Tag: self motivation

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E#165 Busting Cravings and Firing Up Motivation

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This episode is about busting cravings and firing up motivation

Are you doing a transformative program and have found that the magic is wearing off after a week, and you’re losing motivation?

I want to share my initial results with you and talk about how to stay motivated while you’re on a transformative program.

The first week’s highlights

I am pretty chuffed with my first weeks work in my own transformation program.

I did really well with everything this first week. After all, it’s the honeymoon period of the program where everything is new and exciting.

Here are some highlights.

In this episode, I’ll talk about 
* What to do when you are losing motivation?
* How to get the timing right?
* What are the other motivation tips that we can use?

Water

I did especially well with drinking enough water, and this made a huge difference to my overall energy levels, my hunger, the way my skin looks and feels, and also my mental focus. My digestion has been better and I’ve tapped into my natural thirst and hunger signals.

That was an absolute winner to start with.

The way I managed to succeed in keeping my water intake up was actually pretty simple. I just filled my water bottle up every night so would be ready for the next day at my desk. I made sure to have 2 cups of uncaffeinated rooibos tea each day which added to my water intake.

Plus I had a glass of water as I was preparing dinner each night. I absolutely bossed my goal and my natural thirst mechanism has kicked in, so I will be doubling to two litres of water a day this week coming.

One of the things this has helped me to do is cope with sugar withdrawals.

Sugar and white flour

I have to be really honest and say the first five days without sugar was really hard.

After my birthday where I got a lot of cakes and some fudge and some chocolate, I had developed a bit of a habit of eating chocolate or cake in the afternoon when I had a bit of an energy lull.

But by God did I have some sugar cravings this week. I crave sugar after lunch, I crave sugar in the mid afternoon, and I crave sugar after dinner.

To cope with this, I use some really effective strategies to get past those cravings and I was over them completely by day five.

These include keeping my water intake up, including enough protein and fibre at each meal, and getting my meal timing right so I don’t need snacks.

That last part is important because snacking, especially on sugar or carb rich foods, drives false hunger and cravings so it’s important to stop those in their tracks.

Now by day 7 I have been free of sugar or carb cravings for two days!

This is pretty impressive for me because I have long been a fan of having what I call ‘lunch dessert’, plus at least a little chocolate after dinner.

Macro ratios

After busting those cravings by day 5, I turned my focus to getting my carb mix right because this is the secret for managing long term hunger, satiety, energy and cravings – and of course body composition and weight 

Once you sort out any blood sugar imbalances which are indicated by what I call ‘false’ sugar or carb cravings, then you can assess natural energy needs and can get a sense of how best to fuel your body for clear thinking and good performance with exercise.

So the past two days I’ve been following the Metabolic Typing fine tuning process to get a good balance of protein, carbs and fat at each meal and maintain good physical and mental energy, free of cravings and full of energy, completely satisfied for four hours after a meal.

Exercise

I haven’t gone as well as I hoped with exercise because I had a couple of days with really bad headaches and a stiff trapezius muscle so I had to work around those things.

I also noted I hadn’t planned around my work properly during a busy week and so I was short of time on a couple of days, and not wanting to exercise too late in the afternoon for fear of staying awake all night.

However, I achieved about 80% of my exercise goal this week which is fantastic. That means that on most days I did two exercise sessions per day, in accordance with the specific activities I set for myself.

What I learned is that I need to plan better for exercise.

I had to catch my naughty mind trying to convince me I was too busy to exercise on a couple of days, and pushed through using the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 principle.

Staying Motivated

I wanted to talk a bit about how to stay motivated during a program like this one.

Let’s start with what I’ve seen in many of my clients. The first week of any type of transformation program is exciting and interesting. You’re doing new things, you’re getting some quick wins, and you are also starting to get into a rhythm.

But if you are a veteran of programs, or lacking in self confidence, you might start to lose focus or find yourself making excuses for things that you are not doing.

Let me just say that this is totally normal. It’s totally normal for you to start getting a bit bored or unmotivated or to feel challenged when it comes to habit upgrades.

