In this episode of Midlife Mojo, Lisa talks about one of the biggest things that tends to get overlooked when setting goals and planning for the new year that can actually inhibit progress and even end up with just giving up. And nobody wants that!
Shared in this episode:
Interested in getting additional support to achieve your goals?
Lisa has a couple of spots opening up in January for private, one-on-one coaching!
Private Coaching Options: https://www.lisadupreecoaching.com/services
Free strategy session: https://lisadupree.squarespace.com/getcoached
Links to previous episodes mentioned for getting clear on what you want and setting goals to help you get there:
Thanks for listening!
Follow Lisa on Instagram or visit her website - Lisa DuPree Coaching.
Need new strategies for boosting physical, mental and emotional resilience, download your free Refresh From Stress guide.
To help you set positive, motivating goals you are excited about, get this free Goal Setting for Success worksheet
In this episode of Midlife Mojo, Lisa talks about one of the biggest things that tends to get overlooked when setting goals and planning for the new year that can actually inhibit progress and even end up with just giving up. And nobody wants that!
Shared in this episode:
Interested in getting additional support to achieve your goals?
Lisa has a couple of spots opening up in January for private, one-on-one coaching!
Private Coaching Options: https://www.lisadupreecoaching.com/services
Free strategy session: https://lisadupree.squarespace.com/getcoached
Links to previous episodes mentioned for getting clear on what you want and setting goals to help you get there:
Thanks for listening!
Follow Lisa on Instagram or visit her website - Lisa DuPree Coaching.
Need new strategies for boosting physical, mental and emotional resilience, download your free Refresh From Stress guide.
To help you set positive, motivating goals you are excited about, get this free Goal Setting for Success worksheet
In this episode of Midlife Mojo, I'll be going over one big thing that tends to get overlooked when we're setting goals and planning for the new year that can actually inhibit progress and even end up with us just giving up. And nobody wants that. I'll be offering an easy way to address and work around this.
Welcome to Midlife Mojo. The podcast all about how to be fit and flourish in your fifties with me, your host with over 25 years of experience in the health fitness and wellness industry, Lisa Dupree. We'll be talking about all the things that support living life to the fullest. Let's dive in.
Hello. Hello. I love the new year. There is a lot of excitement and energy for what's to come. It's a time of renewal, of hope, a time that we're looking forward to new opportunities, to new possibilities, and thinking about what we really want to accomplish in the next year. And for many of us, that includes setting intentions, goals, and plans for these things to come to fruition.
If you're new to Midlife Mojo, or just want a refresher on how to set yourself up for success with your planning and goal setting, I covered creating a vision to be fit and flourishing, along with keys to goal setting and action planning in episodes 2, 5 and 6. I'll include the links to each of those episodes in the show notes, so you have easy access to check those out if you are setting new goals for the year.
For today though, I am going to move beyond the basics of setting intentions and goals to talk about a critical area for health and lifestyle change that tends to get overlooked in the excitement of just getting started on a new plan, especially in the new year. When I talk to clients about the biggest things that hold them back from achieving their goals, most of the time, the specific reasons fall into the categories of either mindset or motivation.
Today, I'm going to be concentrating on mindset. Not to worry though, I'll be tackling rekindling and boosting motivation in the next episode. There are so many different kinds of beliefs, thoughts, assumptions that are treated as facts that come up when working toward changing something and achieving goals that fall under the category of mindset.
Personally, I can tell you that when it comes to a couple of goals I've been working on this year, I've noticed that when I have gotten stuck and wanted to just give up, a lot of the time it has been because how I'm thinking about the situation and certain beliefs that I have that bubble up.
One recent example that I noticed come up for me really frequently is around a goal that I made at the beginning of the year, and that goal was for this podcast. My goal was to post every week on Instagram to help get the word out and get feedback about topics that I'm talking about. Several things that have come up for me while working on this.
