Ep. 75: BONUS! Get Your GOAL Conversations

Ready to change your mind about weight loss? Grab The 5-0 Method to lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.

We’re exploring how to recognize language that holds EMOTIONAL WEIGHT and may be holding us back from getting the outcomes we want.

There’s a treat🍬 for you in this BONUS episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, where we’re talking about buts, parentheses, and changing tenses (and don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense to you right now, it will when you listen)! 

We’re cleaning out our mental junk drawers🗄️ and exploring how to recognize language that holds EMOTIONAL WEIGHT and may be holding us back from getting the outcomes we want.

My friends, if you’ve ever said something like “I overate, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it” and then still didn’t feel good?  This episode is for YOU!

We’re cleaning out our mental junk drawers🗄️ and exploring how to recognize language that holds EMOTIONAL WEIGHT and may be holding us back from getting the outcomes we want.

I talk about falls (both literally🍑 and figuratively!), guilt (why do we have it?), and the words we use to talk to ourselves. When we investigate the NUANCES IN OUR SELF-TALK🦜, it can put us on a different path🗺️ to creating better results in our lives.

Intrigued🤔?  Listen now!

(Don’t wanna listen? Download the transcript here)

Find this episode on YouTube (video below) or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.

https://youtu.be/zUoWXzR_JVE

Can’t see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zUoWXzR_JVE

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Join the Get Your GOAL Coaching + Accountability Facebook group:  https://pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal/
Ep. 024: The Big “BUT”:  https://pahlabfitness.com/the-big-but/
Ep. 009: Facts vs. Opinions:  https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/9-facts-opinions/

Thanks for joining me today!  Be sure to RATE and REVIEW the podcast on iTunes (doing so helps more people find the podcast!)

BONUS! Get Your Goal CONVERSATIONS (Full Transcript) 

You’re listening to the Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B and this is episode number 75, “Get your GOAL Conversations.”

Hello, hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of the Fitness Matters Podcast, where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I am your host, Pahla B, your best middle-aged fitness friend. And today, I have to be honest. It’s not entirely a conversation. It really is still just a podcast of me talking, but I didn’t really know what else to call it. So there you go. This is how I name things sometimes. I just decide off the top of my head to call it a conversation, even though it’s really just a monologue. But you guys, here’s the reason why this is kind of a special bonus for you. Every single week in my Get Your Goal group. Actually let me back up. Every single week here on the podcast, I invite you to join the Get Your Goal group at the very end of the podcast. And this week, I’m actually literally inviting you to the kind of conversation that we have in the Get Your Goal Group every week.

Every week in the Get Your Goal group on Mondays, I host a Monday meeting where we start off with what is essentially a podcast where I talk about a topic and it sparks a conversation. Hence the title of today’s episode. Everybody in the group joining in on the Zoom meeting has the chance to either talk about exactly what we’ve talked about or ask questions or get their own coaching or whatever. We do end up having conversations where other people join in and we can all talk to one another. But each week I do start off with a sort of mini podcast, except it’s not really that mini. It ends up being what is essentially an entire podcast. Hence today’s entire podcast. This, my friends, is the kind of work that is essential to getting your goal. And I’m really, really excited to share it with you today. So please listen and enjoy.

Good morning. Hello. Hello. Can everybody see me and hear me? We’re all good? Excellent. Thank you for all being here. This one’s exciting. I have something fun to talk about today. We are talking about butts and parentheses. I know you’re all like, “That means nothing to me yet.” I know this is how this works, but here’s the thing about butts and parentheses.

I was thinking about this a lot, really specifically this weekend. I have an old episode of the podcast called “The Big ‘But’”, which is one of my absolute favorite episodes (Ep. 024 The Big “But” https://pahlabfitness.com/the-big-but/). Partially, just because that title is so funny to me, like there’s a lot of ground there for jokes, for butt jokes and I am not above butt jokes just so you know. I have boys, and I have the humor of a teenage boy and always have and hopefully always will because I just really think that’s important to keep your sense of humor.

