Get Off The Hard Road

What is it about going for a big goal, like weight loss, growing a business, running a marathon, saving to buy a house, whatever your big goal is for you, that feels so hard and is there a way to make it easier?

The short answer is yes.

I’ve discovered some things about getting off the hard road, and that’s what I want to share with you today.

If you don’t currently have a life coach, I would be so honored to be yours. I’m currently offering 1:1 private coaching. If you’re ready to take this work to the 10X level, click here to check it out!

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER:

• Why big goals feel so hard.
• What cognitive distortion is
• 5 reasons achieving your goal might feel hard
• The solution to getting off the hard road and getting on the easy road

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• Website

TRANSCRIPT:

This is The Joyful You Podcast, episode 94, Get Off The Hard Road.

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.

What is it about going for big goals that feels so hard?

And is there a way to make it easier?

I have been thinking about this a lot recently.

I have been working on some business goals, and there are times when I find myself thinking, this is so hard.

I have also been doing weight loss strategy blueprints.

If you have not got yours yet, they are still free for the month of July, so hop on that.

But part of these blueprints is you have to fill out a questionnaire.

And one of the last questions is, which statement best describes the way you feel about the weight loss process?

And then there are about six or seven answers to choose from things like it’s fun, I like challenging myself, it’s hard, I hate it, it goes too slow, and then a few more.

And I have done several of these, and so far, everyone, every single person has picked it’s hard, is one of their answers.

So I’ve been diving into this.

Why do big goals like weight loss, growing a business, running a marathon, saving to buy a house, whatever your big goal is for you, why do they feel so hard?

And I’ve discovered some things, and that is what I want to share with you today.

I read a quote from an unknown person that said, Why do you insist on taking the hard road?

One friend asked another.

Confused, the friend replied, Why do you assume I see two roads?

And I have to laugh at that because I think part of what feels hard is this idea that it needs to be hard, or that other people have said it’s hard, and so it is, and we adopt that way of thinking too.

We only see one road, the hard one.

Why do we only see one road?

And I believe that it comes down to a thing called cognitive distortions, which is really just a fancy word that means the way we interpret the world, the way we interpret ourselves, other people, food, our body, our bank account, what we’re capable of.

So we interpret this one way, and what’s actually happening is a completely different way.

And somewhere between the way that we’re interpreting or thinking about something and what’s actually happening is off.

This is why it is super important to be aware of what you’re thinking and not just let your brain run on autopilot.

So I came up with five cognitive distortions that are making it seem like it’s really hard and super difficult.

The first one is shoulding.

We think that there are strategies that we should be doing or that we have to be doing or we must be doing in order to get the results that we want.

So we pick a plan that some expert recommended or that a friend is following and we’re struggling with it.

When we are struggling to change, when we aren’t getting the results we want, we think the only option is to fight harder and to do more.

We don’t ever stop to see if our strategies are working for us.

We just continue to pour time and energy into our strategies that simply aren’t working for us.

When we repeatedly fall short of our expectations, it’s frustrating.

We talked about this last week.

We make it mean that something is wrong with us.

We’re broken and it feels really unmotivating and really, really hard.

I lived on this road for years.

I would go on quote on quote hard diet after hard diet that was hard to sustain for just one day.

Forget doing it forever.

But I was trying to force myself to follow it.

I must eat this way.

I should be working out for three hours every day.

I have to cut out sugar or else I’ll never lose the weight.

But deep down, I really knew they weren’t for me.

But I thought maybe I can just willpower through long enough and then maybe they would be for me and it never worked.

I don’t from diet to diet program to program.

Each approach was really just a different flavor of deprive and restrict.

I really thought I had and should and must deprive and restrict that hard was the only way, and it became a cycle of intensity, inconsistency, and a whole lot of misery.

It never dawned on me that maybe just maybe it was the strategy that was wrong.

Nope, I always blamed myself.

I was the problem.

Something was wrong with me.

When we are trying to implement a strategy that doesn’t work for us because we think we have to or we should or we must, we are not motivating ourselves.

We are guilting ourselves and shaming ourselves to things that we really want to stay away from.

I was the queen of strict diets.

I thought the more rigid, the more efficient and faster it would work.

And the quicker that I lost weight, the quicker I could return to my quote unquote normal eating.

There was no way in the world that I could sustain it or that I even wanted to sustain it for forever.

And you know what I say, if you can’t sustain it, you won’t maintain it.

So of course the weight came back on, and that was part of the reason that it felt so hard.

We’re shooting all over ourselves, forcing ourselves to implement a strategy that doesn’t work.

But here’s the deal.

No one is ever forcing you.

You always get to choose.

Now this leads me to the second cognitive distortion, and that is that we must, there’s that word again, white-knuckle it to the finish line.

We think that if we can just willpower our way long enough, we will finally reach nirvana where everything is rainbows and butterflies and we’ll never ever have to do it again.

And there are two things that are wrong with this way of thinking.

First off, we never reach a place where everything is perfect.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Life will always be 50-50.

There will always be challenges and oppositions along with the good.

It’s just the way that it is.

And the second thing about willpower is that it is finite, not infinite like we want it to be.

We only have a certain amount of it.

And sure, we can build it up just like building a muscle, but eventually it will fatigue.

One of my sons is really into weight lifting, and he’s been doing it now for four years, and his muscles have grown a lot.

He’s gotten really big.

But it’s not like he can go into the gym and just do however many reps he wants.

