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Getting ourselves motivated can lead to a lot of internal conversations… “I know I should do it but I don’t feel like it”…. “If I want to hit my goals, I need to do it!”. It’s stressful and exhausting. So let me ask you…. are you motivated to brush your teeth every morning? No, it’s just something you do, right? There is no internal conflict, no fighting back and forth while you try to make a decision on if you should brush your teeth or not! What if other decisions could be that simple too? What if deciding to exercise, or clean the garage or choose something healthy from the menu could be that easy too? A no-brainer decision that you make with ease. It can be! Listen in to begin to learn how!
And join us inside our free online community at www.TheArtofLivingBig.com to get in on the conversation and learn more!
music by bensound .com
Transcript:
today’s podcast is brought to you by the infinite soul project where you learn how to shift your energy and manifest the change you want in your life. We’re gonna dive into your brain and the scientific reasons why you get more of what you focus on and help you consciously create some miracles for yourself. You can find out more at infinite soul project calm. Welcome to the art of living big. My name is Betsy Pake entrepreneur, author and personal success coach. This is the show that brings you stories and small ideas to help you live a big life. I hope this once a week podcast will inspire you, motivate you and encourage you to think differently about what could be possible for your life. Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Now let’s go live big.
Hello, everybody. Happy Monday. All right. So I’ve gotten some messages from people asking me, well, I got a lot of messages asking me all kinds of stuff. So I’m going to start trying to go through those in the next couple weeks. The cool thing is that it’s Valentine’s week this week. And so we’re going to talk about like a little self love, because I feel like a little self love could go a long way in answering all of the questions that I’ve received. So we got some great ones asking about motivation and habits, and how to get along with different people. And so this particular episode, let’s talk about habits. Because this is something that can really affect, like every area of your life, whether it’s work where you feel like you’re struggling, or it’s maybe you’ve fallen down a little bit with your health and fitness, or maybe you just want better habits surrounding your relationships, because really, relationships fall into habits too. And we get into a cycle with things. And when we pop out of a cycle that has served us, it can sort of throw everything off whack, right. And so maybe in, you know, maybe you’ve been working towards, I’ll use myself as an example, I was working towards competing at the Pan American Games. And that wasn’t this past summer, the summer before. And I was really focused, I was super focused for about a year and a half really focused on my health focused on my fitness, maybe almost to the point where I was neglecting some other areas in my life. So I had to pop out of that a little bit. And I had to kind of find some balance. Well, now I’m at a place where I realized that I’ve developed some habits that don’t really support the life that I want. And so now I’m having a look at it and go, okay, it’s all part of the journey. So it’s all right, but now it’s time for me to take a look and say, Okay, we’re have things sort of fallen out of whack. And at the beginning of the year, and at the beginning of every month, I rate my all the areas of my life. So I talked about this in a blog post, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. But you can actually download the form that I use. But I go through all the different areas of my life. So spirituality, relationships, health and fitness, career, all these different areas self growth, and I rate them every month, the beginning of the month, and then I look to see because every month they can shift, right? So every month, like I may be more focused on fitness one month, and then the other month, I might be more focused on my relationship. That’s okay. It’s sort of the ebb and flow. But in order to have something not go too far off the path, if you can recognize where something has fallen below the threshold where you’d like it to be, then you can go Oh, okay, well, it’s only been three or four weeks that have gone by, that’s fallen down, I’m going to focus on that this month. So maybe developing some new habits with health and fitness or with your relationships or where you are right now, I’ll tell you that right now, one of my focuses is on getting back to like having a regular workout time. So I used to always work out in the morning. And then I found I was more creative in the morning. So I wanted to get to work, but then the workouts sort of got pushed to the side, and then I get busy and tired. So the reality for me is that workouts needs to come in the morning. So if I’ve got a habit that I’m trying to build, so I want to build that habit back of having my workouts in the morning, how do I do that. And how I do that is because every single thing that you do is really just a trigger and an association.
