Finding You!

Are you using self-development as a useful tool or are you using it as a weapon?

Do you ever  think: if you can just stick with it long enough and muster up enough willpower, then eventually it will work, you’ll create a new habit and become a new person, but usually end up feeling frustrated, broken, and ashamed?

On this episode we’re talking about Habit Science and why attempting to force strategies that don’t align with you actually hurt you, not help you.

Ever wish you could have someone look at your weight loss attempts and tell you why it’s not working for you and give you a personalized plan for what will? Now you can. If you are trying to lose weight, feel like you’re doing all the things, and you’re wondering why it isn’t working, then signup for a Lose The Weight For The Last Time Joy Makeover.  

 

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER

• The Chameleon Effect
• How coaching and self-development is helpful and how it is not
• Why all your effort towards your goal, isn’t working
• What we think creates a habit
• What actually creates a habit

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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• I’d love to hear from you with any questions or breakthroughs or topics you’d like me to cover. Send me a direct message on Instagram @ajoyfulyou or email me at rachael@ajoyfulyou.com
• Follow me on Instagram for more
• Website

TRANSCRIPT

This is The Joyful You Podcast, episode 100, Finding You.

Welcome to The Joyful You Podcast.

On this show, I talk all about the tools you need to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, your mind, and your life.

I’m your host, Rachael Collins.

As an eating psychology practitioner, a certified life coach, and a weight loss expert, it is my mission to show you how to work with your body, manage your mind, process your emotions, and create supportive habits so you can live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self, a joyful you.

Let’s do this.

Hey, I’m so excited to be here with you today.

We have hit our 100th episode.

I love getting to be here with you each week, getting to share my insights with you.

So thank you so much for making this podcast possible.

If you are here listening, there’d be no reason to do it.

So thank you for being here.

I have been a coach now for six plus years, and in the past 10 years, I have had several coaches of my own.

I love coaching, and I think it’s very beneficial.

But sometimes we use it as a weapon, and that is what I want to talk about today.

A lot of times what happens is we do what I call the chameleon effect.

We are wanting a result so bad, or we’re wanting to feel better so much that we start looking outside of ourself for the answers, and we try to morph ourselves into our mentor, into our coach, or into being the influencer that we’re following as an example.

We see them.

We see the change that they’re able to make, and we think that their way is the way, the only way for us to do it.

So we start looking to someone else to quote unquote fix us.

We stop listening to our true self, and we start listening to outside influences.

We try to morph ourselves, just like a chameleon does.

A chameleon morphs itself to fit its environment.

We sometimes try to morph ourselves into fitting who we think we need to be, and to looking like who we think we need to look like in order to get the results that we’re wanting.

And what happens is we lose ourselves.

We totally lose ourselves and the innate wisdom that is within us.

And it can often feel like we’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

We are trying so hard.

We’re trying to get that peg to fit into that hole.

Everyone else seems to be able to do it.

But why can’t we do it?

We are trying so, so hard, but it’s just not clicking.

And that feels really, really frustrating.

Now, a good coach will coach you to be yourself and to do things in your own unique way.

She will ask you the right questions that will help you tap into your inner power, the power that God created for you and in you.

A good coach will help you be able to find that wisdom that is within yourself.

A good coach will encourage you to be yourself and to find what is right for you.

Sure, she will offer you tools and strategies that you might want to use.

But sometimes what happens and what I see happen is we take the tools that are offered, and we use them as weapons against ourselves instead.

So let’s use a hammer, for example.

A hammer can be used as a really useful tool.

Have you ever had to hang up something on the wall, and you weren’t able to find a hammer, and so you try to use like the back of a knife handle or the handle of another tool, and it sucks, right?

It doesn’t work very well, and it makes it a thousand times harder to get that nail into the wall.

So a hammer is a really, really useful tool, but a hammer can also be used as a weapon.

I have a favorite mystery series that I just love listening to.

It is the Hannah Swenson mysteries.

It’s by Joanne Fluke.

They’re culinary mysteries.

They have recipes and everything.

It’s so, so fun because I love to bake, so you get like this mystery.

You get her baking.

She owns a bakery.

Anyway, it’s just super fun, and there’s a lot of them in this series, and so you can just listen to so many.

And that’s one of the reasons that I love series.

It’s because you just follow all of the characters throughout their whole life.

So I was listening to one of these mystery books.

I can’t remember which one.

And the murder weapon was a hammer.

A hammer can be used to bash in someone’s head.

It can also smash fingers.

It can be hurtful and a hindrance and a disadvantage.

It can impede.

It can impair you, right?

If you don’t have the use of your fingers because you smash them with a hammer, that is a real disadvantage, right?

So are you using what coaches and self-help offer you as a tool, or are you using it as a weapon to bash yourself with or to hit yourself over the head with?

Are you using it against you, or are you using it for you?

