Episode Transcript
When I first realized I needed to change my relationship with
exercise and nutrition to sculpt my arms, I wanted to learn
everything I possibly could. I read tons of books and articles about
the brain and the think-feel-act cycle. I listened to podcasts about
different exercise and nutrition philosophies. My email inbox was
stuffed with emails from coaches, teachers, and other people who
said they could help me.
Learning feels really good. Our brains evolved to keep us curious
about the world around us so that we can ensure our survival. But
if you’re just learning, learning, and learning about something,
you might have found a new way to numb yourself.
Don’t get me wrong: learning is great. But action is required if you
want your habits to actually shift. And I see so many people get
stuck in the learning phase instead of taking the leap to actually
put what they’ve learned into practice in their own lives.
Listen in to today’s episode as I talk about how people often use
learning as a way to avoid uncomfortable emotions. I talk about
how learning often feels like a great excuse for why we’re not
taking action – e.g. “I don’t know enough yet to change” – and
how you can shift this mindset.
You probably already know everything you need to know. Now,
you need to act.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to The Arm Coach podcast, episode
#28.
Alright so, let’s talk about the learning trap today. It’s such an
important thing and it’s something that I watch so many of my
clients fall into this trap. Now, when I first discovered the think-
feel-act cycle, it really did blow my mind. It really was earth-
shattering for me because suddenly, I had this framework to
explain why it was that I was overeating.
This action, this decision that had felt sometimes not even like a
decision, had felt so mysterious, all of a sudden, I had this
framework to understand why it was happening. There was
always a thought and a feeling attached to it, and the more I
repeated that cycle, the more habitual it became.
And so I became a woman obsessed. I started studying how habits
work in the brain, I started learning about cognitive science and
how you can actually rewire your brain, you can actually overwrite
old habits, habits that aren’t serving you with new ones, and I
started learning about how the brain evolved.
This piece in evolution is really important because how the brain
evolved really colors, really affects how we think today. I’ve talked
about this a lot but it’s why we often have so many negative
thought patterns and why we’re so good at spotting problems and
so good at spotting danger, which really helped us when humans
were living in a very dangerous world and there was danger all
around us, but it’s not so helpful for most of us today.
So, you know, I threw myself into this work and I love learning
about it. I still love learning about it. And I’ll hear the same thing
from you guys, so you guys will write to me and say, oh my god, I
can’t believe I never knew about this, I’m so fascinated, I’m going
back to previous episodes and I’m listening from start to where we
are now, I’m listening to them over and over, I’m reading books,
I’m taking notes, I’m journaling, I’m doing all the stuff.
So when I hear this, when I hear people telling me all of the
learning they are doing, which don’t get me wrong is great, I
always ask them, yeah, but are you taking action? And especially
when I’m talking to my clients, I do a lot of coaching over video.
I’ll be able to see their face and they’ll get that kind of sheepish
look like, well, not yet, Kristine, I’m not yet taking action, I’m not
yet trying to change my exercise and eating habits, I’m not yet
doing all the things you talk about doing because I’m still
absorbing all this information, I’m still taking it all in, I still feel
like I have to learn more.
Which of course, that’s a trap. That’s what I want to talk to you
about today. I want to talk to you about how learning can become
a trap, why it happens, and how to make sure you don’t fall into
this cycle because it really is something that people will get caught
in for such a long time because it feels so noble to keep learning
and understanding and reading and exploring all these things but
not actually taking action.
So let’s talk about this for a second. Why do we love to learn? Why
is that? Humans are driven to understand the world around them.
We are driven to understand how things work. Humans are
always trying to understand our environment, who we are, our
place in the universe. We have so many questions.
I mean, just think about all the questions you ask yourself all day
long. Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why did he do that?
Why did he say that? How does this work? How can I figure this
out? We’re asking questions all day long. Questions are incredibly
powerful in the brain.
A question really puts your brain to work. When you ask your
brain a question, it goes on a mission to find an answer.
So the problem sometimes is that the brain is primed to answer
questions negatively. Why does this happen? It’s a really simple
reason. Because of human evolution. We are primed to spot
danger, to see problems, to see what could be dire, what’s not
working because it helped humans survive.
So you have to pay attention to that when you’re really
understanding how questions work in the brain. But questions
really are a byproduct of the fact that humans are hardwired to be
curious. And you know I love curiosity. I talk about that emotion
being a superpower. I really believe that it is a superpower of mine
because curiosity and wanting to understand how things work and
being really inquisitive with the world around me is something
that I really do believe that I have cultivated and has helped me
quite a bit.
