Happy Sunday, my dear podcast-listening friends!
Today we’re talking about the chain⛓️ of events that gets you the RESULTS you want in your life. Often we think that we need to DO SOMETHING to get results… and while that’s true, it’s not the whole story. “DOING” is only one piece of the puzzle🧩!
In this episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re chatting about how to get to the core🍎 of what’s HOLDING YOU BACK from the results you want.
(Don’t wanna listen? Download 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/3-GwxJha9tg
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Pahla B Fitness YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/PahlaBowers
Ep. 032: How to CHANGE: https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/32-how-to-change/
Ep. 078: Where Do Your THOUGHTS Come From? https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/78-where-thoughts-come-from/
Ep. 067: RESULTS: https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/67-results/
The 5-0 Method, Weight Loss for Women over 50: https://pahlabfitness.com/weight-loss-over-50/
Ep. 045: How I JOURNAL for Success: https://pahlabfitness.com/how-i-journal-for-success/
Join the Get Your GOAL Coaching + Accountability Facebook group: https://pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal/
Don’t forget to RATE and REVIEW this podcast so that others can get the RESULTS they want too! 💛
THINKING vs. DOING (Full Transcript)
You’re listening to the Fitness Matters with Pahla B, and this is episode number 83, “Thinking vs. Doing.”
Well, hello, hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, where every single week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. And I know that this title is a little bit oblique and maybe you don’t think it actually applies to you, but I tell you what, it absolutely does. They all do whether you know it or not. This is really sort of my MO here.
I try really hard to make sure that every single episode actually applies to you, actually matters to you. Sometimes you have to do a little bit of mental finagling, and sometimes you just have to press play. Honestly, that’s really what it comes down to. Even on the ones where you’re like, “I don’t think this applies to me.” It always does. There’s always some nugget in here that you can make work in your life. And thank you for listening, especially when you click play on the ones where you’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t think I do much thinking. I don’t think I do much doing or whichever way it goes.” This one definitely matters to you.
And before we get into it, let me also say thank you to those of you who have been leaving ratings and reviews, specifically on iTunes. Apparently Spotify and even Podbean maybe have places to rate and review. Again, I don’t really use a whole lot of those different places. I’m most familiar with iTunes, and I really appreciate it because every time you leave a rating or a review, it helps whichever podcast platform you are on to realize that, “Hey, this is a good podcast, and I can recommend it to other listeners.” And the more people who listen, the more people who get this stuff, the easier everything will be for all of us. Because here’s the real crux of why I do what I do. I was thinking about this recently, and I am going to get to the topic, but I was thinking about why I do what I do. And here’s why: This mindset work has helped me so much in my life.
In fact, you can even see that, not necessarily if you’ve been around for a while, but if you go back and look at my old videos or my old Blake blog posts. I knew that I had something to say, but I didn’t really put myself out there. I had a lot of drama about who I was and what I was saying and what I was doing. And I wasn’t very clear on my vision for what I wanted to do and how I wanted to be helpful. I was trying really hard to help everybody. And unfortunately, when you help everybody, you actually kind of help nobody.
When I was trying to make videos for everybody, the videos were really uneven and really unclear and really, truly not helpful. And yet through doing this kind of mindset work and getting really clear on who I help and how I am, and discovering that I’m deserving of the success that comes along with helping people, it’s very clear to me that once I started feeling better about myself, I actually felt better about everybody in the world. And it helps me spread this message of how you can feel good so that you can spread your goodness out in the world. It’s kind of amazing to me how we all worry about getting too big for our britches. We all kind of worry about things like, “I can’t feel too good because then I’ll just be an arrogant jerk.” I have found the exact opposite to be true. The better I feel about myself, the better I feel about literally everybody else in the world, specifically you and how this mindset stuff matters to you.
So let’s talk about thinking versus doing. Here’s what I mean by this. I had a client many, many, many years ago when I used to go to people’s houses. I almost said I had an old client, but that’s not a very nice thing to say. I had a former client that I used to work with when I used to do in-home personal training. And I loved her because I love everybody, but also she drove me crazy. I say this with love because at the time I wasn’t doing any mindset work. And so, I really thought that the things that she was doing were responsible for my feelings.
