Episode 52: Creating Consistency

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 52 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April price and it's official! We've been together here in this phase for a whole year. Thank you so much for being out there, for listening to the podcast, for sharing it with your loved ones, it means so much to me that you have found some value in this. And since this episode marks a year of us being together, I wanted to ask you a favor and ask you if you would go on to iTunes and leave me a review.

When you're listening to the podcast you can just scroll down under the episode notes, and there's a place there to rate the podcast, and just below that there's a little purple link that says write a review. And I would love it if you could take a minute, and just write a review, and tell me how the podcast has helped you this last year. I would so appreciate it and it helps other people find the podcast as well.

So, how are you guys? I gotta be honest, it's getting tough, right? It's getting real. This is where we find out what we're made of, it kind of reminds me of being pregnant. Like nothing you can do about it, you just gotta endure it now. We just have to get through it. And when I was pregnant, I remember at the beginning I would be so scared that I was going to die. It was that bad! I was that sick, and I was just scared that I wasn't going to make it, that I was going to die. And then there would come a moment where I would start to be scared that I wasn't going to die. That I was going to be stuck here, sick forever, and I was scared that I was going to have to live through this whole thing.

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I started being less scared that I was gonna die and more scared that I wasn't. And I know where I am right now, and the quarantine isn't as bad as all that, but it kind of feels the same, you know? Like at first we're scared that something terrible is going to happen, and now we're scared that like "oh we're just gonna be bored forever, just skip, and be in limbo and discomfort forever." But what I want you to know is that no matter how unending it seemed, I always had that baby. The nausea stopped eventually, the baby always came out. And this will to this will end, so be still, this too shall pass. Give yourself a serious pat on the back, and just keep going. I love you and I'm cheering for you, and I'm happy to coach you if you need to sort your head out, and figure out what you need to think in order to keep going.

So, today on the podcast I wanted to talk to you about the idea of consistency. We've been here a year, and I've consistently shown up every week, and so I've been thinking about how we create consistency in our lives? How we create consistency about anything? How we create and structure our lives, so that we start to make those accomplishments stack up over time?

And I think it's really about showing up for yourself, right? Keeping the commitments you make to yourself, and doing the things you say you want to do. So, I heard this really interesting thought from one of my coaches, Brooke Castillo this week, and she was writing about the phrase that we use a lot. The phrase is "I was going to", "I was going to" we say things like "I was going to get in shape, or I was going to finish my book, or I was going to take a cooking class, or I was going to go back to school. I was going to spend more time with my spouse. I was going to clean out that hall closet. I was going to."

And she pointed out that this one phrase "I was going to" in that phrase there is both the past and the future but there is no present, right?

So, let's take it apart for a second. "I was" that's in the past. That's a focus on something that's already happened. "I was" that's the past. And then we say, "going to", going to is the future. It hasn't happened yet. It's still coming, it's still out there somewhere in the future. And so, in this one phrase "I was going to" we have the past and the future. But notice, how there is no part of it that is in the present. No part of it talks about what we are doing right now.

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No part of it is happening currently, and when we use that phrase "I was going to" we essentially let our present self-off the hook. Our past self should have done something "I was going to" and our future self is going to do something. I was going to, but our present self has no responsibility here. And when the present has no responsibility, then it makes it so it never happens. This phrase that we use so casually, makes it so that no present action is ever required.

And then we kind of sit and blame for the past, or like pining for the future but zero action is happening in the present. And I thought this was so fascinating, right? It's a way that we keep ourselves from doing anything, while feeling like we're totally doing something, right? Like tricking ourselves. We keep telling ourselves that we are going to do something, when actually we do nothing at all.

And this is the first key that I want to talk about when it comes to consistency, and how to be more consistent in your life. I want you to understand that everything with consistency happens in the present. It's the stacking up of action in one present moment after another that creates progress in our lives. The temptation is always to put it off, one day, or one week, or one month off, into the future. And the reason for this is simple, because whatever it is that we want to start doing consistently in our lives requires effort. In some cases, it requires courage, and it almost always requires some amount of discomfort. It's going to take a little work, and it's going to be a little bit hard, and our brain loves to avoid effort, because this requires energy which the brain is programmed to conserve. Our brain also does whatever it can to avoid things that require courage or discomfort because it is biologically programmed to avoid painful experiences. So, in the present moment our brain wants to avoid things that might be painful or require energy, and so it's no one strategy is to put it off into the future moment.

