After working with clients through many coaching sessions, I’ve started noticing certain patterns.

I can usually tell who will hit their goals and who will still need to make some mindset changes to get there.

This isn't about emergencies, bad weeks, or life getting in the way. Life happens.

I'm talking about repeated patterns of behavior that tell me someone is not yet prepared to do what sustainable change actually requires.

Here are the signs.

1. They weigh themselves every day. Sometimes twice a day.

2. They keep looking for "partners" to do their workouts with or to eat healthily with. This, believe it or not, sometimes has the opposite effect of motivation. You’ve just created two resistant beings instead of one that you have to overcome to get to the gym.

3. They repeatedly cancel coaching sessions at the last minute. If the appointment that is specifically designed to help you change is the easiest thing to cancel, you've already told me where it sits on your priority list.

4. They don't have a schedule.

5. Their sleep schedule is all over the place, without a fixed range for bedtime and wake-up time (I'm not talking about new parents here).

6. They don't have long-term goals that they are working toward other than losing weight.

7. They seek out other resources that promise to get them results faster.

8. They lie to their coach or hide important facts due to fear of failure and judgment.

9. They believe in extreme diets and excessive exercise to achieve results faster.

10. They refuse to question their own beliefs.

People can go through these cycles of trying and quitting for years.

They keep changing the plan without changing themselves.

And that's why they keep ending up in the same place.

You cannot build a different life with the same mindset and behaviors that created the life you're trying to change.