One, I don’t enjoy social media. Yeah, so, you know, all the advice that I had been given about starting a podcast, getting interaction, getting a following, like, all of that is great. People are saying you need to post multiple times a day on Instagram. That was just, like what? You've got to be kidding me. Who, who does this?
It's uncomfortable for me. Thoughts that are coming up are, I'm an introvert. I don't want to be out there as much. I'm a private person. I don't want to be doing this as much. The other thing that was coming up was like, what am I going to do?
Thoughts like, I'm not a creative person. I don't want to be on videos because I don't wanna put on makeup and fix my hair every day or something like that. It's all these kinds of things that are coming that stopped me from actually posting multiple times a day.
I decided I was just going to do it like once a week and I kept to that pretty well. And then I've kind of fallen off, I'm not going to lie. I’ve got to get back to it. So that is part of the work that I have been doing. I feel like it's been pretty helpful and wanted to share that with you.
If you think back on a past experience when you have worked toward a goal, it doesn't even have to be a health or a fitness goal, it could be a career goal, it could be a relationship goal, really any kind of goal. What kind of thoughts and what kind of beliefs came up during that time that may not be helpful to you or they may not be useful. If you think back with those experiences, you know, what's coming up, what comes to mind, and if nothing's coming to mind or you're not sure because you never really thought about it, no problem.
That is pretty common. It's not something that we think about or talk about. And if it does get brought up or gets noticed, it can be so darned uncomfortable that those thoughts quickly get dismissed or buried deep, deep down where we hope it won't resurface anytime soon. And if that worked, it would be glorious.
My friends, it does not work that way. Those thoughts, beliefs, preconceived notions are related to your deeply held values, your experiences, how you view the world, and end up strongly influencing your choices and your actions. They are the kind of things that you want to identify and acknowledge when they bubble up to the surface and even better, before they come up, so that you address them before you are working your goal or in the early stages of working on your goal.
So that your goal is aligned with your values and beliefs and that will help propel you forward into meaningful action and also help you plan for when these thoughts, beliefs, and notions come up that may throw you off track or cause you to stall in your progress.
Here's an example to illustrate what I mean by this. I had a client, a divorced woman in her 50s, who had a stressful full-time position in the nonprofit sector, was trying to lose weight and was just getting more and more discouraged each week because her weight loss wasn't as fast as she had hoped.
Over a couple of coaching sessions, she mentioned “being bad”. Or I'm a bad person. I've been bad. And talking about it a little bit more, it was because she was eating cookies that she had in the house for her kids’ snacks. She would get down on herself for not being able to resist the cookies and then feel like a bad person or a bad mom for eating them.
She valued being a good role model for her kids, and she wanted to feel more confident in her own skin. You know, getting to a point where she wanted to put herself out there a little bit more by dipping her toes into the dating pool. Her goal or purpose for losing the weight was aligned with highly held values.
On the other hand, when she was growing up, she was surrounded by a lot of food rules and this food is good and this one is bad kind of thing, as well as being shamed for wanting to eat sweet treats. It turns out she had internalized that if she ate cookies, she was bad and would never be able to lose weight.
This all or nothing kind of thinking and the good food versus bad food beliefs led to thoughts of giving up, feeling like she was letting herself down, she was letting her family down, which not surprisingly made her want to eat cookies even more. Definitely not a belief or thoughts that were coming up that are aligned with her goal.
Once she became aware of these beliefs and how they showed up in her thinking, she was able to acknowledge them and more effectively address those beliefs and thoughts when they came up. Another example of a belief or preconceived notion that comes up frequently for clients, and I'm guilty of this myself, is the belief that, you know, this is just how I am.
Or this is what I've always done, or this is how it's done. I think of this as a default thinking. It usually comes up as an excuse for not following through with something, however, it can also indicate self-acceptance. That would be like someone who has done the internal work, they know who they are and they've accepted it.