In fact, I had thoughts about her and what she was doing that were creating my sense of frustration. This client was very determined to be prepared for everything. She spent a lot of time planning ahead and prepping and getting ready and making sure that she had all her ducks in a row. And she asked me a lot of questions like, “What should I do here? What should I do there?” And she was really, really focused on being ready, on getting ready. And yet she really struggled when it came time to actually get results. She just really didn’t lose weight. She had a lot of very uneven success. She would lose a little and then gain it back and then lose a little and then gain it back. And she really, really struggled to find her footing.
And again, to be fair, this was before I had created the 5-0 Method. So this was before I had a lot of the data, frankly, to work with. She was one of my very early clients. And before I had a lot of real conviction about exactly how to get the results that you’re looking for. And most importantly, this was before I really understood how much the “calories in” mattered and how to get your exact number of calories in to make sure that you’re eating the right amount. As it turns out, if I had to guess, looking back now, I would say that she was probably eating too little because I didn’t know what to recommend. Anyway, that part’s kind of neither here nor there, but she was always focused on getting ready and prepping and planning but really struggled to get the weight loss results that she was looking for.
And I notice this a lot now in different places. Like sometimes in The Killer B Hive, which is my super private, very supportive Facebook group or in comments on YouTube, on the videos. By the way, if you don’t know who I am, I’m Pahla B, your best middle-aged fitness friend. In addition to having this podcast, I have an entire 900 plus video catalog available to you on YouTube of exercise videos. And now I’m getting into mindset and lifestyle type videos.
But I would say probably at least 850 of my videos, if not more, are full length, follow-along workouts. But anyway, I’ll have people leave comments about things like, “I’m having so much trouble drinking all my water. What can I do to fix this?” Or I’ll have people when it’s time for Q&A ask me questions about what they’re doing. “I’ve got this duck in a row and that duck in a row, these are all the things that I’m doing. Why aren’t I getting results? Why can’t I lose weight? What’s going on?” And I think it’s really fascinating how much we all want to focus on what we are doing, or in some cases not doing.
I was going to include that in the title of this episode, but I didn’t because the title “Thinking Versus Doing or Not Doing” made it even more confusing. But I want to be really clear here that sometimes when we’re not getting the results that we are looking for, it’s because we are not doing something. Really specifically, like the person who’s saying, “I’m having so much trouble drinking my water.” They’ve noticed that they’re not drinking their water and they’re wondering what to do about it. But what I really want to focus on is how we all focus on the doing or not doing part of the equation of getting results. And it’s absolutely true. I’m not going to deny that what you do and don’t do is how you get results. But here’s what I want to be really, really, really clear about in our conversation today: what you do or don’t do doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
There’s a chain of events that gives you results, and doing is only one part of that. In fact, it’s the third link in a four link chain. You are missing the other two parts. And they go in order. So what you are doing or not doing, yes, absolutely gets you results, but you don’t just magically out of the blue, out of the ether, do or not do the things that you do or don’t do. What comes first is neither the chicken nor the egg. The thing that comes first is your thought.
My friends, we have talked about this before, and this is the point in the episode where I’m going to point you in the direction of one of my other podcasts, How to Change (Ep. 032 How to Change https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/32-how-to-change/). This episode really dives deep into the whole chain of events that leads you to results. And I would love for you to go and listen to that.
I’ve got a short, brief synopsis today, and I’m going to explain why it’s so important that you understand the whole chain of events. My friends, you don’t just do things. What you do before that is you feel something. And what you do before that is you think something. And I want to be really clear here that you don’t always notice the thought or the feeling before you do something. It’s why we’re all so focused on the doing. We really understand the very close connection between doing and getting results, and we don’t always notice the thought and the feeling, especially because for lots of us, we grew up hearing that your feelings are just kind of throw-away. They’re not really good for you or bad for you. You really don’t want to show your feelings. You don’t necessarily need to acknowledge your feelings.
Feelings are just the soft stuff. They’re not how we get things done. They’re not how we get results in our life. We get results by doing. But, my friends, the reason we do or don’t do things is because of what we are feeling. And your feelings also do not just come out of the ether for no reason whatsoever. Your feelings are created by your thoughts.
