Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 470 of They Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! What’s going on? I read a funny post the other day and it said something like “When we were young we didn’t want anyone telling us what to do but now that we are adults all we want is someone to tell us exactly the things we should be doing” I could totally relate. It would be really nice to just always kind of have someone guiding us towards the thing that is the right thing for us to do, wouldn’t it? We kind of do have that though, it’s somewhat innate. It just so happens we look for it everywhere it’s not. We look for it outside of us when if we would quiet our mind and listen, the wisdom we need is inside of us and has been all along. We’re learning that together. OK…
How many times have you said “That’s just how I am” or “I’m not that smart” or “I’m never gonna change”. There are so many versions of the words we use to put limitations on ourselves. You probably have a few “go to’s”. And I bet some of them you’ve carried with you from childhood. Things like “I’ve never been good at making friends”, “I’ve always been this way, since I was a kid” Maybe some of them came on as an adult…“There’s no way I could quit drinking completely” “I’m never gonna be the skinny girl” “I don’t enjoy working out”. These are subtle ways our mind keeps us in a holding pattern of doing the same things we have always done because it’s not our fault and it’s out of our control so we don’t allow ourselves to go through the necessary uncomfortable phase of changing our habits because in our mind it would do no good.
This is a very human thing to do, we all do it. But what I have come to realize is this. Usually the reason we say these things like “there’s no way I could stop drinking alcohol” is because deep down there’s something innate in us that wants to and knows it would benefit us but our human mind likes for things to stay the same. It wants safety and comfort above all else, and when we are in a constant state of comfort any challenge seems overwhelming. When we are in a constant state of doing only the things that feel good or are easy, any challenge becomes almost offensive. This is causing us to be weak as a society. Our minds don’t have to work very hard anymore to find food or to stay safe, so our basic human needs are easily attained without much effort for most of us so we don’t have a lot of struggle to meet our needs, but meeting those basic needs is not enough for most humans. Most of us are not satisfied with just the basic human needs, but we also have gotten so comfortable and can access our basic needs with so little effort that when something feels like a stretch or like it’’s out of our comfort zone, our first thought is oh, Im not doing this, why would I when I don’t have to? Any sign of struggle and we want to quit. We want more but getting more requires effort and struggle, which for a lot of people just isn’t worth it because our basic human needs are met without struggle, so why struggle if we don’t have to?
I have the answer. Now I don’t always go with it but the answer is this. You want the struggle too because there is no growth without struggle. There is no change without effort. The reason you have this yearning inside of you is because there’s something in you that wants more but there’s an equal force that wants comfort. So which one is gonna win out?
So you want to feel and look your best innately but you still eat and drink things all the time that don’t lend you to feeling and looking your best. Or you want to be fit but you always find something more important than exercise. Or maybe you want to have a more active social life but your video games and social media or maybe even your dog are just more comfortable. How about you want so badly to have that new venture be successful but some of the things you need to do are out of your comfort zone so you distract yourself instead. I could go on and on with the list of things we want for ourselves and how we consistently do the opposite that it would require so we tell ourselves that’s just the way it is, that’s just how we are and some things never change. And that will continue to be true until you die or it becomes unbearable to you to stay that way.
