Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey. Even the stuff you don’t want to hear, your expectations can make or break your success. How you really manage them can be everything in you achieving the outcome that you want. And I want to share a little story with you because I think this really highlights how our expectations can shape our perception of things and really put us in a mood to move forward, or that emotional sabotage that leads to us giving up on everything. So you go to a restaurant and you go up to the stand and you ask the host is how long it’s going to be? How long a wait? And she said it’s going to be 45 minutes. And so you go back and you’re waiting and you’re waiting 45 minutes, 45 minutes, and all of a sudden it’s 45 minutes and you don’t seem any closer to the top of the list.

(00:49):
An hour goes by and finally you get a table. You are frustrated, you’re hungry, you are miserable. And it’s all because she said it was 45 minutes and you ended up waiting an hour had she told you it was going to be an hour, and then you got the table at an hour or even 55 minutes. All of a sudden, you would’ve been waiting basically the same length of time, but you would’ve gotten in at the time you were expecting, and you wouldn’t have been as frustrated then had you even gotten in earlier, say 30 minutes. All of a sudden, you’re super excited that you even gotten earlier. So it’s not the time, it’s the expectation of how long it will take. And I bring this up, especially when we talk about expectations of how long something will take because especially when it comes to weight loss, we’ve heard, oh, one to two pounds per week.

(01:32):
So if I do the math, I can lose it in this time. We expect progress to be linear, even while we know it’s not, or we expect results a little bit faster because we’ve seen X, Y, and Z person do it on X, Y, and Z diet. But the thing is, that expectation of how we’re going to see results is what sabotages us. We can expect to achieve a goal, but we can not control the rate at which we see progress towards that goal. And the more we try to, the more we stare at that scoreboard hoping for it to change, instead of impacting what we’re actually doing on the field, instead of impacting the habits that we’re doing, the more we’re just going to hold ourselves back. So when you’re thinking about the goal you want and the expectations you have, you need to set expectations based on the things you can actually control.

(02:14):
If you’re expecting to lose one pound per week, well, you can’t actually control if you lose one pound per week. What can you control? You can control how you hit your macros, how you adjust your diet daily if you do your workout routines, if you get moving, if you sleep well, and even sleep I guess is a little bit out of your control, but you can control your sleep routine. Try and set yourself up for success, but you want to expect and have expectations on the things you can actually take action on that will drive the ultimate outcome you want. But expecting a rate of change, expecting an exact outcome in an exact timeframe, well, you can’t control that timeframe as much as you might want to because life will always do its best to get in the way. All we can do is control the actions and mindsets that build.

(03:00):
So as you are setting an expectation, an ultimate goal, I want you to break that down into the habits and actions and mindsets you can actually control today. Because when you do that and then you set expectations on those things, that’s where you gain power to make changes. I expect myself to do this thing today. I expect myself to do this thing tomorrow. And then you can check those things off. You are in control of those actions. Again, you cannot expect the scale to change despite even doing everything you’re supposed to because maybe it didn’t poop that day. Maybe you have a little extra inflammation. There’s so many other factors you can’t control, but you can control your daily habits. So as you’re setting those goals, think about what you’re expecting to have happen and the expectations you can actually control and the ones you can’t. Because the more you focus on expecting things that are within your control to change, the more you’re going to see that momentum build, feel successful with everything, and ultimately reach your goal. Staring at the ultimate expectation and things you can’t control will never move you forward and often sabotage you emotionally so that you fall off and keep yourself stuck in this horrible loop of starting over and never truly gaining momentum towards your goal.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast, everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. We’re here to talk about silencing that inner critic. I’m super excited to be joined by Alison. I know it can be hard sometimes to silence those doubts, to stop those negative thoughts, but it’s so key that we do learn how to control that mindset if we want to move forward. So Alison, thank you so much for joining me. Let’s jump into talking about why that inner critic is even there.

Allison (00:33):
Hey, yes. So we come by it naturally, which I think can be a nice relief that our brains are kind of wired for this. They’re wired to keep us safe. So if we think back to cave people times, we had to be part of a group in order to stay alive, obviously. I mean, hopefully not worrying about bears chasing us anymore, but we still have that desire to be part of a group. And in modern life though that inner critic turns into this super mean girl, harsh self-judgment instead of helpful self-correction and lucky us as women, we tend to have this even more so because of all of those societal pressures that we face with being able to do it all. And you see those Pinterest perfect parties and all of that reinforcement that we’re just not doing enough.

Cori (01:29):
I am definitely more along the lines of the Pinterest fail images you see, especially if it’s anything party related. But I do think it’s really oddly comforting to know that we have this negativity bias, this judgment bias, and it’s therefore both a positive reason and it can really help us reflect. But there can be that negative side to it because I think the more we recognize something is natural, the more we don’t beat ourselves up for it, but the more we also see the opportunity in learning to use it to our advantage even.

Allison (01:59):
Yes, and that’s exactly the difference between self-compassion and self-criticism is acknowledging that we’re all part of this struggle and we can learn from those moments of setback. We can find ways to find the positive that 1% better and really be able to get out of that failure mindset. Because when we’re criticizing ourselves over and over again, it can be really easy to believe that what’s the point of trying? I’m just a failure. I might as well not even do this. You hear that often enough. What do you think your motivation to actually change is going to be? So by not utilizing this shame as a way to just get stuck, but rather utilizing it as a way to focus on what were some of the circumstances around this failure that led me to behave this way. So for example, I like to think about driving in, you have a really long hard day at work and you’re just ready to get home.

