Do you have a GOAL you’ve been thinking about, but you’re not sure HOW TO GET IT? My friends, today’s conversation is tailor-made🧵 just for you!
In this mind-blowing🧠 episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, I reveal the ONLY TWO STEPS you need to know to get on the path🚵 to any goal you want, any time! It’s a straight-forward process – and IT WORKS!
Ready to change your life? Jump🦘 on the podcast now and let’s GO!
(Don’t wanna listen? Access the transcript here)
Find this episode on YouTube (video below) or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.
Can’t see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Dr__zVaZtOY
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Sign up for the FREE 5-day Mindset Masterclass with Pahla B
https://www.pahlabfitness.com/mindset/
Pahla B Fitness YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeXAh1l-MSjIbDkvHXa1yyA
Fitness Matters Podcasts
https://pahlabfitness.com/category/lets-run-podcast/
Ep. 009: Facts vs. Opinions
https://pahlabfitness.com/facts-vs-opinions/
The Thought Model by Brooke Castillo
https://thelifecoachschool.com/self-coaching-model-guide/
Join the Get Your GOAL Coaching + Accountability Facebook group:
https://pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal/
My friends, if you have someone in your life who wants to get goals too, please SHARE this podcast! 💛
Mind MANAGEMENT (full transcript)
You’re listening to the fitness matters podcast with Pahla B, and this is episode number 89, “Mind Management.”
Hello, hello, hello my friends. How are you today? I am so excited about today’s episode for several reasons. Reason number one is because this is the lead-in to the mindset masterclass, and I am super, super excited about that. If you haven’t already heard or signed up for the mindset masterclass, you can do so now. I don’t think I’ve really told you very much about it. I know I’ve mentioned it, but I realized I don’t think I told you out loud that it’s free. By the way, Blossom [Pahla’s dog] just came trotting down the hallway and is now shaking right in front of me. And she’s about to jump up on the chair right next to me. Welcome to the podcast where the animals just walk around and jingle and make noise. And that was me tossing my notes on the ground. You guys, this is a professional podcast but it’s not always professional.
So anyway, okay. It’s completely free. Here’s what it looks like. You’re going to get five days of emails from me, which means that for all intents and purposes, it is a live event. So if you are listening to this sometime after like the 13th of August of 2021 then I apologize you’ve missed it. And something like this will come back around because I’m really enjoying the challenge of putting together such a thing. So there will definitely be more like this in any event. Okay, so it’s five days of emails. In the email you’re going to get a very short video explanation from me. It’s like a teeny tiny mini podcast in video form. So you get to see my face while we’re talking about this stuff. And there will be a journal prompt for you. Don’t let that throw you off.
I know that for lots of us even that word “journal” is like, I don’t know . . . it’s an activity. Let’s just call it that. In fact, I won’t even say the words “journal prompt” in the emails. How about that? We’ll call it an activity for you to do to get to know your mind a little bit better. And that is the whole point of the mindset masterclass. We’re getting to know our minds. You guys, here’s reason number two why I’m excited about today’s episode. It’s because this is actually kind of a short one truly. I realized I was explaining something to my husband recently and I was like, “You know, everything that I need to know about mindset and managing your mindset can really be distilled into two steps.” And I’m going to tell you what those two steps are in just a minute. But also since it’s the beginning of the episode, I totally forgot to tell you hi, I’m Pahla B. I’m your best middle-aged fitness friend.
I was so excited to get into the meat of today’s episode that I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Pahla B. This is what I do. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about making peace with your menopausal body. And I have a podcast where we talk about all of the mindset matters and the fitness matters that matter to you. Because your fitness mindset completely matters. You guys, here’s the thing. You can’t get your goal without managing your mind. And I know that some of you have gotten goals in the past and you’re like, “No, no, I totally have.” Here’s what I’ve learned about the goals that I completed well before I was actively managing my mind. I was actually inactively managing my mind when I got those goals. I was trying to explain to someone just recently about how I achieved what I consider truly one of the greatest accomplishments of my lifetime.
