Hello, hello GOALfriend, and welcome to episode number 292. And you guys, before we even get into the meat of today's topic, I wanna tell you something real quick about Mind Over Menopause, my new book that is coming out on June 27th. Now I know that you've just listened to the little advertisement that I've had on the beginning of the podcast for the past couple of weeks, but even better than just, Hey by the way, my book is coming out. Hey, by the way, there is actually a pre-order bonus if you order the book, either the audio book or the digital format or the hardback version before the publishing date of June 27th. My publisher and I worked out this fun bonus for those of you who decide to pre-order where you can come to a super informational and interactive workshop where we're gonna talk about the two-step tool, which is what the entire crux of mind over menopause is about.
We can use the two-step tool together live in this workshop and you'll have the chance to get your weight loss and menopause and mindset and two-step tool questions answered in an interactive q and a session. So if you have already pre-ordered your book in any format, you can simply email giveaway@theexperimentpublishing.com with proof of your purchase and they will register you automatically for the workshop. And then I'm gonna be emailing out all of those details, uh, a little bit after the publication date. If you didn't need to write this down while you're listening, the show notes or the description box, depending on where you're watching or listening to the podcast will have the information for you. But if you haven't pre-ordered yet, maybe this will be the thing that you're like, oh, you know what? The only way I can do that is if I pre-order instead of waiting for the book to come out, then go pre-order now so that you can get involved in this exclusive workshop if you don't order the book or buy the book until after June 27th.
I hate to put it like this, but it leaves you out. This is for pre-orders only and thank you so much for it. You know, you guys here on the Get Your Goal podcast, how we talk about goals. My publisher and I came to a goal together about pre-ordering sales and just in case you know or don't know anything about books, one of the best indicators of like how a book is gonna do and where it's gonna go in the world is the number of pre-orders. That's why I've been talking about pre-orders for a, a good couple of weeks, uh, gosh, over a month at this point because when enough people pre-order the book, it helps bookstores and online retailers understand like how many they should have in stock and then they'll start promoting the book as well. It's all about getting the word out and then having people respond so that more people can learn about the book.
So in that sense, your pre-order helps other women our age learn about the book and learn about mindset work and learn about their bodies and how to take care of their weight at our age and all the good stuff that we talk about all the time here on the podcast and in the book. So thank you so, so much for your enthusiasm from my book. I really appreciate that. And you guys, speaking of enthusiasm, I think that's what I'm gonna use as my segue into today's topic. Here's what we're talking about today. We are talking about a question that I think truly plagues every single person who has ever set any goal for themselves. And whether or not you've actually heard this question in your brain, I suspect that this is something that you are going to come up against at some point in time on your weight loss journey.
And the question is why bother? I mean really why bother? I got this question actually in a couple of different places recently, as the world tends to work where when there's something that you need to hear or something that you need to work on, it'll show up for you in a couple of different places. Well, that's exactly what happened to me with this question and the reason I presented it to you as maybe you recognize it and maybe you don't is because I hadn't ever heard this question in my own mind until I had a couple of people in a couple of places present it to me. And the further I went digging into how can I help you with this? How can I help these specific people with the way that they were presenting it to me? How can I coach them on this?
I went digging and lo and behold, I had some why bother lurking around in my brain also. And the thing is, this might present to you as not necessarily that question in that phrase exactly in your mind, like ugh, why bother? But it might present to you as like a feeling of, I'm gonna say low grade, but it might be, it might be even more than that for you, but a feeling of being defeated, feelings of frustration or maybe just full on anger at the way your weight loss journey seems to be going. You might also notice it that you are having trouble sticking with your tasks and we might attribute it to lots of different reasons like, oh, I'm having trouble because X, Y, or Z. But the thing that's actually going on in the background is this question of why bother You might also notice yourself having trouble not just like sticking with your tasks but but hitting them right on the money like you're getting them done more or less.
But also it's a little bit on the less side or a little bit on the more side depending on what we're talking about here. But it's got that vague edge of why am I really doing this? Why am I bothering to lose weight? Why am I bothering to count calories? Why am I bothering to drink my water? Why am I bothering to go to bed on time? Why bother with this? And the truth of it is your brain presents this as I'm gonna say a rhetorical question because you don't necessarily hear the answer, you just hear the question of why bother? And for me personally, I love to know why my brain behaves the way it behaves, which is why I so often present it to you. To me personally, I love understanding the neuroscience and the psychological science and the cognitive behavioral therapy science of why our brains do what they do.