(03:10):
You’ve got a plan. You’re going to get your workout in, make dinner for the family, but you’ve had a super long day and everything just seemed to go wrong. You’re driving home and there’s an awful traffic jam. Your response after having all of that experience is probably going to be much different than if you had a really awesome day at work. And you can look at that traffic jam as like, oh, this is annoying, but whatever, I’ll deal with it. Put on some music rock out versus this always happens to me now. I’m not going to be able to get my workout in. So those circumstances can really be the difference maker in how we respond. And the more we’re aware of, Hey, we’re not a failure. We’re not intrinsically bad because we didn’t do the thing we said we were going to do. There’s a bigger picture there. And so then we can identify, okay, what were the challenges? How can I make just one tiny change now maybe I don’t have time to get my full workout in. Can I do a dance party with my kiddos while we’re making dinner or take the dog for a walk?

Cori (04:16):
We can really shift our perspective, which is everything because how we perceive that event, it shapes how we move forward from it. And a lot of the things that happen prior do shape our perspective of it, but the more we recognize the cycle that we can be in and the impact each of these components can have, the more we can step back and even realize when we’re critiquing ourselves in justifying the critique as, oh, well I’m learning from this. It’s good to be hard on myself to make sure that I’m not just letting things slide and I’m moving forward. But we have to realize there’s a dark side to everything and what can be a strength can also be a weakness. So stepping back to assess these different things and even realizing where your perception of the event is coming from can be so important because that’s what leads to, as you said, finding the 1% that can really make a difference.

Allison (05:05):
Exactly. And so there’s a few ways that we can actually start to recognize how we can make those changes. Because if we’re just aware of it, okay, cool, but we have to move beyond that awareness. And so the first thing is that instead of just continuing to be ourself up for all of these mistakes, think about how you would speak to a friend. I like to think that most of us speak nicely to our friends, otherwise we probably don’t have a whole lot of friends. So if a friend comes to you and is like, man, I suck. I’ve been working really hard and Friday rolled around and we went out. I had two glasses of wine. I’m such a failure. Are you going to say to your friend, yeah, you suck. You’re a loser. You’re never going to be successful. I mean, we laugh at that because of course we would never speak that way to our friends, but we say to ourselves all of the time.

(05:59):
So shifting that a little bit, talk to ourself like we would talk to a friend, yeah, that stinks. You made a couple of bad choices, but was it because you restricted all week or you had a really tough day and you sought that glass of wine was going to make you feel better? Now we can identify, okay, tomorrow I’m going to drink a lot of extra water and make sure that I get right back on track and hit my macros and get my workout in and feel really good and honor my body with some good movement. So instead of beating ourself up for what we intend to do, which can then lead to more setbacks, we get stuck. If Friday night rolls around and we kind of blow it, how many of us have heard that? Well, I already ruined it. Might as well just wait till Monday to use one of a ryms.

(06:51):
We don’t need to slash all four of our tires, we can simply get right back on instead of keeping ourselves stuck in that all or nothing black and white thinking. Because when we look at ourselves that way, we just stay stuck. We always do those same things that we’ve been doing over and over again. Diet starts on Monday, starts let get all the unhealthy food out of the house and then I’m going to be so perfect. We tend to overcorrect even and go into that other extreme, which of course doesn’t lead to real success. It might lead to some short-term changes, but eventually we fall back into those old habits and patterns because it’s not sustainable to be so stink and mean to ourselves and to treat ourselves so unkindly.

Cori (07:38):
It also creates a lot of the mindsets which only hold us back from moving forward or implementing tools or techniques later. Because if you think about that pattern, maybe you did track all week, you hit specific macros all week, you hit specific calories all week and you cut out all the foods you love. So you then think, oh, well, I fell off on Friday because this is miserable and tracking stinks and I’ll never do tracking again. But it wasn’t the tracking. It maybe wasn’t even the macros or the calories you had. Maybe it was something that you need to adjust, but it was the fact that you chose to cut out all the foods you loved that then made things backfire or not owning the stress of making these changes to make smaller changes to meet yourself where you’re at. So in the end, because this feeling occurs, we then associate the feeling with the tool and we can’t go back to the tool.

(08:23):
So the stress, the guilt, all these different things, if we don’t really assess them, almost make it harder and harder to make the changes. Not to mention you pointed out something so important, we get that all or nothing mindset. It’s either I do the ideal or I don’t. Well, what is ideal? Ideal is something that you can actually do today to be successful with ideal is picking yourself up. When you fall down, you’re not just going to be laying on the ground in the middle of the sidewalk, whereas people step over you, you’re going to get up, stand up. Yet that’s how we sort of treat mishaps with our workout routine. We’re just laying on the sidewalk, letting people step on us.

Allison (09:01):
Yeah, I love that analogy and it makes me laugh because when we really think about that, it’s so silly. I mean, we have so many ways that we can still be successful without having to go to that other extreme of standing up and running down the sidewalk or whatever, to just take that metaphor a little farther. So really when we think about how we are going to, what is self-compassion even and how do I do this? So I think there’s three big components to self-compassion that really help frame that we are all in this together. And I love this because every single one of us, regardless of how much we present to the world as the perfect or the ideal, we all struggle. We all look in the mirror some days and don’t love the way we look or we say something and we’re just like, oh my God, I cannot believe I said that.

(09:59):
We all have that experience. So when we’re able to look at those setbacks and struggles as part of this larger common humanity that we all struggle, then it makes our challenges less unique. And that’s important because when we think that we’re the only person who’s struggling with something, it makes us feel like we’re an outsider. So if we go back to what I talked about at the start of this conversation, that’s going to be a stressful situation for our brain. Oh my God, I’m not part of the ingroup. So when we’re able to look at this from this common humanities standpoint, we’re not defective. We’re not unique in our failures. We’re just like everybody else. But that means that we can acknowledge those that suffering in a way that’s like, okay, well I had a bad day today, but I bet you that my coach had a bad day last week or whatever. So we’re able to really move past that. This is just sucky for me, and I’m the only person who’s ever had to struggle with any of this

Cori (11:02):
And not only move past a little of the self pity, which I’ve thrown plenty of pity parties myself, but in that we see that by being able to see the flaw in something, that means that we’ve already grown. And I bring that up because I’ve been putting out videos for a very long time and made lots of amazing mistakes in that time. But I’ll look back at previous blog posts I’ve written or videos I’ve done and be like, oh my goodness, I put that out that’s really out there in the world. And now I used to get all cringey and be like, should I take it down? And now I’m like, the reason I think that’s so bad is because I’ve gotten better. When we can even pause to reflect and be like, oh, that’s not how I like that situation to go. I wish I hadn’t had those glasses of wine on a Friday night.

