Why Is It So Hard To Change? Part II

Introduction and Recap of Part One
[00:00:00] This is part two in a two-part series of why it is so hard to change. And last week's episode, we looked at what's harder. Is it harder to quit drinking long term, change your diet long term, or exercising long term? And I mean one and a half plus two years. And it was a sneak question because it's all hard.

[00:00:19] So in today's episode, I'm going to give you four reasons why it is so hard to change that you probably don't know. So join me in today's episode.

[00:00:27] Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back. Last episode on why is it so hard to change, that was the part one of this two-part series, I asked whether people thought it was easier to sustain an exercise regimen or significantly change your diet over a two-year period or quit drinking. I asked which of those three things people thought was harder.

[00:01:17] And it was a little bit of a trick question because one, it all depends on your vice. But the second thing is, is that they're all hard because it's not really the quitting that's the challenge. It's sustaining the change. When we have a craving or an urge or a desire or just when life lifes and I have to tell you I've had life life lately.

[00:01:43] So throughout the episode I might add some real-life personal experiences to this with the intention that it will kind of ground everything and also inspire you.

Personal Struggles and Grace
[00:01:53] So pretty much I mean, I don't know if you guys have noticed but I didn't publish a podcast for the month of August. We had some really heartbreaking news with the loss of my mother-in-law.

[00:02:05] And until recently, my heart and my head just haven't been in the game, but here's the thing. I knew that one day I'd return to my beloved podcast and to you guys. And from personal experience, I also know that beating myself up, that I hadn't done the thing that I was committed to doing, which is releasing a podcast episode once a week to you guys.

[00:02:28] I realize that beating myself up over that doesn't actually help me achieve anything. It never works for me. Flogging myself about things I don't do well or in the moment, or like I said, never helped me achieve my goal. So I gave myself grace and I want to offer that to you guys too, is to allow you to give yourself space and grace when you need it.

[00:02:50] And we'll talk about some important ways to get back on track so you know when you fall off the wagon or you know when you trip up which is inevitable, you know how to get back on track and I didn't always respond to myself like this. I didn't always give myself grace. Like I said from personal experience I used to beat myself up all the time and it would only keep me in procrastination mode much longer.

The Importance of a Solid Foundation
[00:03:17] And this is also why I believe this work is so important because if we don't learn how to create a solid foundation, and that is different for each and every one of us. 

[00:03:27] Let me be very clear, you have to figure out what your solid foundation is made of, and the only way to do that is to try on all the tools, try on all the tips and tricks that people offer you, so you know which tools work for you, and sometimes a tool may work, and then it gets dull and breaks and rust and you need to use another tool because one tool that works right now in your life might not work later on and that's okay, but you need to know the tools to lean on when you aren't feeling your best. When life lifes. And even if it doesn't make you feel a hundred percent better, at least, you know, it will make you feel a little less worse.

[00:04:10] And the reason why that's so important is because otherwise what happens is that one week turns into two turns into four, and that turns into a year and we're still stuck in the muck and that muck might be procrastination for you. It's procrastinating on a project that keeps popping into your mind, something that you feel really passionate about, and it may be a little bit scared, but that you know that you really need to do in your lifetime.

[00:04:36] And for me, that's like this podcast and working with women in a one on one way to create sustainable change in their life. Or maybe it's obsession or worry over politics, or for others it might be over drinking or over eating in a way that doesn't feel great in our body, in our mind. And that's why shooting for perfectionism is a broken strategy, because perfection doesn't exist.

[00:05:04] And neither does giving into every desire or craving or urge or whim or emotion. And like I mentioned in the episode, the number one way to take control back, it's your responsibility to try things in order to feel better. Or like I said earlier, to feel less worse. It's your responsibility to recognize that that two weeks turning into four is something that you have control of.

[00:05:31] And we're going to talk about ways that, that can kind of trip us up some real life examples and strategies to help us stay on track. But in my recent case, I recognized also that it was okay to grieve. It was okay to have space and to recognize that I had to feel the pain because it won't ever go away.

