What to Tell Yourself When You Want to Quit

I'm gonna ask you a bit of a funny question. Why is the disc the mother of the chair? When I first heard this question, I came up with all these different reasons. Why the disc was the mother of the chair. The disc was like the bigger one in the office. The disc had been there longer. The disc was where the responsible things were done and the chair was the fun things and the chair was more of like the fun supporting character. But that question is actually meaningless. The disc isn't the mother of the chair. The disc is the disc and the chair is a chair. But if you came up with things like I did, it's an indication that our brains are meaning machines. And our brains are trying to fill in answers for why things are the way that they are. My name is Chelsea and I've lost 40 pounds on a pump based diet. And I've been able to keep them off for the last six years. It's actually seven years now. My daughter is eight and she had a birthday last week. She has a party tonight and we're going rollerblading. And it's funny that I've been doing this podcast for about four, five years now. And I keep forgetting how long to say that I've been losing weight because it keeps creeping up. At some point soon it's going to be 10 years that I've kept off 40 pounds, which is actually going to be longer and a very quick timeframe than the years that I struggled to lose it. Because I struggled to lose weight for over a decade. And a big reason for that was because of the meaning that my brain made on why I couldn't see results and why I couldn't get consistent. When we don't know why something is the way that it is, our brains make the best guess they can. They're constantly looking for things to make sense. But it doesn't feel like a guess it feels like truth. If you've ever been in an argument with a spouse or like a good friend or maybe a coworker, normally in that argument you're going to have two people that feel misunderstood. You're going to have two people who feel hurt in some way, who feel attacked in some way. And the argument will mostly be stemming from the meaning that those two people place on whatever they're talking about and what it says about them or the other person. I had a conversation with some of the works with me today. And I'm setting up a new contract with them and I send them the new contract and I had a whole lot of things. And then they sent me a message and they said, "Hey, like so many things that we talked about "are not in this contract." Like this is an entirely different role. My initial response to that was to be defensive. I felt like they were saying that I wasn't honorable or I wasn't truthful. The thing is, I know my brain does that, but I can examine that that isn't necessarily true. Even though that's the meaning my brain ascribes to the words that I was reading. When I had a further conversation, I realized that there was just some things that I'd forgotten to add in that I was on the same page about, but I just put them in in a way that was understandable. And then we were actually on the same page. There was no misunderstanding, no accusations, of course, obviously, but my brain still went there. The problem with weight loss or achieving any kind of long-term result that requires us to stay consistent, to do something day in day out, to pick ourselves up after failure. The problem is that our unconscious interpretation of the world becomes our reality, but it affects how we consistently feel and act. If I didn't have the ability to say to myself, "You know what, brain, whatever you're telling me "about the meaning of the words that your manager "is writing to you," they think that you're dishonest, they think that you're not saying like the right things. If I didn't have the ability to speak back to those initial thoughts and feelings, I wouldn't be able to have a business where I could collaborate with people. My interpretation of those feelings is gonna mean that I can either collaborate or I can't, which has a little massive, long-term, wife impact. We do the same thing every single day when it comes to building our habits, getting back up after failure, eating vegetables, interacting with other people who are saying, "Why are you eating that thing?" When you could be eating cake, the emotions that we feel, the fluctuations, the thoughts, the core default patterns that our brains have taken from our childhoods, from the trauma and our lives, from the books that we've read, the movies that we've watched, we can create roadblocks because we don't change our emotional state or our behavior when confronted with problems. So we always get the same outcome. And I would preface to you that if you haven't lost weight and kept it off, if you haven't achieved a sustainable result, I don't care if you've lost weight in the past and then you've gained it all back. That's not losing weight and keeping it off. Losing weight and keeping it off has been able to maintain a significant amount of weight loss. If that's what you have to lose, however much you wanna lose and to be able to do that in such a way where you're confident that you're never gonna gain it back. Maybe you gain like one, two pounds or your weight fluctuates by two, three, four pounds. But if you haven't achieved that, then the core beliefs and then actions and stories and meanings going on inside your head which then influence what you actually do, those have led you there