be in their long-term best interests?

For nearly twenty years I have worked with people who wanted to get stronger, move more, reduce pain, improve their energy, or simply feel better in their bodies. During that time I have become less interested in exercise itself and more interested in the people trying to do it.

The gap between knowing and doing

When I first started working in this field, I thought the challenge was largely about helping people understand what to do. The assumption was that if people knew enough, they would make better decisions. If they understood the benefits of exercise, the importance of strength training, or the consequences of inactivity, they would naturally act on that knowledge.

The longer I have worked with people, the less convinced I have become that information is the primary problem.

Most of the people I meet already know that exercise is good for them. They know they would probably benefit from moving more, sleeping more, spending less time sitting, and eating more vegetables. They know that being stronger would likely improve their quality of life. In many cases, they know far more than they give themselves credit for.

Yet knowing something and consistently acting on it are clearly not the same thing. That has made me increasingly interested in the space between knowledge and behaviour.

Everybody’s behaviour makes sense with enough information

Over the years I have sat across from thousands of people. Some have exercised consistently for decades. Others have started and stopped so many times that they have lost count. Many arrive feeling frustrated with themselves because they cannot seem to build the habits they genuinely want to have.

What I have noticed is that the longer I spend listening to people, the more their behaviour begins to make sense.

One of my favourite ideas, which appears in The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel, is that all behaviour makes sense with enough information.

From a distance it is easy to assume that someone is lazy, unmotivated, disorganised, or simply not trying hard enough. Those explanations are simple and satisfying because they allow us to quickly categorise what we are seeing.

The difficulty is that they are often incomplete.

The person who struggles to exercise may be trying to build new habits while raising children, caring for ageing parents, managing financial stress, working long hours, and functioning on too little sleep. The person who repeatedly starts and stops may have spent years feeling judged whenever health is discussed and now approaches every new attempt expecting failure. Someone else may be carrying an injury, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, grief, or a lifetime of experiences that have shaped the way they relate to their body and to exercise itself.

None of those things remove responsibility, but they do provide context. The more context I have, the harder it becomes to judge.

What people want is often deeper than the goal itself

That same pattern appears in another area that fascinates me. Many people seem to be pursuing something quite different from the thing they initially say they want.

This is true in books about money, where conversations that appear to be about wealth often turn out to be about security, freedom, status, peace of mind, or belonging. The money matters, but it is often standing in for something deeper.

I think health is very similar.

People may tell me they want to lose weight, but after a longer conversation it becomes clear that what they really want is confidence, energy, freedom from discomfort, or the ability to participate more fully in life. They may even feel like finally looking a certain way will bring them the respect and admiration they so deeply crave from others (and themselves). You’d be surprised how often this shows up.

Someone may tell me they want to get stronger, but what they are really talking about is remaining independent as they age. They want to be able to travel, carry their own bags, get up from the floor, play with grandchildren, continue working, or simply feel capable in their everyday life.

The exercise programme matters, but the meaning attached to it often matters more.

Staying in the game

As I have become older, I have also become less interested in health as a destination.

Much of the messaging around us focuses on outcomes and milestones. Reach this goal weight. Complete this challenge. Run this race. Achieve this transformation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with those goals, and many people find them motivating, but I have become increasingly interested in what happens afterwards.

The people who seem to age particularly well are not always the people who achieved the most impressive short-term results. More often, they are the people who found ways to keep participating. They continued walking, lifting, stretching, playing sport, gardening, hiking, meeting friends, and doing the countless ordinary activities that keep them engaged with life.

Their success was not built on a single achievement, but rather, emerged from years of continuing to show up, often imperfectly, for things that mattered to them.

A thought to leave you with

If there is one practical lesson I have taken from all of this, it is that curiosity is often more useful than judgement.

If you are struggling with a habit you wish you had, it may be worth spending a little less time asking, “Why can’t I just do this?” and a little more time asking, “What might be making this difficult for me right now?”

You may discover that the obstacle is not a lack of discipline at all.

You may be tired. Overwhelmed. Stretched too thin. Trying to build a new habit in an environment that makes it difficult. Or perhaps pursuing a goal that does not connect strongly enough to something you genuinely value.

The answers will be different for each person.

What I have learned from both health and the books I read is that lasting change rarely begins with judgement. More often, it begins with understanding.