I qualified for the Boston marathon. I didn’t ever get to run it, which means it is still on my list. In case you don’t run, let me explain this super, super fast. You can qualify for Boston, but that does not automatically gain you entry. The year that I qualified there were so many qualifiers that you actually had to beat the qualifying time by three and a half minutes or something. And I only beat the qualifying time by 53 or 57 seconds. So I barely qualified, and I did not qualify enough to actually gain entry into the Boston marathon, which was what it was. Honestly for me, the qualification was the thing that I had been dreaming about. And I do truly believe that someday I will get to run the Boston marathon. That’s a whole other story for a whole other day.
But anyway, when I accomplished this goal, I had no idea what I was doing at the time. But looking back at it and parsing out all the things that I did, I was like “Oh my gosh! I was totally managing my mindset. I had no idea.” I was doing all the things that you need to do in order to get your goal. And here are the two things that you need to do to get any goal anytime ever. This is it. You ready? Step number one, listen to your thoughts. Step number two, decide if they’re helpful. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. That is everything you could possibly need to know about managing your mindset. Everything else is details. Everything else is the nuances of: How do I listen to my thoughts? How do I determine whether or not they are helpful? But truly when in doubt, this is all you need to know. Listen to your thoughts. And okay, there’s a caveat there of recognizing that they are thoughts. You and I have talked about this so often.
Here’s the part of the podcast where I’m going to refer you to episode nine, Facts Vs. Opinions (Ep. 009 Facts Vs. Opinions https://pahlabfitness.com/facts-vs-opinions. Sometimes I say Thoughts Vs. Opinions. I used to always call thoughts opinions. They’re very interchangeable. It is truly the same thing. A thought is not a fact. An opinion is not a fact. So for the purposes of that episode, I called it Facts Vs. Opinions. And since then I have really changed over to the terminology of calling things thoughts. Understanding that your thoughts are not facts is pretty critical to this process. And in fact, we’re going to talk about it during the mindset masterclass – about how to tell the difference and what to do with that. And it is something that I have expanded on quite a bit in episode 9, “Facts versus Opinions”.
Where when we think things in our head they sound so truthful. They sound so factual. They sound like things we believe. And yet, when we really listen to them and understand what we are telling ourselves, we will realize that they are thoughts. And thoughts, my friends, can change. Can you tell how excited I am about today’s episode? I’ve already been singing like how many times? This kind of broad-strokes generalization . . . I love episodes like this because I think sometimes we get really lost in the weeds. I sometimes get really lost in the weeds. I love to talk to you about all the nitty gritty details. I love to talk to you about peeling back 5, 6, 7 layers of the onion. Thinking about your thoughts about your thoughts about your thoughts. But we can step back sometimes and just get this big, broad overview and really see that there’s nothing about managing your mindset that’s truly complex; it’s all very simple.
You listen to your thoughts, and you decide if they’re helpful. That’s it, that’s all you have to do. And yes, there are nuances. I mean there absolutely are. We very frequently do not actually hear our thoughts because we’re so inside of them. We’re so in the midst of feeling the feelings that they are creating and thinking that they are true and believing that this is the way that things are and that this is just the fact about my body or about my life or about my circumstances.
And we also sometimes get really caught up in the weeds of deciding whether or not a thought is helpful because something can feel so true and so factual. We just don’t take the time to take that step and recognize it doesn’t matter if something feels true or believable. If it’s not helping me get where I want to go, I don’t want to be thinking it. Have you ever really thought about that? Because sometimes I mean I’ll do this too. I’m thinking really specifically of the times that I’m just righteously angry at somebody who cut in line and they just shouldn’t have done that.
And well, I can really spend some time on that just so you know. These are the things I spend time on in my mind. I can really, really spend some time on thoughts like that. When I step back for that moment and just ask myself the question, “is this thought helpful for who I want to be in the world? Is this thought helpful for how I want to behave in the world? Is this thought helpful to getting me where I want to go in the world?” And it’s really clearly not helpful for any of those things. And yet so few of us actually take the time to take that step.
You guys, the next time you find yourself caught up in the middle of anything – something good, something bad, something indifferent, something whatever – just take those two steps. Listen to your thoughts, and decide if they’re helpful. It’s so fascinating to me after I was having this conversation with my husband how often I have thought of my own advice. Don’t you love that? This is the thing I love about having my own podcast. I have these thoughts and these theories and I’ll recognize things that I am thinking, things that I am doing, but until I say something out loud, sometimes I don’t really get how to use it in my own mind. There goes Blossom jingling again. Okay, now she’s click clacking down the hall. Bye, sweetheart.