because those are the drivers of your behavior. So if you want a different result, if you want to change the trajectory, you have to change the driver. That's like putting a different person in the seat of a car that actually knows where they're going. Otherwise, you're gonna get lost all the time. We can change the outcome of our entire lives by opening up space to tell stories and interpret thoughts and feelings that serve us, that empower us to act in the way that we want to, to feel emotions that serve us. I have this very distinct memory back in May of 2024 and I'm gonna be really honest, I struggle with a lot of anxiety. My brain likes to tell me a lot of negative things. I have habits of looping ideas and these are patterns that I've had for a long period of time. Back in May 2024, I went to an event that challenged me on whether I could change the way I felt about the thoughts in my head and I started reading a book about neuro-linguistic programming. And I really think in that moment that things went from hard mode, thinking I had to white knuckle everything to a much, much easier mode. That's not to say that I don't struggle a lot with anxiety now because I still do. But I haven't been on meds since that point, I don't think, and it allows me to talk to myself in a way that I do get less of what I don't want and more of what I do. I was able to learn that I can influence the way I think and feel by the stories that I tell myself, but most importantly, the meaning I ascribe to them. Our emotional state and our thoughts are gonna be influenced by the way that we speak to ourselves. So I have this framework for myself now, which is, does this story I'm telling myself in power me or disempower me? Does it give me room to resolve my emotions? Is it truthful? Would I say the same thing to someone else if it wasn't me? Would I say the same thing to my sister, to my mom, to somebody I loved? The problem of the stories that we tell ourselves is because they are unconscious most of the time, we can't identify that they are not reality, but they are our reality. One of the ways that we can start to open up space to change our default thought patterns is to recognize that we are separate from our thoughts. It's to prep distance between your brain which generates thoughts and who you are as a person. Who you are as a person is something much deeper than the thoughts that you have. It's this idea of I think therefore I am. Your ability to think proves that thinking is not you because you think, just like you run, therefore running is not you. It is something that you do. So you do think. The crazy part, as we know, is that what we think and what we feel are not always things that we want, but everything that we think and feel has separation from who we are, whether we feel and think there is separation. There just is because we can think and feel it. Just like we can run, just 'cause like we can speak. We are not running and speaking. We do those things, but they're just much more conscious. So the way that I think about this in practice is that every time I have a thought that is uncomfortable or every time that I have a thought that is gonna influence my behavior to do something that I don't want to do. Maybe that's a binge, maybe that's miss a workout. Maybe it's be scared to hop on a live. I'm able to talk back to that thought, to that feeling, ask it questions, tell it things, examine it, put it on the witness stand and see if it's truthful. Get feedback on it from other people, but this is. starts with a process of self awareness. I've been having a conversation that's ongoing with myself and with other people that self awareness is a very underrated practice and a skill. And I think the reason is that if we not self-aware, you don't even know that you're not self-aware. Self-awareness is not, I like X. Like, I like puppies or I know myself. Like, I get really, really upset, I don't know, when I'm on my period or self-awareness is not the things that you do and the things that you think. Self-awareness is the gap between them and understanding that you are not what you think can feel. So that everything that you think and feel is open to interpretation because of the lens in which you see it. The lens is the glasses, the thoughts and the feelings are going to be because of the lens that you have. But even the lens that you have isn't you, it's just your lens. I like to think of this almost like I'm sitting on the ground and I've got my thoughts, which is represented by the squishy brain. It's sitting out in front of me. The brain's on one plate. And then I've got my emotions. My emotions are kind of like this little cloud. It's hovering just above the plate and the plate is wet because the cloud is raining into the plate. And then on the other plate, I have this pair of glasses. And they're kind of like the glasses that change color based on whether it's light or whether it's dark outside. And so the lens inside the glasses is changing color all the time. And these are the three things that are going to be influencing mostly my internal world, which is my head. It's my thoughts, it's my feelings. And it's the lens in which I interpret both of them. But who I am is separate. I'm sitting and I'm observing these things. My thoughts and my feelings are mostly out of my control. It's like they can pick up a tiny BB gun and fire darts at me. If I feel sad, that's mostly chemicals flooding my brain. If