Now, here’s the point in the episode where I’m going to point you to another episode. And I know for a fact that I’ll be referring you to a third episode soon too. All of these episodes eventually work together for this body of knowledge that can really help us change. But here’s the episode that I’m going to point you to right now. It’s: Where Do Your Thoughts Come From? (Ep. 078 Where Do Your Thoughts Come From? https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/78-where-thoughts-come-from/). Because I know that if you’re listening to this, you’re like, “Okay, if my thoughts create my feelings and my feelings create my actions and then my actions finally on the other end get me my results, what do I do with these thoughts? Where do they come from? How do I get the right thoughts?”
Well, your thoughts come from different places. Your thoughts come from what essentially might be considered the ether, but not entirely. We are constantly thinking. You’ve been thinking since you were born, you’ve had lots of thoughts kind of handed to you in one way or another through the things that you’ve learned from your parents, the things that you’ve learned from media and social media, other people that you know in real life, books that you have read. All of the different inputs that you have taken in throughout your life have helped to create your thoughts.
Your thoughts, technically speaking, are just bursts of electricity, neurons firing in your brain, but your thoughts are really, really, really, really powerful. And when we ignore them, it is to our own peril, truly. When you don’t hear or don’t acknowledge your thoughts, those thoughts create feelings that some of us also don’t hear or acknowledge. They’re always working in the background – your thoughts and your feelings – whether you notice them or acknowledge them or embrace them or love them, or direct them on purpose or not. Your thoughts and your feelings are driving your actions.
So when you come to my Facebook group and you have a question like, “Hey, I’m having so much trouble drinking my water. What can I do?” I’ve noticed, – because we’re all so in tune with the actions and the doing part in order to get results – that most of the advice that people will give you is something along the lines of, set an alarm or get a really nice water bottle or remind yourself why it’s such a great idea to drink water. We have lots of “doing” steps to help you do something else. And some of them really sound like they’re helpful thoughts. “Remind yourself why it’s a good idea to drink water.” That sounds really helpful, but the reason why you are not getting results that you are looking for is twofold. Number one is because you might not be noticing all the results that you actually are getting.
This is the point in the podcast where I’m going to refer you to the episode Results (Ep. 067 Results https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/67-results/). You might not be noticing the results that you are getting because, my friend, all of your actions and inactions get you results. All of the things that you do create some kind of result for you in your life. But what you want to do in order to get the results that you actually want – the results that you’re looking for, the results that you are trying on purpose to create in your life – is to not focus so much on what you were doing. And I know that that sounds like crazy and counterintuitive advice because of course, the way to get results is to do something right. My friends, the way to get results is to notice what you are thinking. Long-time listeners have heard me say that once or twice before, maybe even three, four, five, a dozen times, maybe even more than that. When you notice what you are thinking, it will be very clear what results you are getting.
My dear friend, my former client, who was always planning and prepping and getting ready, had thoughts like, “I’m not ready.” And therefore from the “I’m not ready,” she felt cautious. And from that cautious feeling, she was constantly doing things like prepping, planning, thinking, going over, trying to prepare and get ready, and yet not really following through. The actions that she wasn’t doing were things like actually tracking her calories, actually eating what she intended to eat or following through on exercise or water or sleeping. Her thought was, “I’m not ready.” Her feeling was cautious. Her actions were prepping and trying to get ready. And also not following through on the things that she intended to do because she didn’t think she was ready. And what she created was a situation in which she was not getting weight loss results because all she was doing was trying to get ready. She was creating for herself a situation in which she was not ready to get weight loss results because of her thought. “I’m not ready” does not create weight loss results.
How about the person who says, “I’m having so much trouble drinking my water. What can I do?” Well, my friends, I don’t know if you caught it, but it was right there in the question. I’m having trouble drinking my water. When you have a thought like “I’m having trouble,” that creates a feeling. For me personally, my go-to feeling when in doubt, I’m always going to aim for sad. That’s just how it is with me. It’s a well-worn path in my mind. Lots of thoughts create sadness for me, probably because it’s a feeling that I’m very willing to feel. So therefore it’s water flowing downstream.
So for me personally, “I’m having trouble” creates a feeling of sadness; it creates a feeling of defeat. Like, “Oh, I’m having trouble with that.” For you personally, I’d like you to just take a moment here, honestly, and really tune in. What does, “I’m having trouble” create for you? Maybe anger or frustration or defeat, sadness? Really tune in and listen. Because what you do or don’t do is going to come from that feeling. For me, personally, sadness tends to be a very closed in, closed down sort of feeling. I ended up not doing things from a feeling of defeat. I end up not drinking my water, for example, not looking for solutions, not creating a solution for myself, but maybe mulling over why this is a problem. Why it’s hard for me, thinking and ruminating.
