Kristina:
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As soon as you start taking those small steps, you start digging yourself out of that hole. You start digging yourself out of that trap. Then you actually start gaining skills. That will make you feel like you have more power in the situation to start making a change. So not only are you learning more or gaining more resources or whatever it is, you're actually, I. Giving yourself more confidence or more power to continue down that journey. And so it almost becomes an exponential change effect. hey guys, this is Coach K, and you're listening to the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast, where we talk about you. This is about you, your mind, and your path. So thank you for being here with me today for a solo episode that I'm very excited about. I'm very excited to talk about this subject of how we can just get ourselves to keep going, how we can get ourselves to not quit. To not let frustration derail us and just to keep taking one step forward, how we can not fall into the trap. But I'm gonna talk a little bit more specifically about what that trap actually is. But real quick, before we actually dive into today's episode, I wanted to remind you guys that if you have not left a rating, Or a review for the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast. I would greatly appreciate it. I think we got some new followers over the last few weeks, which I'm very excited about. So thank you. Thank you for following along. Thank you for listening to these episodes, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you would go onto Apple Podcasts or you can go on to Spotify as well and leave a rating, hopefully five stars if you've been enjoying this podcast. Just write a quick little two sentence review. It does not need to be long. It could even be, Hey, I just enjoy this podcast. You know, you don't have to put too much thought into it, but I would greatly appreciate you doing that. You leaving a rating and a review doesn't just, you know, bring me joy to see those things. That also allows more people to be reached with this podcast because those platforms will start sending it out to more people. So I really appreciate that help. Alright, let's dive into today's topic. So, like I said, this is something that sits really close to home for me. I have dealt with this personally, and I'll get into that a little bit as well today. But I deal with this on a daily basis with my clients. On any given day, I'm working with somewhere between 40 to 50 clients and a lot of times it's in the personal fitness and nutrition world and. I've seen a very common process that happens with clients as they start moving into month number two, month number three, month number four of this health and wellness journey that they're on. And let me take a second and just say, I am gonna be talking today, you know, at least part of the time about fitness and nutrition. So focusing more on the. You know, overall health sort of things. That is something that I do a lot since that is my profession, but this really can apply to anything. And actually I think it's interesting. One thing that I, that I know personally it applies to is actually producing podcasts. When I was deciding whether or not I was gonna start this podcast, start the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast, I was doing a little bit of research on how many podcasts are out there, how many health and wellness podcasts are out there, and you know, just that. Background research and I came across some really interesting stats, and the stats were that only 10% of all the podcasts that are out there in the world right now, only 10% make it past producing three uh, episodes. That means 90% of all podcasts that are out there never get past producing three episodes. Okay, first of all, I thought that was wild. Now, This one might not come as surprising to you since I just gave that fact. But the other fact is if you make it to episode 21, producing 21 episodes, you are now in the top 1% of all podcasts. Okay? So literally, no matter how good or bad your podcast is, if you just kept producing 'em, if you just kept going, never quit, never let frustration derail you. If you got to episode 21, you would be in a very, very, very small population of all the overall podcasts. So I think this is just an example of how sometimes just. To not fall into the trap. And again, I'm gonna get to what the trap actually is, and just to keep going is so important. But back to my clients for a second. So I, I recognize this pattern I see with them when we get into month two and month three, honestly even like week four before we get into month two. And the pattern is that when they start, There is so much motivation. Think about the last time that you were like, you know what, I'm gonna buckle down and get my health in order. Or, you know, like I said, maybe it didn't need to, doesn't need to be health, but like, maybe it's with your job. Like, you know what? I'm gonna start putting in the extra time. I'm gonna really start educating myself even more on whatever it is that you do. And I'm gonna put my best foot forward so that I can start moving up in the company or whatever it is. But back to the health dirty, if it is that for you, and you know the last time that you were like, Hey, I'm gonna really start to. Straighten things up, I'm gonna really start to focus on my nutrition. I may be gonna start cooking at home more. I'm gonna look at new recipes, or you know what, I'm gonna make a plan for myself to go to the gym this amount of times per week, and this is what I'm gonna do. And you have all this in order, and you have all this motivation and you're excited about it. Let me ask you this, how long did that motivation last? Like when was the first time that whatever plan you had set out for yourself? You went to go do it and you realize, I really don't want to do this, how long did that take? I mean, to be honest, and again, I can speak from personal experiences. Well, there's times where even the next day, like I say to myself, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I'm gonna get this workout in. And you wake up the next morning and you're like, Hmm. I don't feel quite as motivated anymore to do this, and