Podcast Episode #44
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Extraordinary Life Podcast from the creator of the Extraordinary Life Tribe, Crystal Obregon, the self-development podcast propelling you forward toward your goals using science backed high performance habits. Reach the next level in your physical and mental health. See new Heights in your relationships.
[00:00:18] Gain clarity on your purpose and live your extraordinary life. Welcome your host writer, speaker and coach, Crystal Obregon. Hey there, this is Crystal of Crystal Obregon Coaching with episode number 44 of the Extraordinary Life Podcast. I hope you enjoyed last week's podcast with Laurie I definitely enjoyed the interview myself.
[00:00:48] It's so important to keep moving both physically and mentally, as we're heading towards summer in the Northern hemisphere, I thought I would spend the rest of [00:01:00] may on the second of the high-performance habits, Generating Energy. As you may know, when I was looking for a life coaching program to compliment my health coach.
[00:01:13] I knew I was in the right spot when I found that energy was one of the key components of the high-performance coaching curriculum. And I've honestly never felt that I was a person to forego my physical health for long in order to achieve goals in other areas of my life, but the past five years or so, I've been very dedicated to working on my business.
[00:01:41] And while I consider myself an active person, I was realizing that there were many days when I didn't move my body other than up and down the stairs to my home office and back. And then the last two years during the pandemic, like many other people, I [00:02:00] started focusing more on moving my body. I took up mountain biking again, and this season I've been one of the coaches on my son's mountain bike.
[00:02:11] I've definitely been moving in a positive direction on regaining my fitness. However, I noticed that there were still some days when I still wouldn't be moving. So maybe I would have some days where I would do two or three hours on the bike. And then other days I wouldn't even walk the dogs because I'd get busy with work and then I'd move right onto dinner.
[00:02:39] And then. I would say I was going to, but often I'd find some excuse not to. And this was happening in other areas of my life as well. For example, I've been working with Sue. She's a posture therapist that was on my podcast a few months ago. And [00:03:00] after we would have our zoom session, she would give me a set of posture exercises to do every day to help my body feel better.
[00:03:09] Sometimes I would be really good about doing them every day and then sometimes not so good. And they only take 20 to 30 minutes to complete. Other areas could be getting the taxes done. I do get them done on time, but it could be earlier. It was like working in the yard, doing housework. It really shows up in many places.
[00:03:31] We generally call it procrastination, but what it really is, is not doing what you say you're going to do. So recently I decided to do a challenge with a friend and more friends are joining on as I go called 75 hard. And the components of it are doing two workouts a day of at least 45 minutes. Drinking one gallon [00:04:00] of water a day, following a diet of your choosing drinking, no alcohol and having no cheat meals and reading 10 pages a day.
[00:04:12] And generally it's you do non-fiction and audio books don't count. So doing this for 75 days. Okay. Well, it will have physical benefits. The main idea behind it is to develop mental toughness. In other words, building that, doing what you say you're going to do muscle. I mentioned a few weeks ago that. The idea that one of the main jobs of our subconscious mind is to keep us safe.
[00:04:45] And it thinks that staying the same will keep us safe. It's been doing a pretty good job of helping you survive so far and just keep doing the same thing. So when you try to change [00:05:00] something, it comes up with reasons or excuses to not do what you say you are going to do. For example, I could say that I'm going to go for an early walk or a swim in the morning, but when my alarm goes off, I could decide that actually what I really need is to sleep a little longer or maybe I do get up.
[00:05:23] But then I decide what I really need to do is use that time in the morning to do a chore or check my email, or maybe just have that, that personal time in the morning of not really doing anything. And I'm sure that you have examples from your own life that are popping into your head right now. I rarely come across someone or maybe never who doesn't know at least some things that they need to do to move toward their goals.
[00:05:55] It's just the doing those things. That's the problem. I have [00:06:00] my own areas of my life, where I'm pretty good at coming up with excuses, which is what. I decided to do this. If you aren't following me on Instagram yet, please do, because I am sharing insights along the way. The other sticking point for me has been time.
[00:06:20] I'm gradually learning to be better with managing my time so that I fit in all of the 75 hard components. For some reason that week that I decided to start it it's been more challenging because. For example, normally I am in bed easily by 9:00 PM and I always liked reading at night. And so usually I have no problem reading at least 10 pages, but this week that I started it, you know, from social events to getting home late from athletic events for my son, I've had many nights where I've been falling asleep in my book.[00:07:00]
[00:07:00] And then water. I feel like I normally drink a lot of water each day, but at the beginning I would suddenly find myself behind on drinking water. You know, you really don't want to be drinking your last 32 ounces of water at eight o'clock at night. Before I dive into some of the physical aspects of this challenge in later podcasts, I'd really like to chat about the five mindset stages that people go through.
[00:07:29] When they do try to create a lifestyle change and how I've moved through them when deciding to do this challenge. So I'm going to just go into a little bit something called the trans theoretical model of change. So it was developed back in the 1970s when researchers studied smokers who are trying to quit.
[00:07:53] I don't think smokers were trying to quit much before. The first stage of this [00:08:00] is pre-contemplation. So this is before you're aware of a problem, or are even thinking of making any changes, awareness of the possibility of making changes could like in the case of smoking, I think they were starting to realize that it was hazardous to your house.
[00:08:20] It could come from a magazine article, a doctor, or in my case of doing this challenge from a friend for me, I know I generally eat pretty well. I drink water most of the time, except when I'm drinking coffee. I really enjoy reading and I enjoy exercising, but. I started to realize that I wasn't in all these things as consistent as I thought, and that there might be good reasons to apply myself a little more.