So I happen to love that episode. I think it’s a really, really good and interesting one. It’s very much about mindset, but it’s something that I like even more than mindset. It’s actually about parsing out the language that we use when we talk to ourselves. And I was thinking really specifically about “The Big ‘But’” for a couple of reasons this weekend. A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you guys an episode where I was talking about some thoughts that I had had about my sister (Ep. 070 Feeling Angry https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/70-feeling-angry/). And also, I apologize really quickly. We’re talking about my sister today. It’s not the point. We’re not really talking about grief, but I do always like to warn you guys.

When I talk about my sister (she is deceased), I do use words like dead and died. And sometimes it’s not for everybody. I’m three years into this journey, and I’m a little bit more at ease with that kind of language. But if that is not where you are right now, that’s totally okay. And I mean, you can be careful of your own wellbeing as far as that goes. So I was thinking about that episode where I shared with you my journal entry where I had really been trying to figure out what was going on with me and running. I had really been having a hard time, not with the running itself. I enjoy running. Running still feels good, but I noticed that I had a lot of stuff going on in my head about how much I was enjoying my running, and racing, and thinking about running, and thinking about being competitive.

For me personally, running and being competitive is incredibly joyful. It is something that I do for fun. It’s something that I do for pleasure. It’s something that I do because I love it. Like I love running and racing. But what I discovered when I was journaling about it was that I was really having a lot of conflicted feelings about running that were very related to my sister being dead. And really specifically, the thought that I uncovered was that I can’t enjoy running if Vicki is dead. And I followed that through. The circumstance of the situation is that my sister is dead. But my thought was, “I can’t enjoy running if Vicki is dead.” And the way I felt about that – because your thoughts create your feelings – was sad and kind of guilty, really specifically guilty.

And so the actions that I was taking from that guilt were lots of . . . And here’s the thing about guilt. Guilt actually produces a lot of back and forth, a lot of seesawing. The reason we have guilt is because we are trying to simultaneously hold two thoughts in our head that are at odds with each other. They’re both allegedly true in our minds, but they can’t combine. Anyway, they are oil and water. And so my guilt was from loving running, but not wanting to love running because I had this thought that I can’t enjoy running if my sister is dead. So what I was doing is I was running either way too much or way too little. I wasn’t recovering well. I wasn’t creating a plan, even though I like to use a plan when I’m running. I just had a lot of seesawing actions that were producing for me, this inability to either love running or not love running anymore because I couldn’t really make up my mind.

And what was happening was that it was producing so much ill effect in my life. I wasn’t recovering well. Again, I was running too much or too little. It produced the result for me that running was basically dead to me too. And so that was rather shocking to discover. I mean, I kind of, I knew something was going on, but I didn’t really understand what was going on and what I realized about that thought and those feelings and the results that I was creating for myself was that basically what I was telling myself was, “I love running, but Vicki is dead.” And here’s the thing about the word “but” in that sentence. When I was in college, I had a philosophy class and the professor in that philosophy class was one of the best professors I ever had. I just loved him. And I will never forget him explaining how the language we use affects what we’re saying and how we’re saying it.

It creates the result of how people hear it and how we hear it in our own brains. And he was talking about the word “but.” The word “but” is incredibly powerful. You will start to notice it all the time when I point this out to you. Anything in your sentence that comes after the word “but” is more important than anything that came before it. So the example that he used – and this is so sexist, but I totally remember this example because it made it very clear what he was saying and it also was a product of the times. What he was saying is that if there was a woman who is both rich and ugly, the way that you know which part of that is more important to you is how you say it in a sentence. “Oh, this woman that I’m thinking of marrying is very rich, but she’s ugly.” Or, “This woman that I am thinking of marrying is ugly, but she’s rich.”