I don't know if I want to. Okay. So. My point in saying all that is motivation is crap. And I've said that before on this podcast, but if we are relying on motivation to keep us putting one foot in front of the other, we will fail. We will be derailed. We'll let frustration derail us and we will just at some point, stop what we're doing. Back to the podcast production, if someone is relying on motivation. To get them to sit down at their computer for four hours to edit a podcast, to post it on all the platforms, to create the social media clips and whatnot and so on. They're not gonna do it because it requires a lot more than motivation. Okay, so let's get into that a little bit. What is the trap and what does it really require to stick with something for longer than two weeks? Okay, so if you guys have listened to some of my previous podcasts, you've maybe heard this before, I'm not gonna go. So as in depth with this as I have in previous podcasts, I'll actually link the episode where I do go in depth about the DARE method in the show notes in case you want to go back and listen to that one. But just briefly, the DARE method of change, this is a mess method that I have come up with based on the research and education that I have as well as my personal experiences. Then I do think this method of change is, Very useful, very beneficial. But within this method of change, there are some traps. Okay, so the DARE method of change, what does the D stand for? The D stands for, discover Your Mountain. This is all about your purpose. This is all about why you're doing something. This is about your ideal self. And when I talk about ideal self, this is the self that you could sit down and say, Hey. Just for a second, just for a couple minutes. If I don't think about the logistics, if I don't think about my responsibilities, if I don't think about all the security things I need to consider, I. What do I want my life to look like? What do I want my life to look like one year from now, five years from now, and so on? That's your ideal self and not so much just the material things or even a career or you know, but what do I want in my life that is gonna bring me joy? What do I want in my life that is gonna bring me purpose? What can I create in my life? That will, that will give me those things. Okay? So that is different. Your ideal self is different than your ought self, which is basically if you say like, I ought to be this, someone else is telling me to be, this society's telling me to do this. Social media is showing me I should do this. If I'm basing my future, my dreams off of my odd self. Again, not gonna last. That is another trap. That's not the trap that I'm talking about today, but that is another trap. We have to base our future and our dreams and our, you know, whatever we're imagining on our ideal self. So de discover our mountain is all about just imagining this mountain in front of you. Maybe it's one mountain peak. Maybe it's multiple mountain peaks, but you're imagining these mountains as your purpose. They're what you want to climb, they're what you want to put effort towards. They're what you want to put your energy towards. They're meaningful to you. So when we b, when I break this down with someone, we start talking about. Core values. We start talking about priorities in life. We do talk about some of the non-negotiables, right? Like some of our responsibilities. We also talk about, certain goals that we wanna set for ourselves, achievements that we want. Okay? So we have to take the time to discover our mountain. If you recently, in the last year, let's say, have not sat down and, and written with a pen and paper, or to be honest, even just thought about, right? But let's take it a step forward and say, if you have not sat down and written down what you would dream your life could look like five years from now, if you have not done that in the last year, I have a hard time believing that you know what mountain you're climbing at this point. Okay, so discovering your mountain is so important. That's the D and the DARE method of change. A. A stands for actions for alignment. This is where a coach comes in, or this is where your goal setting skills come in. This is the planning. This is making sure that what you are actually doing after we get back past the ideas and the theory and the dreams, this is actually putting actions in place that are in alignment with. Whatever your mountain is, right? So if we're gonna take an action, and let's compare that to taking a step forward, we wanna make sure that we are taking a step forward on a trail or on a path that is heading in the direction of. Our mountaintop. Now, just to be clear, sometimes that step won't always be a straightforward step, or sometimes it might even be a step down before we can step back up. But we do wanna make sure that those actions or those step forwards, are in alignment with what we actually feel is our purpose and our mission and what is important to us and so on. So again, that does take planning. That's sometimes where a coach comes in, right? A lot of my clients come to me because that's maybe something that they need help with. I mean, to be honest, I have clients come to me who are also personal trainers themselves, or who are also nutritionists themselves. Believe me, I get it. Sometimes, even if you know all the information. It is so hard with the lives that we live. You're taking care of kids. You have a full-time job. You're trying to work out, eat healthy, all these things to actually put together a plan and then hold yourself accountable to it. Okay? So sometimes that's where a coach can come in, but that is the A and the DARE method. Actions for alignment, making sure that your actions are aligned with what you actually want to do. Okay, r R on the DARE Method of Change stands for roadblocks. I am actually gonna skip this one for now because as you can imagine, this is where our trap lay. Okay, so I'm gonna come back to that one. So just real quickly, the last letter in the DARE method of change is e and E stands for the Endless beginning. So I really like this concept because I think this is something that doesn't get talked a lot about in goal setting. If you imagine that mountain that we were talking about before, and you have that mountain