Episode 59: Moving from Intention to Implementation

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think and that my friends is 100% awesome!

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 59 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome you to the podcast. Thank you for listening and sharing the podcast. I am so grateful for all of you and for all the positive feedback that I get from so many of you. I'm so grateful that in some way the thoughts, and ideas that we share here on the podcast are blessing your life. My goal is always to try and make the earth life experience a little bit easier for you. I was just talking to a dear client yesterday, and she was overwhelmed by the pain in the world, by the pain in her own life, and then the pain in the world at large.

And she said, "Sometimes it just feels like it's too much. There's just too much pain." And I can relate to that, and I know that many of you can as well. That is one of the primary reasons that I do what I do, because I have learned through my own experiences that while life is painful, and it does contain challenge, and difficulty, our suffering increases by the way we think about things. And there is always a way to alleviate the self-inflicted, unnecessary, suffering from our lives.

That's what coaching did for me, and of course I am still having a 50/50 Earth life experience, but that is a significant improvement from the mostly negative experience that I was having before. And I just want to share that with you, with my clients, and with anyone who wants to listen. And anyone who is interested in getting some relief from the Earth life burdens, that are compounded by unhelpful thoughts, and beliefs. That's why I'm here! That's why I do what I do, and I hope that in some way that is happening for you. And if you ever want more help with that you can sign up for a free coaching consultation, and I'll show you what can happen when you take this work even deeper, and apply it to your personal life.

2:43
Okay so, today on the podcast I want to continue our discussion from last week. And if you haven't listened to the episode on the problem with guilt, and shame I encourage you to go and do that, because I want to talk about how we actually implement change in our lives today. A lot of us think about changing, right? We want to change, we talk about change, and we even make decisions to change, and do things differently. But for so many of us there is a disconnect between the desire, and the decision to change, and the implementation of that change.

And as I said last week, one of the biggest hindrances to that is that we have the desire, and make the decision to change from a place of guilt, and shame, and this does not have the power to change us in an effective way. So, that's first, and that's what last week's episode was all about. But once we can drop our guilt, and shame, and decide from a place of love that we want to do things differently in our lives then what? How do we close the space between deciding to change, and then implementing that change? And that's what we're going to talk about today.

So, I'm going to give you five tools that have really helped me to close this space between what I want to do, and what I actually do. And they aren't sequential, okay, they don't happen like one step at a time, they kind of need to happen simultaneously. And especially as I talk about the first two ideas here today, I want you to know that they almost sound like opposites, but they are both necessary. And I think they're really effective for us when they're applied at the same time.

Okay, so, the first tool that I want to give you is the idea that all the action that we take in our lives, and all the action we don't take in our lives comes because of the feelings we are feeling. Our feelings fuel our actions, and in fact we don't take any action without first having a feeling, our feelings are the way that our brain communicates with our body, and then causes our body to act. The brain is always taking in information, right? All the time through our senses, and it's constantly generating thoughts in response to that stimulus. Those thoughts we're having produce our feelings, and those are just chemical signals sent from the brain into our body, and the brain senses so that it can get the body to do something, to act.

5:17
So, it's really important to remember that the reason you are acting the way you are or the reason you're not acting in the way you want is because of a feeling, because of the feeling in your body. And so, it follows if you don't like the action you're taking or you want to take different action, you're gonna need a different feeling to fuel that action. So, how do we get a different feeling? Well, as you know feelings are only ever created by thoughts. And so to take different action we need to look at our thoughts, and find a thought that creates a feeling that will then create the action that we want.

So, to give you a little example of this a couple of weeks ago we were all going to bed and I said something like, "I've really got to get to work tomorrow. I really need to make some progress on some of these things on my list." And my daughter said, "I say that every night." She said, "I've been saying that every night for the past month, I got to do something tomorrow." And she said, "But somehow it never happens."