(11:46):
That right there is that that you already need to feel proud of because that means that you’ve already grown from it. Recognizing your flaws and being able to say, okay, this is a learning experience is what moves us forward. And I bring this up because I have a hard time saying that word. It feels a little too huggy for me, but finding a way to embrace that, we need to have that. And you can’t just always beat yourself up because that internal language, like what you repeat consistently, you become right. Your actions are going to be in line with the verbiage you’re using with yourself. It’s so important. So for a non hugger, let’s go into a little bit more self-compassion and how we can really build this.

Allison (12:26):
Yes, it was so funny because actually one of the best ways to help yourself feel safe is to give yourself a hug. But you don’t have to do that, Corey. Yeah, you’re so right when you talk about being able to look at those setbacks, because we’ve grown, we’ve learned better, we know better. And now we can look at that as not a failure. I’m not a failure, I’m not doomed. This situation came up and now we can look at it as part of that longer journey. So did I track every single macro and hit everything perfectly? No, but did I track something that’s a win that’s different than maybe the way I used to behave in the past? If I don’t track it, it didn’t happen. Spoiler alert, it does. So being able to respond instead of react is really key as part of this whole idea of being self-compassionate.

(13:26):
And so again, it allows us to take a step back, and some of this may feel a little woo woo or a little huggy, but if you think about all of the years that you have spent doing the same thing of complaining, yelling at yourself, speaking really unkindly and it hasn’t worked, or maybe it’s worked in the short term but not long term, or it doesn’t leave you feeling very well, so let’s try something different. Let’s try looking at a situation almost as an outside observer. So one of the tricks that you can use is you can even just start to be a little more aware of when those thoughts pop up. This seems kind of silly, but you can even give that little inner voice a name, maybe you call it, I don’t know, Sandy, whatever, somebody you don’t like. And it helps you to create that distance, and then you can hear those thoughts and be like, oh yeah, that’s Sandy.

(14:28):
She just wants to make me feel bad about myself again, by being aware of when those thoughts come up and just sort of acknowledging them, even if you don’t have the time to sit down and journal or reflect about it, it just helps to bring that awareness more so to the forefront so that eventually you’re able to, okay, now I know when these thoughts come up every Friday night or every morning when I hit the snooze, instead of getting out of bed and going to the gym, now I have that situation a little bit more in focus and I can think about, okay, if I know that I hit snooze every morning, instead of going the gym, do I need to reevaluate when I work out? Maybe that first thing in the morning workout isn’t the best or ideal for me, or maybe I need to prep a little bit more ahead of time, have a better nighttime routine so that I’m going to bed earlier. So now we have that opportunity to identify those patterns and then wear those tweaks that we can make to improve for next time.

Cori (15:31):
It’s so key that separation between your thoughts and the actions that have to occur. And when you do name something or call it a bad roommate in your head or whatever works for you, you do create just that little bit of pause and distance to be like, okay, this is a thought I’m having, not something I have to become. And off of that too, those thoughts are going to happen. They’re going to pop up. And it’s not that we can always control them from occurring because it’s not only a routine and habit we’ve created for a very long time that we’re trying to break, but we’re human. And on top of that, we can recognize when they’re occurring to even then put in some of the positive as well, which for me, I’m not a hugger, but I do do my own form of I guess a physical fist bump.

(16:15):
And not for self-compassion, no hugging, but the bicep kiss. It’s kind of a little more awkward, but it helps. It keeps me true to what I want. But even thinking about if the negative thoughts are occurring, how can you state a positive too? Think about how many times you’ve had a brag that you then don’t say, but how willing you are to say the negative. We need to shift that mindset and realize that bragging is not being humble. It’s owning something awesome that you did and balancing out all the negative thoughts that you’ve had no problem saying.

Allison (16:47):
Yeah, I think that goes back to that whole concept of that all or nothing mindset, that if we’re not totally perfect or we haven’t quite reached that goal yet, that it’s not worth celebrating. And that’s where a lot of us end up just stuck and feeling like we’re never making any progress. But when you’re able to identify all of those places along your journey that you have gotten better, maybe you can’t do a full pull up yet, but maybe you’re doing more weight on a lap pull down, that’s growth, that’s progress towards that goal. And you can reframe instead of saying, man, I’m such a lazy person, now we’re able to say, yeah, well, you know what? I made this choice and I’m going to own it. And I know that even though I didn’t get my formal workout in, I’m going to be really intentional today with making sure that I get some extra movement in because it feels good for my body and reminding ourselves that that progress is not linear.

(17:46):
And I think that that’s the other thing that we expect to see this beautiful flat trajectory heading upward, and that’s just not reality at all. We have those ups and those downs. The difference is that when we’re in those downs or those plateaus or whatever, that we look at it and can assess, can assess where have I already been successful? What were some ways that I did improve? And yes, acknowledging that we haven’t quite gotten to that ultimate goal yet, but we’re a heck of a lot closer than we would be if we never started or if we quit when we got to one of those down days.

Cori (18:28):
And I love that you use yet because I think that word is so powerful in setting our expectations in line with what we need to do, and also not limiting ourselves with the idea that we can’t, right? It adds that little shift. I can’t do X yet. It allows for growth. But off of that too, I think it can be really hard to find the line, right? Something that’s also a strength is also a weakness. Having that negativity can be a strength and that you critique things, you analyze things you want to learn from them, but then it steers into a little bit too harsh and inner critic. How can we find that balance and realize that self-compassion doesn’t mean letting yourself off the hook, but again, that even can sometimes be overcorrected the other way.