And I hope you guys hear that the way that my professor in the late 80s and the early 90s was trying to say it. The thing that comes after the “but” is the thing that is more important to your brain. When you start listening for the “buts” in your sentences to yourself, you will start to understand what is most important to you. This is going to be really crucial in your journaling when you notice it.  And you won’t necessarily notice it because here’s the thing. Sometimes, I mean, like in my original journal entry, what I said was that I can’t enjoy running if Vicki’s dead. So that doesn’t really have a but in that sentence, like it doesn’t fall into that category. And so this is why it can be important to kind of rephrase things for yourself. Sometimes play around with the language and with the words you are using to really understand what it is that you’re saying to yourself.

What I was saying to myself is that I love running, but Vicki is dead. And that was the most important part. I felt like her being dead was more important than running and racing. Now, the reason that I was thinking about this really specifically, is that I had a race this weekend for the first time in over a year. It was very exciting. I stood at the starting line and I made it to the finishing line of a running race. And I haven’t done that since February 29th of last year. That was the last race before everything shut down. And so coming up to this over the past couple of weeks, I’ve really been doing a lot of thinking. Like really, really doing a lot of thinking about how I feel about running and racing and my sister being dead.

Because I knew from my past experiences of the last three years, that basically every single finish line has felt very bittersweet. It has felt very difficult because of this thought that honestly, I just recently discovered. It’s amazing how much it’s been affecting my life, but I had just recently discovered that I love running and racing, but my sister is dead. So coming up to this race, I kept thinking to myself, “How do I want to feel? How do I want to think about this? Now that I know that that thought is in my head, what do I want to think about running and racing and my sister? And how can I enjoy myself in a way that I want to and be acknowledging of this thought that I have? And do I want to change it? How do I feel about that thought?”

And the other thing that my professor told us about in college was that the word “and” is exactly what it sounds like. It’s an equalizer. It means that both things in the sentence hold equal weight. And so I kept thinking to myself that what I’d like to think is that I love running and racing and Vicki’s dead. Both of them felt factually true to me. And this was the other thing that I’m going to parse out a little bit more in just a little bit here. Clearly, factually true is the fact that my sister is dead and it’s not a fact actually that I love running and racing. And this is totally aside, but it’s something that I’d really like to address because it’s something that we really think to ourselves. When we say something like, “I love tomatoes,” it sounds like a fact, right? You think you love tomatoes, but it’s still just an opinion. Even the things that we hold very dear, like loving tomatoes or loving cats or disliking whatever it is that we dislike. We really think that that is a true statement. But is it?

When I was a kid, I hated tomatoes. Now I love them. That means it’s an opinion. If it can change, especially over time or even in an instant, that means that it’s not actually a fact. So it feels very factual that I love running and racing. It is a fact that my sister is dead. And so what I wanted, what I was really hoping to do was come to this feeling that they have equal weight, that it’s totally okay, that I love running and racing. It’s totally okay that my sister is dead. I love running and racing, and Vicki is dead. And both of those things are fine. So I really practiced that.

I’ve been kind of thinking about this at least a little bit for over a month now at this point, even before I had discovered that really specific thought in my head a couple of weeks ago. So over the last week or two, I’ve really been thinking, “Does this sound believable to have the word ‘and’ in that sentence, to be able to give both of them equal weight?” And I was really practicing it. And I was thinking, “Is this how I want to feel?” And I had gotten to the point where it felt very believable to have them both have equal weight with me. And then yesterday I was running, and I was racing. I felt amazing. I felt amazing right up until I fell. I have to tell you, I was so bummed.

It was a trail run. So I’m climbing and I’m descending. And some of it’s very, very technical. There are lots of rocks, lots of dirt, lots of everything. Lots of people on the trail too, actually. So what happened was this. I was descending down to this waterfall that I love. I run on this trail all the time. I absolutely love this trail. I know it like the back of my hand. I knew exactly where I was throughout this whole race. It was beautiful. It was so perfect. But so I was coming down this rather steep part of the trail, and this really nice man came up the trail. And so he stepped over to the side and said, “Good morning.” And I was like, “Oh, good morning. Thank you. I totally appreciate that.” And as I looked down to see what was going on, I noticed that his companion had stepped off to the other side of the trail.