It’s normal to feel a bit stuck or overwhelmed at times and feel like giving up. Although this may happen to you later on, it can also happen after the first seven days of a program.

I want to explain what I’m doing to stay motivated during my transformation program

Motivation Tip 1 – Get the Timing Right

The first point is that you should really choose the timing of your transformation program carefully. It’s crazy to try to do it when you are incredibly busy at work, or when you have a lot of stressful things going on in your life.

Generally those things mean that you’re at a tipping point of stress and a thing that would normally be challenging can become just that bit too challenging such that you might give up more easily.

Also, when you’re stressed it takes a huge toll on your physical and mental health, including your body’s nutrients status. Your nutrient needs increase, and your cravings for sugar and carbs and fatty salty food all increase when you are stressed. So it makes it a lot harder to improve your eating, just sleep well, and to be able to exercise effectively. 

In fact if you are trying to do something transformative in a period of life like this, you’re more likely to get a cold or a flu or to get otherwise rundown and sick and then not be able to complete the program.

So this timing thing is really important – choose a period of your life that is normal, routine, and average, so that you can more easily adjust to the disruption and challenge of the transformation program and face the challenges and discomfort of change without giving up!

Similarly, a bad time to do a transformation program is if you are out of a normal routine.

The reason that this isn’t a very good time to do a transformation is when you’re on a relaxing holiday. It may be harder to persevere or you might find it harder to stay motivated and focused.

One other reason that you should not attempt a transformation while you’re on holiday is that you may be establishing habits outside of your normal weekly structure, so that when you go back to that normal weekly structure, your new habits no longer fit into that typical week.

It totally makes sense for you to make changes within your normal routine, where you have more of a fixed schedule each day. That makes it easier for you to stack habits or piggyback habits on top of your existing ones and automate them much more easily.

Motivation Tip 2 – Measure and Reflect

One thing that’s been really helpful for me is to measure several things each day and really keep my eyes on how much better I am feeling when I do certain things and to reflect on the success of that.

After seven days on my own 50 day program, I have learned a lot about motivation. I realise that I approach each weekend ready to relax after a stressful week and have been tempted to let down my guard because of that.

Documenting this process helped me to see how important it is to have a strategy for weekends to stay motivated to stay on track – or choose to focus on habits that you can easily do 7 days per week – or at least consistently and without any sabotage.

Motivation Tip 3 – Don’t wait for motivation

Have you ever heard of the Zeigarnik Effect? 

The Zeigarnik Effect states that not completing a task creates mental tension, which keeps it top of mind. The only thing that will ease this tension is to complete the task. 

Starting something – like your daily exercise session – is usually the hardest part. If you can start focusing on the task for a few minutes, the brain’s desire to complete it should then take over. So next time you feel like putting off an action, just take that first step, and the rest will follow.

Summary

Today I’ve talked about all the things I’ve learned after 7 days on my own transformation program. 

I’m still in the experimental phase to see what works and what I can fit into my lifestyle and how to do that, but I’m already seeing amazing results with clearer skin, clearer thinking and a calmer, less anxious state of mind. The mental chatter has all but stopped and that’s been life changing for me.

I explained the changes I’ve chosen to make – water, food, exercise, boundaries around work, journaling – and how I’ve used journaling and metrics to learn about myself, and stay motivated, and tweak the plan.

This has been such a growth opportunity for me. It hasn’t been easy but it’s been extremely rewarding. I look forward to sharing what happens next week!

Ready to get clarity on your pathway to success?

Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

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E#164 Getting Motivated to Transform

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This episode is about getting motivated to transform

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get motivated and in the right headspace to commit to and complete a transformation challenge or program? Have you ever started a program and not been able to finish it, and feel really bummed about that?

I hear you! In this episode, I want to share with you a journey that I’m about to embark on to improve my mental health and sleep.

I’ve developed a holistic program that I’m calling “physically and mentally stronger”. 

And in this episode I want to share with you how I am getting into the right mindset and how I’m preparing to absolutely smash the next 50 days. 

In the coming weeks, I’m going to share what’s going on and what it feels like to be on this journey. I’m going to share all of the blood, sweat and years with you so you can see which of my hacks and methods are working, and my secrets for staying on track.

