Posted on September 18, 2026
Maybe it begins with concerning news from your doctor. Or your desire to live long enough to see your children and grandchildren grow up. Or you just want to feel better. Whatever the reason, changing your health habits may be important to you right now. But before you leave the starting block, some preliminary work needs to be done, and a certified health coach can help you do it.
Picture Yourself
If I were your coach, I would begin by having you form a mental picture of yourself in your own version of ideal health a few years from now. We would explore the personal values that make that state of health important to you. A foundational first step in your journey to better health, this approach has proven scientific benefits. Visioning opens new brain pathways that grow stronger with repetition. By envisioning themselves doing what they hope to do, actors and professional athletes have used this technique successfully to help achieve their best performances.
Choose a Focus
Next you would choose an area of health to focus on first – just one. Maybe you want to start with your eating habits, physical activity, work-life balance, stress management, or something else. As time goes on, you may wish to add another area of health, but starting with one gives you a chance to build traction and not feel quickly overwhelmed or discouraged.
Assess Readiness
We would then examine closely how ready you are to make the proposed change at this particular time. For this I use a 1-to-10 scale. If the number you choose is low, it may be that this is not the right time for you to make this change. Perhaps another area of health is currently more important, or any change at all is premature.
What I most often see is a high number on the importance scale. But this is not the case with the second dimension of readiness: your level of confidence in making this change. Very often a client’s confidence lags their sense of importance, sometimes by a significant amount. But this does not mean your plans need to grind to a halt. Confidence is not an innate quality that belongs to some people but not others. And it’s not static: it can be built (and lost) in many ways. In coaching, we look for ways to build the confidence you need to reach your goals.
Reframe Failure
I once had a client who wanted to give up smoking. Inquiring about past experiences, I learned he had quit once before but had begun smoking again after three months. This experience, which he deemed a failure, kept him from believing he could ever quit permanently. As we processed this, he was able to reframe his “failure” as a partial success: He had succeeded in quitting for three months! What had derailed him was prematurely resuming a social life with a group of smokers. Realizing this, he could see his “failure” as a learning experience that would help when he tried again.
Use Skills Differently
Another client loved to learn. She devoured non-fiction books and articles, but she also devoured unhealthy food. She wanted to adopt new, healthier eating habits but didn’t know where to start. She was willing to cook but had no idea how to go about it. As we discussed this, she began to see how she could use her love of learning to look up easy recipes for healthy meals. She came to our next session with a handful of recipes she was excited to try. She used a personal strength in one area of her life in another area to boost her confidence.
Use What’s Worked
Looking for what’s right with a client’s health rather than what’s wrong (a more common medical focus) can also build confidence. An approach that has worked in one area can often be adapted to another. A daily meditation practice that has helped with stress management through awareness of thoughts, feelings and reactions could also help with noticing non-hunger cues that lead to unhealthy eating.
In these ways and others, it becomes possible to overcome the entirely normal fear of trying something new and override the unhelpful messages we give ourselves in moments of self-doubt. After doing so, re-checking the confidence scale usually results in a higher number.
When you see you have the confidence to proceed, you’re ready to take the next step with a realistic action plan, leave the starting block and begin the journey to the lasting change you seek.