I have intrusive thoughts, if I feel like, you know what, Charles, like you're stupid, you're a failure, that's my brain telling me things. Just like a bully would yell at me in a playground. But the lens, the glasses are the things that I can pick up and I can then use to interpret those. And once I've interpreted them, I'm gonna have different thoughts and feelings based on the interpretation that I give them. So the first step is being able to identify that this is just fact. We aren't our brains, we are separate from them. We aren't our thoughts, we aren't our feelings. We aren't our lenses. Those things are all just a part of the toolkit that we have inside of us. We need to understand on a purely conceptual basis that the thoughts and the feelings and the lenses that we have are not accurate. They are just a thought and a feeling and a lens. They're not based in reality. They are based in interpretation. I'm gonna share a story to highlight this and it's a very sad story. But in the '70s, there was a whole vein of psychiatry that thought that there was a way to access hidden memories, repressed memories and psychiatrists would take their patients through a process of accessing these memories that they had repressed and what it actually led to was many women thinking that they had been sexually abused, by loved ones, when that wasn't the case. And there was people that were convinced that things had happened in their childhood that simply hadn't happened. And this was like a crazy psychological phenomenon that happened in the '70s. You can imagine the breakdown in families, the loss of relationships, the loss of trust in yourself, the negative effects of that by accessing memories that weren't real. Like our brains can create so many different crazy things that aren't real. Our brains can create memories that aren't real. Our brains will create meanings on things that aren't real. It's not to say don't trust yourself, but it is to say trust yourself a whole lot less and question your core beliefs because they aren't inherently real because our brains do have the ability to play tricks on us. And they're only going to interpret what they see based on the patterns and the meanings that we've described to them from our experiences and what we've had access to in terms of information. Our reality is not the same as reality. I've got in my brain into a habit of questioning the interpretations that I give it. Based on some of the interpretations I know of most common to holding people back. For example, I know that saying it's hard or giving excuses for why I can't do something is a very core behavioral pattern of women who will find it difficult to see success. Women who make excuses, valid or unvalid, women who see reasons why they can't succeed, women who will think that their situation is harder, like menopause or dealing with grief or whatever it is, those women are less likely to succeed. That's just a fact based on statistics. Women who make consistent changes have the same feelings and the same thoughts and the same difficulties as women who make excuses and say I can't and think it's hard, but they have a different narrative. They will say things like it's hard and I can do it. I'm or when they think that this is especially, or when they think that this is especially difficult for me, they will say to themselves, other people have done it, therefore I can, I'm not special. They will tell themselves that when they start to give a reason or a list of wise for not achieving something that that is an excuse and is less likely to get the results, therefore give reasons or ideas of what they could do instead, which is proactive problem solving. Let's say you miss a workout or you ovary or you don't follow through. You could say, you know what, see I'm like, I'm really bad at this. I always mess up the emotion that you're going to experience, that little cloud is going to squit shame at you. You're going to feel embarrassment. Your behavior is going to be probably quit, restrict, spiral. The outcome is going to be the same as what you've always experienced. You're going wait. The second option is when you miss a workout, you ovary or you don't follow through, you still experience that initial shame, but you say to yourself, this is data. What made this harder today? And so the emotion that you then generate from that question is curiosity. The behavior then will be to adjust, will be to plan, will be to continue, and the outcome will be progress over time. Do you see how the initial triggers are the same with the lens that was picked up to interpret, which was, this is data. That's just decision making. What made this harder today is going to then change the outcome of the emotions and the thoughts. Nothing external changed in this example. Only the narrative did. Your life is a lagging indicator of the stories you believe and tell yourself. And what you tell yourself is going to be what you believe over time, because it confirms through words, the power of life and death is in the tongue. Words have so much power. Facts don't determine outcomes. Interpretations do. Same event, two stories, two futures. I was inspired by a podcast with Alex Homozin, Chris Williamson, where Chris Williamson shared about an injury that he had. And it really took him back in terms of what he was able to do, like his mobility was much less. He wasn't able to do the same job. And through that, he made a decision to