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Your higher self has all these things that wants you to do, but your lower brain is always trying to figure out how to get out of doing these things, and putting off doing anything until later. Until it's a better time, until you're less tired, or more prepared, or until you feel more motivated, or you feel more ready to work. This is a very effective technique to avoid work in the present, but the present moment is the one that counts. And the more willing you are to consistently experience discomfort, or put forth effort in the present moment and override that lower brain, the more ability you will have to create the life you want.

So, Russell Brunson calls this the "Manana" principle. "Manana" means tomorrow in Spanish, and he says that if there are things that you want to do and your brain says, "let's do that tomorrow, let's do it manana", then you know that it's something you need to do now. And he says that if you have fears that are keeping you stuck, instead of worrying about your fears today, put those off until tomorrow, until manana. So, if it's something that you think "I'll do that tomorrow" do that today, and if it's something that you're worried about today, put the worry off until tomorrow.

And I really love that you want to flip the equation around in your brain. Your brain wants to tell you to worry today and work tomorrow. But what you need to do is the opposite. You need to work today and worry tomorrow, right, manana. If my brain says do it manana, I'm doing it today and if my brain says I should worry about this today I will worry about that manana. I think that is like pure genius!

Everything happens in the present moment. If you want something done, if you want something to happen in your life, it always happens in the present. You have to take action in the present to have those things in your life. You want to be a podcaster it happens in the present. You want to be a writer, it happens in the present. You want to be a great mom, it happens in the present. You want to be a soft place to land, it happens in the present. "I was going to" doesn't exist ever! There is not a past future moment where you become what you want to be. There is just now, and all the becoming happens right now. You have the present and whatever it is you want to be consistent in your life, it will happen in the present.

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The second thing that I want to talk to you about to increase your consistency in any area, is to really look at your thoughts about the thing that you want to do, and see what those thoughts are creating, and evaluate whether or not those thoughts are helping you get what you want. So, I want to give you a little example of this, but I really want you to understand that this idea doesn't just apply to your health or weight loss goals.

This principle will apply no matter what it is that you want to be more consistent at. So, the other day I was listening to a podcast from a trainer in Australia whose name is Dan Kennedy and he was talking about body composition goals during the COVID 19 quarantine. What they should be and why? And he offered this thought that this could be the very best time to lose fat because you can control so many of the variables in your life. He pointed out that most people have more control right now over their food because they aren't going out to eat with friends, they aren't socializing, there isn't doughnuts in the conference room. People have more time to meal prep and cook than ever before. People have more time to get adequate sleep which is like a huge component of weight loss. People have more time to exercise and get their activity level up throughout the day, like you can take walks throughout the day if you're working from home, where maybe you can't in an office. He said that even stress levels can be lower because we don't have the immediate usual stressors in our life, like our schedule and traffic and all those things.

And the big stressors like the economy, and the virus are things that we have no control over, and so we can release those big stressors knowing "okay I'm not in charge of that and I'll deal with things as they come." And so he's saying even our stress levels could be lower. Now, the reason I'm telling you all this is because when he said these things it was the first time I had ever heard that thought, it was the first time my brain had ever thought "a pandemic is a really good time to do fat loss." It was the first time I had even thought that thought. Up until that point I had heard and believed lots of thoughts that this isn't a good time for fat loss, and then it's too hard to manage all our fears and uncertainty with a calorie deficit. But when Dan Kennedy offered this thought, I realized he could be right about that, and I could believe this thought just as easily as the one that I had been believing, "that I'll be lucky to get out of this pandemic without a few extra pounds." And I have to tell you that in that moment that he said this I understood for the first time that the idea that I would be lucky to get out of the quarantine at my current weight was just a thought.

