Episode Transcript
Today we're going to talk about a new way to look at sculpting your arms. We're talking about sculpting your arms, weight loss, and changing your body and how you eat by changing what you do. But remember, we change what we do by learning to change how we think. When you want to make some big changes in your arms, your body and your life, you need to get clear before you start on how you'll think about the job that's ahead of you, how you look at it. This makes a huge difference. So what I will coach you about today is the mindset you need to have to help you make exercise and eating changes. I want to encourage you to look at what you're about to do as a project. Just like a home improvement project or work project, but this is project you. I want to give you a way of thinking about this, that would help you succeed just like I do with my private coaching clients. It's different than just setting a goal. So whether you want to sculpt your arms, lose some extra weight, or maybe you're more concerned about making a change in how you eat, you still need to decide how you're going to handle it. And handling it as a project makes more sense, and it will eventually get you to whatever your goal is. Now, here's what I mean. I know it may sound a little confusing but here's what I mean. When my private clients come to me, I always ask them what they want. Many of them, most of them, will tell me they want to see muscles in their arms. They want to be a certain number on the scale. These are goals, seeing definition or that number is your goal. Or maybe they have a goal of wanting to stop eating when they're not hungry. So very cut and dried. So if you're looking at it that way, then you'll succeed in reaching your goal if you stop eating when you're not hungry but you'll fail if you don’t. So I don't think that only looking at and reaching for a goal is helpful to you. Let's take a look at the difference between looking at making this change as reaching a goal, versus making this change, working on a project. When you work on an exercise or eating goal, you're not happy until you hit that goal. It's very black and white. If you get there at all. So all the steps you take to get to that goal, sort of don't really count if you're not at your goal. But when you work on a project, it's something you work on every single day. You work on it continuously and consistently. So you have the opportunity to feel good all the way through the project, not just at the end. You're involved on a daily basis. When you work on exercise or eating goals, you're usually starting off, well let's be honest here, you start off hating yourself because you hate where you are. You hate where your body is and that feeling is just not good. When you don't feel good during the process of doing something, you're not as likely to reach that end goal, or it's just gonna feel like so much hard work, because you feel so negative right from the start. And when you work on this project instead, you start with a feeling of self compassion. You make peace with how and why you are where you are and why your arms look the way they do and why you weigh what you weigh. And when you have that self compassion, you're able to do what you need to do. When you work on an exercise or eating goal, you're more likely to be judgmental. So if you don't make perfect choices, you're angry at yourself, or you're ashamed of yourself, and you just beat yourself up, you don't give yourself a break and some of us are so used to doing this we don't even notice that we're doing it. But if we ever spoke out loud, and gave a voice to what goes on in our head, you would be astounded at how negative it is and how bad it feels. And most of us would never talk about someone else the way we talk about ourselves. When you’re working on a project, by contrast, instead of being judgmental, you're at least more neutral. So this is a project, it's something you're working on. Yes, it's about you, but it can be fairly unemotional, no drama, more just, these are the steps that I take. So if you don't make perfect choices, and no one does believe me, then you just notice what's going on. You see what you'd like to do differently, and you make an adjustment without judging yourself. Back when you're working on an exercise or eating goal, you try to be good. Does that sound familiar to you? So many of my clients try to be good. And that is the extent of their plan. This is not enough to carry you through, and failure at being good is going to come pretty fast as you try to learn new things. But when you work on this project, you definitely make plans for the whole scope of the project. You think of all aspects of what you're working on and you lay them out. You brainstorm. You have a lot of steps. When you're looking at it as that exercise or eating goal, if and when you fail, and as I said, you will definitely fail, it's not the end but when you're looking at it as the exercise or eating goal, and you fail, you see it as the end. You just stop. You fall down and you don't get back up. And that's one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make on any type of program. You fail, you fall down, and you stop. But when you look at this more as a project, you fail, you still fail, as part of learning, but you get back up, and then you go on Plan B, and you go and Plan C and plan D, and however many it takes to get you to that end. But the biggest difference is that you don't stop. When you look at this thing that you're trying to accomplish as the exercise or eating goal, you take 100% responsibility for building that muscle and making that goal weight, it's all on you. Success or failure, and especially
unfortunately failure, right? You're really good at taking responsibility for what you did wrong. But when you look at this as your project, you decide that you need to create some support for the project. And you take more of a team approach. So you look at your family, your friends, you might hire a coach, you might join a group, you might get on a forum. There are so so many ways to get support. And it's just a given that that's what you do to help you get through this project. But back when you look at weight lifting 3 x week or changing your eating as the big goal, you tend to do it when it's easy, right? When everything is all aligned, you’re feeling good, you're well rested, you have no challenges coming up, that's when you can stick to your plan. But with a project, you know that stars are not going to be aligned all the time. You know you're not gonna have a clean plate and plenty of time to focus on yourself all the time, but your commitment is big and you're committed to doing it all the time, no matter what comes up. With an exercise or eating goal, you put all of your focus on one aspect of exercise, eating or food or your body, or your habits. But when you look at it as a project, you focus on all the different parts of the project. Just like a home improvement project for example, you think about the electricians right, and the plumbers, you think about the architect and getting permits, and the designers and the construction workers. It would have so many moving parts. So if you apply that mindset to you, your project of sculpting your arms, you think about not just whether you're lifting enough weight or eating and what the scale says but you think about your eating, your movement, your thinking, and how you take care of yourself. With an exercise or eating goal, you find a plan like a diet, and you follow what someone else tells you to do. You just don't really trust yourself. You feel safe when you're on a particular program. But when you look at it as a project, you're part of that plan, you're part of creating the program. Because no matter how brilliant a book may be, and no matter how brilliant a coach may be, you still always know yourself best.