[00:08:55] So I moved on to the second stage, which is [00:09:00] contemplation. I realized that I really wasn't following through on everything. I said I was going to do. I'm a big believer in the fact that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And that time shouldn't be an excuse. I'd also been struggling with perimenopausal symptoms and some joint achiness and a stiff neck and shoulder.
[00:09:24] And I knew that I needed to be stricter about what I was eating really to calm the inflammation that was causing some of these things. I decided that eliminating gluten dairy and added sugar would be my diet. And I stayed actually in this part until I made that decision for awhile. Because from being a health coach, there's many different and many different books and different methods of really addressing inflammation or joint achiness or.
[00:09:57] Perimenopausal symptoms. [00:10:00] And so I decided just to simplify it to gluten dairy and added sugar. And then if I feel like I need to take other things like night shades or something like that out of my diet, then I'll decide that in the future. I often don't eat gluten for the most part, because I know that it affects my joints, but it was sneaking in sometimes.
[00:10:24] And eliminating dairy, especially cheese was something that I had been thinking about. And my chiropractor who's trying to help me with my, with my neck and shoulder had mentioned as well. Completely giving up. Alcohol is easy for me since, for several years, my body has not reacted well to it anymore. And it would cause me to have more hot flashes, stay awake at night.
[00:10:52] So whenever I would have a glass of wine or a cocktail, I would almost always feel that it just wasn't working. [00:11:00] So once I started making those decisions, then, then planning was my next step. And I stayed in this one for a while. I felt like I wanted to try to be organized around my food in the end. I wasn't, but I also wanted to ease into the two workouts a day.
[00:11:19] Like I said, I often will have a big day of exercise, two or three hour bike ride, and then not do anything the next day because I'm busy working and I think I can put it off to the next. I could have planned a little better before I started, but by easing into the two workouts a day, I started to see the places I could fit more movement into my life.
[00:11:44] And I also learn how I could still listen to my body because I think that's important. I don't think it's a great idea to do a lot or ask your body of a lot when it's already fatigue. So one of the workouts [00:12:00] can be yoga or my posture exercises. It doesn't have to be a really intense workout twice a day.
[00:12:08] Many people do you stay in this planning phase for too long? I want to tell you that it's a lot more valuable to take imperfect action, either risks, doing it wrong or making a mistake than it is to plan, plan, plan, and never take action. Because you learn so much valuable information when you take action, even if you don't take the right action, you learn by that and you can do a lot.
[00:12:38] Of course, correcting action is the first step. So that's where I am now. As I'm recording this podcast, I'm on day nine and getting it done, the exercise, the water, the reading, and the food. It feels imperfect. I'm getting a lot better at drinking water on Sundays. I drink even [00:13:00] more than a gallon. The reading part I've done it every night, but because of those later nights, I've often found myself falling asleep in my book multiple times while trying to get my 10 pages finished.
[00:13:16] I know that there are things that I can do to work on that. For example, last weekend. When I knew I was going to be camping overnight for my son's bike race. I got my reading done early in the morning before we left so that I didn't feel like I had to do it that night. When I knew I would probably be social and fall asleep.
[00:13:36] As soon as my head fit the. So food has also been hard because I have not been as good at meal planning, but my snacking is getting better because it can be so easy just to grab a few pieces of cheese when I'm hungry. And instead I'm spending a few extra minutes to cut up some veggies to dip in hummus or [00:14:00] slicing some apple and spreading almond butter on it.
[00:14:03] So I'm increasing my fruit and veggie intake. The last phase is the maintenance phase where you continue with the changes you've made. If no, when I make it all 75 days, that's when I'll move to this last phase, which is maintenance already. As I counted off the days to see when I'd be done. I grimaced when I realize family birthdays that would fall during that time.
[00:14:36] So now a search for me on those days already, the excuses would pop into my mind that maybe I should wait. Maybe I shouldn't do this right now. There are always reasons to not start something. Even when the benefits outweigh the, the not benefits, like not eating. And that's what [00:15:00] we often do, whether we're trying to act on a small goal or on a big dream, we always feel like we can start later that there's plenty of time in the future.
[00:15:09] We'll start when the time is. Right. But what if this is your time? What if now is the time to start and ask yourself where in your life are you not doing what you say you're going to do? And how is that impacting your life? Even the lives of those around you, because if you don't trust yourself, it will be hard for other people to trust you,
[00:15:34] and for you to trust other people. If you'd like help with doing what you say you're going to do and moving towards your goals and dreams, I can definitely help you. Reach out to me or make an appointment for a free consultation. Those links will be in the show notes. I can help you uncover a why you're not moving forward or help you gain clarity on what [00:16:00] you really want in the first place.
[00:16:03] That's it for now? I'd love to hear your insights from this week's podcast. So please do reach out by emailing me at [email protected] or messaging me through any of my social media channels. Have a terrific rest of your day, and I will see you in here next week. Bye for now. Thank you for listening to the Extraordinary Life Podcast with writer and coach Crystal Obregon.
[00:16:33] We'd love to connect with you outside of the podcast, too. To find more helpful insights, show notes and more about crystal. Go to Crystal Obregon.com. O B R E G O N, where you will also find info for the Design Your Decade workshop. This workshop will help you to stop drifting and start creating. Until next time be extraordinary.