Because for me it helps me not take it personally. That's what I wanna say, that rather than, oh my gosh, this is a thing that I think this is a way that I behave. These are feelings that I have as though I am responsible for it and it's a problem for only me and I'm the only one I love understanding that every single thing you do and I do and every person does, is just because of biology. When it's mother nature and biology that makes our brains behave like this, then it's like, oh well that's a problem. And there's always a way to come at it from a different angle, which is to say what we do around here, using the two-step tool, finding your thoughts and deciding if they're helpful, you have the superpower to look at your thoughts, to observe your feelings and your actions and to do things intentionally.
Just because your brain behaves a certain way biologically doesn't mean you're at the mercy of biology. So here's what happens with your brain. Your brain will ask a question that sounds rhetorical because it wants to keep creating the results that it has always created. Your brain is keeping you stuck so that it doesn't have to think a new thought, it doesn't have to burn more energy. Your brain would always love to be efficient and keep thinking and therefore feeling and therefore doing the things that you've been doing for years. So here's how we come around this. Here's how we use our superpowers to get an intentional result, a k, a weight loss that we want for ourselves. My friend. You are going to answer that question and it sounds on its surface like that might not be very much fun and sometimes it's not.
But here's what we're gonna do rather than just answering the question. And what I mean by answering the question is that you're going to restate the question as a sentence instead of a question. Your brain didn't really, I mean you heard it as a question but your brain said it as a sentence that was kind of subconscious. So we're just gonna hear what your brain is thinking subconsciously. So the first thing you're gonna do is restate the question as a declarative sentence in the negative meaning I shouldn't bother because, and then you're gonna listen for all the reasons why you shouldn't bother. Here are some of the ones that I heard in my brain I shouldn't bother because I'll never be young again anyways. I shouldn't bother because I've always been fat. I shouldn't bother because I won't really be different. Even when I lose weight, I shouldn't bother because my weight won't really change anything anyway.
I shouldn't bother because I've tried before and it didn't work. Any of those sound familiar? Why? Yes and my friend, those are thoughts. There's nothing about any of those sentences that are true. They are simply thoughts. And we can use the two-step tool to decide whether or not those thoughts are getting you where you want to go. And here's how we hear the sentence. We acknowledge, ah, this is a sentence in my brain, this is a thought that I'm having. And then we tune in for just a moment to how that sentence makes us feel. Every thought you have creates a feeling. So when I think I'll never be young again anyways, I feel defeated. And just a quick note to the aside, when I offer you my feelings, it's not necessarily how you feel. Even if you have that same thought in your brain, I really want you to take the time to spend a moment with yourself.
I offer you my feelings just as an example, not as, oh this sentence, this thought always creates this feeling, what it creates for you is going to be unique to you and your life experiences. And the reason I mentioned that really specifically is because me and my life experiences, my go-to feeling is always gonna have some flavor of sad. I'm a sad girl except that I'm really not, but my brain very efficiently and automatically heads toward sad feelings much, much more so than like angry feelings or frustrated feelings or any number of other things. So when I offer you that I feel defeated or sad, you might feel frustrated or angry or something else. So please take the time to tune in to yourself cuz I'm pretty sure, yeah, I'm pretty sure that all of these thoughts actually created some version of sadness or defeat for me .
And they might really feel different for you. Something like I'll always be fat anyways, definitely defeated, it won't really be different or I won't really be different even when I lose the weight. Definitely sad. This won't really change anything anyway. Oh my gosh. Very defeated, very morose. I've tried before and it didn't work. That one actually for me, that one created a feeling of embarrassment. So interesting. This is what I love about journaling work you guys. I never really know what's going on with me until I take the time to like slow down and listen to one thought and then really tune in to what that one thought is creating in terms of a feeling in my body. When we really slow down, it's also clear like, oh my gosh, no wonder I don't wanna do my tasks. No wonder I'm having a hard time sticking with things.