[00:05:56] In practicing feeling pain deeply, I was also able to recognize that it won't kill me, like it's okay to feel that deep pain, and it lightens up, even if it's just for a moment, or even if it's just for a few days, that all takes practice as well. Just like practicing things that make us feel better.

[00:06:17] Anyway, back to today's episode where I mentioned quitting initially isn't the hard part. It's sustaining the change that is so hard, but why is it so hard? We're going to look at four different areas that I want to touch on today. We're going to look at the mindset component. We're going to look at one of these hidden aspects that you may not know about.

[00:06:38] We're going to look at why identity is important. And we're also going to look at the influence that people have over us when we are trying to change. Okay. Deal? Deal. Are you committed to hang out with me during this whole episode to the very end and sprinkled throughout? I will have actionable items, some homework for you to do. 

[00:07:01] So you can start recognizing these secret insidious little components that keep us from reaching our goals. Okay, well, let's do it.

Mindset and Recognizing Internal Voices
[00:07:10] Let's start with mindset. So have you ever noticed? So this is the important word here, noticed. Let me just say that word again, noticed. Have you ever noticed when you tell yourself things like, I don't have time to exercise, I can start tomorrow.

[00:07:29] Who am I to make such a big deal about this? I don't even drink that much. Or, my diet isn't that bad. Well, I had happy hour tonight, so I guess I'll just drink every night this weekend. Or, I had a slice of cake, so I might as well go to Chick fil A tonight. It is so important that you notice that you catch yourself when that little voice in your head, or that devil on your shoulder, is saying this stuff.

[00:07:57] Because so often we don't even recognize it's there. And for many of you, you may not even know what I'm talking about. You're like, what are you talking about? There's this voice that is on constant monologue. So important for you to realize that there's this involuntary peanut gallery that's going on constantly.

[00:08:18] Because if you don't recognize it's there, then you can't mute it. You can't change its station. But once you catch yourself, once you catch that voice that's trying to convince you that it's a perfect day to have rosé on a patio. Then, you can reframe that thought. When you catch the thought that's happening, and you recognize that thought for what it is, a thought, not you, you don't have to act on it, then this is a life changer.

[00:08:47] Because then you can reframe it and say, instead of it's a perfect day for a rosé on a patio, well it's a perfect night for a walk in the park, or to lie in a blanket in my backyard and read, or to eat the leftovers that I made specifically so I wouldn't go eat fast food tonight. So mindset is key and reframing that, and I guess I really even want to say it's not even the mindset piece that's so important, but recognizing that you have this voice in your head that's involuntary, that's trying to direct you on where you're going and what you're doing in life, like walk into the fridge, time to eat that ice cream, when you're like, wait a minute, I didn't even have that thought.

[00:09:26] What did, why, why am I thinking of ice cream right now? Like, that wasn't a voluntary thought. Because once you do that, then you can change your thought. Okay, but there is also this other behind-the-scenes thing that I'm going to talk about right now that I think is so important.

Physiological Responses to Change
[00:09:40] It's how our brain responds to change.

[00:09:44] How physiologically we respond to change when it's happening. Because our brain does not like change, and I've mentioned this in other episodes before, but I want to say it again. Our brains love repetition. It's what is kept, you say, for millennia. So the habit that you have been performing over and over and over again, consciously or subconsciously, Remember, 95 percent of our habits are subconscious, has led your brain to understand that that behavior, that behavior of overdrinking, of overspending, of sitting on the couch, is somehow important and integral to your survival.

[00:10:22] When you break away from the habit that you've been doing for decades, whether it's good for you or bad for you, your brain doesn't differentiate. So when you try to break the habit of drinking alcohol or Diet Coke or eating 3000 calories a day or sweets at night or exercising. This sets off a physiological response called stress and stress makes us more vigilant.