For me, a feeling of defeat is a very sit-and-spin feeling because that’s what I do. I sit down. I’m not doing anything active. I’m not up and going out and doing things. I’m sitting still and spinning. I go around and around in my mind about why it’s a problem, why I’m a problem, why this will always be a problem, why I never create results for myself. Those are the kind of spinning thoughts that I have. For me personally, a feeling of defeat leads to sit-and-spin actions and inactions. In which case, I would create for myself a situation in which I’m having a problem because I’ve created zero solutions. A feeling of defeat does not create solutions. It does not get you doing the things that you want to do in order to figure out your water problem, because you think you have a problem. You think you have trouble drinking your water.
How about anybody who asks me questions about why they’re not getting results? Did you catch the thought on that one? Yeah. It’s that simple. I’m not getting results. My friends, when you think you are not getting results, you will not get results. You will not get the results that you want really specifically, because of course you’re getting results. Again, the episode where we talked about how you’re always creating results for yourself, but you’re not getting the results that you want because you are looking for and finding evidence of why this thought “I’m not getting results” is true.
Everything that we think, our brains want to agree with. Your brain really loves to agree with itself because once it agrees with itself, it can get very efficient at thinking that thought. Your brain, above almost all else, number one, your brain wants to stay alive. That’s always your biological imperative. But after that, your brain wants to stay the same. And your brain also wants to make adaptations just like your body when necessary so that it can come back to homeostasis. It can come back to being the same. Thinking the same things over and over is what your brain is designed to do. It wants to be efficient. It wants to find evidence of why it is right so that it doesn’t have to rethink this thought. “I’m not getting results” is creating for you a situation in which all you can see is that you are not getting results so that your brain can be efficient thinking that thought.
It’s essentially the same thought as “I’m having trouble” as far as what kind of a feeling it will create for you. And it might be subtly different. That’s why I came up with two examples that are similar, but different. “I’m not getting results,” honestly for me, it’s interesting. It’s water flowing downhill; I’m always willing to be sad. “I’m not getting results” actually makes me kind of angry. It gives me a feeling of frustration. It’s why I wanted you to tune in to the fact that a subtle difference in your thought can create a subtle difference in your feelings. And that subtle difference – even though it’s still not a good feeling; it’s not happy or confident or excited and is still on the negative side of the feelings wheel – can get you a different result.. For me, anger tends to not be a sit-and-spin but more of an “explode and get nothing done” feeling.
I know that you might recognize this in your own life. When I am angry, I want to complain. I want to talk. I want to do a million different things. For me, anger is scattershot. I do a lot of things when I get angry. “I’m not getting results,” for me personally, would lead me to actions like changing everything. Rather than being methodical and scientific about it, I would probably change my calories, change what I’m drinking, change how I’m trying to sleep, change what I’m wearing, what I’m doing, what I’ve done with my hair, how I talk to people. I would probably try to change everything. And I wouldn’t be methodical about it. My actions wouldn’t be carefully planned or thought out. I would probably be very quick and reactive coming from a frustration or anger feeling. I would change something and then get frustrated and angry about that. Or I would do something once and then decide that it wasn’t working. Very explosive and unhelpful actions would come from that thought and feeling combo.
That thought, that feeling of anger or frustration, those actions of the scattershot and the “explode” and “get nothing done” would create for me a situation in which I was not getting results. Because, my friends, results don’t come from explosive actions. They don’t come from doing one thing one time and deciding it’s not working. It doesn’t come from that scattershot activity and the lack of planning. Results that you are looking for come from consistency over time. Really specifically, weight loss results come from consistency over time. So a thought like, “I’m not getting results” is not going to help you get the results that you want.
When we can hone in on what we are thinking versus what we are doing or not doing, we come to the place where we can truly create results that we want in our lives. When you want to get a result, like losing weight, I know that you already know what to do. I’ve already told you what to do. Well, maybe you don’t know that I’ve told you what to do. My friends, if you want to know what to do in order to get weight loss results, check out my 5-0 Method at https://pahlabfitness.com/programs/the-5-0-method/, which is my proven method to get weight loss results for women over 50. But I will be honest with you that one of the things to do is managing your mind and noticing your thoughts.