in front of you and you start climbing up that mountain, what happens when you get to the top? Have you ever thought about that? What happens when you get to the top of everything that you want to achieve? I think I've mentioned this before in this podcast, but imagine someone who's just won a professional sports championship. You know, you're Steph Curry and you just won the NBA Championship, and let's go back to his first time he won it. What does that feel like? I mean, I have to imagine, at least for a short time, it feels amazing. It feels like a huge, huge accomplishment. But what happens the next morning? What do you feel like the next morning you train four months for this race? You train four months for this marathon, it's something that you really have been wanting to do. You go through all the training, you have your setbacks, but you overcome them. You get a little injury, but then you get better and you go out and you run this marathon and you finish and it feels terrible, but it also feels so good and you have people there supporting you and, and everything. And then you wake up the next morning and yes, you feel accomplished, but what else do you feel? There's always this little bit of this feeling of what's next? What's next? And that's where the endless beginning comes from. The journey changes us. We're not gonna be in the same place personally as we were when we started. Hopefully we're better. We're better in many different ways, but we're just gonna be different. We're gonna be different than when we started. But. The journey keeps going. And so understanding this I do think is an important part of the change process because sometimes it. We, when we don't recognize that we'll actually get to where we're going and we still feel like we haven't accomplished anything because we still have that feeling of what's next. And I think it's an important piece of the process in that moment to acknowledge I have accomplished something and, and I. Come out the other side in some way, and I've bettered myself in all of these ways. Hey, but let's keep going. You know, maybe I want a little break of some sort. I have a vacation plan, but hey, what's next? What else can I do? How can I keep this going so that's the endless beginning. And like I said, Go back to my previous episode, which I'll link in the show notes if you wanna hear all of those things more in detail. But for now, I wanna go back to that R, the R and dare method of roadblocks, because this is where the trap lies. This is where the trap of starting something and quitting before two, the two week mark happens. There's a lot of roadblocks that can stop someone in their track. I could go on and write an entire podcast series, not just an episode on every single roadblock that people run into. It's not the same thing all the time. Okay? But there's two pieces to this trap. The first piece is commitment, and the second piece is, Not believing that you have the power to make change in your life. Okay, so let's talk about that first one. The first part of the trap, that's commitment. Like I was talking about before, motivation is crap. So like that motivation may last you a week, it may last you three days, it may last you one afternoon, but what I can tell you for sure and is at some point that motivation is gonna run out. So if you are relying on that and you feel like. If this is really important to me, I'm always gonna wanna do it. You're gonna be, you're, you're getting fooled, right? You are fooled. You have to understand that just because you want something doesn't mean you're always gonna want to do it, and doesn't mean it's gonna feel easy. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna go to the gym. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna get in the pool and go swimming. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna cook your own meal and you'd rather go out. There's all these things, right? And so if we rely on the motivation, they're not gonna happen. We have to stay committed and, and how do we stay committed? A bit of this is grit, we have to have the resilience to. Just do it anyways, even if it's not exactly what we want. I was actually talking to a client the other day and she was saying something that I've said plenty of times, and I've heard many clients say plenty of times, but she was saying, I've had a really long work week and today especially, I've had a really long day, like I actually worked close to a 12 hour day and when I get home, I just don't really feel like going into the gym and doing my lift. The amount of times that I've heard that, and believe me, like I said, I've said it myself, but what I told this client is, if you don't wanna go into the gym and lift, that is your choice. Okay? And if you make that decision, there is no judgment on my part. But I do wanna let you know you do have the ability and you do have the capacity to go get this lift in right now. Okay. If you are staying resilient to your goals, you will go get your lift in right now. Does that mean it's gonna be easy? No. Does that mean it's gonna be what you wanna do? No. And believe me, let me just give a caveat. There is a scenario where maybe you don't go and do that. Like if you feel an injury coming on of some sort, or like you really feel like your body physically needs a rest, that may be a time to actually like take a rest day, right? So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just not being motivated to go do something. So now I don't go do it. Okay, so I'm telling that person, you do have the capacity to go do this right now, and ultimately though, if you don't go do it, we need to come up with a plan that's going to serve you better if you keep relying on getting your lift in at the end of a busy workday and you keep figuring out that you do not, you just can't. Get yourself to go do it. You honestly don't have the resilience to go do that. Let's figure out another plan. Right? And maybe that's waking up early to go do it. And I'm not saying that's gonna be necessarily any easier, but maybe it's a little bit easier. It's just a little bit easier. Still really hard, but a little bit easier to get up in the morning. First thing before any energy is drained, go get that workout in and now you're, it's just done. It's