In this episode, I’ll talk about 
* How to get yourself motivated to transform?
* How to have a clear path?
* Finding out the why behind the motivation

The Background

Over the past 25 years I have worked as a personal trainer, as a nutrition coach, and as a health coach. I’ve participated in countless challenges and programs, but there aren’t many that I’ve completed. And I know a lot of other people in this same boat. 

It tends to happen that when spring comes around people feel motivated to get outside and to shed a few winter kilos or to get out of the winter slump and re-energise themselves or lose weight or whatever it is. 

But the reality of a busy life often gets in the way and it’s easy to slide back into old habits and give up on that program or challenge or whatever it is.

As I mentioned in a recent episode, I have been trying to hack my sleep and anxiety that have come about as a result of many stressors in the last 2 years but also with the onset of perimenopause. It’s been a really trying time and my productivity is down, my energy is down, and my mood has been low. I’ve woken up a few times feeling really anxious in the night with a tight chest. 

So over the past couple of months, I’ve been hacking a few different parts of my life to reduce these symptoms and get things back into balance, I feel like it hasn’t quite been enough and I want to do a more complete and holistic program that will get me some results and get my health and physiology back on track.

But I didn’t want this to be one of those programs that I would start and then never complete. I didn’t want to feel pressured  to flog myself at the expense of my health and my sanity. I didn’t want to feel pushed, restricted, or overtrained.

Speaking with a friend today, she said she’d hit ‘rock bottom’ and it gave her the impetus to make some changes and stick with them.

Then I thought – why is it that we have to wait until we are at rock bottom before we act? That gives us so much more shit to push up hill!!

I’ve decided to be proactive and start something now, and create the commitment to it.

Since I have the qualifications, skills and experience, I decided to come up with my own program and commit to doing it for a period of time that I felt was reasonable and that would yield results.

Given my past experience with this sort of thing, including some successes, I knew I had to make sure that I was 100% committed and that my commitment was foolproof. 

How on earth do you do that?

That’s what I’m going to explain – my three-step formula. 

Step 1 – The Plan

The most important thing for starting any program is to have a really clear plan of exactly what you are going to do and when. 

That might sound like a bit of a no brainer, but there is a nuance here.

How often have you gotten a plan that somebody has written for you and tried to copy, but have lost interest or found out it was too hard or not doable for you or didn’t get any results?

I have seen this countless times and so the important thing about making a plan is that it’s customised to you.

Here are three steps for getting your plan right.

Decide exactly what you are going to change. Be very specific.

For example, instead of saying I’m going to exercise each day, I’m going to say exactly what the exercise is, and what time I’m going to do it. 

And not just that, but I have scoped my calendar in advance to make sure I’m choosing days and times that are absolutely realistic, blocked out for myself, and most likely to succeed. 

I also have a plan B in case any of those times don’t work out.

Be selective

This one is really important. You can’t change everything at once. Studies show that the likelihood is that you can automate around 2 – 3 habits in 12 weeks.

So I’m not trying to change everything dramatically, I am choosing a couple of things that are new habits and a couple of things that are improvements to existing habits.  

Another point about being selective is that you need to choose activities that you absolutely 100% can commit to. For example, there’s no way I’m going to get up at 6 a.m. and run 5km. No way. So that’s not even on my agenda.

I am going to walk for 30 minutes each morning, and do 30 minutes of weights and stretching every afternoon. 

This is a stretch for me but I have done it easily before and so I know that I can do it again. Remember I’ve blocked this out in my calendar so that it’s not negotiable.

Make it foolproof

The third step is to make your chosen activities foolproof. What I mean by this is to write down all of the excuses that your brain is going to come up with when it comes time to do that activity and work out how you will counteract them.

For example I know that when it comes to exercise it’s going to be too cold or I’m too tired or I’m too hungry or I’m too busy and all of those other really good reasons that my brain is coming up with in the moment. I have a plan for all of those things. It’s foolproof.

Step 2 – The Why

Now you might think that making a plan is enough. And this is a mistake that a lot of people make.