Allison (19:13):
Yeah. So if you think about when you make an excuse for something like, oh, sorry, I was late traffic. Was it traffic? Or did you just make the choice not to leave? Soon enough? When we make excuses, we’re just dismissing the issue or we’re ignoring it. Well, this is too hard, but we’re not actually able to then move forward. We get stuck. But when we come at something with more of that, so we acknowledge like, yep, I didn’t get that workout in. I’m going to be intentional with movements later on today. And it also encourages more of that learning again, which is how we’re going to grow. So when we make excuses, we’re kind of justifying or rationalizing the behavior. Well, I was really hungry. Dieting is hard, and so I ate the pizza. But there’s no reflection there. Self-compassion means we kind of look at that behavior with more of that curiosity, why did I choose to eat pizza?

(20:21):
Maybe it was because pizza’s fricking delicious and you wanted it, right? Okay, so how can we adjust and is there a way that maybe we could have a slice of pizza with a side salad or maybe we have more of that. I dunno, veggie pizza, I guess some people like that, not me, but give me the real thing or nothing. Anyway. Also, when we’re able to that self-compassion, we can really actually improve our motivation rather than deplete it, because when we are kind to ourself, we feel better. We actually want to continue to feel that way. So think about when you’re rocking things with, whether it’s your health and fitness journey, or simply just in the zone at work, you’re feeling really good. You want to keep that good feeling going, and that’s going to help drive some of that intrinsic motivation to continue to make those choices that are going to help you feel better, that are going to lead you to those goals. But if we don’t actually give ourselves that opportunity to reflect on it, all we do is then say like, well, I’m a loser. I stink. And then we kind of just avoid or never actually get started.

Cori (21:39):
We stop the success snowball, we’ll call it, where the more you do, the more you do and the more successful you feel with things, the more you want to do those things that are making you feel really good. Versus when you do something that you can’t achieve, you set your expectations too high, you focus too much on an ideal over just what you can control, you end up doing a lot less because you’re not in that success mindset. And I love the way you frame that because I think it goes back to agency. A lot of times we give away our own agency, we say, oh, well, in critiquing ourselves, oh, well, I’m just flawed. I’m just this. I’m just that. Or even with letting ourselves off the hook, we say, I deserve this. Right? We’re not looking at our own control and our own choice in the matter. And I think the more we bring it back to, I have to take agency and ownership of this, the more we’re not letting ourselves off the hook when we do show ourselves compassion and grace, but we’re also not letting that critique become something that we’re just sort of writing off as an inherent flaw, so to speak.

Allison (22:40):
Yeah, we’re taking that power back. We actually then can take action instead of looking at all of these things that’s happening to me that’s causing all of these reasons to fail. It’s what is my role here and how can I improve? How can I take some action to move myself forward? And that’s such an empowering thing because instead of just waiting for things to happen to you, you get to choose. You get to decide. I’m like, you can hear my passion because it’s so exciting. You have this choice there. And I think that that’s a huge component. That is part of being a little bit more kind and compassionate to yourself.

Cori (23:22):
We like taking action because action feels good. It makes you feel like you’re doing something towards your goal. And while we do have to pause and think about it, and I know that has to come in into play at points, action is really what drives us forward. And so on that note, what actions can we take today, this week, this next month, to really start to build that self-compassion and be aware of that inner critic when it is trying to speak up a little too loudly?

Allison (23:47):
Yeah. So first awareness, simply noticing when you’re hearing that voice again, maybe it’s just that maybe you do a tick mark on a little sticky note or something like that and you can kind of identify, man, I’m really kind of mean to myself that awareness is important. So that’s the first step is just really being intentional about paying attention to when you hear that inner critic start to talk to you, and then when you have a little more data, a little more distance from it. So a couple of weeks, I would really give yourself that time to pay attention and be mindful of that voice. Then you can start to identify some of those patterns like I was talking about. Are there certain times of the day or certain moments that you hear that inner critic more? And then you can ask yourself, is this something I would say to a friend who is struggling and truly think about what’s the tone of voice?

(24:52):
What are the words that I’m saying to myself? And then you can say, okay, I clearly would not speak this way to a friend, friend. Now we can reframe some of that. Once you’ve got that verbiage down, now you can actually start practicing it. So when you do hear that inner critic saying, when you step on the scale and it’s like the weight’s up, I’m a failure at this, you can hear yourself and you can interrupt that pattern and say, the scale’s not reflecting the number I wanted to see, but it does not define my progress. And it’s only one piece of data in my journey. And when we are able to look at some of those setbacks or those times where we feel our inner critic yelling at us, we can then get curious about the data. What can we learn from it? How can we improve for next time?

(25:43):
And then something that you can also do that I think is really helpful is come up with a self-compassion mantra. It can be as cheesy and as corny as you want it because you’re the only person who’s going to hear it. But that acknowledgement of, I’m a human. I’m struggling. And that’s okay. And what is possible right now? And you can obviously Google, but even thinking about what are the things that I like to hear that help me feel good and help me feel better? And that will really help you start to identify what’s a mantra that’s going to resonate with you? Because if it doesn’t feel good for you, you’re going to be like, that’s dumb. I’m not going to say that to myself. So really thinking about what do you want to hear when you’re struggling and use that as your driver to generate that mantra for yourself.

