Hello GOALfriend! Welcome to episode number 300. Oh my gosh, I can't even say that without singing. This is kind of a big deal. This is episode number 300 of the now Get Your Goal podcast, formerly known as the Fitness Matters podcast, formerly, formerly known as the Let's Run podcast. And also, I'm pretty sure when I counted up all of the episodes that we included, I included something else. I'm trying to think whether or not I included it, which is why that came out so weird. I had this channel on YouTube a long time ago. Technically speaking, the channel still exists. It was called The Buzz and I had these sit-down episodes and it was the precursor to actually calling it a podcast. So I don't know if I included those episodes when I counted them all up or not.
Somewhere around episode 100, I skipped from 100 to like 208 or something like that because I included all the ones from way back in the beginning that didn't have numbers on them, which is why I've never actually done a celebration episode like this because, well, because 100 felt like a big deal, but I was not mentally in a place where I could celebrate like this. And I'm gonna actually explain that that's the crux of today's episode. And then 200 came and went because I went directly from 100 to like 208 or something. So I kind of skipped over that one. And I came this close, like for reals, I almost didn't even celebrate this one. I was planning episodes and I was like, oh, okay, 300. And I almost blew right past this one also. And I was like, oh no, it's time we actually talk about this topic.
So let me tell you a couple of things. Number one, if you are listening to the podcast only this one's on video. I'm singing that too. It's an exciting day and I'm also still a little nervous. And I'm sure if you're watching, you can see that on my face. This is, this is the way it's gonna be for a while, for the foreseeable future of my friends. If you are watching the video, I'm gonna look nervous. But if you are watching the video, here's what I wanna tell you. The way I set up the camera was to reduce as much glare off of my glasses as possible, and also to have you be able to see my mind over menopause and my pink flowers and my flight attendant Barbie and my YouTube play button. And apparently, my keyboard that I had to move out of the way in order for you to be able to see my beautiful background.
My notes are actually right over here, so every time I'm turning my head, I'm not like not talking to you. I am looking at my notes because I took some notes about, well, I took some notes because that's what I'm doing now. I used to take very few notes. I would just sit down and just start talking and sometimes it would come out great and sometimes it would come out not so great. So I am, I'm implementing some new procedures for the podcast. One of them is filming, one of them is taking notes and I'm actually gonna tell you about the other thing a little bit later. But I like having notes so that I know exactly what I'm, no, I don't know exactly what I'm gonna say. I never know what's coming outta my mouth, but I like having the notes because it makes it easier for me to offer you a more or less cohesive podcast.
So I will be looking at my notes and it also helps me not feel quite so nervous because before when I would just sit down and start talking, it was just me sitting on my couch. It was kind of no big deal. So it didn't feel as high stakes to not know what I was gonna say. And now it feels very high stakes. So anyways, let's first of all, talk about why celebrating feels hard. I've just told you my story about how hard it was for me to even think about coming on the podcast and celebrating the milestone of, I was gonna say losing 300 pounds, no recording, 300 episodes of the podcast. And this might be why it feels so hard for you to celebrate honestly, anything I get asked all the time, whether or not you should set small milestones for yourself, like if you should, you know, celebrate every, every five pounds or if you should go down, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever. Like if you should break your weight loss goal into chunks. And I'll be honest, it really depends on you. And having said that, yes, I think it's a good idea, not necessarily to break it into chunks, that makes it easier to lose weight. But for this exact reason to actually celebrate each milestone, each win as it comes so that you can practice. And I'm getting a little bit up ahead of myself here. What I'm gonna tell you is that the reason why celebrating feels hard, I really always love to know why. I love to know how my brain is normally working, what biology has to say about this and why, why things are going on in the background. And here's why. We are all hardwired. This has been proven through science that we are hardwired biologically to have something called negativity bias.
You've probably heard me talk about this before, but it really bears repeating here that we are supposed to look for and find problems much more so than winning. I mean, if you think about this through the lens of, you know, evolution cavemen, they did not. I'm picturing, you know how, oh my gosh, who was it? I don't know why I started this story. I don't really watch sports. There was somebody in the eighties or the nineties, probably the nineties who was really famous for getting a touchdown and doing a dance. Was that Dion Sanders? That's the only name that's coming to me. I don't really watch sports. This was a terrible story to tell, but it's out. Here we go. Do you know how nowadays we celebrate things like a slam dunk or a touchdown?