change the way that he was doing things and kind of used that as an origin story, in the same way that a hero would, like Spider-Man, being bitten by a radioactive spider, doesn't then become homeless, because he's like, oh, poor me. I got bitten by radioactive spider. No, he becomes Spider-Man. He doesn't go, oh, my gosh, I have all these problems. Why am I handsticky? Well, he kind of does. But he then uses that to become a hero that saves the city. Chris used this as his origin story and he went on to create this massively influential million downloads and episode podcast. And actually the studio that I'm filling in, he's filmed in this studio. I remember a week post ACL surgery on my knee. It was so much worse than I had been expecting. And I started to see how long and how difficult the rehab process would be. I got very down about my life for a couple of days. And then I remember thinking, I can either use this as an excuse for why I can't do things. And I'll be miserable. I can use this as something to feel sad about. Or I can use this as fuel to me getting more and more determined. This can be my origin story. can be my comeback of coming to the gym and building a habit because I had to go twice a day and work out and to rehab my knee. I'm going to become so freaking diligent, so disciplined through this process and like that's going to be the reason that I get even stronger than I've ever been because I'm going to be so mentally tough, I'm going to be so physically used to pushing myself that I'm going to be able to become unstoppable. So I was like this is going to be my origin story, I'm going to go you know what I had ACL reconstruction and like I'm like stronger than I've ever been because I'm so grateful for that. I can truly tell you today a year and a half on I am grateful that I had ACL reconstruction. I am grateful for what it taught me because the interpretation that I had was this is going to be my origin story, but that could have been very very different based on the lens that I decided to pick up because reality is subjective to the meanings we interpret. We get to choose our interpretation just like one of those choose your own adventure books and we can have that either serve us or harm us based on whether it is proactive radical responsibility to generate more ability to take action or whether that is something that allows us to stay in a victim mindset and productivity is that choice to be the hero of your own story. It's the choice like Frodo to take up the ring and try to get it all the way to about doom even if you don't know the way even if you're a tiny hobbit even if you have every single obstacle it's the action of trying it's the action of persevering it's that I can do this even if it's hard I won't quit even if it's hard I'm not going to make excuses that's just choice that's just interpretation I have seen so many people difficult lives massive obstacles choose to do great things I have seen people of so much privilege so much access to resources decide that their situation is so difficult so hard so stressful so unique that they will not make progress and the crazy part about all of this is if you're listening and you're like you know what like things are really hard for me right now maybe a loved ones died recently maybe you're going through some stuff with your spouse maybe your kids hate you maybe you don't have any money maybe you've got an injury maybe your back is bad maybe you're going for a minute pause whatever it is that you're going through if you even at all have this thought you know what things are hard for me right now like like if you only knew like things are really difficult I've talked to thousands of women I've talked to hundreds of women personally one-on-one in Zoom conversations every single one of them thinks that this situation is unique difficult and there are reasons why they haven't seen success the reason why you haven't seen success is because of the choices that you make and the interpretation you put on that situation you can have a proactive outcome and you can pick up a proactive lens or you can pick up a victim lens that's on you if your life is going to be a lot harder and a lot harder if you choose not to be proactive some of the questions that I like to ask myself to speak back to the thoughts of my head of which there are many is is this truthful has it been truthful for everyone else so a lot of the the questions that I say to myself were a lot of the thoughts that come up for me with having like a lot of anxiousness as it is even stupid stuff like when I get a message and then I'll read that and I'll be like this person's angry at me this person is is mad this person wants to tell me off and it can be just a message from someone that barely knows me or someone that of course is not going to tell me off like a teacher wants to have a parent conference interview the thought and the fear and the emotion of panic is like this person's going to tell me off and I can ask myself well is this true first of all probably not they're not going to tell me off that's not real that's just in my head has it been true for everyone else because I can play that story out while like what like even if they were to tell me off like what like what's actually the outcome that I'm scared of well I can't even name it it's just an unnamed fear does this set me up as the protagonist of my story the hero well if this person does tell me off I can