not something that has to be hanging over you the rest of the day. Okay? So sometimes the resiliency you, it may fail you in one instance, but the resiliency can come in and creating a new plan. Create a new plan to keep going, create a new plan, to stay committed to what it is that you want, regardless of it being hard. So that's the first part of the trap, is relying on motivation and just not staying committed, not being resilient enough to just keep going even when you don't want to. This is something that we've probably all fallen into at some point, and I think it requires us to be honest with ourself. Am I committed to this or not? And if I'm not, then maybe that's time to reevaluate. Go back to the beginning of that dare method and say, if this isn't something that I truly wanna commit to, then like what do I want to commit to? Right? What do I want my mountain to be? What do I want my plan and my actions for alignment to be? Okay? The other part of the trap, like I said before, is not believing that I have the power to change my life. I was speaking to an MD actually the other day and they were talking about some clients that they have, which is obviously a very different position than I am in, in my role as a coach. You know, they see clients in, in a different aspect, but they were talking about how sometimes they have clients come in and there's just no. Motivation to change in any way. And I really feel like that comes from, I. Not actually believing they have any power to change. So I think there's a difference there. There's a difference between not feeling like you're motivated to change and actually not feeling like you have the power, whether that's the resources or the knowledge or the energy or. Just the capacity in general to make a change. That's another trap that we fall into, and the reality is there's always something that we can do. Maybe we don't have all of the resources, maybe we don't have the financial means. We need to pay for a coach. Maybe we don't have a ton of energy, maybe we don't have. A lot of knowledge about what it is that we want to change, but there's always something that you can do and there's always a first step that you can take. And if you let that feeling of, of not having that power just overwhelm you and overrun you. Then you'll never take that first step. Right? You'll never get anywhere. This is a silly example, but I'll give it. I just am recently getting into road biking. It is very, very new to me. I rode a bike as a kid and I've ridden a bike on vacations and stuff like that, but until recently I didn't even own a bike as an adult. Okay. So I go and I pick up a used bike and it's more of like a mountain bike than anything else. And I go out on that bike on I've, I've been starting to go out on that bike on, on bike rides, right? And I've been mostly riding on the road and I get passed by road bikers on their road bikes because I'm on this like little mountain bike riding on the road. And anyways, I've just been doing it for exercise as of right now, but I'm starting to get more into it and I wanna get a road bike. I know nothing about road bikes. Okay, so that could very much overwhelm me and I could very much say, I can't get into this because I don't know anything about it. Well, we actually have a neighbor who's like an expert at road bikes, so I've been grilling him with questions, right? That's one thing I can do. I can seek out someone else who has more knowledge about something than I do and just start to learn, and I still barely know anything, but I know I will say a lot more than I knew two weeks ago. Right, because I've been just doing a little bit of research here and there. I've been asking questions here and there. I've been looking up used road bikes on Facebook marketplace and so on, right? So sometimes just start asking questions, and as soon as you start doing that, I think this is really the important piece and how to get out of this trap. As soon as you start taking those small steps, you start digging yourself out of that hole. You start digging yourself out of that trap. Then you actually start gaining skills. That will make you feel like you have more power in the situation to start making a change. So not only are you learning more or gaining more resources or whatever it is, you're actually, I. Giving yourself more confidence or more power to continue down that journey. And so it almost becomes an exponential change effect. You start feeling like you have more and more power, so you start doing more and more things and, and all of whatever change you want to happen starts happening quicker and quicker. But sometimes it's just those first couple steps that feel like they're so hard to take. In order to make any change we want in our life. So that's the trap guys. The trap is not staying committed and not feeling like you have the power to make a change. And again, I know that sounds super simple, but the reality is it kind of is. If we sit down and we seriously ask ourselves to be honest about our situation, a lot of the times there's something that we can do that we're not. A lot of the times, we are not actually staying as committed as maybe even we're telling ourselves that we are. Okay. Those are two huge traps I see in any process of change with myself, with clients that I'm working with, with friends, and so on and so on. So hopefully this just leaves you with something to think about, something to evaluate your own situation with, right? Maybe you're sitting there saying, You know what? I really haven't stayed committed to this, so you know, I, I want to commit and how am I gonna do that? Or maybe you're sitting there saying, you know what? I actually don't really feel like I have the ability or the power to make a change. But Coach k Christina is saying, let me just take one step. What is that one step I can take? What step can I take tomorrow? Even if it feels so minuscule that can help me get to where I wanna go? That's what I'm gonna leave you guys with today. So, like always, I will say one last thing. Changing your path will not be easy. It will be challenging. I'll say that over and over again, but it will be so worth it. So do a self check today, just like I was talking about before. Are you on your path up your mountain? And if not, what path are you on?