That's how little I watch sports. But if you think about doing something like that back in caveman days, you know you're doing your little dance in the end zone, and all of a sudden a saber tooth tiger comes and eats you. You really had to be aware of and look for problems much more than celebrating when something went well. So we are hardwired to not celebrate our wins. And frankly, we've all been socialized. I mean, how many times did you hear as a kid, you know, you shouldn't brag or don't get too full of yourself or you know, don't be prideful, things like that? Like us, we are hardwired to not celebrate. And then we also get socialized not to celebrate. So no wonder it feels very difficult. However, here's why it's a good idea for you to practice celebrating in whatever way makes sense for you.
If that means breaking down your weight loss goal into chunks or honestly celebrating every pound or celebrating every week how you celebrate, I'm gonna leave that up to you, but I am gonna tell you why it's a good idea to celebrate because of that negativity bias and the socialization, it does not come naturally to us at all. This is actually a skill. It's a skill that is really good to learn because it primes you. I'm looking at my notes. It primes your brain to look for success. As much as looking for failures, you are very automatically gonna look for and notice and wallow in your failures and the things that go not so well for you. But intentionally looking for your wins, and celebrating your wins will teach you how to continue looking for 'em. And the reason that you want to continue looking for them is because it will actually help you practice the feelings that you have associated with your goal.
Think about it this way. When you get to your goal, picture yourself that day you hop on the scale or you step gently on the scale. There's the number you've been looking for for weeks, months, and years, right there. If you haven't practiced celebrating, you're gonna be like, oh, that's nice. And then it won't feel like you have accomplished your goal. Most of us, because of socialization, because of the negativity bias actually feel really uncomfortable with success, achievement, pride, excitement, joy, all those big emotions that sound like they're gonna feel amazing if you don't practice them. They feel uncomfortable. I feel comforted. I think I've told this story before. I love this story because it's hilarious to me now. The day that I got my agent for my book, I got off the phone with her. No, it wasn't even on the phone.
I got an email from her, Michelle Martin, with a shout-out. She was amazing. She worked so hard for me, works so hard for me. But she emailed me 'cause I had sent out a query. She emailed me and she was like, Hey, I'd like to talk to you. Can we talk on the phone tomorrow? And I was like, oh my gosh, this is everything I've been working for. And then I sat on my couch and cried my eyes out like Lucy Lucille Ball. Like, whoa. My mouth was open, I was drooling, I was crying. It was the most uncomfortable feeling I have ever felt in my entire life. I wanted to get up and clean my kitchen rather than feel that feeling. Let me tell you something that's really saying something. It was so hard to feel, it felt way too big in my body. It felt way too much.
It lasted about as long as feelings usually last, which is to say like two or three minutes at the most because I intentionally sat with it and let it flow through my body. And it was so, so hard. I identified it after the fact. I identified the feeling itself as overjoyed because it wasn't just joyful. It was, it felt like, like too much. And interestingly, the day that I got the publisher, when we sold the book, I had that exact same thought. This is everything I've worked for. And it felt like the exact right amount of joy. It wasn't overjoyed, it wasn't uncomfortable. I didn't want to run away and clean my kitchen or eat something or go out for a walk and try and shake it off. I was able to actually feel the feeling when you get your goal, if you have not practiced the pride and the joy and the excitement, it's going to feel really uncomfortable.
You've probably, you've probably had this happen before where you've, you've done something and it's like, oh, this feels amazing. And then like for days or sometimes weeks and sometimes months afterward, you kind of find yourself sabotaging yourself. Yeah, it's because that feeling was so uncomfortable, that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of pride was so uncomfortable that your brain and your body were like, no, no, no. If that's what's gonna happen when I actually lose weight, well then I'm gonna be over here stuffing my face in the ice cream. So recognizing that, celebrating your wins as they come in small doses as much as possible, is actually going to help you not only celebrate when you actually get your goal but keep your goal. Celebrating your wins now is part of maintaining your weight forever. Is that amazing? Right? And that's what you want. That's what we all want.
So I'm looking at my notes, I looked away and now I'm looking back. Gimme a minute. Here's the thing that we're going to do. In order to celebrate whatever small wins you want to celebrate, I have a four-step process that is going to help you celebrate your wins. And in fact, it is something that I am currently doing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be really transparent here. I am still struggling to implement this in my own life. I have learned how to celebrate wins sometimes. I'm gonna offer this to you as something to be done regularly and intentionally on purpose. And I'm gonna offer you the weekly as a repeatable, as opposed to the sometimes that I still do. You guys, I'm in it with you. That's, that's the nice thing about this, right? Like, I'm not perfect. I'm not even trying to be perfect.