A plan is definitely important, but unless you have some good motivators behind the plan, you’re probably give up by about the 2nd or 3rd day.

It’s great to think about your motivators from a really broad and deep perspective. For example, I know that bone health and healthy aging and so on are really important to me. 

I know that I want to reduce anxiety and insomnia. 

But in a recent session with my coach, I realised that these weren’t motivating enough for me. I had to come up with another three or four very important reasons why I would do this challenge and complete it no matter what. Many of those reasons are intrinsic – important to me – but some are also extrinsic – beneficial for others.

For some people one or two reasons might be enough, but I’ve realised that I need to have a lot of reasons to really commit to something like this, and feel like it is worth the effort.

Step 3 – The Terms and Conditions

The third step that I want to talk about is what I’m calling the ‘terms and conditions’. 

This is like my contract with myself, outlining what I want to do and how.

For example, I am not naturally a journaller but I feel it’s important to document certain things every day to keep me focused and to help me identify when or where I need to course-correct. I will also be visualising and rehearsing the steps I have committed to each day. I will use positive and supportive language. I commit to not complain or make negative or unhelpful comments to myself or about my plan.

I will recognise that it’s hard some days, and easy on others, and that’s ok and it’s part of the journey.

All of this mental stuff is so important to me because I am someone who may not take the time to reflect or celebrate my successes or my commitment to the process. So, it’s really important to record specific metrics each day to show that I am firstly taking action every day and secondly that I am checking in with my motivators, and my mindset, to ensure that what I’m doing is meeting my expectations.

Part of this recording of progress is going to be the recording of physiological changes in  my body. I am using Philia Labs system that monitors a specific part of the stress cycle, to inform me of how my chronic stress is tracking and also, to predict when my mental health, productivity or focus is likely to shift, so I can realign my day and use strategies to boost my mood and wellbeing. For me this is a critical part of staying on track.

And the last part of my terms and conditions are about my expectations. 

In terms of expectations, the only one I have is that I will learn how to persist with a process and follow through until completion.

At the very least I will learn something about myself and build trust in myself. At the most, I will also achieve some outcomes.

Summary

I’m about to start a 50-day journey to improve my physiological, physical and psychological health. 

Despite being a natural born quitter in the past, I am using all of the qualifications, skills, and experience I have to commit to a program I have devised and follow it for 50 days, no matter what.

Why wait until you hit rock bottom? Be proactive and start now, because it will be way easier, more positive and more enjoyable.

Today, I shared my own three step process to make this journey foolproof.

I have created a plan that suits me specifically.

I have identified the whys behind it – and that I need several immediate ones to help me commit.

I have devised terms and conditions to help me stick with it no matter what.

Hopefully, this has inspired you to think about what it takes for you to change and… to get on and do it.

Listen in next time and let’s see how I’m going with it!

Ready to get clarity on your pathway to success?

Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

Learn More
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E#160 Trusting yourself

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This episode is about trusting yourself

Trusting yourself as a key to developing self belief – and in creating a thriving business. 

That’s because if you can’t follow through on your commitments, you will lack self-belief and self-confidence, and you will also be seen as unreliable or flaky by others.

How can you learn to trust yourself more and build more self belief, so that you can show up confidently and achieve what you want in the world?

That’s what I want to discuss today.

In this episode, I’ll talk about 
* What Erodes Self Trust?
* What gets in the way of self-accountability?
* How do you find the motivation to do things?

What Erodes Self Trust?

I want to start by providing some backstory to this, and outlining some basics on how the brain works and how self-trust can be formed, or eroded. 

Firstly, you will only believe something is true if your brain has enough evidence to prove it. 

For example, if you have previously run and won (or come close to winning) a 5K race, then you probably trust that you can probably win a 5K race in future. 

Here’s another example.

Let’s say you have previously gotten up at 7am each day and created a daily work plan and then completed all of the tasks in your plan. You didn’t need anyone telling you to do it; you were self-motivated and just got it done.

Because you’ve had that experience, you trust that you can do it again.

Where I’m heading with this is that if you’re willing and able to be accountable to yourself, and do the things you set out to do, at least for a little while, then you will start to build self trust. 

