Staying “All In”
Goals always sound like a good idea at first. We’re so excited and motivated, but then something happens and we find ourselves wanting to go back down the mountain. On this episode we’re going to dive what is going on that might be sabotaging your efforts.
Being aware of all of this is going to make it a little bit easier for you to be “all in” and to stay “all in”. No more self-sabotaging or giving up on your goal.
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Transcript:
I’m Rachael Collins at the Joyful You Podcast; this is episode 61: Staying “All In”
Welcome to The Joyful You Podcast. On this show I talk all about living a joyful life on purpose so you can be live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self. Let’s do this.
I am so excited about today’s episode. The podcast these past couple of weeks has been on being “all in”. We’ve talked about what it means to be “all in”, and then last week we talked about being an Owner and not falling into victim mentality. If you missed any of those, they’re definitely worth a listen. Today what I want to dive into is staying all in and I want to share with you what is going on inside the brain that might be sabotaging your efforts.
Being aware of all of this is going to make it a little bit easier for you to be “all in” and to stay “all in”. No more self-sabotaging or giving up on your goal.
I was thinking about an experience my son had this past week. He’s majoring in Business at the local University and one of his required classes is a Business Presentation class. Which means he has to get up in front of the class and present. His first presentation was this past week.
He was so nervous that he thought about calling in sick just so he wouldn’t have to face his fear. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set a goal, been “all in” and then shortly after wanted to “call in sick”. Goals always sound like a good idea at first. We’re so excited and motivated, but then something happens and we find ourselves wanting to go back down the mountain.
There’s a very good reason for this and it all has to do with your two brains. Yes I said brains, plural. Now we don’t really have two brains, we have one amazing brain that is a complex and complicated organ – it’s made up of several parts but for the purpose of today, I want to talk about just two of those parts. And I’m going to keep it really simple. I am not a neuroscientist and chances are you aren’t either so we’re going to dumb it down and use really simple terms.
The first brain sits high on the front of your head near your forehead. We’re going to call this part of your brain, the Conscious Intellectual Higher Brain. This is the Human brain that no other animals have. The Higher Brain is wise and Intellectual.
The other brain, sits at the bottom of the back of your head near the base of your skull. Let’s call this the Subconscious Lower Brain.
When we are between the ages of birth and 3 or 4 years old, this part of our brain is wide open. It’s taking everything in and believing it as truth. All the things your family taught you whether it was intentionally, or through their behaviors, all the things you were taught about yourself and all the messages that the people around you taught you to believe about yourself. You are storing all of that in your subconscious brain without ever questioning it. We just accept that yep this is how we think about ourselves, this how we think about life. Most of us don’t even know this is our thinking, we just think it’s the facts of life. We see it as our truth.
Another way beliefs get stored in the Lower brain is through repetition or experiencing something that came with a huge emotional charge or reaction. The brain pays attention to all of that and tags it as really important and something you should remember and repeat over and over again. For this reason, all of our habits are stored here in the lower brain.
So, what does this have to do with goal setting?
When we set a goal for whatever reason, maybe we have a circumstance in our life that we want to be different. For example, maybe we want to change the circumstance of our current weight.
Maybe we set a goal because we had a prompting or a whispering to do something or to start something.
Or maybe we just wanting a challenge of some sort so we set a goal. My son in law, set a goal a few months ago to run a ½ marathon just because he was up for the challenge. His race is next week.
Whatever the reason is, you decide to set a goal and a thought enters your brain into the higher brain.
I’ll use me and my story as an example. I had a thought “I want to lose 50 lbs”.
With the help of my higher brain, intellectually I could see other people doing it. I could see people losing way more weight than that. I’m able to see intellectually that it is possible for me to lose 50 lbs. So up in my Higher brain, I can believe that it’s possible.
So I set the goal and got to work, all was going great until I started repeating the thought and my lower brain got involved. It was what was going on in my lower brain that kept sabotaging me all those years where I’d lose a little, then gain it back. Up until this point, my subconscious lower brain had always thought of myself as uncapable of losing weight because being fat is in my DNA, and I’m too old to lose weight, etc. All those thoughts I shared on last week’s episode that had been programmed into my subconscious lower brain thinking.
