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. It can be really fricking hard to step outside your comfort zone and face your fears, but we're going to get a little nerdy and talk about motivation, how you can push yourself to do those hard things. And I'm joined by the fabulous Dr. Leigh to talk all about how you can do hard things and face your fears. So thank you so much, Leigh, for joining me today.

Leigh (00:34):
Yeah, well thank you so much for having me on.

Cori (00:37):
So let's talk about this because it is very uncomfortable to step outside that comfort zone and to face your fears, but why is it so important that we really push ourselves to do this?

Leigh (00:50):
Yeah, so I mean, we oftentimes don't pursue hard things because it's fun, but we want to pursue them because they build the person that can handle more. So growth is never going to feel comfortable. That's often when we know we're in the right place. We all crave progress, but we also crave comfort. And it's really this tension between the two where the real growth happens. So our instinct is always to avoid the hard thing because it brings uncertainty and discomfort, but that's any meaningful transformation and health, fitness, life is on the other side of that discomfort. So just like an example, ever doing a workout like after a long break or the first time you've done a new style of training, honestly, anytime you've ever done anything new, the first time you do it, it's going to feel awkward and heavy and slow. And then a few sessions later, maybe the weight that crushed you initially feels much more manageable. And that's adaptation to a stressor. So your body and brain learning that you are capable of handling more than you originally thought,

Cori (02:00):
We become more comfortable being uncomfortable, and it translates to so many different things. When you do handle that heavier weight, it translates to you gaining confidence, building that strength that can help you allow yourself to be more uncomfortable in other everyday things. So it's kind of crazy how the more you do, the more you do, the more you embrace that discomfort, the more you become comfortable being uncomfortable in that way and you just have that mental fortitude to do more. Now when we think about taking that leap to be uncomfortable or step outside of what we're used to face our fears, we usually think, well, I have to be motivated to do this. But motivation's kind of a myth. How do you help people take that risk step outside their comfort zone when they say, I'm not motivated, or how do you help them build that motivation even?

Leigh (02:50):
Yeah, so motivation often gets misunderstood. So it's really not about hype or willpower, but it's the byproduct of three psychological drivers and we'll dive into them and break them down. The first one is expectancy or the belief that your efforts are going to work. So first of all, you have to believe that you efforts are going to lead to results. So if you've tried multiple times and failed repeatedly, like different dieting cycles or inconsistent workouts, your expectancy or your motivation is going to drop. So your brain is going to start to associate effort with futility and motivation wanes. The caveat here is that the world of exercise science is constantly evolving and changing as theories get tested, and that's where we oftentimes get really confused, but that's where trusted sources and structured programs can really come in and help build clarity and belief that your effort's going to lead to something. The second one would be values.

Cori (03:58):
Wait, I'm going to pause you right there really quick not to interrupt you, but just because I do think this is such an important thing to touch on, and I think a lot of clients we see coming in and a lot of people in general are like, I don't believe anything will work for me. We feel broken. What would you tell a client that is feeling that way to help them believe that it is possible for themselves?

Leigh (04:19):
Yeah, I mean we do see that a lot with our clients, especially women and per post menopause. And that's because a lot of the research is really evolving around females and things are changing. And also I like to tell women too that in perimenopause we're in uncharted territory. So things that maybe worked in the past just simply aren't working now and we just have to find the new way that we're going to do things. It can be really hard to break those past cycles, but approaching it is with open mind and looking at the current research, which again, like I said, is always evolving, really helps to kind of give you a fresh perspective.

Cori (05:03):
It's almost sort of remembering that what used to work may not work, and so you're not broken, you've just evolved and owning the heart of facing something new and even believing you deserve it is kind of key. Because if we don't do those different things, it is just sort of like, what's the point? I don't think anything will work for me. But when you really step back and assess who you are, where you are now, what you've even done and the opportunities within some of those slip ups or mistakes or setbacks, the more you can help yourself move forward. Now diving into the second factor.

Leigh (05:35):
Yeah, so the other one would be value or the meaning behind the goal. So this one's super important because goals that don't have any meaning they don't hold any power. So you might want to lose 10 pounds, but why is it confidence, strength, longevity, we have to have a deeper personally meaningful, which is going to transform that superficial goal of I want to lose 10 pounds into something that's worth sustained effort For me personally. To give just a personal example, this is where I start to connect the dots between what my personal goals are and the evidence behind healthy aging and longevity. So for me, my value comes from knowing what I want to prevent. So things like osteoporosis, hip fractures, chronic disease, cancer, like frailty. So those are my big fears. So having that awareness and understanding of the science and how muscle building can protect against those things gives my goals a lot of value. And honestly, this is shaped by my perspective as a physical therapist because I've seen firsthand what can happen later in life when we don't prioritize our health, when strength, mobility, independence start to slip away. So that experience really reinforces why I care so deeply about this work in general and then also my personal goals. So this is where you have to really draw from your personal life and personal experience to give your goals meaning.