But if you consistently start things and give up right away, or focus on what you haven’t followed through on, then your brain will notice the unfulfilled promises and tell you that you’re only capable of making empty promises and that you’re not to be trusted.

For example, if you keep meaning to walk each weekday after work but it doesn’t happen, maybe you never even start, then you will start doubting your ability to do things.

Or maybe, you just can’t be bothered!

Let’s talk about these two important pieces – self-accountability, and motivation – because they are so important for anybody who wants to achieve anything in the world. 

What gets in the way of self-accountability?

Have you ever wondered why it can be so hard to be self accountable?

The first reason is that when you always put other things and other people first, you often end up doing that at your own expense, and therefore letting yourself down. 

Or, if you have too much on your plate and so you constantly struggle to get everything done, you are also letting yourself down.

In either scenario – putting yourself last, or having unrealistic expectations – you are eroding trust in your ability to start, persist or complete something.

Let’s project this outwards for a moment and see how it feels to be on the receiving end. 

Imagine that you were working with somebody who constantly let you down. 

They would promise that they would do certain things by a certain time, or that they would have that report finished by Friday, yet they never ever met those deadlines. 

How do you feel about that person? Would you trust them? Would you be relying on them for things? Would you believe in their capacity to do things?

When you don’t meet your own goals and expectations, you end up feeling that way about yourself, and also, you become known as someone who is unreliable or flaky – which erodes trust from your client base!

How do you find the motivation to do things?

There are three things to think about here.

Firstly, what looks like lack of motivation is often lack of energy. 

That’s why people who are overloaded may find it hard to make decisions, feel overwhelmed and exhausted at the thought of doing anything new, or finding the mental energy to be consistent with habits. 

Secondly, motivation may come after you have made a commitment to something.  

Thirdly, motivation may come only when you know what to do and/or have taken the first steps. 

So, if you have avoided making decisions or if you haven’t mapped a clear plan or pathway, you might get stuck in an avoidance pattern where you don’t take any action because you aren’t committed or clear on what to do.

Three things to build more trust

With all that said and done, hopefully you’re clear on why you might not trust yourself.

But if you want to flip this around and start trusting yourself, you need to stop doing those things and change your behaviour.

Here are three things that can help you to build trust.

1. Honesty

Firstly, be honest with yourself. If you want to be consistent with something but you don’t have the energy, time or commitment, be clear on that and park the idea.

Schedule a date to revisit it when you think you might have some more breathing space.

Secondly, be honest with others.

Honesty also extends to your responsibilities at work and in your relationships. If you don’t have the capacity to do something, or the bandwidth to contribute, say so.

Don’t burn yourself out for the sake of someone else’s happiness.

Don’t put yourself last and expect to muddle through it. It won’t work.

By being honest with yourself and others, you will be able to set boundaries that give you time, space and capacity to actually do things for yourself.

Then you will be able to do those things, stick with them, and build trust.

2. Decide what you will commit to 

One afternoon when I was 14 years old, my best friend’s mother came into their kitchen and hung a rubber disc on the wall. It was the size of a dinner plate and it had writing on it.

“What IS that?” we said.

‘It’s a round tuit.” she replied. Sure enough, the disc had those words on it.

She said, “It’s a fun little reminder of all the things that I keep saying I will get around to doing one day.”

We all have things that we’d like to get around to doing one day, but as long as those things are hovering around in your brain without any action, there is a clear lack of commitment, importance and/or energy.

If you have a list of ‘round tuits’, I suggest you write them all down and look at the list with honest eyes and make some decisions.

Decide what you’ll never do and cross it off the list.

Decide which ones have merit and evaluate them. Visualise yourself actually doing them, and then, cross off any that aren’t important, realistic or likely.

Decide which ones you will do at some point, and diarise time slots to revisit each one and make a project plan.

When you have done this, your round tuits will become actionable projects that you feel honestly committed to.

One last thing on this. We all have to do things that we don’t like doing or find difficult, like writing a blog, or exercising. 

But we may need to do those things in order to succeed, so we can choose to make those things more enjoyable somehow, focus on the outcome we’ll get, or find ways to make those tasks a bit easier.