I have said for as long as I can remember that I have to eat the first thing when I wake up. No question about it, gotta eat immediately. If I had to fast until 8am for a Dr’s appointment or something you would think I hadn’t eaten in a month. I would say that’s just how I’m made. I could not for the life of me understand how people just forgot to eat, that was crazy to me, I could never forget to eat, it just couldn’t happen. Now here and there I would read things that said we should be able to go 16 hours without eating periodically so your body has time to heal and repair any damage that has been done by just day to day living and eating. But I have always said there’s no way even though I have tried different things and different ways to clean up my nutrition. I innately want to eat healthy, I think we all do, but I never allowed myself to go through the discomfort of actual change until a couple years ago when I was having very bad reactions to food and that’s when my functional nutritionist gave me a 10 week protocol cutting gluten, grain, dairy, alcohol and sugar. It had gotten unbearable and therefore I made a big change, I did stop eating all of those things but I wasn’t getting the 6-8 cups of greens and veggies. Gradually though I noticed I was allowing sugar to creep back in and then Eric had his AFIB incident and that caused us to clean things up completely. But this time, we cut out most sugar and on top of that, added in 6-8 cups of vegetables and fruit, mainly vegetables and greens every single day and adding protein too, something interesting has happened. I sometimes forget to eat. My body is getting so much nutrition from the food I am eating that I stay full for very long periods of time, I actually went to the gym around 9:00 the other day and during my exercise I thought hmmm I haven’t eaten breakfast, it was one of those aha moments for me. I realized it wasnt “just the way my body is” or just hereditary, it was “I was burning sugar for fuel instead of going into my fat stores for fuel so I was constantly having to eat and my body was craving anything because it hadn’t been getting the nutrition from food, yes I was eating but I wasn’t eating proper nutrition. I had set and then overcome my own limitations. Yeah it wasn’t comfortable at first but growth doesn’t happen in our comfort zone, it happens on the other side of it. It happens when we allow ourselves to be a little uncomfortable, knowing we are strong and the discomfort just means we are doing something new or different. Knowing that in order to be happy fulfilled full humans we NEED to struggle in some way.
Im reading a new book right now calling the “Laws of Life” by John Marks Templeton. In it he gives us rules for being human and I thought it was great, I think you will too. The rules are this:
You will learn lessons. We’re all enrolled in a full-time school called life on planet earth. Every person and incident is your teacher
There are no mistakes only lessons. Failures are the stepping stones to success.
A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented in various forms until you learn it. Then you go to the next lesson.
If you don’t learn easy lessons, they get harder. Pain is one way the universe gets your attention.
You’ll know you’ve learned a lesson when your actions change. Only action turns knowledge to wisdom.
“There” is no better than “here”. When “there” becomes “here” you’ll find another “there” that looks better than “here”.
Others are only mirrors. You can only love or hate something in another that reflects something you love or hate in yourself.
Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas, you do the painting.
Your answers lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
You’ll tend to forget all this.
You can remember anytime you wish.
The reason you aren’t the size you want to be isn’t because it runs in your family, it’s because the part of you that values comfort is winning out. The reason you aren’t more socially active isn’t because you’re a loner, it’s because the part of you that values distraction is winning out. The reason you aren’t changing that job you hate isn’t that you’re not smart enough to find one you love, it’s because the part of you that values safety is winning out. We all put limitations on ourselves, it’s only when we allow ourselves to get ok with feeling a little discomfort that we break through to the other side of it.
So, Welcome the struggle, embrace it. The next time something feels hard remember it’s supposed to and then remind yourself too that one part of you wants the beautiful growth that comes from that struggle and the other part of you wants to hide in the cave where yes you are safe but you are also resenting that you aren’t fit or healthy or socially active or super successful or whatever it is you really want, but you’re comfortable until that comfort becomes a prison and it will. It’s just some will distract themselves from the prison and some will break out….it’s up to you which one you do.
My challenge to you this week is the next time you feel a calling to something like a new job, or a new adventure or a new habit, notice that part of you wants it really bad and the other part of you wants to ignore it, justify why you don’t have it, or distract from it. We all have that little fight within ourselves with just about everything we do. You don’t have to die with that calling still inside of you. That calling is there for a reason, it’s something you’re meant to have or do, you are never given a calling that isn’t meant for you. But you may have a calling that you aren’t quite ready for which you know what that means, it means you have to grow and in order to grow you have to struggle, and sometimes you have to fail more than once or twice or 10 times even to succeed but eventually you will as long as you don’t quit. And then when you reach that goal, you will want for another and off you go again. That’s the story of our life. It’s part of the rules for being a human. Share this with 3 people who already inspire you. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