Cori (07:07):
And I think that even relates back to the first factor where the more meaning you have, the more you say, well, I'm worth always trying no matter what. And so I'm going to believe that by testing out these new things, I'm going to find something that works for me even if nothing has before. And your goals are very amazing and very a lot of foresight forecasting for yourself, predicting for your future and to live your best future. I have to admit I'm sometimes a little bit more one step in front of myself, or I'll even say vain with it, where for me, one of the biggest life-changing goals was trying to achieve that six pack and get leaner because at that phase in my personal training career, I felt like a fraud if I couldn't help myself do it, if I was trying to help other people reach a level of leans, but also in doing something that seemed simple, deprioritized in my life, not as important as my health, all those other very important things for my future, I did deprioritize that and make myself feel like it was something I couldn't value because it was s silly or vain not as important, whatever else, all the labels I put on it that really shouldn't have been there.

(08:14):
And so for me understanding that it was just pushing myself to do something hard and just for myself that actually opened up so many other doors, ended up being a really big why that was so valuable for so many other areas of my life. Built confidence helped me take other risks, ask for other things, change everything. So what can seem like a small goal of losing the last five pounds or some goal that you think of people might judge in a negative way, it can honestly pay off in so many ways that we don't even recognize. So sometimes taking that step back of what this means that you're doing for yourself in trying to achieve that goal can be really key to seeing the value and then helping you embrace stepping outside that comfort zone to do it. Sort of now off of that, there is going to be some work that's involved in achieving our goal. How do we sort of navigate the mindsets of effort, outcome, time? Does it really all add up? Is it worth it? How can we sort of navigate that to find the motivation, so to speak?

Leigh (09:17):
Yeah, so that's a good point. So there's always this delay between time and effort and reward. For me, my goals are when I'm hopefully 102, we don't have to all live in that mindset of what's going to happen when I'm 90. We can have these smaller goals and oftentimes that's what we want. So the longer it takes to see the results, the harder it's to stay engaged. So if personally my goals were only going to come to fruition when I was in the nursing home, it'd be hard for me to stay engaged. So really we need to have smaller wins along the way, and so they shorten this feedback loop and keep our brains invested. So you won't see visible body composition changes after two workouts. It's just not going to happen. But what you can feel after two workouts is more engaged, you can feel proud, you can feel really strong. So these immediate rewards are going to sustain our motivation long enough for the long-term ones to arrive later on.

Cori (10:27):
So what I'm hearing is that motivation is partly built through action. We can't just wait for motivation to take action, which is a weird sort of cycle conundrum when we really think about it in terms of getting ourselves to actually take that leap to face our fears and do hard things. So then how do we get that little push to take action?

Leigh (10:53):
So I mean doing hard things and doing the challenging stuff, it's not a personality trait, it's a practice. So it's like every small time that you choose, the harder more aligned action, your training, resilience, your brain is going to learn gradually over time, that discomfort isn't danger, it's data. So you start to really just show yourself that you can trust yourself. And the more often you do that, then the easier it becomes to trust yourself.

Cori (11:29):
It's building that belief that we can, that self-efficacy that's so important. But I think there's a lot to how we teach ourselves to trust ourselves, especially when some of us have broken our trust even with ourselves in the past. How can someone go about starting to rebuild or build that trust in themselves?

Leigh (11:50):
So that is really kind of the engine behind motivation. So it's this thought of it's not just like I want this, but I believe I can figure this out. So the other side, the great thing about self-efficacy is that the higher your self-efficacy is for a task, the more likely you are to participate in it. And so just to kind of break it down, if you feel confident that you're going to walk a mile with ease, your self-efficacy for that is high. If you feel like you're going to start that mile and you're going to have to stop after a couple couple steps and take a breath, then you have low self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is not confidence or self-esteem. So self-confidence would be, I believe in myself, self-esteem is I value myself and self-efficacy is this, I believe I can succeed in this situation and you can actually develop it and build it. So there's kind of four main steps that we can walk through on how you build up your self-efficacy or your belief in yourself, especially if you've had lots of experiences where you've failed and tried. This can be where it's really important to work on this.