Cori (26:32):
The mantras always seemed like verbal, hugging to me. I’ll be a hundred percent honest. And then I realized how many of them I had in my own life, and I was like, maybe I am a hugger. Just kidding. No. But it doesn’t have to be something that’s even a positive affirmation, so to speak. It can just be something that makes you pause so that you’re not letting that critic be so negative that you’re seeing the growth opportunity. For me, that’s just the question of why when I really have something happen or I start to criticize myself up and go, why am I critiquing this? Why am I going down this path? Why do I have these feelings? And when I start to do that, instantly I let some of the stress go and I let the emotion go because it becomes just a reflection. And we learn so much more in the reflecting than even in the doing. And the more we embrace that, the more we can grow. So I even feel proud of myself. I’m like, yeah, I’m asking myself why, and I’m pausing in this moment, and that really moves me forward. So just remember, it can be a question even that helps you stop the negativity to reflect on what you can grow from. It doesn’t have to be a verbal hug, so to speak.

Allison (27:38):
Yes. I love that.

Cori (27:40):
So on that note, Alison, any closing thoughts for somebody who’s really struggling with that negativity mindset? Who’s struggling with that? Inner critics often leading to emotional sabotage when they do really feel like they’ve just started to get that momentum going? Any closing thoughts to help them do one thing today?

Allison (27:58):
Yeah, I mean, I think just that reminder that we’re all part of this common humanity and we all have those moments of struggle. And so it’s okay. It’s okay to feel that way and just give yourself even just five minutes to say, okay, yeah, I am struggling right now. This is really hard. I want to improve. I want to do better. Something along those lines. And then really just give yourself that permission to take one action that’s going to help you move forward. And it does not have to be anything crazy. It can be something so little as simply having one more glass of water or going to bed 10 minutes early, something so stupid simple that you can do it and it’s going to just help build that momentum and that snowball effect that you’re talking about.

Cori (28:52):
And I love that you mentioned we’re not alone, even don’t hesitate to reach out in the Facebook group in the forum. Reach out for a little bit of help and motivation and to even see how other people have conquered the challenge. While it’s hard to be vulnerable in that way, not only can we potentially put some positivity out there and brag about something we’ve accomplished as we ask for that help, but we’ll see we’re not alone and we’ll come up with a lot of extra tools that might really resonate with us. Be us verbal hugger or not. Allison, thank you so much for joining me today. This was fabulous. I’d love to hear how you guys are all going to start using these tools and techniques to show yourself a little bit more of self-compassion this week.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. Why have you failed? Often we think that our failures are the opposite of us succeeding, but that’s just not the case. And if you really think about some of the people you idolize, your role models, the great people out there, they have probably failed more times than you ever have. And the more I failed, the more I realized how valuable a learning experience it really is, because we can ultimately see things as an obstacle or an opportunity. Success really is struggle and failures are a part of that success. And it’s not fun. It’s not something we often want to own, but the more we can really see that we only hold ourselves back when we don’t see the opportunity in those failures, the more we can constantly learn and grow and truly move forward faster.

(00:53):
Again, all those people that we idolize often have failed even more times than they technically succeeded. It’s just that they’ve succeeded so greatly because of those failures. And I was trying to think of a way to explain how we can change our perception of failure. And I saw a video that Ashley had sent me when she was dog sitting, kiwi and sushi, and she had zoomed in on Kiwi scratching at the glass on the door and Kiwi scratching the glass, whining to come into the room, whining, whining, whining. I’m like, oh gosh, she’s going to scratch up the glass. What are you doing, Ashley? And then Ashley zooms out, and here is Kiwi standing at the glass when the door is wide open because it’s a sliding door, it’s wide open. She and sushi could have just gone around, but hey, she’s just standing there with no clue as to what’s going on, watching Kiwi scratch at it and Kiwi scratching as if she can’t get in.

(01:40):
She’s putting this roadblock in her own way when she could go around the door. And finally Ashley persuaded them to come in. But I think this is almost how we often look at failure. We see it as the door being closed on us. We can’t go around it when really the door is wide open. We could go around, we’re putting this roadblock that we see as immovable in our own way, and sometimes we need an outside perspective to help us around. Sometimes we just need to pause and step back. But the more we don’t see failures as the end, something that we can’t come back from, something that we can’t grow from, the more we can really help ourselves move forward. So I would urge you, if you’re looking at a door that you feel like isn’t open to go through, really assess what is this door telling you?

(02:19):
What is it telling you about what you’ve done currently that might be not allowing you to seemingly move forward on this one path? What is this teaching you as to what might actually work? Because I think a lot of times in our failures we think, okay, this doesn’t work. But then the opposite might be true. If that doesn’t work, what’s the opposite action I could have taken that could really move me forward? And I found this quote that I thought was really good that I wanted to share with you guys. The best inventors often arrive at amazing ideas precisely because their original plans failed. Think about how many times you’ve had a great day, a great experience you’ve made, even a recipe that tasted better and you actually made a mistake when you were doing that thing. I can tell you I’ve had so many instances like the things didn’t work out exactly as I planned and the day ended up being better or the restaurant experience ended up being better or the recipe ended up being better.

(03:09):
Cooking not quite as much, but there’s always those situations where you do something even accidentally wrong and you don’t realize till after and things turn out better because those mistakes that we have happen, those setbacks are truly, and I keep saying this, but learning experiences, they are opportunities to step back and assess, Hey, what did I do and why did or didn’t it work? I actually thought it was really interesting, a story by the founder, Spanx. She had her dad ask her every single day, what did you fail at today? And actually be disappointed if she didn’t come up with something. And I think that’s such a great way to frame failures in our own head because those experiences we demonize, we feel bad for because we don’t like looking like we messed up or we’re not perfect, but we’re not perfect. And so often, again, if you think about the people you idolize, they have failed the most, struggled the most.

(03:58):
And so the more we can see that in ourselves and step back and treat ourselves like a friend, when we do struggle, the better off we’re going to be. So because success is struggle and it can be hard to step back, I think it’s really key that we have a few questions sort of in our repertoire to ask ourselves when we do hit those hard points. And so I was thinking about what is failure? How failing isn’t failure unless we actually give up and looking at those situations to assess them. So some questions I like to ask myself are, why did that happen? Why did the actual thing happen? Was it that I actually didn’t implement the plan? Was it that I didn’t implement the plan and it didn’t match my priorities right? Now, is this something that really is against a non-negotiable I have in my life or a value that I have in my life?