I was like "wait a minute! What I've been thinking about myself and my weight is just a thought, and I could think something totally different." It was kind of mind blowing for me, even though I do this work, and it created this kind of shift inside of me, right? That I could think something entirely different, and that shift in my thinking created a change in my behavior. I understood that I could believe that this is a great time to achieve the exact weight goal I wanted. And my point is not that you should or shouldn't lose weight right now, that is not my point. My point is, that the way I had been thinking was not serving me, and it was not helping me be consistent on my food protocol. My own thinking was sabotaging my consistency, it was telling me that it was kind of impossible to be consistent during the pandemic. And so, guess what, impossible to be consistent with showing up in my results! I was suddenly having a hard time being consistent in the food I was eating.

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And so, whatever it is that you want to be doing take a minute and examine the thought that you're having about it. What do you believe about your ability to be consistent? What do you believe about your ability to show up for yourself, and what are the beliefs you have that are getting in your way? Whatever you want to be consistent at, do you have a belief that it's impossible to do that right now? It's impossible for you to do it. It's impossible to do it with the kids home. Do you have a belief that it's impossible to do it when things are uncertain? Do you have a belief that it's too late? Do you have a belief that is making it difficult to be consistent?

So, right now I'm working on body re-composition with my nutrition coach, where we maintain my current weight but turn more fat into lean muscle. And so, at the beginning of the year I was working on a cut in my calories with my nutrition coach, and she gave me the thought "it's okay to be hungry" and that thought helped me so much because whenever I would get hungry I would remember it was perfectly okay to be hungry. I could be hungry, and it was just discomfort, and I could do that, right? But then the quarantine came around, and suddenly that thought no longer seemed valid to me. I adopted thoughts like "I need to be as comfortable as possible because the world is so uncertain." Right. "Regular life is so uncomfortable that I don't need to add to it." What I want you to notice is how big a role my thought was playing in my success at being consistent, in my success at eating the way I need to, in order to reach my goals.

So, if you aren't being consistent it's not because you're an undisciplined person, it's not because you can't get your act together, or because things are like crazy in the world right now. It's because of the thoughts you are believing. The thoughts you are believing are keeping you stuck and preventing your consistency. And you just need to believe something else! When Dan Kennedy gave me the thought that "this was the perfect time to work on fat loss" it changed my perspective completely and then that changed my consistency.

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So whatever your goal is, whatever you want to develop consistency at, examine your thoughts and find the ones that aren't helping you show up the way you want to, and then decide to think something new instead. And this is what I love about having a personal coach, she can see so much easier than me because I'm living inside my own brain. The thoughts that are keeping me stuck, she can identify the unhelpful thoughts, and show me how it's the thought, and only the thought, that is preventing the action that I want to take. In this way, my coaches have been like my secret weapon, these last couple of years, to actually taking action, and being consistent, and getting what I want out of my life.

So, just this morning I had a memory pop up on my phone from a year ago, and it was like from this photo shoot that we had done for the pictures for my website. And I remember that a year ago I didn't have a website, I didn't have a coaching business, and amazing clients, and I didn't even have a podcast yet. Right? All of that has been created from consistent effort, that was made possible because my coaches challenged my limited beliefs, over and over again. And if you don't have a coach your first reaction should be to hire one, probably me! To help you question your thoughts, and think the thoughts on purpose that will move you forward in consistent action, to get what you want out of your life.

The third thing that I want to offer you in your efforts to be more consistent is the idea of making a decision, and then not giving your brain an alternative. Like "Brain, this is what we're doing. End of discussion!" So, I wanted to give you a little example of this so you can understand what I mean. And I recently heard this interview with Marcus Smith and, Marcus Smith lives in Dubai. And last year after this horrific road bike accident, he worked his way back through physical therapy, back to health. And he was able to run at the end of the year, 30 marathons in 30 days, and he said that obviously this was an excruciating goal, to be able to run, and keep running on tired legs that many miles day after day after day. And he said that one of the keys was to let his brain know that there wasn't a choice, that he had decided, and this is what he was doing.

He had made a decision and that was it. And his brain was going to have to deal with it and find a way to make it work. So, he said for example that a few days in to this goal he had this really intense pain in his hamstring, and he was pretty sure that he had pulled it or damaged it and that he was like "I'm in real trouble here." It was like the most excruciating run to be able to finish this marathon that day. And he said that his brain protested the whole way through the marathon. And he just kept telling his brain he didn't have a choice. He had to finish, he had started that day and he had to finish. And so, he said the next day when he got up it was hurting him again and he said, "well I just have to do one." I just have to do this one today. I made a commitment and I just have to do this one. And he ran it with all that hamstring pain, and the next day the same thing happened. He was like "well I just have to run one today," right? And so, he just ran with the pain, and he did it again. And then the next day he said there was no pain. He said his brain just figured out that we weren't going to stop, and it just had to figure it out.