I am working on celebrating my wins and you're gonna see me celebrate them after we talk about this. Okay? So step number one is you're gonna set aside time once a week to look for your wins. Setting aside time is actually really important. I mean, four, all four of these steps are important. But setting aside time is because you are not going to do this naturally. You are going to squirrel away from this naturally. You are going to be like, oh, I'll do that, I'll do that tomorrow. This is not going to feel amazing. The first couple of times you do it, it's going to feel awkward and uncomfortable just because it's a new skill. And it's also gonna feel awkward and uncomfortable because like we've talked about with the socialization and the negativity bias, you are legitimately going to be intentionally feeling an uncomfortable feeling, which that's a topic for another day.
But that really is a big part of being able to get your goal. In fact, it's probably, is it the number one thing that we do in the Get Your Goal group. It's the number one thing that we do on the coaching calls in the Get Your Goal group. I very frequently help facilitate the feeling of feelings like the, uh, the processing of emotions in your body. Learning to sit with your feelings is a skill, and it's not easy. And it's why people come to the Get Your Goal group. And it's my favorite part as the coach because I've seen how important it's in my own life and I love being able to facilitate it for other people. Again, a topic for another day. But you're gonna sit down once a week and you're going to actually intentionally do this practice Me too. me too girlfriend, which is to say you're gonna intentionally set aside, set aside time once in a while until you can actually implement it weekly.
Number two, you're gonna write down one to five wins. I think five is plenty. If you can come up with more, that's fantastic. But one to five, because I love the number five is a great place to start sometimes. In fact, when you're starting, it's gonna be pretty difficult to even really come up with one, which is why I offer one at the low end. But five would be, five would be like a really good thing to aim for. So the wins that you are looking for, and this is also really important, is that it is something that you personally created. I wanna really like to pull this apart from a gratitude practice because it can feel very much like being grateful for good things that are happening in your life. This is not to say that you shouldn't be grateful. Go ahead, be grateful, and have a gratitude practice.
I know lots of people who like to look for something to be grateful for every day. The reason celebrating your wins is different though, is because it's not just something nice that happened, it's something you created for yourself, which means honestly that it might not even sound like something amazing. For example, when I do this for you later, you're going to hear that one of my wins is feeling lousy. Because feeling lousy on purpose, knowing that it's gonna get you where you wanna go is a real win. Most of us, 99.999% of the time, would rather get away from our uncomfortable feelings. I mean, this is how we find ourselves in ice cream. This is how we find ourselves just feeling stressed all the time, or this is how we find ourselves shoving our feelings down. Feeling uncomfortable even though it feels uncomfortable, is a win.
It's a huge win. So you're going to look for things that you created for yourself, not just nice things that happened in the world that you happened to be there for. maybe you had a part in it and maybe you didn't. And then you're gonna notice how uncomfortable it is. You're gonna notice the feelings inside your body, intentionally sitting with the discomfort of the pride that comes up, or the joy that comes up, or the excitement that comes up, or just, uh, embarrassment that comes up. Like whatever it is that comes up for you while you are bringing up these wins, while you are acknowledging your part in creating the win, you're gonna sit with it. You're gonna let it exist in your body, however, it exists. The reason we practice this is because when you do this regularly, it should be, it might not be, but it could be, how about that better word?
It could be a little bit smaller of a feeling, a little bit less intense because you're not proud that you accomplished this great thing. You're proud that you accomplished this. You know, kind of like really doable, ultimately not the hardest thing you've ever done in your entire life. But hey, I made this happen. It doesn't feel as overwhelming, but sitting with it, recognizing the discomfort, recognizing, oh, this is what pride feels like. Oh, this is what joy feels like. Oh, this is what accomplishment feels like. Sitting with that, letting it exist in your body. I have a whole process actually that I described, um, the book that I'm pointing to mind over menopause. My book where I call this idea, it's, I mean, that's an acronym idea where you identify that there's a feeling in your body. You describe it in words as much as possible.
Like, my fingers are tingly. I've got attention and my jaw or my chest feels bubbly. Whatever it is, you are not being judged for whatever words come to you. I frequently say things like, I'm seeing red when I'm mad. Like I, I tend to describe my feelings in cliches. It's totally fine. You're going to express safely as much as necessary, but also not so much that you're trying to like, you know, walk it off or get rid of it out of your body. What I mean is if you find yourself laughing or crying or clenching your fists, that's an expression safe. But don't get up and try to get the feeling out of your body. And then step four, the a, an idea is just to allow, allow, allow, allow the feeling to be in your body as long as it's in your body.