Are you using it as a tool, something that is helping you to build the result and the life that you want?

Forcing strategies, forcing tools that don’t align with you because you think you should be doing them, because you’re trying to morph yourself into being someone that you think you need to be, is a complete misalignment.

It’s taking you out of alignment with yourself.

That’s what sometimes feels so off.

When we are out of alignment with ourselves, we’ll feel it, right?

We’ll feel off.

And a lot of times what happens when we feel this misalignment is we try harder.

We try to force it.

We think that if we can just stick with it long enough, or we can just muster up enough willpower, or if we can beat ourselves up harshly enough, then eventually it will work, and we’ll create a new habit, and we’ll become a new person.

And habit science, it just doesn’t work that way.

If it doesn’t feel good, we won’t do it.

In order to build a new habit, it has to feel good.

It has to feel rewarding.

That is how the connection in our brain works.

Sure, we can force it for a little bit, but it won’t be long lasting.

It won’t turn into a habit that goes on to autopilot.

We have to be getting some kind of benefit out of it.

It has to feel good.

If it feels forceful, if it makes you feel ashamed because you can’t do it, or you can’t sustain it, but you think you should be doing it because your coach does it, or this influencer on social media does it, or your mentor told you to do it, then it’s not for you.

On the other hand, if it feels good, now not necessarily easy or simple, but it feels good, it feels like a yes, this is what I need, then you know it’s for you.

It’s in alignment with you, even though it might be a little bit challenging.

Changing a habit takes effort.

It takes some rewiring, but it shouldn’t feel like trying to push a square peg into a round hole.

I did a podcast about 10 or so episodes, I can’t remember, it’s on forcing versus allowing.

And when we are trying to force ourselves to become someone other than who we are, which is our true self, it’s like a chameleon who is constantly changing to fit in with whatever, or in our case, whoever we’re trying to be like.

And when we do this, we are ignoring our own wisdom.

And when we ignore our own wisdom, it shuts off our own power.

We stop listening to the feelings inside of ourselves.

We stop listening to the promptings and the revelation that the Spirit is sending to us.

And we start listening to the wisdom of others.

We start listening to people outside of us who don’t fully know what’s best for us.

And this is why it often doesn’t work.

We are left feeling frustrated and broken and so, so ashamed.

Instead of tapping into our true self and being in alignment with her or him, we start looking for the next program, the next book, the next whatever.

And we do this because we are looking for answers outside of ourselves.

We think we’re broken and someone else can fix us or we’re lost and someone else can sweep in and rescue us, or that someone else has the right answers because we don’t.

And once we find the right answers, that will change everything.

I have done this so many times.

I will pay big, big bucks for a program that after a month or so, I realize deep down in my soul, which is my true self, right?

It isn’t for me.

It’s not aligning.

I will fill that, but I will ignore it.

And I will try to be a chameleon and morph myself into someone that I’m not.

I will try to do things that don’t align with who I am deep down inside my true self.

And then I end up feeling really frustrated.

I feel worthless and broken and so ashamed because I couldn’t make it work.

Well, the reason that I couldn’t make it work was because I was trying to be someone and something that I am not.

So here’s the truth.

We are in charge of ourselves.

God has given us everything we need, all of the answers, all of the ability to become the next best version of ourselves, everything that we need to achieve our goals, to figure things out, to create the life of our dreams.

It’s all inside of us already.

It’s like an acorn seed, that tiny, tiny little seed has everything inside of it to become a mighty oak tree that is thousands of times bigger than the seed itself.

It has everything it needs already inside of it.

We have everything that we need already inside of us.

So a good coach will help you tap into that power and that wisdom.

It will help you create the right conditions for that seed within yourself to grow and sprout and become a mighty oak tree, the best next version of yourself.

This has been a lesson that I am slowly learning.

Myself, very slowly learning.

When I first started coaching, when I first started being a coach, I was basically just lip service.

I repeated whatever my mentor said, whatever the expert that I was looking up to at the time, whatever my coach certification program said, I was trying to be them because I thought that was the way to success.

But what ended up happening was I just felt blocked.

I felt restricted.

I felt discouraged and ashamed, and like something was wrong and something was off with me.

And something was off.

I wasn’t being me.

And that’s the problem.

God kept sending me all these little reminders.

He kept telling me, the reason that you’re feeling this way is because you’re not being yourself.

The amazing, talented, gifted person that you are, you are pretending to be everyone else but yourself.

You’re memorizing their words.

You’re trying to do their practices, their routines, their diet, their likes and dislikes you’re taking on as your own.

And you don’t feel like yourself because you are not being yourself.

Find yourself and be that person.

Be authentically you.

That is who the world needs.

That is who your family needs.

And that is who you need.

That was the message that God repeatedly was like trying to hit me over the head with.