[00:10:45] It increases our heart rate. It makes our breathing more shallow and all of this can be ever so slight. Okay, all of this can be under the radar if you will. But it's sending off these little alarms in you telling your body to do the thing that you've always done because that will make you feel better.

[00:11:03] And like I said, it usually goes unnoticed or you might be able to recognize this if you aren't super in tuned with your body and the way that it feels. Then you might notice these stories that we start attaching to the cravings, like it's been a bad day, or that I'm sad, or I'm angry, or my partner is annoying me.

[00:11:22] The psychological response usually goes unnoticed though. And it is often the thing that leads us back to our unsavory habits, these false feel-good habits. And in next week's episode, we'll talk more about the stress response and how to calm yourself down. And it's so important to learn this, not just around our habits and around eating and drinking and exercising and things like that.

[00:11:45] But anything that wants to drive us forward. Anything that you want to do that could put you in the stress state or this fear state, you'll learn practical techniques to move yourself into a more calm state where you can make better decisions. But I wanted to introduce it in this way first, because it drives so much of our life behind the scenes and like always, awareness is the first step.

[00:12:10] So, one of the first practices I want to invite you to do is when you're having a craving or an urge to do something that is contrary to the goals that you're trying to set is just tell yourself, Hey, brain, I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to keep me safe. It's sending off all these bells and alarms inside me, I get it, I get it, I feel it.

[00:12:31] And it's okay brain and body, that we are safe right now. And then take a deep breath. We'll look at more techniques about how to move from the stress response to the calm response in next week's episode, but write this one down and try it over the next week.

Influence of Others on Our Habits
[00:12:45] So let's also not ignore the influence others have over us.

[00:12:51] Let's say we're trying to improve any area of our life, being more positive, or optimistic, or less angry and reactive within our emotions, or changing our food choices, so an action or a behavior of some sort, or not drinking as much, or exercising multiple times a week, this upsets the dynamic within our relationship.

[00:13:14] And so we typically go back to doing the same thing we did before just so it balances everything out again. So I want you guys to imagine this mobile. It's one of those things that hangs over a baby's crib with all these little dangly things on it. So let's imagine that one of those little dangly things is torn.

[00:13:35] So everything is still balanced with all the dangly things in their place, but one of them is torn. So we want to take that one off and fix it, tape it up, do whatever. So what happens is then the mobile is off balance. It's all cattywampus, right? What happens if we use this analogy as relationships in our life?

[00:13:54] When one person tries to change, and that can be through our behaviors and our thoughts and our actions, then our mobile becomes cattywampus. The people in our lives don't understand the relationship anymore. So instead of it, like, waiting to fix this one little piece of the mobile or replace it with something completely different, we will go ahead and put on the torn one just to balance the mobile out again.

[00:14:22] And that's what happens in our lives within our relationships when we try to change when you try to change something and it disrupts what's happening within our community within our group of people closest to us. Then sometimes we'll do go back to do the thing and this is subconscious. We'll go back to do the thing just to make everybody comfortable, just to make ourselves more comfortable because we don't like being cast out from our society.

[00:14:48] We like to be accepted. And again, so often this goes on without us even recognizing it. And so if we choose to have the same group while we're changing, then it takes sometimes a lot of perseverance to do this, or at least it takes what? Awareness. Exactly. Awareness that this could be happening. So, if your friend group or your family is telling you that drinking is the only way to have fun and fit in with the family, or eating until you are over full is what your family does and you're trying to change your diet, then that can make some of your people feel uncomfortable.

[00:15:25] And they might not even recognize they're doing it, but they might make comments about why you're not eating or why, you know, you look so skinny or that you don't need to do it, that we're just big bone family or whatever it is to bring you back to what all of the other people are doing, that's what's going on.

[00:15:44] And so you need to be aware that that could be what's happening. And a side note here, I actually heard that, that a big section of our population now is taking ozempic or zemeclutide or, you know, one of the weight loss drugs to help curb hunger, that it actually is affecting the dynamics within family because it's causing conflict within family members who don't see that person eating as much or the same as they used to.