When you are committed to doing something, this part is much easier!

Rather than doing something ‘when you feel like it’, you will have a not negotiable, automatic habit that you do no matter what.  

3. Set specific goals and build in self-accountability. 

Once you have done the first two steps, you can create specific, tangible goals which are based on clearly defined, realistic actions with their own unique days and time slots.

Be clear to identify whether you need training or support to take each action.

Make sure your confidence of achieving each one is at least a 9/10.

Troubleshoot in advance – plan away the roadblocks and create cues and support to help you succeed, like reminders to complete a plan, or developing a checklist you can use to complete the steps.

This is the secret to setting and actually achieving all of your goals, and building self-trust through self-accountability.

When you start doing this, you will start to feel good about yourself, and the outside world will see and feel it, too.

Summary

If you can’t follow through on your commitments to yourself, you will lack self-belief and self-confidence, and you will also be seen as unreliable or flaky by others.

That feels terrible.

It can be hard to commit to yourself if you normally put yourself last, overcommit, or otherwise lack motivation.

Luckily, you can change ALL of these things, by

  1. Being honest with yourself and others about what you want to do and can do, 
  2. Making decisions on what you will and won’t commit to, and
  3. Setting specific goals with built-in self-accountability.

The more you commit to and achieve your own objectives, the greater trust you will have in yourself, the more confident you will feel, and the more self belief you will have.

Ready to get clarity on your pathway to success?

Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

Learn More
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Episode 29: 3 ways to be more accountable to yourself

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If you are floundering with a goal, spinning your wheels and want to stop saying “it’s too hard,” there are three easy ways to build persistence and accountability that you can start right now.

The thing is, if you want to grow and change, you need to do the work to get there.

And sometimes, that daily work is hard, boring, dull or a nuisance, uncomfortable.

No matter who you ask, they’ll say that persisting toward a goal and being accountable to yourself along the way is tough at times.

 

It can be way easier to be accountable to others as your level of personal responsibility is much less in those situations.

Being more accountable to yourself means stepping up and taking responsibility, and accepting that certain things are not-negotiable.

The good news is that you CAN start showing up more in any area of your life.

It requires you to develop the skills of both persistence and accountability, and I’ve found three simple ways you can do that.

Note that these strategies will ONLY work if you have deep commitment to yourself in terms of the end-goal and the work required to get there, or, your daily habits (or both).

The three things that create better accountability to yourself, and therefore create persistence are:

1. Set clearer boundaries around the action

Boundaries include the things you need to say no to and the things you need to say yes to. They include consequences for saying yes or no.

So if you want to go to the gym three times, using rewards and penalties is a great way to improve your chance of actually doing it.

Maybe the reward is simply feeling better, or giving yourself a relaxing bath at the end.

Maybe the penalty is going without.

Make sure that the work you need to do, in this case the exercise, doesn’t feature in the penalty, because this would be counter-productive.

2. Plan and schedule your actions 

If you schedule your must-do actions into your diary, as if they were as important as any other responsibility in your life, they will more likely get done.

It’s great to have a plan to do certain tasks – scheduling them in realistic time slots makes them happen.

As boring as it sounds, this is one of the most effective ways to be more accountable to yourself. 

3. Measure your progress honestly and non judgmentally.

There is a saying that goes, “What gets measured gets done.”

Hand-written monitoring such as a food diary, a daily success journal, a daily reflection or a to-do list completed is the most effective way to create self-accountability.

Further, celebrating each win reinforces the value of your actions and builds self-confidence and self-worth.It reminds you why the next action is worth taking.

“What gets measured gets done.”

In summary

Being accountable to yourself means taking responsibility and accepting what is. 

The reward for being more accountable to yourself is persistence, consistency and ultimately, achieving goals. 

The easiest ways to become more accountable to yourself are to set clearer boundaries around your intended actions, to plan then actually schedule your actions, and to measure your progress honestly and non-judgmentally.

Yes, it’s incredibly simple and it gets results.

Ready to be more accountable to yourself?

Write something here that ties in with the topic for the podcast! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

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