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And there are two things there that I think can help you. One, first we reach our goals one day at a time. You just have to do today, you just have to be consistent today. Like Marcus Smith said, "I didn't run 30 marathons in a month." He said, "I ran one marathon, 30 times." He calls that doing the small thing over and over again. I don't think a marathon is a small thing, but you know we're all at different levels. But you just do a one at a time, right?

And then secondly what I want to point out is that he just decided that, that's what he was doing, and he made his brain and his body figure it out. If you decide that's what you're going to do and no excuse is going to get in your way, or stop you, then your brain will need to figure out a way to get it done. And this is really powerful to know. It really is up to you. And the decisions you make, your brain will do what you want it to do, if you don't allow the excuses, and carry on a negotiation with it.

And this idea pairs really nicely with the last idea I want to give you about consistency and that is, the power of setting an actual goal instead of just thinking it would be nice if someday I could do X, Y, or Z, or thinking that someday you'd just really like to develop a certain habit in your life. We want to not just have a nebulous idea of something, right, but an actual goal so that you, and your brain can be aware of the decision.

So, when I went to the life coach school, I just thought it would be like the coolest thing in the world to be a life coach, and to be able to help people every single day. To be able to help people see what was actually creating their pain, find the cause of it, and then be able to show them the way out. But when I signed up, I didn't really realize that there was going to be a few steps between going to school, and getting certified, and then being able to help clients every day. Like you just don't get certified and then step into a life where there's like this queue of people waiting for you to help them.

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So, one of the most valuable questions my coach asked me was "What is your 90 day goal?" And I had just finished certifying and she said, "Okay, what is your 90-day goal?" And I remember just being like so stunned by that question. Like "90- day goal? What are you talking about?" "I just want to have a life coaching business, I just want to help people, I just want to be able to coach." I hadn't even considered the idea of meeting a 90-day goal, or even like seeing the necessity of having any goals. But that question reframed everything for me, and I think that having a goal can reframe everything for you as well, and here's why. So, one of the coaches at the life coach school Stacy Beeman, talks about how having a goal is like creating a container for your dreams. We all have these ideas of the life we want to be living, or the person that we want to be, and our goals kind of create a container around those ideas, so that you can grab hold of them and move them from just an idea, like actually into the physical world.

So, I want you to notice the feelings and kind of imagine what happens when I say, "Alright, before I die I want to write a book." Like that container, my whole life before I die, I want to write a book, that container is so huge that it doesn't provide any urgency for my goals. It doesn't provide any urgency to take action. Like who knows when I'm going to die, but it feels like never. So, I have lots of time on my hands to make my dreams happen and this is kind of how we live our lives, we think "yeah before I die I want to try that or I want to be that I want to become a person who does this kind of thing." But the container is so big that we have seemingly forever to create that result in our life, and so then we don't take any action, even when I say "okay, I want to write a book this year." It's too big of a container still for my brain to be able to handle, a year is so far away, like I have so much time there's spring, and then there's summer, and then there's fall, and there's winter. Like it's forever, the last four weeks alone have lasted an eternity! So there really is just so much time, but notice the smaller my container gets the more urgent my goals become, and the more necessary it becomes for me to take action.

So, I like to set 90 day goals to kind of give me a vision for where I'm going, but even then I find what's even more useful than that, is for me to set up 30 day goals, or monthly goals within that 90 days. Like a month is such a small container, that it brings me like right up next to my goal up close and personal with my goal. It makes it urgent. We are now down to like days. I have 30 days, and I want to create something within a matter of days, I've got to get to work. And this makes me act, rather than just thinking about acting, in many ways the container makes me set my fears aside. It makes me act, it's like I don't have time to wait and be scared, I simply have to get to work. I don't have time for fear, like it can be so helpful for you to give your life and your dreams a container.