And she also said, “Good morning,” which is so friendly. I love this. I mean, this is the thing that I love about trail racing and running. Everybody says good morning and is super nice. And so I made the mistake – because I hadn’t seen her when I started the descent – of looking right into her eyes and saying, “Good morning.” And as I did that, my foot stepped on a rock and whoop, went right out from underneath me. I fell right on my butt, which is totally appropriate for today’s conversation. Actually, let me tell you the part. So I fell on my butt and I’m screaming F, F F, F. This was my natural response to start swearing like a sailor. I’m screaming this at the top of my lungs because I can feel myself going down and I’m like, “Oh, this is not good.” So I’ve just very pleasantly said good morning to this woman. And then I’m screaming F bombs.

So I’m sitting on my butt like totally in shock. And I’m like, “I’m so sorry for all the swearing,” because there are so many people around, and I’m like, I’m so sorry for all the swearing.” And then I realized that I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m like F again because it hurt. The girl who was right behind me, who was chasing me down the hill, of course she passed me. I was kind of bummed about that, but she stopped actually. She was like, “Oh my gosh, are you okay?” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m totally fine. Totally fine.” So I’m getting up, and I’m trying to get some assessment here as to what’s going on, and I’m covered in mud. I mean like my whole backside is covered in mud, and I’m like, “Okay, I can move. Nothing’s broken. This is all good.” I mean really, if there is a part of my body that was well-equipped to fall on, it’s definitely my butt. I’ve got plenty of muscles back there, plenty of padding. It was a good fall.

I didn’t break anything. I didn’t land on my knees or anything like that. So that was good. I get up, and I’m starting to move again. I’m apologizing for all the swearing to all the people around. Thankfully, no children. It was all adults, and I’m very grateful for that. And I kind of get moving again. And this particular part of the trail, it happens to be like there was the steep descent and then we cross the bridge at the waterfall and then there’s a kind of a steep rise back out of it. So I had plenty of time to walk and move because I wasn’t going to start running again until I could really make sure that I was okay. I’m going to go ahead and actually just finish this part of the story, and then we’ll get back to talking about thoughts and stuff.

I crossed the finish line. My husband was running and racing yesterday at this event as well. He ended up coming in fifth place. He did great. It was very exciting. I come running across the finish line and the first words out of my mouth to my husband are, “I didn’t just sh– my pants. It’s mud.” Because I really, really needed him to know that it was only mud because it was all down my leg. I mean it looked quite bad. It really did. And I know the whole time I was running anybody who was behind me was kind of wondering what happened there.

After I crossed the finish line, I thought about how I had such a good day, such a good day. I felt really strong the entire day. I felt really good about the race. It was a well managed race. I was able to push exactly what I wanted to push. I let people pass me on the downhills because I’m slower on downhills, but I am such a good climber. There were almost 1,000 feet of climbing in the last mile. And I passed three people, and I knew I would because I’m a good climber. And so I felt exactly like I wanted to feel, and I crossed the finish line. I had predicted for the day that it was going to take me a little over 2 hours, and I crossed the finish line in 1.45.

So I was thrilled. I was thrilled with my day – with how I felt with everything about it. And as soon as I assured my husband that it was mud on me, I said, “Vicki’s dead, but I love running and racing.” And he kind of looked at me because he and I had talked about this. This wasn’t just a random thought that I’d thrown at him. He and I had been talking about the word “but” and how I wanted to feel about running and racing and how I wanted to feel about everything. And so when I said that to him, he was like, “Yeah, that’s awesome.” Like that’s such a good feeling. And I kept thinking about that yesterday. And I keep thinking about it this morning because this morning in hindsight, my brain really wants to offer it to me the other way around. It really does.