So you do your research, you know. You sit down with your calendar, you make your plans, you figure out what you need to do, or buy, or prep. What help you need, what skills you might need to learn. You own it. You are a part of it and it is for you. You're totally involved, as opposed to following something with an exercise or eating goal, you tend to look for the fastest, easiest way to get where you want to go, to the number you want or to stop an eating behavior, whatever it is, whatever it is that you want, you tend to want it fast and easy. And you haven't been successful so far, right, so you're not willing to put so much time into the project. But with a project mentality, you look at the whole thing differently. You look at it as a challenge. You think of things as hard or challenging and you don't run away from them. You expect things you really want, that are valuable to you, to be hard. And hard is okay. You were meant to solve problems, You were meant to do hard things. It feels so good when you do. You expect challenges, and you prep for them, which works a lot better than telling yourself that things will be easy and then being thrown and disappointed when of course they're not easy. With an exercise or eating goal based on your past experience, it's hard to feel optimistic because you haven't had the success you want so far. So you're negative going out of the gate, because you haven't been able to get where you want to go, right. But with a project mindset you have the thought, “I will figure this out”. And let me tell you, those are the most brilliant words I've ever heard. You don't need to know all the answers but if you have that attitude, you will definitely figure it out. If you look back on your past efforts to change your arms or your eating and your body, I would bet that you've looked at it as a goal, and I want this time to be different for you. That's why we're laying out your path, so carefully and thoroughly before you start. I know you want to dive in and make it happen and it will happen. But I'm a huge believer, based on what I've seen on learning from your mistakes and not doing the same thing over and over again. Because when you do, you suffer needlessly. Your self esteem suffers. Your image of yourself as someone who could take care of things, and solve your own problems. We need to get some evidence that you can do this, that you can believe. I want to give you as much evidence as possible for that new belief that you can do this, that you can figure this out and developing the mindset of looking at this as a project is very important. So instead of focusing on exercises, eating and weight, I want you to focus on life and how you want to be and how you want to show up in your life. Imagine if you had a presentation at work, or maybe you're researching what kind of car to buy or you're going to adopt a pet, or maybe you need to do research and find the right school for your kids or, you know, here's the big one that we almost all have or will face someday, making a job change. So all of these things are not one step actions. They're not just something that you can put on your to do list, and then check off, because they're made up of many, many steps. So they're all projects, and although, depending on what we're thinking as we go through these steps, we always will do better if we could just take care of things as unemotionally as we can. We just keep moving forward. So first, when we want to achieve anything, especially in this world of exercise, eating and weight loss, taking care of our bodies, we have a desire to do something right, we have a desire to make a big change, maybe we want to see definition in our arms, stop turning to food when we're feeling an emotion, or we might want to lose that extra weight that we're carrying around. So we create a vision of what we really want. We want to have the feeling of what it would be like when we get there. And then we make a commitment to it, not just when it's easy, but a true commitment. And making a commitment means giving yourself enough time. Enough time to do and learn what you need to do. So we leave our negative and judgmental emotions at the doorstep and we jump in. Make a plan. We also make a plan B, and we get help. Get help because we're smart, and we know what we don't know. And then we take the steps, right. We get feedback when we take steps, and we keep taking more steps. We keep moving forward. We mix in some rewards, but we keep moving forward on our big project. So think about how different this approach might be from when you've tried to tone up, lose weight or change your eating patterns, and you've just jumped in and you zoomed right towards your ultimate goal. And now think about how you're going to focus more on the different parts of your arm sculpting project. All the different steps, all the new feelings you want to bring with you. Compassion determination, kindness. And not judgment or fear or anger at yourself, and a little bit more matter of fact thinking. Thinking like, “well, this is just what I'm doing. It's all part of my life, not for 10 days, not for 30 days”. There is an end result that you'll get, of course, I know what you want. But the process of getting there is what we're going to focus on with this project. So, if you're still here with me. Good job. I know you want to jump ahead to get awesome results, but this is what works. So good for you. Thank you for joining me today. We’ll talk soon!