[00:16:09] And so it's actually causing a lot of friction within family units. So that's a little aside that I thought was really interesting and fits this. As a perfect example that they probably don't recognize that they're telling them that they don't eat very much anymore, or they're going to waste away or whatever it is that they're saying, but it makes that other person feel like they're being cast aside, that they're doing something wrong and different.

[00:16:32] So I just want you to be very aware that people influence us. And this can be in a very, low-key way. It doesn't look like the old school peer pressure, right? Where somebody is like, drink this or eat this pizza or, you know, chaining you down to the couch, watching Netflix all day. It can really be way more low-key.

Rewriting Your Identity
[00:16:50] And then the fourth thing I want to talk about is identity. When we really start rocking and rolling and changing the way that we do things in our lives, again, if this is being more positive or more optimistic in our lives or our behaviors, we're exercising more, changing our diet, or maybe even our emotions.

[00:17:10] Like we don't want to get wrapped up in political talk constantly because it does nothing for our mental health and wellbeing. Then if we don't feel the influence from other people in our lives, right? So they're like super supportive. They're not being weird at all. And we're really feeling like we have good patterns and routine down, what can happen is, is that we can start tricking ourselves about this isn't who we really are, how we can say like, no, I'm actually kind of that person who loves sitting on the couch and watching reality TV shows, and it can start feeling really odd to be the person who walks in the evenings instead of doing that.

[00:17:48] So we have to just be aware that we have to change our own story about who we are, our own identity around who we are. And, you know, sometimes having our influences, our friends and our family that we've known for a really long time, they can tether us back into the reality. Our old reality, which can make it harder to see ourselves in a new light, but we can also do that to buy some of that discomfort that we start feeling the physiological changes that we can start feeling can make us feel like, well, this isn't really who I am.

[00:18:19] Like I can't go on forever walking in the evenings. I can't go on forever eating hearty salads instead of pizza. I mean, like, this isn't who I am. So right here, right now, you get to change this identity of who you are. You get to rewrite your story, because if you don't rewrite your story, then there's that part of you who's always going to be the wine girl.

[00:18:41] There's that part of you that's always going to look in the mirror and always see something different than what's really there, a beautiful, healthy individual, right? So we need to change our identity. And the way to do this is I want you to write. I highly encourage you can do whatever you want, but I would love for you to write about yourself in the first person a year from now in the first person present moment a year from now.

[00:19:06] So you'll start it by saying, and October 1st, 2025, whatever, a year from whatever date that you write your letter. And you say, I woke up this morning feeling amazing in my body. I look to my right in this, you know, whoever is laying down next to you, lights coming through the windows, you know, like describe where you are, how you feel in your body, how your clothes fit you.

[00:19:33] What your practices are, what your routines are, what your rituals are, how you care for yourself deeply and write that in the first person present and read it to yourself, record yourself. I have one, I do this and it is such a beautiful nourishing practice that we can do. And it also changes the neural networks in our brain.

[00:19:54] It creates this new person. Because if we're running off of this old person that we are, we'll inevitably slip back into that. So this is a way for you to quantum leap, so it doesn't take you three decades to change where you can change really overnight or in a very, very short period of time.

Conclusion and Next Week's Preview
[00:20:13] And next week's episode, we are going to talk about how to move from the stress state, this fear state over to a calm state in the reason why it is so important. And let me stress that again, it is so important for us to learn this technique and tool because our nervous system, the way that we hold stress and respond to stress in our bodies is what's running our lives.

[00:20:38] So once we can learn this and once we can identify, Oh, I'm in the red zone, stress state, or I'm in the yellow zone. So I could either fluctuate to the red state or the green state or the green state, which is a calm state and I'll go into all of the colors and what they mean. But it is essential that we learn this, like I always say it is our responsibility to take control of our lives, of our nervous system, and I can't wait to do this with you.

[00:21:04] See you next episode.