63 From Frustration to Freedom Live Your Ideal Healthy Lifestyle! Part 1

You are listening to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, episode 63. I'm your host, Liz Jolly, founder of the School of Courage. I'm an engineer turned life coach because I saw the need for more courage in my own life. As a mom and wanting to be a great leader, I use the skills we cover every day in my own life and I am excited to teach them to you so you can unlock your own potential. Well, today is all about healthy living, and we're starting a new series on not just weight loss, but how to live the healthy lifestyle that you want. So first off, how is that going for you right now? Are you the weight you want to be? How do you feel about your body? Do you love your body? Do you think to yourself, if only I were X amount of pounds lighter, then I would love my body? Or I Do you find yourself frustrated in the fact that you're not working out as much as you want, or you don't have the muscle strength that you want, or you don't like your arms? Whatever it is, ask yourself, how am I doing when it comes from a healthy lifestyle right now? How do I feel about myself when I look in the mirror? Many of us are really critical when it comes to our bodies and if we're living the healthy lifestyle that we want. And I would imagine majority of us have found ourselves at a point in life, whether it's because of a New Year's resolution or some other thing going on, maybe a vacation that we want to get healthier, we want to lose weight, we want to fit in our clothes better. And so we're going to dig into this whole series and really talk about how to create the healthy life that you want, how to reach the weight goal you have, how to commit to something like exercising and actually go and do it. And I have people tell me that they want to get healthy, they want to lose the unwanted weight, and to start actually working out again But often this just doesn't happen. And so much of it is related to how we try to willpower ourselves into it. We try to beat ourselves up into going to the gym or not eating the cupcakes or removing all the food we don't want to eat out of our house. So we can't even see it. And so we're gonna talk about why the willpower, why the traditional diet doesn't work. And today I have a set of questions for you to answer, which should help get you on the path to starting this health journey. So the first question is Let's get a clear why. So think about what is it you really want to do? And this question matters because we can try something or we can commit to making something happen. It's subtle, but this is actually two very different approaches when it comes to getting results. And many of us will say to ourselves, yeah, I want to try that out and see how it works. Like I want to try and work out more. And then magically it doesn't happen because I woke up in the morning and I didn't feel like it and I just decided, oh well, let's try again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll want to then And many of us do this with weight loss from the food standpoint, like, oh, well, I will try to eat salad all the time. But when you don't, you blame the world outside of you. Like it just didn't feel like it. Or it wasn't easily on the menu. Or I went to someone's house and they didn't have that When we notice how we have a goal and we say we want to try to do something versus we want to commit to something, it's very different. If you're in the try mindset, it's really looking to something outside of you to determine your success. Like the world is responsible for your results. I didn't eat the what I wanted to because of my kids or my spouse or my mother-in-law that made dinner or the restaurant we went to everybody was ordering different things and I didn't want to eat a salad. So like you blame the world outside of you for what you put in your mouth, for whether or not you work out. Versus the other side of that, which is on the commitment side, where we will take action until we get the result we want. It's not just saying I want something, but it's saying I'm willing to not give up when something doesn't work, but to keep going no matter what till I get the result I actually want. Because when you try something and if it doesn't work out maybe as fast as you want it or the way you want it, there's this chance that you can just quit. versus going to get the result you want no matter what. Why? Because you're the reason for your result. It's not the world around you. It's nothing outside of you. You are responsible for the life you get. And it doesn't mean it's gonna be easy if you make a commitment. It means that when things get hard or it's too slow or you're frustrated That you don't give up and tell yourself, it's not my fault, it's everybody else's fault. You take action until you get that desired goal met, that desired result. And the way we follow through on a commitment is because we have a reason that's so compelling. And we are committed to ourselves so strongly that we're gonna go after it and get it One of the other mistakes I think we make is when we say we commit to something and we want to know all the steps along the way. We want to know the how But the reality is so often we know the result we want, but we're not really sure on the how. And when you're committed to something, you'll keep trying all these different paths to get to the result until you figure it out Whereas in the try mindset, you think you know how to go get that result, but when it doesn't work out or the steps you thought didn't give you what you wanted, you just tap out and think, well, it's just not gonna happen for me So we need to get to this compelling reason within ourselves and we need to commit to ourselves in such a strong way, knowing that we're not gonna know all the details of the how, but we're gonna take all kinds of action until we get the result we actually want. So the key question for today is what is it you actually want for your health? What is the weight you want to be? And don't judge yourself or Talk yourself out and don't be really judgy on the answer you give. Just sit with the possibility. Pick a number that makes you slightly uncomfortable but is still reasonable. Don't make it ridiculous where you're just set up to fail from the start, but make a commitment to something that makes sense to you, that's healthy for you. The second question is, why do you want to reach that goal? Really dig into this one and your why has to be compelling. It has to be good enough. You have to really feel a connection to why you want to do this because when you have the option of giving up, when you have the option of breaking that commitment to yourself. Then you really have to go back to your why. And your why has to be compelling. And be on to yourself. Don't make a reason that's reliant on what other people think So if you answer this question and you say, I want to lose weight because other people tell me I should lose weight, you need a reason that matters to you, not to other people. If you answer the question with, well, I want other people to think I'm beautiful or attractive or I want to feel happy Write that down, but notice your feelings of happiness or even feeling beautiful or confident aren't going to come from what other people think about you. It's going to come from you. So take that desired feeling and turn it into something about you. Like I I want to be beautiful. I want to be happy. And what you'll find in this work is that you can feel all that now. Here's the thing with weight loss. Many people think I'll be happy when I'm thin. And that's not the way it works. You need to know that it's not better there than here. That you can create any