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As soon as you start taking those small steps, you start digging yourself out of that hole. You start digging yourself out of that trap. Then you actually start gaining skills. That will make you feel like you have more power in the situation to start making a change. So not only are you learning more or gaining more resources or whatever it is, you're actually, I. Giving yourself more confidence or more power to continue down that journey. And so it almost becomes an exponential change effect. hey guys, this is Coach K, and you're listening to the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast, where we talk about you. This is about you, your mind, and your path. So thank you for being here with me today for a solo episode that I'm very excited about. I'm very excited to talk about this subject of how we can just get ourselves to keep going, how we can get ourselves to not quit. To not let frustration derail us and just to keep taking one step forward, how we can not fall into the trap. But I'm gonna talk a little bit more specifically about what that trap actually is. But real quick, before we actually dive into today's episode, I wanted to remind you guys that if you have not left a rating, Or a review for the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast. I would greatly appreciate it. I think we got some new followers over the last few weeks, which I'm very excited about. So thank you. Thank you for following along. Thank you for listening to these episodes, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you would go onto Apple Podcasts or you can go on to Spotify as well and leave a rating, hopefully five stars if you've been enjoying this podcast. Just write a quick little two sentence review. It does not need to be long. It could even be, Hey, I just enjoy this podcast. You know, you don't have to put too much thought into it, but I would greatly appreciate you doing that. You leaving a rating and a review doesn't just, you know, bring me joy to see those things. That also allows more people to be reached with this podcast because those platforms will start sending it out to more people. So I really appreciate that help. Alright, let's dive into today's topic. So, like I said, this is something that sits really close to home for me. I have dealt with this personally, and I'll get into that a little bit as well today. But I deal with this on a daily basis with my clients. On any given day, I'm working with somewhere between 40 to 50 clients and a lot of times it's in the personal fitness and nutrition world and. I've seen a very common process that happens with clients as they start moving into month number two, month number three, month number four of this health and wellness journey that they're on. And let me take a second and just say, I am gonna be talking today, you know, at least part of the time about fitness and nutrition. So focusing more on the. You know, overall health sort of things. That is something that I do a lot since that is my profession, but this really can apply to anything. And actually I think it's interesting. One thing that I, that I know personally it applies to is actually producing podcasts. When I was deciding whether or not I was gonna start this podcast, start the Making Changes, breaking Barriers podcast, I was doing a little bit of research on how many podcasts are out there, how many health and wellness podcasts are out there, and you know, just that. Background research and I came across some really interesting stats, and the stats were that only 10% of all the podcasts that are out there in the world right now, only 10% make it past producing three uh, episodes. That means 90% of all podcasts that are out there never get past producing three episodes. Okay, first of all, I thought that was wild. Now, This one might not come as surprising to you since I just gave that fact. But the other fact is if you make it to episode 21, producing 21 episodes, you are now in the top 1% of all podcasts. Okay? So literally, no matter how good or bad your podcast is, if you just kept producing 'em, if you just kept going, never quit, never let frustration derail you. If you got to episode 21, you would be in a very, very, very small population of all the overall podcasts. So I think this is just an example of how sometimes just. To not fall into the trap. And again, I'm gonna get to what the trap actually is, and just to keep going is so important. But back to my clients for a second. So I, I recognize this pattern I see with them when we get into month two and month three, honestly even like week four before we get into month two. And the pattern is that when they start, There is so much motivation. Think about the last time that you were like, you know what, I'm gonna buckle down and get my health in order. Or, you know, like I said, maybe it didn't need to, doesn't need to be health, but like, maybe it's with your job. Like, you know what? I'm gonna start putting in the extra time. I'm gonna really start educating myself even more on whatever it is that you do. And I'm gonna put my best foot forward so that I can start moving up in the company or whatever it is. But back to the health dirty, if it is that for you, and you know the last time that you were like, Hey, I'm gonna really start to. Straighten things up, I'm gonna really start to focus on my nutrition. I may be gonna start cooking at home more. I'm gonna look at new recipes, or you know what, I'm gonna make a plan for myself to go to the gym this amount of times per week, and this is what I'm gonna do. And you have all this in order, and you have all this motivation and you're excited about it. Let me ask you this, how long did that motivation last? Like when was the first time that whatever plan you had set out for yourself? You went to go do it and you realize, I really don't want to do this, how long did that take? I mean, to be honest, and again, I can speak from personal experiences. Well, there's times where even the next day, like I say to myself, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I'm gonna get this workout in. And you wake up the next morning and you're like, Hmm. I don't feel quite as motivated anymore to do this, and I don't