either take what they say and if it's true use some of it or I can politely get out and leave or I can be like you know what like I've got like people who like they don't understand me they don't like me and that's okay like I'm going to rise above that even my interpretation of that if that is my outcome that's my worst case can be positive because here I always have adversity here I always have people that don't understand them does the story allow me to act in a way that moves me closer to who I want to be well who do I want to be I want to be proactive I want to do the things that are in line of the values that I have I want to be authentic and truthful I want to be someone who is honest I want to be hard working I want to persevere I want to put an effort for the things that I that I care about I don't want to be someone that makes excuses and I want to be someone positive who is gratefulness and joy so when I have that thought what's something I can say back to myself it's this person cares for the situation and they're probably trying to help me the worst case scenario I can just walk out and if I do that will help me because I'll have more reps that doing hard things you see how even the way that I can talk to myself is so different based on the interpretation that I have given it it's so funny because I can identify very very quickly and clearly when someone has what I would call a growth mindset or a victim mindset and I want to break those terms down a growth mindset is just choosing that when the thoughts and the feelings remember them kind of visualize them on plates in front of you if you can a growth mindset is just that whatever the thoughts and feelings are they pick up a lens to view that on they pick up words to speak to the thoughts and feelings that say this is going to help me to be better not worse this is going to give me reasons to become stronger and to grow it's not going to be reasons for why I can't do something it's going to be reasons why I can so that's the that's kind of the way that I would see a growth mindset a victim mindset would be whatever my thoughts and my feelings and my circumstances are the lens and the interpretation that I'm going to pick up and view that is is why I can't achieve X why I can't succeed why it's harder it's going to be reasons why growth doesn't happen as opposed to reasons why growth can that's really the only difference that I see so the question that I would ask myself is the thoughts and the feelings that I have or especially the thoughts because the thoughts are going to influence the feelings and the interpretation that we put of the thoughts how we speak back almost like this internal conversation is going to have a big influence of on our feelings I don't necessarily ask myself as often is this true because we can get caught trying to figure out is it if it's true if it's legitimate does it help me does it help me to grow to be a better person am I more peaceful when I think this am I going to be a better mum am I going to be more likely to achieve my goals if I make an excuse why I can't or if I set give myself a reason why I can or if I say you know what like if I approach it with honesty and say hey this is the reason that you failed objectively dispassionately without shame and then go on and take the next action which thought pattern is going to help me more and then I just choose the one that is going to help me even if it's just a tiny bit pitter than the other one this is all about reframing the thoughts and the words that we have inside of our heads we identify old stories that's the meanings to situations they keep us stuck like I can't lose weight because of menopause that's a story we give ourselves new stories that serve us new story could be other women have lost weight with menopause therefore it's possible for me we challenge our brains to shift our paradigm which shifts our attitude towards the situation that could be if other people have done this I can do it and because it's difficult I'm going to grow so much in this process therefore I'm grateful that's going to change our attitude to the situation we get into a bit of emotional state gratefulness as opposed to despair which allows us to then do what is required if you're grateful that you get to do something or you've made a paradigm where you go you know what like I'm going to show my kids what perseverance looks like I'm grateful that I get to do that that's an opportunity that I wouldn't otherwise have we're in a much much better positive state in order to take the action that we need to to do that where we need to reframe as a as a bit of a framework or a starting block as any kind of victim language just get it out of your vocabulary speak back to those thoughts that come up anything it takes away your control like I can't do this because of my height I can't do this because of childhood trauma. It's harder because of my spouse. I don't have time. These are all things that make the ability for you to see success outside of your control. That is what I would define as a victim language because you don't have an internal locus of control. Therefore, you are subject to anything that's happening around you. A hero says, "I'm going to find a way and I'm going to use this as a way." The second thing is labeling or identity language that doesn't serve you. I do this because ADHD. I'm not saying that having ADHD is bad or knowing those things about yourself, but