So goal setting, having goals, it reminds us and brings us back to our true self.

It’s not meant to change us into someone else.

It’s meant to reconnect us to our true self.

When we’re not ourselves, what happens is we tend to fall into this people pleasing trap, saying yes to everyone when we really want to say no.

Trying to look like and sound like and be like who we think we need to be in order for them to like us, for them to be happy.

That’s not being true to ourselves either.

It also looks like buffering.

So we’re trying to buffer away the pain of not being authentically true to you.

We’re trying to buffer away the uncomfortable feeling we feel when we’re out of alignment with ourselves.

So buffering looks like watching TV instead of doing what’s on your to-do list.

It looks like just scrolling.

Have you ever like scrolled for hours and hours and hours, and you still feel bored and empty?

That’s a sign that you’re buffering.

That’s a sign that you’re trying to fulfill a need with something that can never fill a need.

It also looks like overeating, big time overeating.

It could also be things like over exercising, overspending.

Addictions are a way that we buffer all sorts of things.

True power and results are created by listening and caring for yourself.

They are created by being yourself.

So if this sounds good and you’re like, yes, I totally resignate with this.

Sign me up.

Where do I start?

Okay, let me tell you.

I’m gonna give you three steps, okay?

Step one is awareness.

It always starts with awareness.

We cannot change what we’re not aware of.

So maybe you’re like, oh, you’re right.

Now that you say it, I am trying to be like somebody else.

I’m not in alignment with myself.

So just be aware of the stories that you have about how you are supposed to be.

You have many shoulds about yourself.

I should do this.

I should not do that.

I should be this way.

I should not be this way.

You’re going to want to take all those shoulds, should not.

I have to.

I must uncover them so that you can let them go.

We have to be aware of what they are.

So start writing them down.

Anytime they come up, have a little notebook, a little tiny pocket notebook that you just keep with you.

And anytime one comes up, you’re like, oh, okay, there’s another story.

yes, I just uncovered it.

The more you can uncover and be aware of them, the easier they are.

Well, okay, I shouldn’t say easier, but you are more capable of letting them go because now you know what they are.

So step two is to accept yourself, accept your life, accept your past, all the things that you’ve done that you hold against yourself, any regrets, all those things that you are using as weapons against yourself, let them go.

The way that I am able to accept some of these things is I have chosen to have a belief that, of course, I did that, or of course, I didn’t do that, whatever it was.

But that’s exactly what I needed.

It’s part of the plan for me.

Do you remember there was a cartoon, a Disney cartoon on the Disney channel, Disney Jr.

It came out in like the 2000s, and it was about a bear named Oso, who was a special agent, and he would get called on these missions to help out all of these kids.

And every episode, something went wrong or didn’t quite go as planned, and he would say, it’s all part of the plan, more or less.

That’s how I try to look at it.

It helps me to be able to let it all go, to forgive myself, and to maybe understand the purpose behind some of these things, some of the lessons that I needed to learn from them.

When I think about it as it’s all part of the plan for me more or less.

So maybe you’ll find that helpful for you too.

And then the last step that I’m going to share today, the third step, is to stop doing the things that aren’t in alignment with yourself.

Stop using the tools as weapons.

They’re not meant to be weapons.

They’re meant to be tools.

They’re meant to be helpful.

They’re meant to make you feel good, to get the needle moving.

They’re not meant to hold you down and make you feel like crap.

They’re meant to help you move into alignment with your true self.

Another action that you can take is to find your voice.

Find your voice.

There are so many different opinions out there.

And depending on who we’re listening to, that tends to be the opinion.

That’s why they call them influencers, because it influences us to pick up that opinion.

But find your own opinion.

Find your own voice.

Find your own likes and dislikes, and then embrace them.

Find what you desire, what you want.

Not what you think you should be doing, because you saw so-and-so doing it.

But what do you truly want?

Find what you truly want.

What lights you up inside, and then go after it without apology.

Just go after it.

What if we stopped trying to morph ourselves into someone we’re not?

What if we stop rejecting the way that we are, and looking to others outside of ourselves for who we should be, and how we should be, or looking to others to quote-unquote fix us, and instead we start stepping into our true, unique, God-created, amazing selves.

The whole purpose of self-development and coaching is not to change you.

It’s not to fix you into being something you’re not.

It’s to bring out the best in you.

It’s to remind you of who you are, and to help you find you again, to help you find yourself, the real you.

All right, friends, thank you for joining me for our 100th episode.

I am so grateful that you are here.

I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to The Joyful You Podcast.

If you’d like additional support, click the link in the show notes, and let’s chat about how we can work together to get you to your goal.

If this episode was helpful to you, make sure to subscribe and please share it.

The most helpful thing you can do in return is to go leave a review.

If you want to hang out on social media, you can find me on Instagram, at A Joyful You, or on my website, ajoyfulyou.com.

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