The Six Stages of Health Mastery

We all want to get healthy, right? 

But, you know, sometimes life can get in the way of us reaching our health goals

🔸 We can get off track,

🔸 And go back to our regular old habits, 

🔸 Then kick ourselves in the pants for failing, yet again. 

But with knowledge and understanding of the six stages of mastery, what we can do is quickly identify:

🔸 Which stage we are in,

🔸 What we are doing wrong, and

🔸 What we need to do to rectify or remedy the situation. 

Developing this self-awareness  of your transition through these six stages of health mastery 

🔸 Can empower you with knowledge about your transition.

🔸 It can alleviate any stress, worry or anxiety associated with quitting too early or slow progress, and

🔸 Of course, can help you to reach your health goals.

It sounds pretty good, right? 

So, let’s get stuck in a step-by-step guide to the six stages of health mastery.

The best way to do this is to use an example, and I think I’ll use the example of packing your lunch every day when you go to work today.

So it’s a really simple thing you want to do, but sometimes the simplest things are the hardest, right? 

Using this example, we say that, okay, you look at yourself and say, “I’m spending too much money buying takeaway food at lunchtime. The nutritional content of what I’m purchasing isn’t ideal. It’s too high in fat, too many carbs, or I’m simply eating too much.”

Third, it creates the stress of having to hunt for food on my lunch breaks, which takes up a bit of extra time as well.

Stage One: The Intention

The first stage of health mastery is having an intention. In this situation, the intention is to alleviate the stress of hunting for food and manage your budget better. Obviously, if you look after your nutritional needs yourself, you’ve got more control if you pack your own lunch.

Stage Two: The Action and Behaviour

The next stage of health mastery is action. So, after making this intention, you start with an action, which is, of course, getting the right-sized lunch box. Then, you start packing your lunches, whether they’re leftovers or something entirely new.

You need to indulge in this behaviour to help reach your health goal. Repeating that behaviour or action takes you into stage three, which is the habit.

Stage Three: The Habit

Now, depending on what you’re reading or what you’ve heard, you know, a habit, they say it’s, you know, two weeks or 21 days, or 28 days or six weeks or whatever it is, but the habit is determined by or was created with that repetition of action or behaviour. So, we say that we’ve started to establish a habit between two and six weeks. 

So that’s where you are at in the stage of your health mastery. And, for a lot of us, this is where we become unstuck. We get to the point where, in this example, you get a bit bored with packing your lunch, or you need some more variety, or it becomes a bit of a mundane chore. And it’s not until you reach that frustration stage that you step into the next stage.

Stage Four: The Practice

Now, many people don’t reach the next stage, which is: practice. 

It is the practice of the behaviour and the practice of the habit. So it’s developing new techniques and refining your habit or skill. 

If you’re getting bored with your lunches, for example, you can do all sorts of different things. For example, you might have a theme each week, such as Mexican food one week and Thai food the next, or you might change it up so that you have hot and cold meals, or you might have leftovers for a period of time.

So, in this practice stage, you are changing up the habits so that you can adapt to this behaviour, to whatever’s happening in your environment, or 

You can adapt it to become more of a second nature, which is the next stage of health mastery, where this practice becomes more of a second nature.

Stage Five: It Becomes Second Nature

So it becomes just something that you do.

And you know, during, at this stage, it is maybe six months from when you started with the intention, it would be six months down the track of having the action or the behaviour or including that, then doing that habitually and then practising it. 

It’s been a good six months, and you are still at the stage where you can return to your old habits.

But it is the practice, repetition, and learning how to refine the technique that you are using that take you through to the “it’s just something that I do” stage, which is stage five.

Stage Six: It’s Who You Are

It is not until you’ve been doing this thing, such as packing your lunch, for a long period of time that you reach the point where it is no longer just something that you do.

It is part of who you are, and that’s stage six of health mastery. So in, in this example, you’d get to the point where it’s no longer something you need to think about. It’s no longer a habit because it is a repeated action or behaviour. 

It is just part of who you are. 

And it’s almost like it’s part of your identity. 

You pack your lunch every day when you go to work because that’s you; that’s who you are. 

So that’s the sixth stage. And to be honest with you, to reach that sixth stage, it’s usually about two years or maybe even longer, maybe three years down the track where you have reached the mastery of that particular task. 

The Six Stages of Health Mastery in Real Life

We can apply this sequence to many things that we are learning. For example, if you’re learning a new skill, going to the gym, or even trying to drink more water each day, it takes some time to master this skill or task.

With this knowledge and understanding, you can say, “Okay, after six weeks, I haven’t mastered the task of packing my lunch, going to the gym, or drinking water regularly.” I need to do this, repeat it more, learn how to troubleshoot, and incorporate it into my life on a regular and day-to-day basis before I can say, “Okay, I have mastered this, and it is part of my identity.”

I’d like to hear about the kinds of health goals that you have mastered in the past and also what kinds of things you would like to master in the future. What kinds of obstacles have you overcome, or what kinds of obstacles are you currently facing with the health goals that you’re working on?