And we all just laughed, because every one of us has had that experience, right? But where we can get some traction in this is to understand that the reason that we are acting the next day is, because our feelings are not fueling the action we want to take. So, when my daughter goes to bed she thinks "Okay, tomorrow I'm going to get to work." But when she wakes up she has a thought like "It's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't know where to start." Doesn't really matter, right? Or some other thought like that, that we've all had before, and this thought creates a feeling. It creates a feeling of overwhelm, or lethargy, or apathy, or dread, and then she doesn't take action from these feelings. These feelings cause her not to act, and it's the same for you if you notice that you aren't doing what you said you wanted to do, instead of getting disgusted with yourself for not acting, it will be so much more useful to you to just examine your feelings. When you find yourself not acting, ask yourself what am I feeling right now? And then, what thought is creating this feeling?

Whenever I am willing to examine my feelings, and the thoughts creating it, then I can choose a more useful thought, a thought that will create a feeling of determination, or motivation, or commitment, or courage. Alright, whatever feeling I need in that moment. And so that is the first part of implementing any change in your life, you need to choose thoughts that will create the feelings you need to fuel your change, whatever change you want to make, right? If you want to be more loving, if you want to stop overspending, if you want to get up earlier, whatever change you want to make, you need to think about the feeling you will need to take action in this way. And then, what thought creates that feeling, and then practice thinking that thought. You have to think on purpose, in order to take different action in your life.

8:26
And so many of us just think we need to act differently, we need to take different actions, but in order to do that we have to think differently first. If we don't think differently then we're just going to have to use willpower, or muscle, or might, to get us to act against our feelings. And that only lasts for so long, eventually our feelings where us down, and we stop taking action. So, you need to change your thoughts in order to change your actions long term.

Okay, now the second tool that I want to give you is going to sound like the opposite of this, so just bear with me for a minute as I explain, because you're actually going to need both of these tools implemented at the same time to really get the change that you want. And, so this tool is the idea that you should expect discomfort, you should expect negative emotion when you go to change, or do new things, or do hard things. Now, I know that I just said you need to change all of your emotions with your thoughts to fuel your action, but the truth is we are still living a human experience and that means it's 50/50. That means that even when we think powerful thoughts that fuel action there is still going to be discomfort, and pain, and difficulty in doing new things, right? We aren't going to outthink our humanness, we're not going to outthink our human experience.

So, at the same time that you're nurturing thoughts to get you into action you need to expect discomfort, expect that it's going to be scary, expect that it's going to be hard, expect that it's going to require energy, and there might be pain involved, right? The more you could expect the discomfort to show up, and not need to solve for or change it or make it go away first, the more successful you're going to be at implementing change. So, when I go to the gym I nurture thoughts like, I love my body, I love getting strong every day counts, right? These thoughts get me into action, but I also expect that when my alarm goes off it's going to hurt, there's going to be some discomfort, right? I expect that my body's going to be tired, and my brain is going to protest, that's its job. Its job is to avoid pain, and save energy, and so it's going to say that the discomfort at getting up is a reason to stop. And I just expect that discomfort, and then move through it anyway.

When I decide to eat in a calorie deficit to lose weight, I do thought work to use powerful thoughts to fuel the commitment I have towards my goal, but I also know there will come a moment when I'm going to be uncomfortable. There will be a time when I feel fatigued, and deprived, and restless, and that's all a part of it. I don't have to stop, and solve for all these negative emotions in that moment, they're supposed to be there. Yes I'm tired, yes it's hard, but these are just thoughts, and I could change them, but I don't always have to change every single one of them. I don't have to solve for every thought I have, I've accepted that there is going to be 50% negative emotion in anything I do. And so, I don't let that discomfort stop me from taking action.

11:53
Okay, so let me show you how these two tools work together with a little example. So every Friday I send out a video that has a tip, or a tool, or a thought to help everyone that is on my email list. And if you want to be on that list you should sign up, you can do that at my website aprilpricecoaching.com But anyway, whenever I go to make that video my brain doesn't want to do it, right? In those moments, I often feel confused, or overwhelmed, or stuck, or unsure, about what to say, and how to offer something valuable. And these emotions like confusion, and uncertainty, or overwhelmed, aren't going to help me create really great content for my followers, right? There going to make me spin, and so to get into action I decide on purpose how I want to think about this, right? I decide to think this will help one person. I decide to think this will ease a little bit of suffering for someone. I decide to think I have really good ideas. One time one of my clients called me a "thought wizard" and so sometimes I even think, hey I'm a thought leader, and I can help. And so, all of these thoughts helped me get unstuck, and into action, and creating a video that will offer help to people.