Because I’ve been practicing this for so many years. “Of course you love running and racing, but Pahla, Vicki’s dead. Maybe you should go ahead and still be sad that she’s dead.” And that takes away from running and racing. So I’ve been practicing over and over this thought that I want to think, I genuinely want to think, not just “Vicki’s dead, but I love running and racing.” But actually this other thing that I was thinking while I was running. Vicki really wants this for me. Now, I don’t know what you believe. I don’t even necessarily know what I believe. Let’s be honest. I have lots of thoughts about the afterlife, what happens, all of those kinds of things. And I’m certainly not going to tell you what to believe, but here was something that I was thinking that made me feel good. I was having the pleasure of feeling competitive, of feeling really good about running and really good about being in nature and really good about using my body. All those things that I love so much about running.

I thought about what that does for my memory of my sister, that it feels like an honor to her. So I kept thinking about being sad versus being happy and being “honoring” versus being sad. And I have to be honest that there’s still a lot more there to journal for me because it still feels kind of like something I haven’t practiced. That’s really what it comes down to. I haven’t practiced this new thought that the things that I do that bring me pleasure are in honor of her. So I’ve been thinking a lot this morning about which way my brain wants to go. My brain wants to offer me that I can certainly be sad. I absolutely can. Or I can continue to practice the particular phrase of, “Vicki’s dead, but I love running and racing.”

And so I’ve been thinking a lot about that “but.” And I’ve been thinking like I have for so many years. Like literally since the late 80s, the early 90s. I’ve been thinking that that statement is really true. Everything that comes after the “but” is more important; it has more weight. And then I was thinking about something that I hear somewhat frequently from lots of different comments. I hear people saying things like, “I overate today, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it.” And I happen to know when I read that comment that you are absolutely beating yourself up about it.

The thing that came after the “but” in that sentence really wasn’t more true. It didn’t hold more weight. It’s not more important. And that’s what I was coming up with today when I was really parsing through the “buts” that we have and how that felt so powerful for me in my particular instance and how, when I see these comments that you guys make, or these statements, these posts that you make about something happened, but you’re not going to beat yourself up. And I started wondering what difference there is. I was trying to decide if it was the difference between facts versus opinions. I mean, in the really specific case of my sister being dead, that is a fact but here’s what I came up with. And like I said, you’re going to start noticing that word everywhere, everywhere, especially when I point it out to you. “But” everywhere.

Vicki is dead is a factual statement. It absolutely is. I know that you all have some feeling about my sister because I talk about her so much and/or because of your own feelings about your own sisters and therefore you have your own thoughts. But here’s the thing. The statement that Vicki is dead actually holds no weight whatsoever. It really doesn’t. It’s a statement of fact; it is actually completely neutral. It is simply a fact in the way that most things aren’t. And here’s what is actually important to me in that sentence. It’s the thing in the parentheses that I’m not saying, but feels like it was very true to me. When I say “Vicki is dead” in my mind what I’m hearing is, “and I’m sad about that.”

I mean, obviously it’s relatively implied for lots of people. I mean, if you’ve ever known anybody who’s ever died, you understand that we all feel sad when somebody dies. Part of death is to be sad about death. And that’s why when I said that statement, “Vicki is dead, but I feel great about running and racing,” you all understood that the reason why that first part felt kind of difficult to overcome was the part in the parentheses. So when somebody says something like, “I overate, but I’m not going to beat myself up,” the even more important part, even more important than the thing behind the “but” because the thing behind the but, both of them, both parts of that sentence, I think you can understand are actually opinions. I know some of you are going to have a little bit more difficulty with the “I overate.” That sounds like a fact. But “overate” is an opinion. “Overate” has no actual factual validity to it. It’s an opinion of something that happened.