(04:40):
Or did I not fully embrace it to actually go all in? Because I think a lot of times too, we’ll be making changes. We’ll be saying we’re tracking our macros and we’re tracking our food, but we’re not actually shifting our portions to hit our new macros. And so we say macro tracking didn’t work, but when we stepped back, we assess, oh, I was tracking and that felt hard alone, but I didn’t change my portion. So of course if I didn’t adjust my portions, I’m not going to see results. So why did that happen? Really dive into even the mindsets behind the actual actions to see where your resistance might have been to fully implementing and then think, are there triggers I can note to avoid it happening again, especially with patterns, we tend to repeat. We come home from work after a long day, we’re stressed, we go to the cabinet, we grab out 20 Oreos, and before we even know we’re sitting on the couch with all of them gone, maybe that’s just me.

(05:28):
But have you ever done something like that where you just repeat this pattern almost unconsciously, and before you know it, you’re feeling guilty about it because you’ve done it. Shifting your environment or noting a trigger earlier in the day can really help you. Where if you know, Hey, on stressful days like this, if I just go straight home, I’m going to repeat that pattern. How can I change that? Maybe I’m going to go for a walk instead. Or hey, I usually go in the front door, put my bag down in this way and go straight to the cabinet. I’m actually going to go in through the garage, which will make me have to go upstairs first or something that changes. The environment changes exactly. The routine that you follow can be that little mental reminder so that we don’t just fall back into that pattern.

(06:06):
So note triggers even in reflection. So often right away, we can’t catch yourself in the act of something, but right after it happens, as soon as we really see that a pattern has repeated, we’ve failed how to step back, step back and say, okay, what can I learn from this that also reframes the event in your head to not feel so guilty about it or not see it so negatively, but step back and then say, what other ways can I notice this might be happening before it happens to catch myself? Because that’s where you start to get a little more proactive. You change things even saying, Hey, I just know that this week is going to be a stressful week, so I’m going to change my behaviors before it even gets stressful. And so maybe you out of stress wouldn’t have repeated that pattern, but you don’t even have to worry about it because you notice that, hey, this is going to be a stressful week.

(06:48):
I know what stress, I can repeat this pattern, so I’m going to completely change everything and even make something fun out of this to help reduce some stress in a different way. And then really think, what can I learn to move forward from it? Again, seeing everything as learning experience, failures are just learning with frustration. And the more we value them for that, the more we can move forward. So what can I really learn from this? Don’t beat yourself up. You’re going to learn the most from this experience because you don’t want to repeat it. So often we breeze past the learning experiences and good things because it worked out. We don’t reflect, which we should also do more of, but it isn’t as painful. And if we just sort of push failures aside and never learn from them, we are way more bound to repeat them and we don’t want to repeat them.

(07:27):
And then also in trying to do potentially exactly the opposite, we hold ourselves back from seeing the opportunity in what we were already doing. We can make ourselves feel broken, guilty, and only mentally sabotage ourselves more. So really seek that learning experience from everything and see it as a positive. Because again, a lot of times the feelings we associate with events are what can hold us back even more. If you see going to the cabinet, repeating that cycle where you had even one Oreo and then you slash the other three tires because you got that flat, right? And then you go eat all the other Oreos, and that’s like sitting by the side of the road flat tire, instead of fixing it, you slash the other three, you don’t want to do that, right? But in doing that, you could feel guilty or you could say, Hey, what can I learn from this?

(08:04):
And even in stepping back and releasing that emotion, it’s going to make it way easier to not repeat it because there’s not that guilt involved. So think of this as also seeing the opportunity and in a positive way that you can disassociate some of those feelings, feeling of guilt, especially to beat ourselves up, which will make you more and more open to moving forward faster and faster, which will help you see results faster and faster. And then what did this teach me about myself? Not only recognizing the environment, the patterns, but I think we need to dive a lot deeper a lot of times because there’s often an underlying emotion and underlying belief or boundaries set for ourselves. If we don’t question deeper, we’re bound to repeat the same mistake in a different way. I call it the circle of hard. Often we hit the hard, right?

(08:48):
We go this direction towards our goals and we hit an edge of the circle and then we say, oh, this is too hard, or this doesn’t work. And we go back and then we basically go a different direction. But because there’s a circle of heart around us, we’re sort of always hitting the same hard, it’s just labeled in a different way. That’s why we might do keto and feel like, oh, well, it’s low carb, that doesn’t work for me. So then we do another diet that restricts something else, but we’re really repeating the same pattern of restriction and we haven’t really assessed, okay, why does restriction do this to me? What are my non-negotiables? What are my values? What are my priorities? How can I work with my lifestyle to really make a change? And so we basically hit the same hard just going in the circle, keeping ourselves constantly stuck within these boundaries.

(09:24):
So really assess what did I learn about myself and my own patterns and my own handling of different things, my own routines, my own mindsets? Because the more you do that internal reflection and really ask why, the more you’re going to assess what you need and truly need to move forward. And sometimes it’s that habits you’ve been doing just now don’t fit your lifestyle. And the more you assess, okay, well, where is my mind right now? What am I evaluating? What am I prioritizing? The more you can even evolve those habits to match really where you’re at right now because something doesn’t work for us forever, even over the course of a year. So I want you to ask those questions and especially the last question, because I think everything is really an opportunity to learn more about ourselves to then tweak. Because habits in one form don’t fit us and fit us forever.