The reason we practice our wins weekly, or at least regularly or semi-regularly or sometimes is so that this process doesn't take a very long time. That the feeling can come up. You can sit with it, it's gonna be totally okay, and it will very likely last approximately 90 seconds. That's not a guarantee, it's an approximation. And then step four is, you're gonna repeat it. I say weekly. This is my, this is my prescriptive advice, but also you're gonna repeat it as often as you can and as often as, as often as you. Well, I'm just gonna leave it at that as often as you can. So my friends, let me model a celebration for you somewhat quickly because Blossom just came out and she needs to go to the bathroom. And so this is gonna be not a rush job, but I am going to model some celebration for you.
I'm not squirreling away from my uncomfortable feelings only a little, okay? Something that I am proud of, something that I'm really proud of, and I'm about to choke on this 'cause it's really hard to say this out loud to you. I implemented a couple of changes to how I create the podcasts and oh my God, okay, what I feel is embarrassment right now for a couple of reasons. I'm judging myself. I'm judging myself that I didn't make these changes even though I've done 300 episodes. It's what I was talking about before, about how I'm making notes beforehand so that it's slightly more coherent, slightly, but also maybe not entirely, but I've implemented these changes about, I am making the notes beforehand. I actually set up a Google sheet where I have all of the episodes that are coming up and I have all of the docs that I'm gonna be using from my outlines and my notes, and I feel really accomplished and proud of myself.
And here's the one that's mostly uncomfortable, organized. Being a person who is organized, um, makes me feel very fidgety. thinking of myself as somebody who is organized, somebody who is the president and c e o of my company. Somebody who is on top of things and who celebrates her wins. And the wins are things like organizing my files, there's a lot of discomfort here, and I'm celebrating that. I'm celebrating the discomfort of telling you and myself that I did this thing. I'm implementing changes to get myself more organized. I'm the one doing that. I did that for myself.
Number two, I am celebrating right now on camera. I know that got really meta. I'm celebrating, but I knew when I was making these notes, I was like, oh, this is going to be uncomfortable. So I put that down as a win. I am celebrating this win right now with you. Why does that one feel uncomfortable? Oh, it feels vulnerable. Oh, that's what that feeling is. Yeah, I just had, I just had the opportunity to feel vulnerable not too long ago, the day the book came out actually. Oh my gosh. Oh, if you have not ever published a book, let me tell you something. It is a beautiful opportunity to feel vulnerable. And I felt that one, that was a very strong one. So this one's definitely a little bit milder. It feels pretty raw. Um, it's all in my face.
Vulnerability is a lot like embarrassment. Like it feels very tight in your face. So I'm celebrating that. I'm celebrating. And, the third one I'm celebrating that I have, this is the one that I was talking about. Like, it doesn't sound like something that a, you know, a normal person might celebrate. I'm celebrating that I have been willing to suck. I am very willing to both feel and appear awkward on camera while we're working this thing out. I really do enjoy the feeling of connection, of knowing that I'm on camera, knowing that you can see my face, knowing that you can hear my voice, knowing that we are together in this space in a way that I used to love when I was making exercise videos. And I've missed that. I mean, I still feel that I feel that very, very briefly filming the shorts.
But those are so short that this, this rambling, this chatting with you, this telling you that blossoms walking down the hallway, things like that, that feels, that feels familiar and it also feels awkward. So I'm celebrating that I am willing for this to feel awkward. I'm willing for this to feel uncomfortable. I'm willing to fail at this or suck at this or not be great at this for as long as it takes. And I'm really willing to get feedback on it. Also, I'm willing to hear whether or not you like this new format or if you're even taking advantage of it by watching it on YouTube or just listening to the podcast. In which case, in which case I am actually still willing to hear feedback. 'cause I always am. But also I'm really curious about how different it sounds. Can you tell that I'm not just sitting on my couch and feeling kind of, or you know, in my car feeling just kind of like easy breezy?
Does it sound different that I am awkwardly sitting in front of a camera? I know that part did. So you guys, okay, so here's the thing. I am willing to hear feedback. B I really would like it if it's convenient for you even remotely to come and watch the video on YouTube. And let's have a conversation in the comments there because this is something that I really enjoy about our back and forth. I would love to know, first of all, what are you celebrating. Go ahead and celebrate with me. Let's be awkward together. Let's be uncomfortable together. Let's make this a regular thing together, that we celebrate our wins so that when there are big wins, big milestones, it doesn't feel like something you can't do. And you don't just turn around and start sabotaging. Let's celebrate wins together. And, of course, I wanna hear opinions. Do you like the video? Do you not like the video? Tell me what's up. So thank you so much for watching and or listening. guys, thank you always. I really hope this was helpful for you. And I will see you next week.