But every time I go to publish the video, or send the videos out to everyone, discomfort starts up, right? I feel vulnerable, and anxious, and self-conscious, and even a little bit nervous, right? And I know that that's just a part of it, I know that whenever I put my work out into the world there will be some discomfort, because my brain thinks being visible and leaving the cave is a very bad idea. It thinks that that's a sure way to get rejected, and die, and so it offers me thoughts, it offers me discomfort like maybe we should just keep this to ourselves and stay safe and not act. But I expect this, this is what brains do, this is what my brain does, this is what your brain does.

13:58
Brains want to stay safe, and never change, and so when you go to change your brain is going to protest, is going to offer discomfort as a way of keeping you from acting. Your work is to expect that, and to not see it as a sign to stop, but as a sign that you're right on track, right? And that you're acting against the desires of your human brain, and that is how you change an up level your whole life. And that's why you really do need both tools right, thought work to get us into action, to produce incredible action or life, and allowing discomfort so that we can stay in action, so that we don't stop taking action. And when you use them together you are unstoppable.

Okay so, I hope that will be helpful to you. I have three other tools that I like to use as well to kind of supplement this foundation of change, and doing new things in my life. So, the third one is to give up perfectionism. Let me explain what I mean because that is not the perfect way to describe it, right? So, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time you know for sure that perfectionism is not a problem for me.

I have never been a perfectionist, and perhaps like you also wouldn't necessarily identify yourself as a perfectionist, but perhaps you have had the thought that, a little bit doesn't matter. I know that I have, right? I have had the thought that, a little bit won't matter when it comes to my eating. I've had the thought that a little bit won't matter when it comes to my exercise, like a little bit isn't going to make a difference, why are we doing this? I've had the thought that a little bit won't matter when it comes to my spirituality. That one prayer isn't going to make a difference, and I actually think that this thought "a little won't matter" is total poison when it comes to change, when it comes to stopping things we don't want to do, right? We always say a little won't matter, and it just kills us, because then we eat a little, or drink a little, or do a little porn, and then we tell ourselves, well it's too late now I've messed up, I might as well just go all the way, right?

And then "a little bit won't matter" it's total poison when it comes to starting new things, and implementing new habits, because we tell ourselves that a little bit won't matter. That it's too insignificant, that if we can't do a lot or if we can't make a huge change that it won't count, and it won't make a difference, and then it's a waste of time and so we do nothing, right? And so this thought I want you to just leave it behind forever. What if all progress is little? What if all of it is infinitesimal, insignificant, and unnoticeable, because I really think that it is. I believe it is the stacking of all the tiny little changes, that add up to big change in our life. Our bodies change one muscle fiber, one fat cell, one brain snaps at a time, our lives change one choice, one day, one hour at a time. So, James Clear talks a lot about this in his book "Atomic Habits", and recently he sent this question out to his email list he asked, "What is the biggest, small thing I could do today?" And that question, "What is the biggest small thing I could do today?" Kind of stopped me in my tracks, because so many times we think we have to make big changes, and this keeps us from making any change. So, for a moment look at your life, and notice where a small thing could make the biggest impact, right?

17:48
The day I got this email I had the thought, I could smile at David when he comes home today, and I know that sounds like nothing, you're like "April, you've got problems." But I know that little things matter, smiling is a small thing, but it would have the biggest impact on David yes, maybe, but on my feelings for David incalculably. It would remind me how good it is to see his face at the end of the day, it would remind me how glad I am that he comes home to me, it would make me grateful that he is there for me to love. So, another coach named Kara Lowentheil, calls this idea "the infinite one percent" meaning that the difference between zero, and taking no action, and taking one percent of action is infinitely more important than any other difference that you encounter when you decide to go and change.