Either one or any types of these kind of beliefs and thoughts are perfectly fine in and of itself. Think of them as neutral. Where this type of default mindset works for or against us is in our feelings that are generated from the thoughts in the current situation. The key when these thoughts are coming up, like for me, with the posting social media, I'm just not a social media savvy person, or I'm an introvert, that's just how I am, you know, if these things are coming up for you, the key is to ask yourself when you notice this is, are these in alignment with your current goal?
And if it's not, is this way of thinking, is it going to keep you from taking the necessary action? And so, the next thing to consider would be, is this something that would be helpful to change? Is it worth putting in some time and some mental? Work to be able to change that, counter that, change your narrative around it. Because noticing these thoughts and beliefs that you have around your goals and what it takes to achieve your goals can lead to helping you get into a more productive, positively aligned mindset.
And this works not only with health and fitness goals, but life in general. Think about it this way, changing your mindset helps you change your thoughts, which changes your actions in ways that can lead to changing your life. Oh, as I just said that that's kind of heavy stuff if you think about it. It’s never too late to change how you think if it's not aligned with what you want to accomplish.
And it's holding you back from making progress on your goals. Every single person has the ability to change how they think. It's not as easy as flipping a switch though. It's not like, oh, I noticed it. Flip on/off. It is a process and it takes some conscious effort, but the payoff for even small shifts in the way that you think about things, and noticing those mindsets can be huge.
I want to offer you an easy way to start addressing these beliefs, thoughts, and enhancing your mindset. First thing, notice the thoughts. And this is no small thing, again, because they can kind of be uncomfortable. We don't necessarily want to think of them, or they are so automatic that you just take it as fact and kind of move past it.
Take a moment, notice the thoughts that are coming up for you. The next thing, once you've noticed that thought, bring it into your awareness, acknowledge the feelings that are subsequent to those thoughts. Often, we dismiss or avoid the feelings instead of acknowledging them, because sometimes it can be uncomfortable.
Especially when it is not aligned with your goals and you're kind of using that as an excuse or a reason for not going forward. And there can be shame about that. Even if we want to avoid them or dismiss them, like no matter what, we're always feeling them. Whether you want to feel them or not, or we try to avoid them.
We try to ignore them, avoid, numb, but they will always resurface. Give yourself the space in the moment and he safety to feel those feelings. Acknowledge them. It helps to write them down or talk them through, but don't just push them aside. After you notice the thoughts, you acknowledge those feelings, and then, don't be afraid to break the rules or challenge the status quo and that default thinking.
You want to counter those thoughts. You're circling back to the thoughts, counter the thoughts, especially if it's generating a feeling or it’s wanting you to take an action that's not in line with your goals. Generate what if scenarios. For me, one of these ways that I did that with the social media post was countering with - what if I am savvy enough?
What if I am creative enough to post regularly to social media? What if I can be an introvert and also get better at posting at social media? You're just trying to open yourself up to the possibilities. And then once you have those possibilities, you have created the ability to have options and choose a different thought.
Focus on developing new habits of thinking that are strong enough to take the place of deeply ingrained, sometimes automatic ways of thinking that result in negative emotions or actions that are holding you back from achieving what you actually want and set out to do.
And so finally, all this comes down to is building your belief in your ability. That is something that no one can do but you, and it does take a little bit of time. It doesn't happen instantly because these things, again, they have built up over time, but it can be, you can kind of nudge, nudge it in a different direction.
When those things come to the surface, acknowledging it, and then moving on, encountering it with things that you've already achieved, or looking at it from a different perspective. It helps for me sometimes to imagine what I would say to somebody if they were in my situation and they had those same beliefs. What kind of questions would I ask them?
How would I encourage curiosity and exploration around that? Um, and then what is a counter to it? Then affirm your ability. Praise yourself. You deserve it. I hope this has been helpful. If you are interested in getting additional support to achieve your goals, I do have a couple of spots opening up in January for private one on one coaching.
Visit LisaDupreeCoaching.com/services to see different coaching options and have access to the links to contact me. Or you can complete the application for a free strategy session at LisaDupreeCoaching.com/getcoached. Links will also be in the show notes.