So, my boys and I were watching that mini-series Chernobyl, oh my gosh it's so good! But they were talking about how a nuclear reactor works and how when you put uranium in a container, they have all these extra neutrons that are forced into close proximity to one another. And when they put it in the container like there's a greater chance that the neutrons will hit each other, and then that fusion between those neutrons are going to produce some power. Without the container, the neutrons don't really have a chance of hitting one another. And like, in the same way I kind of imagined myself and my goal in this little container. Like when we're close up, when it's the 30-day container, I'm going to run into that goal a lot faster, right? And that will create power for my goals, it will generate more power for me than if it's this huge container, or no container at all.

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Okay, so here at the end I wanted to give you a little exercise to bring this all together. And I hope that it will really help you as you go to take action in your life, and create a life you really like living. So, I use it every morning, and it has made a huge difference for me and I hope that it will for you too. So, the first thing that you need to do is to make a goal, a 30-day goal, a container for your dreams, for the thing that you want. And I write the 30-day goal at the top of my page every morning, that's my container. And my brain, as soon as I write that down has all kinds of thoughts about that goal, and about that container that I have arbitrarily made up, and those thoughts are all the fear, and the thoughts about quitting. And so, this is how I handle all of those thoughts. I ask myself three simple questions.

So, I write my goal, and then I ask number one, on a scale from 1 to 10, how committed am I to my goal? And then I write that number down without judgment. The first number that comes to my head. Sometimes it's a two, sometimes it's six. It's never once been a ten, just so you know. And then after I write that number down I ask "why" "how committed am I from 1 to 10 and why?" And then I write down all the reasons why, all those whys are the thoughts about fear and quitting. They're all the thoughts about why I can't, and why I shouldn't, and why this is crazy. They're all the thoughts about why I should just go back to the cave, and why I shouldn't even try. So, I just write all those things down until my brain doesn't have anything left to say about it. And then I ask the third question "if I was ten out of ten committed to reaching my goal, what would I be thinking?" And then I write until I get an an emotional shift from the two, or the six, into the ten, fully committed one hundred percent all in, and I write all the thoughts that I need to think, if I was all in on getting my goal.

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What I'm working on through this exercise is getting an emotional shift inside of me, that will allow me to take action towards my goal, because remember all of our actions are fueled by our feelings. So if I try to go after my goal with the feelings of two, where I feel fear, and discouragement, and defeat, and I use that as my fuel, I am not going to get very far. But if I act, and go after my goal from the feelings of a 10, which are committed, and dedicated, and energized, and confident, then I'm going to make some real progress towards my goal, and the life that I actually want to be living.

So then after a few days of asking these three questions, I change the question a little bit by simply changing one word, I change the word "committed." How committed am I to my goal, to the word "confident." "How confident am I that I can reach this goal?" And then I do the same exercise, I write the goal at the top of the page, and I say on a scale from 1 to 10 "How confident am I that I can reach my goal?" And I write that number down, and then I say why? And my brain gives me all the reasons why I can't reach my goal and write this all down. And then I ask, "If I was ten out of ten, one hundred percent confident that I was going to hit that goal, what would I be thinking?" And I write that down until I get that emotional shift into confidence, and I do that same exercise every day all month long with the word confident put into the question. And the next month I write a new goal at the top of the page and I start over.

I want you to give this a try, you will be amazed at what happens for you emotionally as you do this exercise, as you shift from all those feelings of fear, and wanting to quit, into confidence, into ten out of ten confident that you can achieve your goals. And if you are willing to create small immediate containers for your dreams, and then never stop just consistently create relentless forward motion, that consistency will stack up, and it will change you, and it will create progress for you in your life.

The truth is, we are what we do every day. Everything happens in the present moment, use the power of the present, instead of waiting for a place where it is more comfortable. That place isn't coming because it doesn't exist, you have right now. Look at the thoughts that are preventing your consistent action, question them and then think, and believe what you need to in order to create your best consistent action.

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Make a decision instead of an excuse. Make a decision, and then let your brain figure out how to make it happen, and finally, set a goal. Create a container for the things you really want to be, and have, and do in your life. The container makes everything real, and present, and urgent, and that will help you show up consistently for yourself. Learning to keep your commitments to yourself, and be consistent, is one of the most important skills we learn as humans. And learning it, will change your life, and that my friends is 100% awesome!

I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.