(10:07):
Routines and patterns will shift. We are constantly evolving. We just want to control the direction that we are changing in, and we can better do that by pausing to reflect. Reflection is all about taking ownership, and the more we take ownership, the more we can shift our perspective, how we view the events, see opportunity or obstacle in the failures, because people who succeed the most, those people we idolize, didn’t not fail. They just always saw the opportunity or the learning experience and everything to eventually move forward. So I really want you to think, why have I failed? And then do those assessments. Think about any event that you’ve sort of even tried to hide from and go back and learn from it.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. I am incredibly lazy and I own it, and I actually credit this with the fact that I’ve become more disciplined because of my ownership of my own laziness. So let me explain. We are creatures of comfort and convenience and ease. When we think about the habits that we repeat, they’re often easy. They’re unconscious. They have solved a problem for us, and they’ve become so innate they don’t take any willpower or thought to really replicate. It’s why it’s really hard to break some of those habits, like maybe coming home from work and going straight to the cabinet. We’ve ingrained that pattern so much so that we don’t even think about it. It’s convenient, comfortable, and easy, but this same fact of the fact that we are creatures or comfort, convenience and ease is why new habits are so hard.

(00:53):
Because a lot of times they take thought they’re uncomfortable, they’re different than what we’ve always done. There might be a learning process which is hard involved. And so when we’re thinking about this, the more we can embrace that we are the creatures of comfort, or as I like to put it lazy, the more we can break down those new habits we’re trying to implement, and even the habits we’re trying to unlearn in a way that allows us to steer into this and make it more comfortable, easier. So when we think about habit change, it’s the unlearning process of habits that might be there and the learning process of new habits. New habits might be easier to implement because there isn’t an unlearning process that has to go there. So if you’re trying to implement a totally new habit that you don’t have any bad habits with, you might be like, okay, great.

(01:33):
I can easily do this new thing. It fits in right away. It’s comfortable enough and convenient enough, no problem, right? There’s no unlearning. Unlearning is what makes things often hard in that we have to make that conscious break that pattern as we’re creating that new pattern, which often also clashes with what is easy, comfortable, and convenient. So when we think about this, the first step might be to make things so small that we make that habit. We’re repeating that we want to stop a little bit harder because by just doing that, all of a sudden we’re building towards the other habit. Or by implementing the new habit, we might want to break it down into such a small component that it also helps us stop the other one. So things that really can work are shifts in our environment, especially for old habits and routines.

(02:15):
You might’ve heard me use this example in the past, but it’s something that’s so silly in nature, but made such a huge impact. So we don’t have to think about these things being super dramatic, but I had a problem with what I called the one more game where if I started eating a piece of candy and I had multiple little mini candy bars, I felt like I just always ate the entire bag. And so I wanted to stop this pattern. So when I did get it and I wanted to have a few pieces, I would put some now out in the cabinet and instead of leaving the container of all the other candy, the bag of the candy in the cabinet as well, I put in the freezer. Candy in the freezer tastes just as good, if not arguably better than in the cabinet. But just shifting that so that it was in the freezer, I felt like it was there whenever I wanted it would last.

(02:56):
Now eons even longer. It stopped me from feeling the need to have more of it, and sometimes now I still take it out of the freezer and eat right from there, but I’m not as tempted because it’s a different pattern interrupt for me, it’s a change in my environment, which may not work for you may seem very silly because again, it’s still just as good, if not arguably better. But that changed the routine from being something unconscious to enough of a discomfort, a new hard, just a little bit more difficult and a little bit more out of mind that it helped me. Same thing with learning new habits. You might say, Hey, for my goal to see results as fast as possible, I know tracking macros is great, but it’s overwhelming. It seems tedious. It seems just like something I can’t do. It’s so hard.

(03:37):
So you mentally resist it, even if you could potentially physically do it. So instead of just going straight to trying to force that which ends up making you feel restricted, you push it back even mentally more, which makes it even harder and uncomfortable. Think about what is the easiest, most comfortable thing to do with that. Maybe you’re like, Hey, I’m okay tracking as long as I don’t have to actually make any changes to start. Or, hey, maybe I’ll write down my food or maybe I’ll take pictures of my food, or maybe I’ll even focus on specific things at each meal to hold myself accountable and track in that way. One habit doesn’t have to be done in one way and won’t be done in one way by everybody or even by ourselves over the course of our life. But we want to think about how we can make those habits we want to break harder and the habits we want to implement even easier.

(04:19):
Recognizing even maybe the ideal habit we want to build towards knowing we’re taking those steps because the more we just go right against that hard, we bash our head into a wall. Basically trying to make that habit change the more we are going to push back against it and not want to do it again. Owning our own laziness, what can I be lazy with? Hey, I want to hit macros, so I’m going to map out one day of macros and track one day and create meal prep or even buy meal prep to make it real easy. I love having meal prep. Yes, I do like cooking. I think it’s great to working all these different things, but I also know that I am lazy and at the end of the day, if something takes longer than five minutes to microwave, there are days I won’t do what I should do, what I really want to do in terms of my goals, and I’ll make a choice that I won’t be proud of later.

(05:00):
So instead, I have that frozen meal prep. I can microwave in under five minutes and I can go. So the more you think about, Hey, I’m lazy, let’s own this so that my energy can go to the priorities I really want to focus on. The more you’re going to find ways to make those habits that you want to break a little bit harder and those habits you want to implement a little bit easier, and then find the fun in it. If something is feeling like too much effort, how can you break it down? Because maybe your priorities have shifted. How can you find something new to invigorate it? Maybe you don’t like foam rolling, but you really love listening to the podcasts. Listen to the podcast as you foam roll. Connect those habits, but find ways to steer into making things a little bit more comfortable, convenient, and easy when you want to implement them or a little bit harder uncomfortable and just not as convenient when you want to break them, but own your own laziness and see your discipline actually skyrocket from this.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey. Even the stuff you don’t want to hear, habits are like rocks we’re trying to carry across the field. So I was trying to think about making habit changes as we set new goals and how we usually approach habit change and why we often find that we can’t maintain the habits we’re trying to create and the times that we actually are successful. Not to mention even recognizing why certain bad habits are so easy to keep repeating and so hard to break. In thinking about all this, I came up with this visual that really helped me and I wanted to share it with all of you. It was this idea that we have these different size, big rocks, medium stones, small stones and pebbles all sitting in a pile, and we have this bag that we can use and carry about five pounds across this field, and we need to get ’em across the field to reach our goal, and we want to do this as efficiently as possible.

