Keeping Commitments To Yourself When It Comes To Your Health

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey friends, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. I'm Kevin.

Speaker 2: 0:08

And I'm Becca, and we're your hosts, here to help you reach your potential and maximize your impact in every area that matters. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Well, hello everyone, Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about health. It's still January and a lot of people are well. Actually, many people have made New Year's resolutions and, honestly, by the time this podcast is released, unfortunately many people will have broken their New Year's resolutions. So we want to talk about how to keep commitments to yourself, especially when it comes to your health.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Yep, this is something important that we talk about with clients, it's something that we're working on ourselves and even with our children, and really this can apply to so many areas of life. But it's really asking ourselves, you know, what are we willing to do to make sure that when we say something and we desire an outcome, that we have a plan of action and then we're going to stick with it? And then we find, you know, like, the average Americans will start something early January for weight loss or health or exercise, and by mid February they've already, you know, decided it's too hard, doesn't fit their schedule, it's inconvenient, doesn't feel good, they're not getting results and, for some of those reasons, they tend to quit.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Yeah, and I love what you said. It's actually a phrase that I've learned to use with the clients that I coach and that is what are you willing to do? Because if you were to ask anyone, you know every woman would love to look great in a bikini, Every guy would love to have six pack abs For the most part.

Speaker 2: 1:40

yes, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 1:41

And many people might not say that because they don't even think it's possible, but I think really, the reality is there's no one out there who would not love to look like that. But are you willing to do what it takes to look like that and to be that healthy is a whole different ballgame. Right, everyone wants to live long and be healthy, but are you really willing to do what it takes to live long and be healthy is a whole different thing.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Right, and I mean, for some of you you might be at a different age where you're thinking, yeah, two piece bathing suit, that's not my goal, but for you it might be playing with your grandkids, having the energy to go with a retired spouse on a trip. You know, go hiking. Just, there are things that we hear all of the time when we work with our clients that are important to them, and what's really important for us as coaches is to remind them of what they say they really want. So I was just chatting with the client tonight over text message and it was like she's got her goals, she's been really on track, but she's had a very stressful couple of days at work. And the good thing is she reached out for accountability and said hey, it is so stressful here and what I really want to do is, you know, order a giant pizza. And my question was just, if you do that, how, how do you think you're going to feel about it? And she said, oh, bloated, disgusted, disappointed in myself, some of those kinds of ideas. And I was like Okay, so what's your plan of action? And even before I could give her any ideas which I love, just asking my clients what they think they should do.

Speaker 2: 3:02

She already had some ideas in mind and had started to execute on those. One of the first things she was planning wasn't even going the way that it was supposed to do, so she came up with plan B all by herself, and then I said how are you going to feel tonight when you go to bed, put your head on the pillow and you've kept your commitment to yourself? And then it was like oh, I'm going to feel really proud of myself. Amazing, you know. Just good feedback.

Speaker 2: 3:24

And so sometimes we just need to remind ourselves of the positive outcomes when we keep those commitments. I know, for me as a mom, one of the things that matters to me is not just keeping the commitment to myself for myself, but what do our kids see? You know, right now I've had boys watching me for a long time, but now we have EV and I want EV to see that none, I don't have it all figured out. I'm not perfect, but I am a woman who will chase after her dreams and keep those commitments, and so there's going to be things like that, that for EV. They will be important and I wanted to know she has a role model.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Do you want to talk about any strategies for keeping commitments to oneself?

Speaker 2: 4:02

Absolutely. I know one of our big ones is just choosing the associations that we put ourselves around right. There will be times in life, consistently, when we feel pulled downstream, and if your goal is to row upstream against the current, you're going to have to find those associations that are going to be helpful for you, and we've talked about in the past that in our coaching community. One of the reasons that we love having it is it allows us to be in a micro environment of health. It allows us to put our clients in a micro environment of health until they get stronger and then they start to build their own environments like that and they can start to swim upstream and have other people coming alongside them. But listen, if you're an outlier right now in your family group, your your cohort at work, whatever it is school, you will have a challenging time following through on your health goals If you don't surround yourself with people at least willing to cheer you on if not join you.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Yeah, they're. The thing about making a commitment is that when you're rowing upstream, most of the people you know most likely are actually going downstream and there's very few downstream people that like to support in Chiron upstream people. It's almost like you're rooting for the enemy, because there's something convicting, you know, when someone makes a choice to go to that next level. I know I've been there where I feel like dang, I'm convicted and it's very difficult to cheer someone on. It's just human nature.