I mean, think about it. You have this too. When people are given a
trivia question, it’s fascinating. Scientists have done research on
this and they have shown when people are given a trivia question,
the reward centers in the brain light up. So figuring out the
answer to a question is so deeply satisfying because we get a little
bit of dopamine.
New information and answers to problems, they stimulate the
brain in the same way as other rewards. Rewards that we get from
alcohol and from sex, and of course, from food. And it makes
sense when you start thinking about human evolution because the
more information you have about your environment, the better
equipped you will be to survive.
If you know the right plants to gather and the locations of clean
water and how to build a shelter, you will be able to live. It will
help you survive, not only having information but figuring out the
answers to your questions. So learning is inherently pleasurable.
The brain evolved that way to make it pleasurable, to help humans
learn how to survive.
And it’s why when I learned about the think-feel-act cycle and
when so many of you learned this framework for the first time, it’s
so deeply satisfying because overeating for so long, it felt like this
mystery to me. Like, why did I do it? Why was it that I went for
that next cookie and another? Why would I promise myself that I
was going to be “good” tonight and never follow through?
My actions around food and exercise felt so mysterious. I didn’t
know why I had so much desire. I didn’t know why my exercising
was unpredictable. I didn’t know why it was hard to say no to
snacks. And the think-feel-act cycle, it gave me the answer.
All of a sudden, I could see that my action, the decision to overeat
or not exercise didn’t exist in a vacuum. There were thoughts and
feelings connected to it and when I learned that framework, there
was pleasure. It was pleasurable to really find an answer. I had the
pleasure of watching my brain and my mind expand, grow, start
to understand the world around me, start to understand myself
better. That was deeply pleasurable.
So if learning is this really pleasurable thing, and you know, so
noble, what’s wrong with just learning more information and
understanding ourselves better? What’s possibly wrong with that?
Well, the problem is when you learn at your own expense. When
you are learning and learning and listening to podcasts and
reading books and journaling and journaling and journaling, but
you’re doing it in order to hide and avoid from uncomfortable
emotions.
Because learning feels good. It feels good really allowing your
brain to expand. It feels good solving problems. But you can do
that at the expense of yourself. You can do that as a way to numb
yourself. I talk about numbing a lot. Numbing is simply any
action, any action that helps you avoid experiencing a negative
emotion.
And I talk about numbing, I talk about how you can really numb
yourself with anything. Now, a lot of times it looks like overeating.
Using food to relax or to cover up how you feel with stress or
anxiety or awkwardness or loneliness.
But it can also manifest in overdrinking or overspending or
overworking. The overworking one blows a lot of people’s mind.
The idea that you can work as a way to numb yourself. But listen,
if you’re keeping yourself so busy all the time that you literally
don’t have a spare moment to yourself, guess what, it’s a way to
avoid what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling.
You can also numb yourself with technology. TVs, computers,
phones, social media, Netflix. All of those things. They take up
brain space so you don’t have to pay attention to how you’re
feeling. But you can also numb yourself with learning.
Now, here’s the problem with numbing. It temporarily will cover
up how you’re feeling. It will distract yourself from the emotion at
hand. You’ll be able to pretend that you feel different or ignore
how you’re feeling. But the problem with numbing is that it
doesn’t ever deal with the root of the problem, why you’re feeling
the negative emotion. Why you feel anxious, why you feel
overwhelmed, why you feel lonely, why you feel bored.
It doesn’t deal with the root of these, and of course, the root is
always what you are thinking. It is always the beginning of that
think-feel-act cycle. That’s where our emotions come from. Of
course, the other problem, not only you don’t get to solve what
emotion you’re experiencing, but another problem is the
consequence from overconsumption.
When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we get
hangovers. When we overspend, we’re draining our bank account.
When we’re overworking, we have lost time with our friends and
our family and we’re not going after our dreams. Numbing is a
way that we unknowingly choose temporarily short-term relief
and don’t realize that we’re making that choice and in return,
getting a lot of long-term consequences.
So learning, how does overlearning fit in? Well, simply because
you can learn, you can tell yourself, I just need to read more and
listen more and research more and journal more as a means of
avoiding discomfort. People are always so surprised, and you
know, I was really surprised when I first had this realization that
you could learn as a way to numb yourself.
Because of course, we all believe that learning is so noble. It’s such
a good thing. How could you learn too much? But it’s a very
simple answer. Whenever you are learning at the expense of
taking action, whenever you are learning and not changing what
isn’t working in your life. Whenever you are learning and telling
yourself, I just need a little bit more, a little bit more information,
a little bit more knowledge, and then I’ll do it.