(00:59):
Most of the time, we don’t want to take extra long to reach our goal. So looking at this pile, I think a lot of times we go, okay, well I’m going to carry the big rocks across first, get as many as I can, and that way I’m doing it when I’m freshest, I’m getting these heavy things out of the way. So if we go to picking up the big rocks, which are those habits I think are often hard, most outside our comfort zone. They’re the ones we think, well, I can do this right now. So motivated. They’re the ones that are sacrifices that we feel like we’re kind of will powering our way through. It’s tracking macros when we’ve always said tracking macros is so overwhelming and we’re going to do it perfectly. It’s the two a day workouts. It’s some of these really intense changes that we make.

(01:34):
This all or nothing attitude type habits, those are the big rocks. And so we go and we put a couple in the bag and either A, we can’t pick it up, so we never actually get started. So overwhelmed with the weight of it, or we get halfway across the field and all of a sudden the bag ripped because it couldn’t carry that weight, and now we can’t even go back and start carrying the other rocks across in any efficient manner. That’s how we often approach habit changes, trying to do these big, overhauling heavy changes that weigh us down and ultimately sabotage us when we run out of that initial motivation and willpower. It’s like we had all this passion and then this passion bomb exploded on us and we couldn’t do anymore. So if you go back to that pile, we now have the medium stones, the small stones, the small pebbles, the medium and small stones we could carry a lot more of, but still, again, it might take us a little bit longer to go across.

(02:22):
These habits are things that might be a little uncomfortable but easier to do, or they might take a little bit more effort, be harder to do, but are more comfortable for us. So thinking about things like if you say working out, working out is technically hard, but if you like doing it, you might be like, this is the thing I can always do. I can’t change my diet, but I can change my workouts. Well, you’re comfortable being uncomfortable in that way. It’s technically a hard thing. You’re just comfortable making changes. So we have habits like that. We also have habits that for some reason we really just don’t like doing. We’re not comfortable doing, even though they’re so easy to do. Not even fitness related. I equate this to doing laundry. It’s not really that hard to do, not even that time consuming, but I hate doing it.

(03:05):
So we all have those habits. It might be meal prepping for you, it might be drinking more water, but those are sort of the medium stones and small stones, and we can get those across. But if we’re only carrying those across, it’s not that efficient. There’s times where we put too much weight in and we bog ourselves down or results don’t happen fast enough, so we lose motivation and we give up because we feel like we’re not there yet. Same thing can sort of be said for those small pebbles. These are the habits that barely push your comfort zone. They’re the really easy 1% changes, and while they can really add up, but we might even be able to carry a whole lot of them across in one go. This is often where we’re like, unless we’re really embracing sustainable changes, we’re like, Ugh, nothing’s adding up because these aren’t sexy.

(03:45):
They don’t feel like these massive changes for us. So it doesn’t give us that feeling of doing more. It’s often the things we really need to do, but again, it makes us not as efficient or create as fast a change. It’s sustainable, but we still have those other hard habits we might need to embrace. Sometimes it can help us work our way up to them, but we still have all this diversity of habit change we have to make. And we have only so much willpower. We have only so much motivation. We have only so many ways we can shift our priorities. So how can we manage to make habit changes that actually last? This is where you have to think about efficiency in that bag. What’s one hard habit change you can make? Put that into the bag. How can I fit some medium stones and small stones of bear on that big rock?

(04:28):
So how can I include some habit changes that are maybe a little less comfortable but easy to do technically or a little harder to do, but I’m more comfortable with sort of around that? And then how can I put in some 1% changes around that for maybe one of the other big rocks I can’t carry yet? So I’m using all that space efficiently. If I’m combining all these different types of habits into one bag, I’m going to make it across the field as fast as possible. And I might even be able to then say, Hey, I can actually take two of these big rocks. They’re not quite as big in the next go. And you might be able to do a little bit more, be willing to make a few more sacrifices. You are really motivated, or you might hit a time of year, be a little fatigued carrying the rocks across and recognize, Hey, I don’t have the same focus and intensity.

(05:12):
I’m fatigued mentally, even fatigued with the habit changes. I’m going to carry a few more small pebbles in this go. But that way you’re always moving across and you’re moving across as efficiently as possible. You’re keeping that forward with momentum towards your goal. Well, recognizing that different habits have different hard for us and that we can’t just always go at one speed, carrying only one weight of a habit, and that that’s also what sabotaged us. And along the way, we might get lucky and even find a sledgehammer where we can break down some of the big rocks into smaller stones that are more manageable for us to get across. But the more we look at our habit changes not just as one size, one type of habit, but as this diversity, the more we can really assess who we are, what we need, even at this stage season of life, time of the year, to be able to carry across those habits, to be able to use those habits to move forward towards our goal in the most efficient manner possible.

(06:05):
Love to hear your thoughts on this. Hope this really helped you embrace habit changes and even assess some of the habits you’re currently doing to see are these big rocks that are really hard and am I doing too many of them to sabotage myself and overwhelm myself and run out of willpower? Or am I only sticking with the small pebbles? And that’s maybe why, yes, this feels sustainable, but I’m not seeing results snowball as fast as I’d like, and I’m losing motivation because of that. Can I incorporate some of the small stones and some of the medium stones into this to really be efficient in how I’m seeing results happen and be able to get everything moving forward towards my goal a little bit faster?

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.