Speaker 2: 5:35

The enemy of complacency, really.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Or complacency is the enemy of someone trying to row upstream.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Yeah, or even good, is the enemy of great right, when we've had many clients come to us and they've lost a significant amount of weight. They're not yet at a healthy weight but they have friends and family saying, oh, you're too skinny, you know, don't lose any more weight. And the reality is they're not healthy medically yet. But their community is most likely a downstream community and they're feeling convicted, and the further upstream one goes, the more distance there is between you and your downstream friends.

Speaker 2: 6:20

Absolutely. And so first is to really assess your environment and your associations and are you setting yourself up for the most success you know in your goals? And then to really evaluate why do you want something you know? Why is this important to you? Because if you don't have a strong why a push pull system in there for you, it will be easy to quit on a hard day, and I can't remember who said it, but there's the saying never quit on a bad day or never quit on your worst day. Yeah Right, because if you decide to quit, quit on a good day, and nobody ever does that right. We always quit on a bad day, but a bad day rolls over into a fresh new day, and rarely do we have bad days back by bad days back by bad days, and so it's a reminder that, even when it's hard to stick with it and to have that built in, I would say the next thing is accountability. What about you?

Speaker 1: 7:07

No, accountability is really important and just making a plan and I have found over the last few years that going public with the plan is really important and it's easy to fall off the consistency with that. Well, it probably not as guilty as the next person, but I am guilty of it.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Oh no, you're much more accountable.

Speaker 1: 7:32

I tend to be fairly consistent, but just making a decision, creating some parameters, we call it. I mean, really it's some guardrails Like I. Really. We learned a parenting technique years ago. It was B doesn't happen until A is complete, and I think that that's a great lesson or mantra for those of us who are starting out here.

Speaker 2: 7:58

A good life hack, yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:59

Yeah is to say, okay, what improvements do I wanna make in my health and what is a reward that I will choose to withhold until A is complete. So you know whether it's watching a TV show or a series or something like that. Maybe there's a weekly show that you like and you say, okay, this is my eating plan and if I don't stick to it, I'm not, I'm going to withhold from the show. It doesn't mean you make up for the show the following weekend, you binge. It's saying, okay, this is a legitimate consequence, that something like that is a great way to create some tension for yourself and then to go public with it. You know how long? Is this gonna be something you do just for January, or is it going to be something that you do every single year, or, sorry, every single month of the year?

Speaker 2: 8:49

Hey friends, here's a quick reminder that if you're finding value in this show, would you do us a favor and subscribe, share with someone you think would benefit and give us a five star rating. We make nothing from this show and invest a lot of time and money producing it. All we ask is that you help us get our message to more people. I love that. The next thing that came to mind was to really be in creation mode. So the other thing that we talk about with clients is it's less about running from something like disease and it's more about what are you creating. And when you switch your mindset about that, it's a lot easier to keep those commitments to yourself, because you're not saying I can't have this, I'm restricting myself. You're saying I know what I'm going towards and what I'm going towards is more important than what I'm running away from. You wanna talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 1: 9:31

Yeah, it's. I was just talking about this. You know, using the upstream analogy, that three, if you know we talk about disease, a lack of health. You know lack of energy, poverty, bankruptcy. You know just a lack of time, freedom, financial freedom, relationship, mediocrity, if not disaster, those are all things that are downstream.

Speaker 1: 9:59

But if all we're trying to do is get away from those, it's a lot harder to have the motivation to keep going, because it's very difficult to row upstream, it's tedious. But if you're, instead of running away from those negative things, if you're working, rowing towards something that you truly want maybe it is what we call optimal health, where you have vibrant energy, you can do activities with your friends and family that you care about, you can have the time freedom to be able to spend time with family when you want to and need to, or to, you know, go on a spur of the moment mission trip, like I was able to do just a couple of weeks ago. That was amazing. You're working towards a thriving marriage, one that you really enjoy, your friendship with your spouse and the romantic piece as well, and you're rowing towards a healthy.