self-awareness is going, "I am not this." This is just something happening to me. I am going to be the person who uses these things to get better or I am going to respond to the situation in a way that is helpful for me. You're not using that part as an excuse or because I'm scatterbrained, because I'm Canadian, because I'm a foodie, because I self-sabotage, because I'm a food addict. These are "I am" statements that disempower you because they remove an internal locus of control. They put control on whatever the "I am" is. It's in your brain, it's given control to an identity that exists in your brain, but you are not that thing. Remember, self-awareness is not knowing all the things that you do or your preferences, self-awareness is realizing that you're not what you do or your preferences or your thoughts or feelings. You are separate from them, therefore you can influence them and you can always do so. The third thing that you want to get out of your vocabulary and start speaking back to in your thoughts is language that makes sweeping statements and meanings, hyperbolic language about something that is in the past or patterns that aren't going to help you to change moving forward. For example, I always give up. I ruin it my day. My weekend is ruined. My diet is ruined. I never stay consistent. Nothing's ever worked for me. I'm a failure. I'll never do a pull-up. I'm really depressed right now. I'm in the swamps. I'm in the valley of despair. I heard someone say this yesterday. Sweeping statements about the past, which you have no control over. All you can do is look to taking action now. So how to build a habit around this? Challenge the stories you tell yourself when you fill up set or disempowered or when you're not taking action on the thing that you know that you need to. Don't externalize the excuses for why you can't. Take ownership because it is within your control and then change the stories that you tell yourself. Even if that's difficult, even if that's something like, I said I was going to prep potatoes and I said I was going to stay consistent and I didn't. Here's what I'm going to do about it. I failed. That's okay. Here's what I'm going to do next. I know that my brain is telling me that's because of menopause, but I'm going to say someone else has done this. Therefore, I can. Therefore, that's not the reason that's an excuse. Therefore, what can I look at? What can I change in order to make it more likely for me to succeed? What's a different question I can ask myself? Get around people who challenge your thoughts, like a team, like a coach, like a mentor, like people who think differently. Start to observe the language of the people around you and especially the people who are seeing success in areas of their life. How do they talk to they use empowered language or do they use disempowered language? Once you start to identify disempowered language, it's going to be something that you see all over the place and you will feel almost allergic to it. Once you change that within yourself, stop using it's hard. If you can take one thing away from this podcast, choose going forward to see that it's hard word as relevant as it's purple or the sky is blue or it's raining today or it's 20 degrees in Canada right now. It's hard is just a fact. Change is hard. Eating healthy is hard. Everything is hard. It's not relevant. It just is. Just like there are calories and there is math and there is birds that poop and sometimes they poop on you. I don't know why I even said that. It's hard isn't relevant. What matters is what you do and that is going to be because of the thoughts that you have and what you speak back to them and the lens that you choose to interpret those thoughts by. I hope you found this podcast helpful. I am obsessed with changing my language in order to tell myself the things that I need to do and in order to do the things that I want to do to have the results that I want to have and I know that it is one of the biggest things that hold women back. I tell you all of this with utmost compassion and kindness because I've been and still am in the shoes of knowing how difficult it is, how hard it is to do this. It's hard and it's necessary and it's also worth it. So as hard as it may be, keep going. Fight the good fight question and identify where you stop and start. You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. You are not your lenses, but you can influence them. When it comes to your lens and how you view the world, that is 100% your choice at any given moment. And if you choose to go through that list of asking, like, is this real? Does this help me? Does this help me to be the hero of my story? You can change your thoughts and your default feelings over time because of rewiring your brain through intentionality rather than just acting on autopilot. If you want more help to become the hero of your story, if you want to help and you know that you need it to achieve your goals because you haven't seen that happen so far, I'm going to invite you to hop on a call to my team. You'll see that in the description, which is completely free by the way. We'll just talk about your goals and we'll talk about an action plan to help you to achieve them. I'll see you next week for another episode and I always appreciate you listening. Go forth and change the way that you speak so that you can change the outcomes of your life. I appreciate you so much. You've got this. Bye!