Cori (13:12):
And it's even in reflecting in those failed experiences, and sorry to interrupt, but I think sometimes we think of those as the opposite of building that belief that we can, when really those are all learning experiences that can show us the way and even make us feel stronger because we keep getting back up. Success is failure, it is struggle, and you can even see how the belief that you can is what makes you motivated to do things. We're motivated to do things we're good at, we're not as motivated to do things we aren't as good at. So you can see how this all plays in. So then it's very key. We get to those four things, we all need to build it.

Leigh (13:48):
Yes, I love having action steps. So that's why I wanted to make sure that I have these here for you guys because I think it's so helpful to just sort of have a playbook. So again, to your point of just doing things, that's one way that we can do it is just mastery of experiences. You don't have high self-efficacy first you earn it through evidence. So every time you do that scary, hard thing and you succeed, you gather data points that say, I can trust myself. So again, you build it behaviorally, not intellectually. You can't think your way into the belief you have to actually do it. We can't just sit on the sidelines and think I'll be able to do that thing. You have to start, you have to do it. And that's where we like to start small, celebrate and then repeat. So we love to celebrate small wins here at redefining strength. Honestly, that's because we know that these small wins are going to compound over time into that high self-efficacy. And so every small win is going to reinforce that you can do hard things. So I mean just some examples would be like every time you hit your step goal or you stick to your workout plan, you choose protein at lunch, that's evidence to your body and yourself that you can do these hard things and they're small, but they compound over time.

Cori (15:10):
And sometimes smaller is better, especially starting out because it builds that success mindset. The more you feel successful, the more you want to do, the more success starts to snowball. So it's even remembering that something that might seem sort of silly simple to start could just be exactly what you need to meet yourself where you're at. So start even smaller than you think that you really need to because it can really build. Now off of that, we're starting to build that momentum. We're starting to take action. What's another way we can sort of help ourself believe that we can?

Leigh (15:45):
Yeah, so this is one called social modeling. So it's like if they can, I can. So this is why community is so important. So seeing others like you succeed is going to increase your belief that you can too. So the unicorn corral, the Facebook group, the community accountability, these are really effective because you see proof that it's possible. I know sometimes we talk about comparison, but it's not about comparison, it's about expansion. So maybe you're watching a busy parent lift consistently and find balance with her nutrition, well, that gives you permission to try. Stories are oftentimes more powerful than stats. So when you see someone succeeding, that belief builds faster than any scientific explanation that I could give.

Cori (16:39):
I think that's a key component to recognize too. We are creatures of comparison. We do compare things that's helped us even survive to some extent. Like, Ooh, that looks like X thing. That's dangerous. I'm not going to do that, or I'm not going to go over there. So there is some comparison that can be helpful, and I think it's recognizing that you can make comparison a superpower, and as long as you recognize the negative side of that, but that's where surrounding yourself with the right people can really pay off. And actually really funny timing, but Mika shared a great client message this morning that was like, Hey, I made this change for myself and now my daughter and my husband are seeing me make this change. And they're redefining what their fitness schools are because as they say to her apparently, well, if you can do it, I can do it. And she's a btat. So I don't know if that's fully true, but there is some component of that, of when you do something and you show it's possible, a lot more people see opportunities for themselves as well.

Leigh (17:39):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's powerful. I mean, I've recently had a client whose friend just saw what she was doing and joined just because she was, well, she's doing great. I want to do great too. So it's kind of like this expansion effect.

Cori (17:55):
And so we've talked about how it's taking that action, it's surrounding yourself with people even taking that action to believe that you can. What's sort of the third component that can help us really build that belief?

Leigh (18:07):
So social persuasion or you've got this. So encouragement from credible voices can really help strengthen that belief. So a coach, a training partner, a friend, saying something like You're capable of more than you think can actually nudge you into action. It has to be earned. It can't be empty praise, but action is how you are going to build that. So again, you can't think your way into it. You have to do it. So if you have that encouraging voice on your shoulder, you can do more than you think. You'll start to do that action.

Cori (18:44):
And that's why tracking progress and tracking the changes and even the habit implementation is so key. I think it allows you to give yourself honest praise, to get honest praise from outside sources and to even get oddly praise just from seeing everything accomplished. So it's very important that we do track our progress with the habit changes because it keeps that momentum going now off of that final, fourth way that we can really help ourselves build that.