If I had to guess, I would say that that is the one thing that most people skip over because noticing your thoughts can feel like it’s not part of doing something to get your results. And yet, as we have just realized, thinking is how we do things to get results. When you notice what you were thinking, and when you decide to think things on purpose, you can do what it is that you want to do.
Now, here’s where I’m going to give you a little bit more practical advice on this thinking versus doing. When you think about what you would like to do, I want you to check in with how it makes you feel. Because here’s what a lot of us do, we understand that we do have to think about what we want to do. And so we tell ourselves something like, “I’m going to drink my water.” And that’s me pounding my hand, if you can hear that on the podcast. I’m pounding my hand. I’m being emphatic about this. I’m going to drink my water. And that sounds like, “Okay, I’ve had the thought and now I’m going to do the thing that I want to do.” But I want you to check in. When you think “I’m going to drink my water,” how do you feel?
I’ll tell you exactly how I feel. The reason I bring this up so frequently is because I have actually not found the magical thought-feeling combo that creates for me the action of drinking my water consistently every single day. It’s very interesting to me. I tell you guys to do it. I do it most of the time. I’m at about 90%. But there are still some times when that action eludes me because of my thoughts. When I think “I’m going to drink my water,” I actually feel really skeptical. I feel skeptical because my brain creates all kinds of evidence for me of all the times that I have not had my water. My brain is still believing a thought that I have trouble drinking my water. And it’s fascinating to me to notice it, to work on creating thoughts for myself that feel good, that feel confident, that feel like I’m going to drink my water, and yet I’m still working on this one.
We don’t just have one thought about things, by the way. Let me get into this metal mess. It’s not just one thought that is going to create a feeling for you that can drive all of the actions that you need to be doing in order to create the results that you want. You will, over the course of getting to whatever results you want, have dozens or hundreds, or probably more likely thousands of thoughts. Some of them are going to be helpful. Some of them are going to be unhelpful. And the way that I’m going to have you notice whether or not your thoughts are helpful or unhelpful, is to notice what you’re doing or not doing. We’re going to bring this back around. The things that you do and don’t do are really helpful. Truly, they’re how you get your results. And they’re what we are so focused on.
When you notice that you are doing the things that you want to be doing in order to get the results that you want to get, pay attention. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? When you notice that you are not doing something, and that seems to be the stumbling block between you getting the results that you want, ask yourself, “What am I thinking and how am I feeling?” Notice all of the chain links on this chain in order to get your results. When we focus only on the doing or the not doing, we’re missing the thinking and the feeling truly.
I could have called this episode Thinking Versus Feeling Versus Doing Versus Not Doing Versus Getting Results because they’re all connected. The reason I referred to it as a chain is because they are all linked. But I want you to understand that they come in order. Thinking is the first chain. Feeling is the thing that will always, always, always come next. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions. And then from your actions, yes, absolutely, that’s how we get results.
With a quick little caveat in there that it’s not just your actions, it’s also your inactions. And it’s not just results you want, but it’s also results that you don’t want. When you know all of the parts of the chain and you can notice your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and your inactions, your results that you want and your unintended results – noticing all of those parts is what will help you actually get the results that you truly want.
My friends, I’m going to leave you with this little practical piece of advice because I know that you really want to know. You are probably thinking, “Now I understand it’s my thoughts, it’s my feelings, it’s my actions that finally get me my results, but what do I do? What do I do so that I can find my thoughts and my feelings?” My friends, here’s where I’m going to refer you to my episode titled How I Journal for Success (Ep. 045 How I Journal for Success https://pahlabfitness.com/?s=how+i+journal+for+success ). When you journal, when you write out what you are thinking and feeling, that is where you find your thoughts. They’re all in your head. All of them are in there. When you can get them out, it will help you notice them. It will help you notice what you were thinking and how you are feeling, which is driving your actions and inactions and intended results and unintended results. So what you can do here is you can journal.
Thank you guys so much for listening today. I really hope that this was helpful. I know that it was a lot to think about, but also something to do to help you get on your way. Thank you for listening. I’ll 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.