And this is how she said it and I will link her podcast in the show notes. She said, "We think that the first few steps barely count that they're just like barely more than nothing, that they're so far away from the goal. We think that ten thousand dollars is closer to zero, than it is to a one-hundred thousand dollars. We think that running a half mile is closer to not running at all than it is to running a marathon. We think that making a drink, or meal plan, and then only following it 20 percent of the time is closer to just not following it all than to following it 100 percent of the time. It seems like basic math, but this math is wrong, because the difference between doing nothing and doing something is the biggest difference there is. From 0 to 1 is exponential growth from zero to one is the part most people never do. From 0 to 1 is the hard part."

Isn't that so good! And she goes on later to say, "The biggest difference in the world isn't between people who have done a little, versus people who have done a lot. It's between people who do nothing, and people who do something." And this is the tragedy of perfectionism, because perfectionism keeps us thinking that doing a little is pointless, but doing a little is everything. Okay, so, I love that doing a little is everything so don't fall for the lie your brain gives you, that a little doesn't matter, a little is the only thing that matters. Your brain is just trying to save energy, and avoid pain, and this is one of its most successful tactics, and you can be on to it. When I was first building my coaching practice, my brain tried this one out on me all the time, right? It told me that there was too much to do, and I'd never get there, but I just told myself we'd just have to do one thing this week, just one thing to get closer to the business you want. And that one thing, after one thing, just started to add up. One small thing counts when you just keep doing the one small thing over, and over, and over, again.

21:00
Next, I want to offer you the idea that we need to practice believing in ourselves. So often I find that people are scared to begin a little thing, to begin changing a little thing, because they don't believe in their ability to keep going. They use the evidence of their past, and they tell all their past stories as stories of failure, and they see this as a good reason not to believe in any of their future abilities. So, I want you to think about this for a minute, when did you stop believing in yourself? When did you stop believing in your ability to get what you want? And I apologize if I've already shared this story, but I was talking to my brother one day, and he was talking about how when we were kids learning to rollerblade, and how we'd strap on the roller blades and head down the driveway, and we'd crash, and we'd skin our knee, and scrape our elbows, and we come in two hours later broken, and battered, and bleeding, and still unable to rollerblade. And the next day we'd go back out there and put the roller blades back on, and even though we had zero evidence that we could rollerblade we believed that if we tried long enough we'd figure it out. And as I was talking to him he said "I would never do that as an adult. If I tried it, and I crashed I would just believe that I couldn't do it."

So, we don't have a lot of practice, especially as adults, believing in ourselves in so many ways we have let ourselves down over, and over, and over, again. And we've lost our trust with ourselves, and we've said, we're going to change so many times that we just don't believe it anymore, and I get it. I have been there, I have said those same things to myself, but your belief that you can't change is just creating that barrier result in your life. My life started to change when I started to believe what my coach said. She said, that she had changed, and she believed I could change, and once I started to believe that that I could change, then I started to see change in one area of my life.

That change made me believe that maybe I could change other areas as well. But I want you to know that you don't have to have evidence that you can't change, you can just decide to believe it. You can practice believing that you can. So, start by noticing what you believe right now. What do you believe about your ability to change, whatever you believe right now is just a thought that you have practiced a lot. It is not the truth. What you believe is just the thoughts that you have practiced the most often, and whatever you believe about yourself is 100% optional.

It's just something you have practiced, and you can believe something else, you can believe the exact opposite in fact. And the more you practice that new thought, the more true it will feel. And this is the work that I do with my clients, I teach them how to question the thoughts they have practiced believing, and I show them how that's just an optional story. And I ask them what else is true, and little by little we redirect, and practice new thoughts, so that they can believe new things in themselves.

