Are Your Thoughts Getting in the Way of Your Goals? [Ep 66]

Are your thoughts aligned with what you really want?  In this episode, Lisa dives into mindset traps that often hold us back from achieving what we set out to do. Sharing personal examples and client stories, she explains how thoughts like “I’m not creative” or “This is just who I am” can sneakily derail progress. Lisa emphasizes how our internal narratives often stem from deeply held beliefs and experiences, not facts.

She also offers a three-step strategy to start shifting those beliefs: noticing the thought, acknowledging the feelings, and challenging the default mindset with empowering “what if” questions. This powerful mindset reframe helps listeners become more aware of their internal blocks and gives them tools to align thoughts with their goals.

Interested in more support? Check out Lisa's coaching options or apply for a free strategy session.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Lisa DuPree: When I talk to clients about the biggest things that hold them back from achieving their [00:01:00] goals, most of the time, the specific reasons fall into categories of either mindset or motivation. 

Today I'm gonna be concentrating on mindset. 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 really wanted to just give up a lot of the time it has been because how I'm thinking about the situation and these 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 [00:02:00] was to post every week on Instagram to help get the word out and get feedback about topics that I'm talking about. So several things that have come up for me while working on this.

One, I don't really enjoy social media. Yeah, so, you know, all the, advice that I had been given, he was starting a podcast, getting the interaction, getting a following, like all of that is great. People were saying, you need to post multiple times a day on Instagram. And to me that was just like, what?

Like that, you've gotta be kidding me. Who, who does this? It's uncomfortable for me. So, my thoughts that are coming up is like, I'm an introvert. I don't wanna be out there as much. Um, you know, I'm a private person. I don't wanna be doing this as much. Also thoughts like, I'm not a creative person. I don't want, don't wanna be on videos because I don't wanna put on makeup and [00:03:00] fix my hair every day or something like that. So it's all these kind of things that really stopped me from actually posting multiple times a day.

So I decided I was just gonna do it like once a week, and I helped that pretty well. And then I've kind of fallen off, I'm not gonna lie. Um, so I gotta get back to it. So. 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. It's just what kind of thoughts. What kind of beliefs come up during that time that may not be helpful to you or they may not be useful. So if you think back with those experiences, you know what's coming up, what comes to mind?[00:04:00] 

And if nothing's coming to mind or you're not really sure because you never really thought about it, you know, no problem. That is pretty common. It's not something that we, really think about or talk about. And if it does get brought up or it 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, but 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 influences your choices in your actions.

They are the kind of things that you wanna identify and acknowledge when they [00:05:00] bubble up to the surface, and even better before they come up, so that you address them, you know before you are working your goal or in the early stages of working on your goal. Your goal is aligned with your values and beliefs that will help propel you forward into meaningful action.

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 fifties 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.

So over a couple of coaching sessions, she mentioned being bad, I'm a bad person, or I've been bad. Talking about it a little bit more, it was 'cause [00:06:00] she was eating cookies that she had in the house for her kids' snacks. She would really 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 the kids' snacks and not losing weight.

She really valued being a good role model for her kids, and she wanted to feel more confident in her own skin. You know, getting to the point where she really wanted to put herself out there a little bit more by dipping her toes into the dating pool. So her goal and her why 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 the kind of, this food is good and this one is a bad kind of thing, as well as being shamed for wanting to eat sweet treats. So it turns out she had internalized that if she [00:07:00] ate cookies, she was bad. And would never be able to lose weight.

So 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 wanna eat cookies even more. So, definitely not a belief or thoughts that were coming up that are aligned with her goal.

So 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, this is just how I am.

Or this is what I've always done, or this [00:08:00] is, this is how it's done. I think of this as a kind of default thinking. It usually comes up as an excuse for not following through with something. However, it can also indicate self-acceptance. So that would be like someone who has, done the internal work, they know who they are and they've accepted it so, you know.

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. The current situation. So the key, when these thoughts are coming up, like for me with the posting social media, like I'm just not a social media savvy person, or I am an introvert, that's just how I am.

You know, if these things are coming up for you, [00:09:00] the key is to ask yourself when you notice this, is this 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 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 really 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. So 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. [00:10:00] Oh, as I just said, that, that's kind of heavy stuff if you think about it. It's really 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 a, you know, you're just like, oh, I notice 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. So first thing, notice the thoughts. And this is no small thing again, because they can kind of be [00:11:00] uncomfortable. So we, don't necessarily wanna think of them, or they are so automatic that you just take it as fact and kind of move past it.

So take a moment, notice the thoughts that are coming up for you. The next thing. Once you've noticed that thought, brought 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 really 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 that shame about that. But, even if we want to avoid them or dismiss them, like no matter what, we are always feeling them, whether we wanna feel them or not, or we try to avoid them. We try to ignore 'em, [00:12:00] avoid numb, but they will always resurface. So give yourself the space in the moment and kind of the safety to feel those feelings, acknowledge them.

It helps to write them down or talk them through, but don't just push them aside. So after you notice the thoughts, you acknowledge those feelings, and then. You know, don't be afraid to kind of break the rules or challenge the status quo and that default thinking. So you wanna counter those thoughts. It helps to generate what if scenarios. For me, one of these ways that I did that with the social media post, my thing was 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.

And [00:13:00] then once you have those possibilities, you have created the ability to have options and choose a different thought. So you wanna focus on developing new habits of thinking that are strong enough to take the place of really deeply ingrained sometimes automatic ways of thinking that results in kind of negative emotions or actions that are holding you back from achieving what you actually want and set out to do.

So hope this has been helpful. If you are interested in getting additional support to achieve your goals, visit lisadupreecoaching.com/services to see different coaching options and links will also be in the show notes. Thank you for listening.

Bye for [00:14:00] now.