Leigh (19:12):
Yeah, so this one is an important one. It's our psychological responses or how we're going to interpret stress. So of course we're going to feel stress when we're doing hard things like nerves, fatigue, tension. Anytime we're doing something hard or out of our comfort zone, we're going to have some stress and that's okay. But it's really how we kind of reframe the stress or do some change to action or to our self-talk that's going to change that stress and challenge to not being a failure. It's going to be something where if you're feeling nervous before a workout, you can say, well, this is just my body getting ready to perform. If you're feeling sore after a workout, that's where you can change. Do a reframe and say, well, I'm not weak. It's my body growing. I'm adapting to stress. So it's sort of that self-talk kind of how we interpret stress. If we're not, we don't want to always freak out and think that we're failing when we meet something challenging and we feel like it's going to be hard. It's just some simple reframes can really have a big effect.

Cori (20:26):
It's recognizing too that stress isn't a negative. It means that you care about the outcome and that you care about the effort that you're giving. And it even means that you have clear purpose to what you're doing. There is a definitive why it's not something you're just doing. Because we don't get stressed about things we don't care about. We get stressed about things we do. And so I think that that means that this thing is valuable and allowing yourself to do all the reframing or even do deep breathing, some of the destressors that you can in the moment to help yourself calm down just enough to take action with that, and often action alone reduces our stress, I've found. So now great tips. Thank you very much taking those and you're taking action to build that belief that you can. How does this tie back into growth and into motivation?

Leigh (21:16):
So understanding these things, understanding kind of what is motivation really, and why does it matter for growth? Why is this even brought up with hard things? So again, thinking about that high self-efficacy. So that belief that you can handle the situation that's going to raise your expectancy or the belief that your effort matters. So that belief is going to sustain your motivation. Again, it's the engine that powers motivation. So you have high self-efficacy, you're going to put forth effort. You're going to achieve progress. That's going to help you build confidence that's going to lead to more effort. So it's kind of like this cycle effect. So believing you can be consistent, makes consistency easier. Believing you can lift heavier actually does change how you approach a weight or how you approach a lift. Believing that you can navigate a busy season is going to prevent this all or nothing thinking. So very important as the holidays come up,

Cori (22:28):
Definitely important, and we have to have that direction to drive us with all of this, we have to have that purpose we're striving for, which sort of brings us to a very important subject and one that I personally probably groaned about doing a little too much starting out because I was not good at it. Let's face it, there was not motivation to do it, wasn't good at it, didn't have the belief that I could or didn't see the why, the value in it, but now really do. But it's goal setting because direction really does drive us, and if we don't have that purpose to what we're doing, we're not going to take the leap to be uncomfortable or face a fear. How can we set goals that really can drive everything forward so that we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone?

Leigh (23:11):
Goal setting is really challenging for people. It really is, but it's so valuable. It's like your roadmap. So the key thing here with goal setting is you really have to clarify why the goal matters to you. I can't give you goals. You might not care about your goals when you're 19, but it's really important to have personally meaningful goals in terms of motivation, and we want to break those long-term goals into short-term actions because we want to reduce that distance that we talked about. So again, that you're not going to see body recomp in two workouts, but you can feel stronger and there's other closer goals to obtain that's going to keep your motivation high. So you know me, I love action steps, so I've got some action steps for you guys. So the first one would be to shift your outcome goals to process goals. So for example, an outcome goal would be, I want to lose 20 pounds. So it's kind of vague, it's just the outcome. But a process goal would be, I will strength train three times a week. So the process is what you can control. You can control strength training three times a week. You can actually go do it, and this is where you're going to build that. You're going to go strength train. You're going to tell yourself, okay, I can do it. So build your self-efficacy.

Cori (24:42):
I think it's almost like being on the field. You can't stare at the scoreboard hoping the score of the game is going to change. You have to actually play in the game. And part of playing well in the game to see the scoreboard reflect what you want to reflect is those process goals or all the practice that you put in. If you're playing soccer, making sure you can actually score the goal that you're positioning. And I probably shouldn't use soccer. I don't know anything about soccer, but it's all the habits that build you into the player that will have the score that you want to have. And the more ways we measure success, the more ways we give ourselves to be successful. So we're focusing on the ones we can actually control with those process goals as well.

Leigh (25:18):
Yeah, that's a good point. You can't win the game without scoring the goals.

Cori (25:23):
So we're shifting from just outcome to process goals, step one, step two.