“I ate X number of calories,” is a fact. But what you would hear in the parenthesis is, “I ate more than I wanted to. And that’s bad. And that’s terrible. And that’s no good. And that’s awful. And I’m a bad person because of it. And all of that other self-judgment stuff.” By the time we have used the words “I overate,” we’re already judging ourselves. We’re already beating ourselves up. So then when you get to the second half of the sentence – “but I’m not going to beat myself up” – it sounds like it should have more weight because it’s behind the “but.” What’s the problem with that being behind the “but” when we know that frequently that’s not actually what’s going to happen? We are already beating ourselves up.

You guys, this is my favorite thing that I just realized. Well, actually, I didn’t just realize this, but I just noticed it about this particular sentence. What happens in the middle of the sentence is not just the “but,” but a changing of tenses. “I overate” happened in the past, but “I’m not going to beat myself up” is in the future. And let me tell you something about your brain. Your brain does not understand the future. Your logical brain does, your upper brain. The prefrontal cortex absolutely understands the future. It’s why it exists. But the part of your brain that drives your behavior, that drives what we feel, that drives pretty much everything to be honest, it’s driving the bus. You guys, it’s driving the bus. That lower part of your brain has no concept of the future.

And this is something that I tell you guys all the time. When you say “I’m going to,” your brain doesn’t get it. Your brain is like, “Oh, that’ll happen some other time. Your brain basically puts that in the “to be looked at later” file, which I know you all have. It’s called the junk drawer. And I put lots of things in there that I’m never going to look at later. This is what your brain does with future tense. Future tense means nothing to your brain. Your brain understands the past because something has already happened. It is a fact that you already ate. And what happens right now is very factual to your brain. Also, it’s why I tell you guys to say, “I am losing weight.” “I am,” right at this minute, feels incredibly different. And I know you can literally feel that in your body, the difference between “I am” and “I’m going to.”

“I’m going to” could happen at any point in time in the future. Even “I’m not going to.” “I’m not going to beat myself up” could happen at any point in time in the future. Yes, the thing behind the “but” holds lots of weight. Unless the thing behind the “but” means nothing to your brain. When you switch tenses to something in the future, it holds almost no weight at all to your brain until you can put it into the present tense. Listen to this sentence again. “I overate, but I am not speaking unkindly to myself.” Now for me, this brought up an immediate feeling of guilt. There’s an absolute clash there because “I overate.” I’m already judging myself. I’m already berating myself. I’m already not speaking nicely to myself. I am not speaking unkindly; I’ve just contradicted myself. I mean, it is trying to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time.

That’s why we never say that. That’s why we never say “I am speaking kindly to myself” right after we just haven’t spoken kindly to ourselves, even if we use the word “but” there in the middle because we can’t. Your brain cannot hold two opposing thoughts at the same time. It has to choose one of them. Frequently – because we’re used to it, because it’s a thought we’ve had a million times before, because it’s something that we are super, super, super practiced doing – the thing that ends up holding the most weight in that sentence is the “I overate.” And then we’re going to try to not beat ourselves up for it. But if we haven’t practiced it and don’t know how, and we’re saying, “I’m not going to in the future beat myself up about it,” it tends to kind of just wash away. We just don’t do much with the second half of that sentence.

So when you are noticing the things you say to yourself, the things that you are really looking for are the exact words that you are using. This is actually my favorite part about being a coach. When I can read what you say online or hear what you say to me when we are coaching, I can hear when you change tenses, I can hear when you have a “but.” I can hear sometimes when there’s a parentheses there. Listening for the “buts” and the parentheses and the changing tenses in your own journaling work is going to be something that is something – not just “going to be,” not in the future. It is something that I encourage you to do right now. When you say something that sounds very factual, like “Vicki is dead,” ask yourself, “What do you mean by that? What else is there? What else is there behind that? Is there a ‘but?’ Is there a ‘should?’ Is there a parentheses? Is there a changing tense?”