24:13
And it's just like driving on the opposite side of the road when you come to a different country, right? Your brain only knows one way, and you've practiced that way a lot. When you go somewhere else you have to practice a new way until the neurons rewire and you learn the new way. My daughter recently decided that she wanted to change the side part in her hair to a center part. She said it was so weird the first day she parted her hair down the middle. She thought she just looked weird every time she looked in the mirror, her brain was so used to seeing her in the old way, right? And she just wanted to go in there and fix it. Every time she walked past the mirror and the hair didn't actually want to lay flat at the beginning right it kept trying to go back to the old pattern, she had to re-train the hair fibers, right? She had to re-train her brain to see herself. And some other people compare this to your thoughts being like a river, where we've carved a path, and we have to like create a new path for the water to go down. But what I want you to know is that hair can be re-trained, rivers can be redirected, and brains can think new thoughts. The things you believe are just the things you've practiced and if you want help changing your beliefs about yourself there is so much power in having a coach show you how the old belief is just a choice that you don't have to keep choosing, and how you can redirect those thoughts and believe something new.

Okay, so finally the last tool I have for you is to allow yourself to be proud. And I think this is one of those tools that sounds really insignificant, but then can make an enormous impact on your change. You need to celebrate yourself, and all the little wins along the way. Becoming is a process. There is no arrival point in any area of your life and so if you wait to celebrate and acknowledge your success to yourself you are going to wait forever. As we learn, and grow, and change in any area it is always an infinite process meaning there is no finish line for any of us when it comes to personal development, and growth, and overcoming our human natural brain. And sometimes that can feel discouraging. We would like to get somewhere, and finish, and rest, and be done. But I think that is because we don't celebrate enough along the way. Too often you don't see the good you have done, or recognize that you are always more successful now, and farther along than you ever have been before.

Our brains are programmed to notice where we aren't, and what we still lack. But you can get so much fuel, and power for change when you give yourself credit for the progress you have already made. And I want to offer you the idea that when you give yourself a chance to celebrate, it makes your brain take note. It makes your brain acknowledge the good, and it forces your brain to gather some evidence that builds your belief in you. When you celebrate it makes your brain acknowledge that you do create the results in your life.

27:20
So, I want to just give you a quick example of that. At the end of February, I hired a new business coach, and we set a goal for March that felt like really out of reach for me. But I was able to achieve it even before March was over, and I made more money in March than I had in any other month in my business. And when I talked about this with my coach and we evaluated what worked, and what didn't I told her I didn't even feel like I created it, right? I sort of just feel like it happened to me. It doesn't feel like that is really my result. And as we talked about it I realized that it was because I hadn't acknowledged myself all along the way. I hadn't given myself credit along the way for the wins. I hadn't appreciated myself for doing the hard things, and thinking differently, and changing things. I hadn't celebrated what I had created, but I also hadn't even celebrated my work or my effort in the process. And so, then it never felt like I had created the change in my revenue.

It felt like it would happen outside of me, and I think this happens to so many of us in other areas of our life. We discount our progress, we disparage our own efforts, we say that they're too small, that it's not enough, that it's not worth noticing, or we have so far to go that we shouldn't get excited about a couple of first steps, right? But I think the opposite is true, I think acknowledging, and noticing, and appreciating it, and celebrating all the small steps creates so much energy for continuing forward progress. And so I just love noticing at the end of the day, "Hey nice work April. Thanks for creating that! I saw what you did there and I think it's awesome." It's always my job to acknowledge, and celebrate me, and feeling the positive emotion of that I think is as important to change as managing the negative emotions that come up when we do the hard thing in the first place.

So, that's what I have for you today! To really be able to close the gap between deciding to make a change, and then implementing those changes you need to be able to manage your thoughts to fuel your action. Get you into action, and then you need to expect the discomfort that's going to happen when you get into action when you pursue change or any goal. And to know that that discomfort is not going away that is just part of the process. Remember that a little bit does matter, and that the difference is made not in moving from zero% to 100% but in moving from zero to 1%. Then practice believing in your own ability to change, and celebrate all your wins along the way. These are the things that I think have made the biggest impact on my ability to change in the ways that I've wanted to. And I hope that they will help you.

30:23
I just want to say that it is your privilege to be here on Earth, to learn, and to grow, and to become who you want to be. You don't have to change, or implement anything to be 100% okay. But you can, it is your right, it is your privilege. It's the privilege of every human being to change forever, and become the person that they've always wanted to be. And that my friends is 100% Awesome!

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

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever. As your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay and that my friends is 100% awesome!