emotion you want right now. And I know you may not believe me, but If you're thinking I'll lose weight and then I'll feel beautiful, or I'll lose weight and then I'll feel happy, when you do lose the weight, You're not going to feel happy because you have the same brain that you took in before you and that's the way emotions work, is they come from your thinking So you need to come up with a reason you want to lose weight and feel healthy that's not contingent on how others feel about you or an emotion You think you're gonna feel in the future when you've lost the weight, when you fit into a certain clothes, when you look great in a bikini You are 100% lovable right now. You're 100% capable of feeling beautiful right now And you need to know this because if you get to that result you're really after, you're just going to be disappointed and left wanting. Life is not better there than here. And tons of people that are that weight that you have out in the future that fit into those clothes that look great in the bikini and they feel awful about themselves. They're not happy. They don't feel lovable So your circumstance, your weight doesn't determine your happiness or your lovability So now let's go to your future self. Think about your goal, like you've reached your goal in the future. What do you believe about yourself? And we know that this belief is going to be different from where you are today because your beliefs are what shape your result and you don't have the result you desire. I mean that's just fact. You wrote something down and you're not there yet So this current mindset has shaped your result in your life to date. And one of the things we're going to look at is The reason why you haven't reached this desired result yet is because you've been holding on to these belief systems that are creating that result instead of creating new beliefs that will get you to your future result. So what beliefs do you have about your weight and about your ability to succeed? Many people will go towards, well this has never worked for me before, or I just don't know if I can do this or I'm not good at that. You need to question those thoughts. Instead think of, in the future when I am this weight, when I'm 25 pounds less, what do I believe about myself? That I do hard things, that I can create a future not based on my past. So often we spend a significant amount of time focusing on our past and what we've created in the past to tell us what our future will look like. And we have to drop that. We have to let that go because what has gotten us here to our current state is not going to be what gets us to our future. So we need to identify our reason as to why we want to live healthy lives, why we want to lose weight, and we have to understand What that goal really is. Like, how are we gonna know we've succeeded? One of the most amazing things that'll come out of this work is when you achieve your goal. It's not just the goal that's so satisfying, it's who you become in the process along to get to that goal. It's being able to make a commitment to yourself and follow through. to make decisions in advance and cultivate this incredibly strong relationship with yourself, this incredible foundation that goes out into all aspects of your life. This will revolutionize who you are and and who you will become in the future. When it comes to the reason of why you want to lose weight and reach your health goals, who do you want to be? What does that future person look like? I want to be a person that doesn't waste energy obsessing about food or my body that doesn't beat myself up. I want to be a person who really truly loves my body no matter what. And I don't want to waste my want on food that I don't need that's in excess of what my body needs for fuel. I want to be a person who's an example for my children of feeling my feelings and not eating my feelings. So think about what is your why. Who do you want to be when it comes to your weight and and your healthy lifestyle? Imagine future you and you've reached these goals. How does future you feel about your body? How does future you approach food? How does Future You handle an urge to eat a food that you know upsets your body or isn't what you really want? What do you do when you feel uncomfortable about saying, I don't want dessert, or telling your friends, thank you so much for making this, but I actually am not going to eat it. Like this is the discomfort that we have to embrace to get to the results we want. And again, not to blame the people around us for what we put in our mouth. Imagine future you and when you've had a stressful day and you're so tired, what are you gonna do when you go home? Imagine being the person that doesn't eat the comfort food to feel better. So we're gonna spend time on really mulling over what you in the future. And think about what is your goal? Why do you want to reach that goal? And imagine yourself having accomplished it. And you're gonna go back to this constantly because doing this work, you're gonna feel very uncomfortable. And you're gonna wanna stop trying and give up and be like, this isn't gonna work. See, I knew it, it didn't work in the past But we're not gonna try. We are gonna commit to following through on all this. Reaching your goal is not gonna be a cakewalk. It's gonna require a huge amount of discomfort And we need to be willing to go towards that emotional discomfort to reach our goals. If it were easy, everyone would just have done it. But think about how satisfying it's going to be to get to the other side of this river of misery and have the healthy lifestyle that you really desire. Because right now you're in discomfort probably because you want to be a certain weight, because you want to spend the time working out. and living the healthy lifestyle that you want. So you're suffering now. So let's go through the river of misery to get to the other side of the goals we actually want to accomplish. and stop this like slow burn of discomfort that we have right now not having reached our goals. And we mistakenly think that if we want something, we should just be magically good at it or it should all work out immediately and notice how ridiculous this notion is and how it holds so many of us back from our dreams. The more you can set a big goal and the more Willing you are to embrace the discomfort, the more you're gonna get the life you dream about. This is working against our default brains, our primitive brains. that are always trying to avoid pain, to seek an immediate pleasure, and to conserve energy. So know that this default part of your brain is something that you're gonna have to notice and get over That you're going to have to work against, you're going to have to retrain your brain against this programming And I am constantly 100% practicing this for myself. I believe that discomfort is the currency of my dreams. And by doing this work I know that you will build an incredible foundation for yourself, an incredible relationship with yourself You cannot get to the life of your dreams without addressing your self-talk and how you feel about yourself and your belief in yourself. Like I said, you can't loathe yourself into losing weight. This week, your assignment is to create a goal for yourself when it comes to a healthy lifestyle. Decide on a weight goal and understand what is my why? Why do I want to do that? It is life-changing work. Next week we're going to talk about why we're living why we aren't already at the healthy lifestyle that we want. Feel free to reach out anytime. I hope that you like and subscribe this podcast and forward it on to a friend. And I'm excited for you to join me on this whole series about creating a healthy lifestyle. Take care, everybody.