No wonder losing weight feels so hard when I have these thoughts and these feelings rattling around. So using the two-step tool, feeling like defeat, very uncomfortable in my body, very churning in the pit of my stomach, very heavy in my chest, that feeling in my body gives me the information that this thought isn't helpful for getting to my goal. Now I know I can label it, I'll never be young again anyway, is unhelpful for getting my goal. And just a quick note to the aside here cuz I know that some of you are like, but it's true, yes, there are sentences that your brain offers you that are true in some, well this one really specifically the time space continuum only moves one direction. I will never be young again. I am inevitably moving in the direction of getting older every minute of every day.
However, feeling defeated is optional and unhelpful. That is the work that we're doing here is recognizing not whether or not a thought is true or false, but whether or not it's helpful for getting my goal. This particular thought which is true, is unhelpful, which means that I have a couple of options. First of all, I can simply label it by labeling it as unhelpful. My brain will recategorize this thought and offer it to me less often. Another thing that I might very specifically want to do, and in this case it would make a lot of sense because I am dealing with a fact, a truth, the time space continuum moves in one direction.
I might like to come up with a reframe for this thought that is helpful. Something along the lines of I don't have to be young to enjoy my body. I love that one personally , because I do enjoy my body. I love having one, I love what it can do. I love the way it looks. I love the way it's changing. I have actually lots of helpful thoughts about getting older and I offer that to you as an option for you simply because you're never going to be young again, doesn't have to feel angry or defeated or sad or whatever it feels for you after you have labeled your thoughts as either helpful or unhelpful and they're helpful. If the feeling feels good, they're unhelpful. If the feeling feels bad or uncomfortable after you've labeled them, you can simply let them lie. What will happen here is that since you have brought these thoughts up and out of your subconscious, you'll actually hear them as you are opening up your calorie counting app and your brain says, why bother? You'll hear, I shouldn't bother because I've tried this before and it never worked.
And you will recognize, hey, that's that thought that I found while I was listening to that podcast from that girl who talks a lot . And I know that that's an unhelpful thought. Even if it feels true, even if it seems like a fact, it feels whatever it feels like sad, angry, uncomfortable, defeated, morose, whatever it is for you. Embarrassed, wasn't that what what it was for me? Whatever it is for you, you can recognize that that thought is unhelpful and it doesn't mean that you have to try and think something helpful in the moment. Your brain does so much of this work in the background. What you hear consciously is truly the tip of the iceberg. Your brain is working subconsciously to find a better thought for you. I promise. Simply bringing this up and labeling your thoughts as helpful or unhelpful is all you need to do on purpose and your brain will take care of the rest.
The other thing that we're gonna do here with this why bother thought is we are going to find some helpful thoughts on purpose. Now as I've mentioned several times, you don't always need to do this. I'm not ever telling you that you have to find positive thoughts or you should always look for the positive or you should always reframe. But sometimes this is a fun exercise. I found this one particularly illuminating and it's why I offer it to you as part of the practical process of picking apart the why bother question. We're gonna restate that question again as a declarative sentence, but this time in the positive I should bother cause and then you're gonna fill in that blank. Now here's the thing, here's why I found this to be a particularly interesting and illuminating exercise. My brain didn't wanna do it. My brain was like, Nope, there's no reason nothing to see here.
Close the door, walk away y'all. It really didn't want to find a reason to bother, but of course I have reasons to bother. Of course there are reasons why I want my goal. There are reasons why you want your goal and you know how lots of people will be like, oh, whenever the going gets tough, just remember your why. This is it. This is your why. Why are you losing weight? Why do you want to weigh a particular number or you know a a window of numbers? Why do you want to feel confident? Why do you want this for yourself? Let's just take a quick moment to gently answer that question. Let's hear what your why is, why you want to bother and I will offer you really quickly that we're also gonna use the two-step tool on these thoughts because your sneaky brain who wants to stay the same might have offered you some more unhelpful thoughts even though we were intentionally going out to find helpful thoughts.
Sometimes your brain still has unhelpful thoughts in this category that sound good on their surface. But when you use the two-step tool and really pay attention to the feelings that the thoughts create, those thoughts are unhelpful. Also, here's the one that I came up with because when I was like, okay, why do I want this? I should bother because other people need me. That sounds really nice, right? And I'm sure that was one of the first things you thought of too. You thought of your family, you thought of your kids, your grandkids, your parents, your friends. Other people need me, other people need me to be healthy. But let's take a quick second with that. Maybe not even a quick second for me, other people need me. Creates a feeling of burden. That thought sounds so nice on its surface but feels so heavy that thought other people need me is unhelpful.