The problem is it feels so good. It feels so good, it feels noble, it
feels like such a really, really solid excuse. I got to learn a little bit
more. I just need a couple more podcasts, a couple more books, a
little bit more insight and then I’ll do it. Then I’ll do the hard
thing. Then I’ll move towards my discomfort.
But here’s the thing; when you are learning at the expense of
yourself, it’s just a way to keep yourself comfortable. It just
happens to feel really good doing it, and you get to do it in the
safety of your own home. You don’t have to do anything different.
You don’t have to show up differently. You just have to put in your
headphones or pick up a book or open up your journal. That’s it.
And this is what I want to caution you guys about because so
many of you will do this when you start learning about the think-
feel-act cycle. You learn this framework, you start to really see
how it’s working, but then you just go further and further into
listening to every podcast or reading every book or oh, here’s
another podcast, or another book, or another teacher, or another
person I can learn from.
I was so good at doing this. I did this too. Learning at the expense
of myself. Because what it boils down to is you don’t need more
information really. You need to take action. Changing the habit of
overeating requires that you practice not overeating. Changing the
habit of procrastination requires that you practice not
procrastinating. It’s as simple as that. You can listen to all the
podcasts and read all the books and take all the notes and fill up
all the journals, but if you are not practicing saying no to an urge,
when saying no feels uncomfortable, you will not change the
habit. Period.
Do not miss this. Do not fool yourself into believing that learning
and learning and learning is okay because it feels so noble. Don’t
fool yourself by saying, well, I’m not overdrinking, I’m not
overspending, I’m not overworking, isn’t this a good thing?
If you are learning at the expense of taking action, there’s a
problem because it means that you are using knowledge as a way,
the acquisition of knowledge, as a way to avoid discomfort.
I’ll tell you how I can spot this. When someone wants to tell me all
about the interesting things they are listening to, or all the
interesting things they are reading about, rather than all the
interesting things they are discovering when they show up
differently, when they don’t eat the entire container of Oreos.
When they hang out with friends and they don’t have the drink.
When they go out to dinner with their husband and they don’t
partake in the bread basket. When they go on vacation and they
use the exercise room. That is where the real interesting meaty
stuff comes up. That’s where the real discoveries take place, when
the rubber hits the road.
I did this for so long. I stayed stuck in learning because learning
was easy and learning was safe. And I remember there was a point
in my life when my email inbox was just filled with emails from
coaches and self-help experts and I had so many books and tons
of journals and I was filling up reams and reams of paper, but I
wasn’t taking action.
You really have to ask yourself this. Are you learning right now at
the expense of yourself? Are you getting that dopamine hit from
gaining insight and understanding but not translating that insight
and understanding into action? Ask yourself where you’re hiding.
Ask yourself where you’re avoiding discomfort.
If I told you, alright, commit today to taking action, commit right
now to saying no to a second serving, not snacking at the happy
hour or at the party or this weekend or whatever event is coming
up, what excuse would your brain make? Why would you tell
yourself you weren’t yet ready? What knowledge, what
information are you waiting for?
Once you learn the think-feel-act cycle, your actions are no longer
mysterious. There’s always a thought, there’s always a feeling that
you can find. You are not powerless. There’s nothing wrong with
you. But you know what, there’s also nothing more you need to
learn.
Now the real work is what you need to do, how you need to show
up differently. I talk about this a lot. You can watch a million
YouTube videos about how to ride a bike, and you can read a
year’s worth of books on the art of cycling, but you will not
actually teach your brain how to move a bike in this world until
you get your butt on the seat. That is how you wire your brain to
know how to do something new, how to show up differently.
And that’s what I want for you. I love you guys and I love that you
love these episodes, but I don’t want you to just be absorbing
information. I want you to be doing the work of rewiring your
brain around the habits of overeating and procrastination. Create
new habits that can overwrite the old ones that aren’t serving you.
And you know how you do that? You take action. You show up
differently. You make the commitment when it feels so
uncomfortable, but you do it anyway.
When this episode is over today, I want you to commit to one
place right now where you will take action with regards to your
sculpting your arms. It will feel uncomfortable. You will tell
yourself you are not ready. That’s okay. You don’t have to listen to
the brain. But I want you to stop sitting on the sidelines, stop
avoiding discomfort, stop hiding in the virtue of learning and start
doing. Create the change that you want. You can do this. I know
you’ve got this.
Alright everybody, that’s it for this week. I will see you guys next
week.