know if I want to. Okay. So. My point in saying all that is motivation is crap. And I've said that before on this podcast, but if we are relying on motivation to keep us putting one foot in front of the other, we will fail. We will be derailed. We'll let frustration derail us and we will just at some point, stop what we're doing. Back to the podcast production, if someone is relying on motivation. To get them to sit down at their computer for four hours to edit a podcast, to post it on all the platforms, to create the social media clips and whatnot and so on. They're not gonna do it because it requires a lot more than motivation. Okay, so let's get into that a little bit. What is the trap and what does it really require to stick with something for longer than two weeks? Okay, so if you guys have listened to some of my previous podcasts, you've maybe heard this before, I'm not gonna go. So as in depth with this as I have in previous podcasts, I'll actually link the episode where I do go in depth about the DARE method in the show notes in case you want to go back and listen to that one. But just briefly, the DARE method of change, this is a mess method that I have come up with based on the research and education that I have as well as my personal experiences. Then I do think this method of change is, Very useful, very beneficial. But within this method of change, there are some traps. Okay, so the DARE method of change, what does the D stand for? The D stands for, discover Your Mountain. This is all about your purpose. This is all about why you're doing something. This is about your ideal self. And when I talk about ideal self, this is the self that you could sit down and say, Hey. Just for a second, just for a couple minutes. If I don't think about the logistics, if I don't think about my responsibilities, if I don't think about all the security things I need to consider, I. What do I want my life to look like? What do I want my life to look like one year from now, five years from now, and so on? That's your ideal self and not so much just the material things or even a career or you know, but what do I want in my life that is gonna bring me joy? What do I want in my life that is gonna bring me purpose? What can I create in my life? That will, that will give me those things. Okay? So that is different. Your ideal self is different than your ought self, which is basically if you say like, I ought to be this, someone else is telling me to be, this society's telling me to do this. Social media is showing me I should do this. If I'm basing my future, my dreams off of my odd self. Again, not gonna last. That is another trap. That's not the trap that I'm talking about today, but that is another trap. We have to base our future and our dreams and our, you know, whatever we're imagining on our ideal self. So de discover our mountain is all about just imagining this mountain in front of you. Maybe it's one mountain peak. Maybe it's multiple mountain peaks, but you're imagining these mountains as your purpose. They're what you want to climb, they're what you want to put effort towards. They're what you want to put your energy towards. They're meaningful to you. So when we b, when I break this down with someone, we start talking about. Core values. We start talking about priorities in life. We do talk about some of the non-negotiables, right? Like some of our responsibilities. We also talk about, certain goals that we wanna set for ourselves, achievements that we want. Okay? So we have to take the time to discover our mountain. If you recently, in the last year, let's say, have not sat down and, and written with a pen and paper, or to be honest, even just thought about, right? But let's take it a step forward and say, if you have not sat down and written down what you would dream your life could look like five years from now, if you have not done that in the last year, I have a hard time believing that you know what mountain you're climbing at this point. Okay, so discovering your mountain is so important. That's the D and the DARE method of change. A. A stands for actions for alignment. This is where a coach comes in, or this is where your goal setting skills come in. This is the planning. This is making sure that what you are actually doing after we get back past the ideas and the theory and the dreams, this is actually putting actions in place that are in alignment with. Whatever your mountain is, right? So if we're gonna take an action, and let's compare that to taking a step forward, we wanna make sure that we are taking a step forward on a trail or on a path that is heading in the direction of. Our mountaintop. Now, just to be clear, sometimes that step won't always be a straightforward step, or sometimes it might even be a step down before we can step back up. But we do wanna make sure that those actions or those step forwards, are in alignment with what we actually feel is our purpose and our mission and what is important to us and so on. So again, that does take planning. That's sometimes where a coach comes in, right? A lot of my clients come to me because that's maybe something that they need help with. I mean, to be honest, I have clients come to me who are also personal trainers themselves, or who are also nutritionists themselves. Believe me, I get it. Sometimes, even if you know all the information. It is so hard with the lives that we live. You're taking care of kids. You have a full-time job. You're trying to work out, eat healthy, all these things to actually put together a plan and then hold yourself accountable to it. Okay? So sometimes that's where a coach can come in, but that is the A and the DARE method. Actions for alignment, making sure that your actions are aligned with what you actually want to do. Okay, r R on the DARE Method of Change stands for roadblocks. I am actually gonna skip this one for now because as you can imagine, this is where our trap lay. Okay, so I'm gonna come back to that one. So just real quickly, the last letter in the DARE method of change is e and E stands for the Endless beginning. So I really like this concept because I think this is something that doesn't get talked a lot about in goal setting. If you imagine that mountain that we were talking about before, and you have that mountain in front