Oh my gosh, you guys. This is what the podcast is like around here. Anyway, until I had actually said that out loud to my husband, I hadn’t even recognized how simple mindset management actually is. I have always thought of this as a multi-layered process, and I’ve always considered that you have to listen to your thoughts and parse them out from facts. And then you have to notice what feelings they bring to you and then recognize what actions come from those feelings and then look at your results. And that is a good process, and it actually is the process that we’re going to really be diving into with our mindset masterclass. We use the model, which is Brooke Castillo’s tool for self-understanding, which I do teach to you and we do talk about, but I want to be super clear that I did not create the model.
I went to the Life Coach School for my life coach certification. I believe the model is trademarked through Brooke Castillo. I don’t know for sure if it’s trademarked, but if it’s not it should be because it’s copyrighted in some manner. In any event, using that tool is incredibly helpful, but also very complex. It’s simple but complex at the same time. There are five parts of it. We’re really asking ourselves lots of questions. We’re really thinking things through. There’s a lot more to it. And so even that simple tool wasn’t stepping out far enough to get the big, broad overview of “Here’s how to manage your mind. Here’s how to feel better. Here’s how to get anything in the world you want.” Listen to your thoughts, and decide if they’re helpful. My friends, this is it. This is the key. But I’m not done with the podcast.
I mean I’m done with today’s podcast, but I’m not done with the podcast in general because there are still so many other nuances, so many times where it’s difficult to recognize our thoughts, so many times where it’s difficult to recognize whether our thoughts are helpful or getting us where we want to go. There’s a never-ending amount of nuance to managing your mindset, which I actually love, just to the side here. That is the thing that I really enjoy about managing my own mindset. There’s always another layer to uncover. There’s always something else to dig up. There’s always another thought to find, there’s always more to learn about myself and about others and about my place in the world and about how to get my goals. And there’s always more, but also it’s incredibly simple.
My friends, step one, listen to your thoughts. Step two, decide if they’re helpful. And hidden step three, sign up for the mindset masterclass. I don’t think I mentioned it again. I’m not doing a very good job of really selling you on this. There’s a link in the description box or the show notes wherever you are watching or listening. There’s a way to get to it. Or you can simply tap into your keyboard PahlaBfitness.com/mindset. You guys, I will see you in your inbox. I will literally, I won’t see you, but you will see me. You will see my face in those very quick little videos. It’s not meant to take a lot of your time, It is meant to give you some insights into how we manage our mind. Some of the tools we can use – how to listen to your thoughts and decide if they’re helpful – you can continue on your own through the podcast and through your own self knowledge journey. Or you’re welcome to come on over to the Get Your Goal group at the end of every single podcast.
I don’t know if you listen all the way to the end of every single podcast. I always mention that you can come on over to the Get Your Goal group, which is where we do mindset management every single day. You guys, people in the Get Your Goal group are getting their goals. It’s so exciting. It’s such a fun place to be. My friend, if you have joined the mindset masterclass, I’ll see you in your inbox tomorrow. If you have not, it’s totally okay. There are plenty more podcasts, plenty more resources available to you. You can dig in and listen to as many of these podcasts as you would like to. There are plenty more. Okay, so not entirely related, but I’ve been thinking about this and I’m going to mention it again a couple more times. Here’s the thing that I’ve been thinking about with the podcast.
For a while now, I’ve mentioned to you a couple of different times that I used to have an older version of my podcast called the Let’s Run podcast. Soon, I’m going to count up however many Let’s Run podcasts there were and count them in the Fitness Matters podcast number. Therefore, I’ll skip from Fitness Matters episode 100 to episode I think it’s going to be like 170 something. I think I have that many Let’s Run podcasts because I had quite a few of them before we started the Fitness Matters podcast. So there will be a weird, huge jump in the numbers that I’m going to tell you about several more times so that it won’t surprise you. I really want to take credit for all the work that I’ve done creating this podcast over the years. Isn’t that funny how important that is to me?
You guys, on that happy note, I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you again soon.
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 you in the goal group.