Again, it sounds true, it even sounded nice, but when we use the two-step tool and actually pay attention to our feelings, the feeling in your body, ugh, that feeling in your body has all the information you need to be able to label that thought unhelpful. Other people need me is an unhelpful thought. The other thought that I came up with when I was like, okay, I should bother because I wanna be healthy. Now again, this one sounds really good and I like this thought, but also it feels kind of vague when I'm trying to pay attention to the feeling in my body. It kind of just feels cloudy. A little bit amorphous, a little bit like, hmm, nothing really there. So it's not a bad feeling, don't get me wrong. It's not some very uncomfortable stomach clenching, jaw clenching, hands clenching like some kind of really big emotion, but it also doesn't create good emotion.
It's just kind of vague a little bit me that is unhelpful. So weird, right? Lots of thoughts that sound good on the surface aren't going to get you where you want to go. This is why we always, always check in with our body. Your body has so much information for you. Here was the other thought that I came up with. I should bother to get my goal because what I want matters. Now this one I loved. My body felt this one immediately my shoulders relaxed, my spine sat up nice and straight. I took a deep breath, I felt relaxed. I felt actually the the label or the name that I gave to the feeling was important. I love that feeling. It is a feeling I do not conjure for myself intentionally nearly often enough cuz it feels good, my friends have you felt important. Now, for some of you , I know that some of you just totally took that sentence and took it to the negative and went like, oh no, no, I can't get too big for my britches.
Which is why we check in. For me, the feeling of what I want matters created a feeling of importance and I loved it. It felt really good in my body, it felt really comfortable. I have all the information I need to label that particular thought as helpful because it created a good comfortable feeling. If that thought created an uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling for you, then that thought isn't helpful for you my friend. You have the information inside your body that tells you whether or not your thoughts are help you get to your goal or not helping you get to your goal. Here's why I wanted us to do this particular exercise of A finding the unhelpful thoughts certainly, but then B, stating it as a positive and intentionally finding some helpful thoughts that take us to our goal. I want you to know, because we do really spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about unhelpful thoughts that aren't getting you where you wanna go.
I want you to know that you actually do have helpful thoughts in your head right now. , we don't talk about them very often because, because I really do like to acknowledge the shadow side of our brains. I really do like to dig deep into all of the things that could be slowing you down. But also there are plenty of thoughts available in your head right this minute that are helping you. And when you find them, you can use them the same way. You can like conjure them up on purpose. You can pull them out of a hat and be like, ah, that's right. What I want matters. You can hear it consciously on purpose throughout your day in ways that seem like they're related to your weight loss and maybe don't, but that feel good and intentionally drive you towards your goal. I know it could feel sometimes like, well, especially because we do spend so much time on this podcast really digging into the thoughts that are slowing us down, the thoughts that are stopping us from getting to our goal.
It can feel like there's so many more of them. And truly I'm gonna say that you probably have about half and half. I believe that as soon as you have even the slightest tipping point of let's say one more thought than not, that is helpful, that's gonna take you to your goal. You never have to have all positive thoughts all the time. You simply have to have slightly more of them that are headed in the direction of your goal than not. And that's why we find some of them on purpose so that you can practice them and really acknowledge, oh yeah, I am thinking helpful thoughts. I am getting towards my goal because of course my friend you are. And why should you bother? You tell me you should bother because for me, I believe that you should bother because your desires matter because what you want for yourself matters.
And because what you want and the creation of what you want causes you to do this work that we do where you have to look inward, you have to become aware of yourself, you have to acknowledge both the unhelpful thoughts and you know, both find and intentionally create the helpful thoughts. This work that we do has such a positive effect overall on you that you put out in the world. You and what you want matters because it makes the world a better place. When people, all people are digging in and figuring themselves out and intentionally moving towards things that feel good and create good for themselves. It creates good for everyone, my friends. This is why you should bother because you want to, I really hope that today was helpful for you. Make sure that you, like I said, make, um, open up the show notes or the description box so that you can get your pre-order bonus for the book and also just so that you can read about what we talked about today.
Cuz I know that for me, I mean I'm an auditory learner sometimes, but also I'm a very visual learner, so I really like to read what we've gone through. I will have the steps of this process for you in the show notes or the description box. Thank you so, so much for listening. I'll talk to you again soon.