of you and you start climbing up that mountain, what happens when you get to the top? Have you ever thought about that? What happens when you get to the top of everything that you want to achieve? I think I've mentioned this before in this podcast, but imagine someone who's just won a professional sports championship. You know, you're Steph Curry and you just won the NBA Championship, and let's go back to his first time he won it. What does that feel like? I mean, I have to imagine, at least for a short time, it feels amazing. It feels like a huge, huge accomplishment. But what happens the next morning? What do you feel like the next morning you train four months for this race? You train four months for this marathon, it's something that you really have been wanting to do. You go through all the training, you have your setbacks, but you overcome them. You get a little injury, but then you get better and you go out and you run this marathon and you finish and it feels terrible, but it also feels so good and you have people there supporting you and, and everything. And then you wake up the next morning and yes, you feel accomplished, but what else do you feel? There's always this little bit of this feeling of what's next? What's next? And that's where the endless beginning comes from. The journey changes us. We're not gonna be in the same place personally as we were when we started. Hopefully we're better. We're better in many different ways, but we're just gonna be different. We're gonna be different than when we started. But. The journey keeps going. And so understanding this I do think is an important part of the change process because sometimes it. We, when we don't recognize that we'll actually get to where we're going and we still feel like we haven't accomplished anything because we still have that feeling of what's next. And I think it's an important piece of the process in that moment to acknowledge I have accomplished something and, and I. Come out the other side in some way, and I've bettered myself in all of these ways. Hey, but let's keep going. You know, maybe I want a little break of some sort. I have a vacation plan, but hey, what's next? What else can I do? How can I keep this going so that's the endless beginning. And like I said, Go back to my previous episode, which I'll link in the show notes if you wanna hear all of those things more in detail. But for now, I wanna go back to that R, the R and dare method of roadblocks, because this is where the trap lies. This is where the trap of starting something and quitting before two, the two week mark happens. There's a lot of roadblocks that can stop someone in their track. I could go on and write an entire podcast series, not just an episode on every single roadblock that people run into. It's not the same thing all the time. Okay? But there's two pieces to this trap. The first piece is commitment, and the second piece is, Not believing that you have the power to make change in your life. Okay, so let's talk about that first one. The first part of the trap, that's commitment. Like I was talking about before, motivation is crap. So like that motivation may last you a week, it may last you three days, it may last you one afternoon, but what I can tell you for sure and is at some point that motivation is gonna run out. So if you are relying on that and you feel like. If this is really important to me, I'm always gonna wanna do it. You're gonna be, you're, you're getting fooled, right? You are fooled. You have to understand that just because you want something doesn't mean you're always gonna want to do it, and doesn't mean it's gonna feel easy. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna go to the gym. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna get in the pool and go swimming. There's gonna be times where you don't wanna cook your own meal and you'd rather go out. There's all these things, right? And so if we rely on the motivation, they're not gonna happen. We have to stay committed and, and how do we stay committed? A bit of this is grit, we have to have the resilience to. Just do it anyways, even if it's not exactly what we want. I was actually talking to a client the other day and she was saying something that I've said plenty of times, and I've heard many clients say plenty of times, but she was saying, I've had a really long work week and today especially, I've had a really long day, like I actually worked close to a 12 hour day and when I get home, I just don't really feel like going into the gym and doing my lift. The amount of times that I've heard that, and believe me, like I said, I've said it myself, but what I told this client is, if you don't wanna go into the gym and lift, that is your choice. Okay? And if you make that decision, there is no judgment on my part. But I do wanna let you know you do have the ability and you do have the capacity to go get this lift in right now. Okay. If you are staying resilient to your goals, you will go get your lift in right now. Does that mean it's gonna be easy? No. Does that mean it's gonna be what you wanna do? No. And believe me, let me just give a caveat. There is a scenario where maybe you don't go and do that. Like if you feel an injury coming on of some sort, or like you really feel like your body physically needs a rest, that may be a time to actually like take a rest day, right? So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just not being motivated to go do something. So now I don't go do it. Okay, so I'm telling that person, you do have the capacity to go do this right now, and ultimately though, if you don't go do it, we need to come up with a plan that's going to serve you better if you keep relying on getting your lift in at the end of a busy workday and you keep figuring out that you do not, you just can't. Get yourself to go do it. You honestly don't have the resilience to go do that. Let's figure out another plan. Right? And maybe that's waking up early to go do it. And I'm not saying that's gonna be necessarily any easier, but maybe it's a little bit easier. It's just a little bit easier. Still really hard, but a little bit easier to get up in the morning. First thing before any energy is drained, go get that workout in and now you're, it's just done. It's not something that