Eventually, his muscles will get tired and they will give out.

Relying on willpower, thinking that we can just white knuckle through, is one of those cognitive distortions that makes it feel harder than it has to be.

Because when we’re holding on for dear life, when we’re clinging and we’re white knuckling, and we’re using all the willpower that we have, it takes a lot of energy and a lot of brain power to do.

It’s exhausting.

Now, the third cognitive distortion is all or nothing thinking, or sometimes we call this black and white thinking.

Either we’re all in or we’re all out.

There is no flexibility and no gray areas.

There is no space in between.

If we don’t eat on plan, we’re out and we’re just going to eat all the things that day.

If we didn’t get up early enough and now we don’t have time to run five miles, we’re just not going to run at all.

That is all or nothing black or white thinking.

But here is where this thinking gets distorted.

Something is always better than nothing every single time.

If we do nothing, we’re not making progress.

If we even take one teeny tiny baby step, we’re at least moving forward.

We’re making progress and we’re keeping momentum going.

It is the stopping and the starting and the stopping and the starting that is what makes it feel so hard.

Now, the fourth cognitive distortion is discounting the positive.

We don’t acknowledge all the little things that we’re doing and all the small wins that we’re having.

We’re just so focused in on the big win that we brush off all the little wins.

We don’t pay attention to all the little changes we’re making, all the little progress we’re having.

Or we just don’t count them.

We think they don’t count.

They’re too small.

They don’t count.

If we can’t train our brain to see all the little positives along the way, all the small successes, it feels really hard to keep going.

Now, this was me in my business.

I had a number goal I was trying to reach.

And although I had a lot of successes, I completely ignored them.

And I didn’t count them.

I was so focused in on the number goal.

And then I would complain about never having success and having nothing to show for all my hard work.

Which was just silly, because I had a lot of positive small wins, even some medium sized wins.

I just chose not to count them.

And I think one of the reasons that we do this is because we’re in a hurry.

We look around and we see all these people who have what we want, and we’re in a hurry to get there, because again, Nirvana, right?

And if things don’t happen after one day, okay, I’m exaggerating here a little bit, but I’m kinda not.

If things don’t happen on our timeline, we love to play the victim.

And I’m not sure why we are so comfortable here.

Maybe because in a really weird way, it feels good.

It is a way to unconsciously seek validation and sympathy from others, but also from ourselves.

We’re like, I suck.

And then there’s this other part of us that says, I know, we really do.

We are validating our suckiness, and that, in this odd way, feels really good.

Also, when we play the victim, other people tend to see us sulking and throwing a pity party, and then will often ask us, what’s wrong?

And I think this just becomes a habit.

Some of us have no idea we’re even doing it, but I really think that it’s kind of just a comfort thing.

My youngest girls, this makes me think of my youngest girls, they both have a soft blankie, and they’ve had it since they were babies, and they love their soft blankie.

And whenever they’re sad or they want comfort or they’re nervous, they will grab their soft blankie.

Even today, they will.

They can’t sleep without it, in fact.

So I think that going into victim mode for us is like a soft blankie.

It takes some of that sting away.

It’s comforting to us in this really odd way.

And so discounting the positive, going into victim mode, not counting the small successes that we’re having along the way, it makes it feel really hard because we’re getting no validation at all, which then leads me to the last cognitive distortion, which is this idea that beating ourselves up will motivate us to the result.

I know this one really well.

Actually, I know all of these really well.

But this one, I know really well.

I am a black belt in beating up on myself, to quote Demi Lovato.

I have to be really cognizant at this, because it can easily turn into me against myself.

And I don’t know why we think if we’re really mean to ourselves, and we tell ourselves degrading things, and we punish ourselves, and we withhold love, then it will somehow motivate us to change.

I don’t know about you, but I have never once taken something critical that someone has said to me, and been like, Oh my gosh, thank you so much.

You are right.

I am worthless.

I’m not capable.

Thank you so much for pointing that out to me.

I feel so much better now.

Not that anyone has ever said those things to me, but you get the point.

It makes me feel worse.

It makes me want to hide and sit in my bed all day, and watch Discovery Plus on the TV, and eat a big bag of M&Ms.

It ends until it’s all gone.

But we do this to ourselves.

We are our biggest bully.

We are the villain, the anti-hero, our nemesis.

And this is just a pattern that we’ve picked up.

But all of this requires massive amounts of time and energy and emotion.

So can you see why it feels so hard?

So what is the solution?

The solution is awareness.

The first step is always, always, always awareness.

Be onto your brain.

This is something that I am really big at working with my clients on.

We want to be the boss of our brain.

We want to be aware of what’s going on.

We want to be aware of the soundtracks playing over and over and over again in our brain.

Because we can’t change what we’re not aware of.

We need to make sure that we are getting clarity around our cognitive distortions.

All the thinking that’s playing on repeat inside of our mind.

This is why coaching is so valuable.

Because a lot of times we can’t see what’s going on in our mind.

We are so close to it.

It’s like, can you see the forest through the trees?

No, we can’t.

We have to step out.

And a coach is able to step out.

A coach is outside of you and is able to look on the inside of you and is able to help you see what’s going on in your mind.

So if you want help with this, get a coach.

If you’re looking for a coach, I would love to be your coach.

Reach out to me and let’s chat.

All right.

I hope you got a lot out of today.

And if you did, would you please do me a favor and share this podcast on your social and let people know what you got out of it.

All right.

Have the best 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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