So something triggers you to do something and then you have an association. And that’s the thing that you do. So right now you already have all of these triggers and associations happening in your life. Some of them probably serve you and some of them don’t. But when I’m trying to add in working out, I always like I’ll schedule it right. So I want to look at my schedule and see when I can actually do it because that will start to form a trigger. The time can be a trigger. And so what I like to do is I put it attach it to something I already do. So I have a little routine in the morning, I get up at 5am, I get my daughter off to school. And then I spend time in meditation journal, I read for a little bit, and then I’m going to add my exercise in right after that. So that will be part of my schedule. As soon as I’m done with my reading, I’m going to just change into my workout clothes, and then that will be my trigger to begin working out. So I’ll still get it done early, I’ll get it done in a point where I can then still start my day and feel like I’m creative and have time to get going in the morning. I don’t feel like I’m behind the eight ball when I start my day, so I’m adding the trigger, the trigger is finishing my meditation where normally I would go brush my teeth and just get started for my day, triggering my meditate my meditation, and then I’m going to have my workout clothes out. So when I have my workout clothes out, I go into the bathroom, like I always would finish my meditation go into the bathroom, go to brush my teeth, but now I see my workout clothes, right, so then I can just get in my workout clothes and go and work out. So I’m going to talk in another episode about how to be motivated when you’re not motivated, because there’s a trick to that too. But just know that it might not happen the very first time like the very first time you may not feel like motivated. But if you have that trigger, you’re not forgetting. So I have the trigger I meditate as always get up, go brush my teeth, my workout clothes are there I put them on and I go workout. Alright, so over time, it’ll start to form a habit. Now what if I already have a bad habit? I have something I want to break. So here’s another bad habit if I have carbohydrates, like if I have too many carbs, I always say it’s too many. But maybe it’s not too many. Maybe it’s any, if I have when I have carbohydrates in the form of like bread, or you know, something like that, at dinnertime, I want chocolate after I’m done. Like that’s just how it goes, y’all I just have some kind of bread with my meal, and, or roll or whatever. And then I want I want chocolate but or something sweet. But if I don’t have that if I have like a huge salad, even with like avocado or lots of healthy fats on it, no need for chocolate, but the bread I have found is a trigger. And so how do I stop that? Like maybe I go out to dinner and they have bread, or we’re having something that hasn’t roll for dinner? Like I you know, I can’t always cut out the thing that I think is gonna cause me to want chocolate. So how do I start to break that habit? Because really, that’s all it is, right? So I may have a craving for it. But all that is is being triggered. I’m triggered by the bread, the carbohydrates, that surge of energy that that gives me right the surge of glucose in my system makes me want something sweet. And so the only thing I have to do to break a habit, it’s so easy. I always joke that it’s so easy, a three year old can do it and they do it. All you have to do is wait. So I have my role or my bread. I feel like I want chocolate instead of getting chocolate. I wait. Even if I can wait for two minutes. That’s enough. So I can wait for just two minutes. And that’s enough time. But if I can wait for two seconds, I’m sorry. But if I can wait for two minutes, it gets me outside of that critical chemical window.
And now I’m able to actually, like make a better decision, right? Because now I’m not being flooded with all of these chemicals that’s kind of helping me trying to get pushed me to do the thing. So if I can wait and get outside that critical chemical window, then I can move forward. And even if I have the thing, even if I have chocolate, I’ve still started to move forward. I’ve still started to break that habit. Because breaking the habit is just waiting. It doesn’t happen right off just like I don’t build the habit right off. But if I wait two seconds, I’m starting to break the habit. So I just delay that’s it. delay. If you’re going delay two minutes, awesome. If you can delay three seconds, you’re still successful. Now, what do I do? What do I do during the two minutes, it doesn’t matter. You can do anything you play candy crush on your phone, you can, you know, go for a walk, you can sit on your hands, it doesn’t matter just do anything else. So let’s review. So if I want to create a habit, I find where I want to stick it where I want to stick the new habit right so for me, I want to stick my workouts right after my meditation. I look at what I normally do at that time. And I create a new association with the trigger. The trigger is finishing up and going into brush my teeth. My workout closer there. That’s my new Association. Oh, it’s time to work out and then I just go do it. Now when I want to break a habit. I don’t want to have chocolate after dinner. When I feel the need for chocolate, you know, you’ll feel it’s like an energy that comes over you people call it a craving. All that is is this energy, it’s this rush of chemicals, I’m just going to delay. And during the time I delay, I’m just going to do anything else. And that is how you’ll start to break a habit. Now, it won’t happen the very first day. But over time, you’ll begin to break that habit and you’ll begin to build the habits that you want. So every month review where you are, review every single area of your life on a one to 10. Find the things that are dropping low. Find the goals that you want to have in the dreams that you want to build. And then find your triggers, add them in or delete them, whatever best serves you. So I hope that helps. I hope you attack your habits this week with new ideas and new vigor because you deserve to live
a big life. Have a great week, you guys.
Thanks for spending some time with us today. Remember to jump in on that online community at SS lB community.com. And, as always, here’s a little message from my husband.
That’s it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