has to be hanging over you the rest of the day. Okay? So sometimes the resiliency you, it may fail you in one instance, but the resiliency can come in and creating a new plan. Create a new plan to keep going, create a new plan, to stay committed to what it is that you want, regardless of it being hard. So that's the first part of the trap, is relying on motivation and just not staying committed, not being resilient enough to just keep going even when you don't want to. This is something that we've probably all fallen into at some point, and I think it requires us to be honest with ourself. Am I committed to this or not? And if I'm not, then maybe that's time to reevaluate. Go back to the beginning of that dare method and say, if this isn't something that I truly wanna commit to, then like what do I want to commit to? Right? What do I want my mountain to be? What do I want my plan and my actions for alignment to be? Okay? The other part of the trap, like I said before, is not believing that I have the power to change my life. I was speaking to an MD actually the other day and they were talking about some clients that they have, which is obviously a very different position than I am in, in my role as a coach. You know, they see clients in, in a different aspect, but they were talking about how sometimes they have clients come in and there's just no. Motivation to change in any way. And I really feel like that comes from, I. Not actually believing they have any power to change. So I think there's a difference there. There's a difference between not feeling like you're motivated to change and actually not feeling like you have the power, whether that's the resources or the knowledge or the energy or. Just the capacity in general to make a change. That's another trap that we fall into, and the reality is there's always something that we can do. Maybe we don't have all of the resources, maybe we don't have the financial means. We need to pay for a coach. Maybe we don't have a ton of energy, maybe we don't have. A lot of knowledge about what it is that we want to change, but there's always something that you can do and there's always a first step that you can take. And if you let that feeling of, of not having that power just overwhelm you and overrun you. Then you'll never take that first step. Right? You'll never get anywhere. This is a silly example, but I'll give it. I just am recently getting into road biking. It is very, very new to me. I rode a bike as a kid and I've ridden a bike on vacations and stuff like that, but until recently I didn't even own a bike as an adult. Okay. So I go and I pick up a used bike and it's more of like a mountain bike than anything else. And I go out on that bike on I've, I've been starting to go out on that bike on, on bike rides, right? And I've been mostly riding on the road and I get passed by road bikers on their road bikes because I'm on this like little mountain bike riding on the road. And anyways, I've just been doing it for exercise as of right now, but I'm starting to get more into it and I wanna get a road bike. I know nothing about road bikes. Okay, so that could very much overwhelm me and I could very much say, I can't get into this because I don't know anything about it. Well, we actually have a neighbor who's like an expert at road bikes, so I've been grilling him with questions, right? That's one thing I can do. I can seek out someone else who has more knowledge about something than I do and just start to learn, and I still barely know anything, but I know I will say a lot more than I knew two weeks ago. Right, because I've been just doing a little bit of research here and there. I've been asking questions here and there. I've been looking up used road bikes on Facebook marketplace and so on, right? So sometimes just start asking questions, and as soon as you start doing that, I think this is really the important piece and how to get out of this trap. As soon as you start taking those small steps, you start digging yourself out of that hole. You start digging yourself out of that trap. Then you actually start gaining skills. That will make you feel like you have more power in the situation to start making a change. So not only are you learning more or gaining more resources or whatever it is, you're actually, I. Giving yourself more confidence or more power to continue down that journey. And so it almost becomes an exponential change effect. You start feeling like you have more and more power, so you start doing more and more things and, and all of whatever change you want to happen starts happening quicker and quicker. But sometimes it's just those first couple steps that feel like they're so hard to take. In order to make any change we want in our life. So that's the trap guys. The trap is not staying committed and not feeling like you have the power to make a change. And again, I know that sounds super simple, but the reality is it kind of is. If we sit down and we seriously ask ourselves to be honest about our situation, a lot of the times there's something that we can do that we're not. A lot of the times, we are not actually staying as committed as maybe even we're telling ourselves that we are. Okay. Those are two huge traps I see in any process of change with myself, with clients that I'm working with, with friends, and so on and so on. So hopefully this just leaves you with something to think about, something to evaluate your own situation with, right? Maybe you're sitting there saying, You know what? I really haven't stayed committed to this, so you know, I, I want to commit and how am I gonna do that? Or maybe you're sitting there saying, you know what? I actually don't really feel like I have the ability or the power to make a change. But Coach k Christina is saying, let me just take one step. What is that one step I can take? What step can I take tomorrow? Even if it feels so minuscule that can help me get to where I wanna go? That's what I'm gonna leave you guys with today. So, like always, I will say one last thing. Changing your path will not be easy. It will be challenging. I'll say that over and over again, but it will be so worth it. So do a self check today, just like I was talking about before. Are you on your path up your mountain? And if not, what path are you on?