Be aware of all of the different ways that we can talk to ourselves and all of the different ways that we can, honestly, I’m going to say fool ourselves. And I don’t mean that your brain is being sneaky, and I don’t mean that you’re not smart enough to figure it out. I don’t mean anything judgy about that at all. I mean that your brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And therefore your brain is always going to try to offer you something that isn’t painful and sometimes not painful just means familiar. I mean, sometimes the thoughts it offers you give you plenty of pain, but it’s just very familiar. As we have these familiar thoughts, do your best to get really, really curious about them. Get really, really interested in what else it is that’s behind that thought.

What do you really mean when you are saying “I overate?” What do you really mean when . . . I mean, even something as innocuous as “I love tomatoes.” I mean, and this is actually kind of a fun place to start. Start with something that doesn’t hold any emotional weight with you at all. And start asking yourself really curious questions about that. Like, “Why do I believe I love tomatoes? What is that? What good is that doing to make me believe that I love tomatoes? Why do I think I love tomatoes?” And notice that your brain automatically goes to the past. “Oh, well here in the past, like last week I ate tomatoes and they were really sweet and really delicious. So therefore I think that I love them.” Notice why your brain offers you something as a truth and as a fact. That may or may not be truthful, may or may not be factual.

When you can get really curious, which we did just talk about recently on the podcast, about being really curious about your thoughts (Ep. 073 The Best Feeling https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/73-best-feeling/), you will notice that there are “buts,” that there are parentheses, that there are changing tenses, that there are all kinds of nuances to the language that you are using with yourself. I’m going to say that they hide the truth. But as we all know, very little of what we say to ourselves is true. It’s not about finding the truth. It’s simply about finding the feelings that it brings to you. When I was able to find the feelings that it brought to me to have a parentheses behind what I was saying about Vicki, or to have the word “but” in the middle of a sentence and to decide which way I wanted to say that sentence, I got a completely different feeling from both of those sentences.

When you say “I overate, but I’m not going to beat myself up,” and you feel that little bit of tension, that feeling of, “I know this isn’t really true; I know this isn’t really factual; I know these are two kinds of opposing thoughts and I don’t feel necessarily guilty about it, but I’m struggling with it” – when you feel that tension in your body, there’s a “but,” there’s a parentheses, there’s a changing tense, there’s some other nuance in what you are saying, but it’s going to be really important for you to find. And once you find it, you get to decide. And this is actually a topic for a whole other day. Because I know that some of you are thinking to yourself, “Pahla, you tell me all the time to feel my feelings. And now you’re also telling me that you can change your thoughts and not be sad about your sister being dead. Why would you do that? Shouldn’t you feel sad that your sister is dead?”

And that again is a whole other topic. It’s actually worthy of a long conversation like this, because yes, I do encourage you to feel your feelings. And yes, I do encourage you to decide what you want to feel about everything. You don’t have to feel anything ever. Ever. You can. And I encourage you to feel it if you’re going to feel it. But I also encourage you to decide for yourself what you’d like to feel. And that’s where we come back to today’s topic of when you feel that tension, you can absolutely feel it. You can feel that tension. You can try and hold two opposing thoughts. Help yourself to that. But I’m going to encourage you to notice it and make a decision about exactly what you want to feel. So, you guys, talk to me about your “buts.” Tell me about your “buts” please, or anything else that’s on your mind.

So are you totally loving this mindset work, and you really want to do it like every day in order to get your goal? Then my friend, you need to join the Get Your Goal group. It is my personal and private, very interactive coaching and accountability group where every day we talk about your mindset and we get your goal. You can learn all about it at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal. I’ll see in the Goal group.

Listen to the full episode here, and be sure to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

Originally aired May 2, 2021
We’re exploring how to recognize language that holds EMOTIONAL WEIGHT and may be holding us back from getting the outcomes we want.
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Meet Your Host

Mindset expert and certified life coach Pahla B knows a thing or two about changing your mind to change your weight and your life. She’s the creator of The 5-0 Method, Amazon-best selling author of the book “Mind Over Menopause,” and former yo-yo dieter who has cracked the code on lifelong weight maintenance. Join Pahla B each week for the personal insights, transformative mindset shifts, and science-backed body advice that can help you lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.