Leigh (25:29):
Step two is you want to make these goals very specific and measurable. Vague goals are going to drain your energy. You need to know when you are going to win. So a vague goal would be, I want to eat better. That's really vague, but if we wanted to make it more specific, something like, I will include a source of protein and vegetables at lunch and dinner five days a week. So it's very specific and measurable. So five days a week, lunch and dinner, vegetable and protein source. So it really helps. Okay, I did that. I can check that off. I wanted that same thing with working out. I want to work out regularly. Very, very not measurable, but I will lift on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. You could even give it a time, but that really helps, you know, can check off those boxes.

Cori (26:29):
It really gives you sort of how to accomplish your goal because you're giving yourself direct command so to speak, or rules or guidelines on that roadmap of all the different turns you're supposed to take and it's the how, not just what you want to achieve often is a little bit more vague for

Leigh (26:45):
Us. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Cori (26:48):
All right. So we're setting a little bit more specific targets. We're giving ourselves that measurable thing. We have those process goals, which those two are very related. We're breaking our process goals down into very specific things. What can we do next to make sure that our goals are actually moving us forward?

Leigh (27:04):
Yeah, now you want to just anchor your goal to your identity. So a behavioral goal is like, I'm just going to go to the gym, but an identity goal is I'm someone who trains even on hard days. So it's just a way to start to reframe some of the goals that you have and to then give them more meaning and more personality to it. So I'm someone who fuels my body for strength. I'm the kind of person who keeps promises to myself. So it's sort of a little bit of a reframe to those goals.

Cori (27:38):
And I think it's even remembering the importance of our environment to support our identity. Because if I'm a person that goes to the gym at four 30 in the morning, I'm also the person that puts my clothing out on my bedside table so that I have no excuse, but to get up when the alarm goes off and go and grab that and go out and hit the gym. So it's shaping your environment to also support that identity that can be so key. You can also set a really obnoxious alarm that scares more the dogs than anything else. But anyway, we have now these goals tied to our identity. Now, that can be kind of also a sticky situation because what if you don't hit one of the things you're supposed to hit and then you feel kind of guilty about it?

Leigh (28:20):
So this is the fourth and final action step, but we really need to focus on progress and not perfection. So progress is the product of persistence, not perfection. So if you can't get your full workout in old mindset was I'll just skip it. If I can't do the whole thing, I'll skip it. But you want to have this new mindset where even 20 minutes counts. Again, consistency over perfection. The more we start doing something, the higher self-efficacy is the more likely we are to keep going. Keep motivation high things like I missed two workouts, but I'll show up for the third. I didn't hit my step goal, but I walked more than last week. Those are ways that you will be able to stay on this journey longterm and not end up beating yourself up over these small missteps here and there.

Cori (29:15):
I think it's also owning the delusion of perfection. We put this pressure on ourselves to be perfect, and then we are perfect. We don't have a Dan log, we have the streak with our macros and all of our activity trackers only slightly promote this and make us more OCD or type A about it, but we have this perfect streak and then one thing comes up and all of a sudden we're not perfect, and so then we do absolutely nothing. And so if you actually take that step back, this perfection is not really yielding perfection over the year versus if you were to be like, okay, well if I didn't do that, which ended up then making me sabotage myself out of guilt or whatever else, would I be more perfect or more consistent, really over the course of the year. So it's recognizing the delusion of perfection because it's just not going to be there. There's going to be things where you don't hit that streak on the tracker and it's for X, Y, and Z reason, which might even be a good thing in the long-term grand scheme of your goal. So letting go of perfection's definitely hard, but it's incredibly important. We've now talked about a whole heck of a lot of stuff, and you've given some great action items. Leigh, what in closing, or to sum up everything, would you give someone to start with? How can they go about really facing their fears with all this information?

Leigh (30:29):
Yeah, so I mean, we did cover a lot, but to just kind of summarize it up. So you want to think about doing hard things by facing your fears. Getting uncomfortable consistently is what is going to transform you into someone who trusts themselves. So you're building up a lot of data to support that belief in yourself. You're going to have a stack of like, I did X, Y, and Z, so I'm super capable. So you are going to develop high self-efficacy. You're going to start participating more in these really positive behaviors. Your motivation is going to stay high because you're celebrating the small wins and your goal setting is going to give you that direction and specific targets to hit. And then this last parting thought, if we take nothing else away from our conversation, I really want to stress this point is that the goal isn't to reach the destination, it's to become the kind of person who gets there.

Cori (31:36):
It is that process and that journey.

Leigh (31:38):
Yes.

Cori (31:39):
Not going to say anymore. That was a perfect ending. To sum everything up, hope this helped guys. What fears are you going to be facing? How are you going to make yourself uncomfortable this week? And take those steps towards your goals.

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