Hello, hello, GOALfriend. Welcome to episode number 297, where I reassure you that your mindset isn't bad. And I offer this to you as straight-up reassurance, my friend. This is not gonna be an exceptionally long podcast today. Well, for a couple of reasons. Let me tell you, I meant to get to this a little bit earlier today, and then had a coaching call and got involved in a project that ended up being fantastic. You know how sometimes your brain just gets in that place where you're in the zone, you're super creative. I was writing, it felt amazing, and then all of a sudden it is rather significantly later in the day than I meant to be recording the podcast. It is fully 100 degrees outside, which means that it's approximately a thousand degrees in my garage and maybe upwards of 10,000 degrees in my podcasting studio, which is my minivan.
Thankfully, this was already gonna be a relatively short episode anyways, so I'm not rushing through it just because I'm hot. I'm offering you something quick and simple. And this one is really for, well, it's for everybody, but I was thinking about this today for my friends who are brand new to mindset work. I vividly remember the first, I'm gonna say a couple of months for sure, but it might've even been longer than that. But really specifically, I remember the first like, oh gosh, the first week or two weeks when I was listening to this podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo. I loved her podcast. I got so much out of it. I felt totally jazzed up and ready to go. Everything she said made so much sense. And then I joined her coaching program, and this was many, many years ago.
In fact, I've been a part of her coaching program for four years now, and she used to send out a workbook every month when you joined her coaching program. And it had, you know, like journaling prompts and things to do. And I vividly remember sitting down with that workbook the first day and just being overwhelmed and flabbergasted and, and kind of pissed off. Honestly, I was really angry because I had thought that I had already been doing so much mindset work and that I was gonna feel good, and then I sat down and started writing out my thoughts in a way that I had never done before. And there on the page was just sentence after sentence after sentence after sentence of negativity and just so, so much bad stuff. And I feel for you, if this is your experience if you have just started losing weight with the 5-0 Method, which is my free weight loss program for women over 50 that you can get from getyourgoal.com, and you open it up and you look at the mindset work, and maybe, maybe you've already like seen me on YouTube in my exercise videos where I talk about mindset and I kind of put a positive spin on it, or you've listened to the podcast and maybe you've heard me talking about things in a relatively simple way that makes it seem doable.
Let me assure you, first of all, that weight loss is doable. And second of all that, when you find nothing but unhelpful thoughts in your brain, the first, well, the first time, the first week, the first month, the first couple months, and if I'm being really, truly honest with myself, at least the first year, for me personally, I was more unhelpful thoughts than helpful. And I really want you to know that this doesn't mean anything about you at all, like on any level at all. First of all, because your thoughts don't mean anything about you. They're simply automatic electric impulses in your brain that you picked up from everywhere else in your life. You've been socially conditioned to thank a lot of the thoughts that you are now finding that feel terrible, aka, unhelpful. I want you to know that it means nothing about you, and this is such a good place to be because you've just never heard these thoughts before.
They've been rattling around in your brain, in your subconscious this whole time. You did not bring them on by going looking for them. They've been in there and this, this finding out that you have this much junk in your head. Again, I have so much sympathy, so much empathy. I remember it vividly, and let me tell you from the other side of things that it gets so much better. You do not have a bad mindset, and further to that, you do not have to think positive thoughts to get to where you wanna go. And here's what I mean by that. Really specifically looking at the junk that you have just found in your brain and noticing that it feels really lousy and thinking to yourself, oh my God, my mindset is just absolutely horrible. I'm never gonna get through this. I'm never gonna get past this. This was a bad idea. I totally get that. And also, it doesn't take very much work. It doesn't take very much to uncover these thoughts before you will start to find helpful thoughts. Also, you never, ever, ever have to force yourself to think positively. You never ever have to worry that you don't have positive thoughts in there that are gonna help you get where you wanna go. You simply keep doing what you're doing. This is brave, brave work, my friend. This is the part that feels the worst, and it is such an important and amazing step on your journey getting through this first week, these first couple of weeks, this first month, these first couple of months where it really feels like you are just digging a big hole with a tiny spoon. This will, when you look back on it, be the kind of experience that you can really feel proud about, that you can really notice that you put in the kind of work that you, I mean at the moment, wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, but also after the fact, realize that it was the most important work you could do.
Acknowledging, accepting, understanding, observing your negativity, your bad mindset. I put heavy air quotes around that. One, being in it and okay with it and working with it is the thing that will take you all the way to your goal. The perseverance that you will have to draw on right now. The ability to sit with yourself when you feel overwhelmed and confused and just lousy in whatever way. The observation of this part of your journey is so crucial to your success. And if there is anything that I can say to help you get through it, I hope that you heard it in this podcast. This step of feeling like your mindset is bad is how you get to, I'm just gonna call it a good mindset. Even though technically speaking, that's not really even what you're aiming for. What you're really aiming for is to recognize that every single thought in your head has its place right now. You are observing a lot of the negativity. Later there will be more positivity and you'll recognize that they both have a place, they're both okay. They're all just thoughts, my friend. Your mindset isn't bad and it doesn't have to be good. You are a human being with human thoughts and you have agency over all of them to get where you wanna go.
I was gonna say, stick with it, or something really like, like some kind of just cheesy platitude. And I don't wanna leave you with that. I wanna leave you with, you are doing really important work right now and I'm so, so glad that you're doing it. Thank you so much for listening. I do hope that this was helpful and I'll talk to you again soon.