This is where we get into trouble. When our subconscious lower brain thinking does not match up with our conscious intellectual higher brain thinking.
So for me I was like “I can’t lose weight because of my DNA and my age and blah blah blah”. All those subconscious beliefs in my lower brain. While in my conscious intellectual higher brain I was like “I think I can lose 50 lbs.” Do you see how these two beliefs are total opposites? And in this case, opposites do not attract. They repel each other. When I try to incorporate the new goal belief into my being, my lower brain is like “No way sister! That doesn’t fit.” And this creates dissonance in my body that feels terrible. This is when all the confusion, the fear, the apathy, the discouragement, the frustration, all those uncomfortable feelings come up and I want to “call in sick” or eat all the cookies while binge watching the latest Netflix series.
Bob Proctor calls this dissonance the Terror Barrier. Brooke Castillo calls this the River of Misery. Whatever you want to call it, it feels really uncomfortable.
As long as the new idea stays in the Higher Brain, it’s no big deal, but in order to really incorporate the idea into your being, it has to go into your lower brain and as soon as it reaches gets there, through repetition, the lower brain goes crazy. We feel the dissonance of the new belief and the old belief not matching up and it feels really uncomfortable. And we begin to question: “What have I done? I don’t know how to do this? This is never going to work.” All those self-sabotaging thoughts, and our actions change and we eventually quit.
So , how do we break through this terror barrier so we’re able to stay “all in”?
A lot of us go straight to adding more actions. If we go back to my example of wanting to lose 50 lbs., as soon as I started to feel uncomfortable and things got hard, and the self-doubt crept in, I would try to add more to my to-do list. I’d find and print new recipes. Maybe if I was just more organized, then I’d feel more comfortable. I would tell myself I’m going to go to the gym and run 5 miles every day. I was trying to add more things to the action line of my model all the while feeling even more uncomfortable.
So, what do we do? I’m going to share with you 5 steps. These do not need to be done in order, nor do you have to do them all. Find what works for you.
The first step is awareness. Recognize and be aware of what’s really going on here and be okay with it. It’s not that you’re inadequate. It that you have a new belief that hasn’t yet mixed with your old beliefs. That’s all.
The third step is to feel the discomfort. Feelings are just a chemical vibrating through your body. It can’t hurt you or force you to do anything. There’s no need to run from unwanted feelings. Like we talked about last week, if you can welcome it and stay open to it, it will be able to do its job.
The fourth step is to figure out what some of these old beliefs are that are keeping you stuck. Get curious about them and decide if you want to keep them or not. Sometimes when we look at our old patterns and beliefs, we’re like Why am I hanging on to that? This helps to loosen the hold sometimes. You can do this through journaling, talking out loud to yourself, or working with a coach. Sometimes trying to look at our subconscious beliefs is like being inside a bottle and trying to read the label that’s on the outside. It’s hard. But a coach is already on the outside the bottle and can clearly help you read the label, which is so helpful.
The fifth step is to keep impressing the new idea on the subconscious mind with gratitude and love. Love and gratitude are the most powerful emotions. When I first started incorporating this, I began with just practicing feeling gratitude and love on purpose 3 times a day. I would think of my children or a dream trip I was able to go on and that would help me feel love and gratitude. After a few weeks, my body had memorized the chemical make-up of these feelings and I was able to feel them anytime I wanted to. Once I was able to do that, then I began practicing my new belief while feeling love and gratitude. Sometimes I could only do it for a few seconds, but the more I practiced the longer I could go.
Eventually through using love and not force or punishment, I was able to break through the terror barrier, and the weight came off and stayed off.
Love wins every time. It is unfailing. The scriptures tell us Charity, which is love, never faileth.
That’s why I’m constantly preaching self-love to you because it has a 100% success rate. Love is what’s going to get you through the terror barrier.
If you want to stay “all in” this is the only way to go. Good luck and let me know how it goes.
If you want to send me an email you can always reach out at rachael@ajoyfulyou.com or you can find me on Instagram @ajoyfulyou. I’ll see you next time and as always choose joy because happiness isn’t enough.