Speaker 2: 10:57

I can't do it. No, you can't do it. There we go. Yeah, I need the button. Oh no, there's no button, there's no button.

Speaker 1: 11:07

I didn't work the sound. I was trying to make. Now the question is how do we get that on the video? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 11:12

I don't know. Keep going, we'll let our production team. There we go. Little, it was better. It's better, but it was better. It was the same thing I just did. Mine was shorter.

Speaker 1: 11:24

Okay. Anyways, going rowing towards something that you want is a lot more motivating.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Yeah, totally agree. Well, anything else that you want to add to this? I feel like we've really talked about keeping commitments to ourselves, having accountability surrounding ourselves, with the right people being in creation mode. Those are all things that we want you to focus on right now. Listen, we love to see people thrive well beyond when resolutions wear out, which is, you know, usually six weeks after someone started something. So, creating that habit loop for yourself, what is it? What's the habit book? Where? He talks about the habit loop with Doohig, Charles Doohig.

Speaker 1: 12:03

That's the power of habit, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:05

So that book, remember. You have cue routine reward and this is another tip we'll just give you here is that you know when you're starting to make new neural pathways in your brain and you're trying to change behaviors that you've done before, you've got to switch around the routine part in the middle. So the cue is going to be like at the end of the day I just want to have a glass of wine or I want to sit and watch two hours of TV and my reward on the other end is feeling like I've given myself, you know, a relaxation time at the end of a long, hard day. That is probably typical American behavior.

Speaker 2: 12:35

For many of you and many of us that doesn't support health goals.

Speaker 2: 12:39

You want and need to maybe get some movement and maybe you sit all day at your job and so what you really want to do, your desired outcome, is to get some walking in.

Speaker 2: 12:46

So you're still going to be cued by getting home from work and having that desire of like I want to reward myself and you're still looking for that reward at the end that says I've, I've had a hard day, I've had a long day and I want to have some type of relaxation.

Speaker 2: 12:58

But you can always change that middle routine. Maybe you do put your shoes by the door and you go for a walk before you allow yourself to sit down and, you know, binge a show. Maybe instead of the walk, you go sit in a bathtub and read a book, because it allows you to disengage from electronics and get into that relaxation mode. But somewhere in there we have to break that cycle and so if you find that, you know, mid February you're already caving on your workout goals or you're eating goals or any of those things, number one reach out. We would love to help you. We'd be honored to hear about your goals and connect with you to see how we can help, because we are really good at what we do. But the other thing is to just use the power of that habit and figure out where in the cycle of Q routine reward can you make a change and give yourself like a new way to build a habit.

Speaker 1: 13:40

Cause the Q doesn't change. The Q will most likely be there until the day you die.

Speaker 2: 13:45

Right.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Now there are some things that you can do to eliminate some cues. Obviously, there's some habits and there's some lifestyle factors. You know, if one of the cues is an argument with your spouse and your marriage is miserable, maybe you should work on your marriage and you can minimize the number of cues that happen from that. Many of the cues that we have are stress, anxiety or different things like that. The cues will happen and the key is to change what that routine is.

Speaker 1: 14:19

One other tip that I really recommend for people is just to track things. Track your activity, track your metrics, not just your weight. I'll recommend that everyone gets a good some type of body fat or body composition done. The analogy that I've been using is that the weight is like knowing how much money, or the weight on the scale is knowing how much money you have in the bank account. Knowing your body fat percentage and your real body composition is like knowing your net worth. That's the reality. You're so smart, and so a lot of people. You can't argue with the body count. You can argue with the scale, potentially, but you can't argue with the body count. So I really encourage people to get that done. In terms of the weight, it's unpleasant you might have lost some weight.

Speaker 2: 15:09

The current reality is an acquired taste.

Speaker 1: 15:10

You may have lost some weight and you know what. Sometimes you just need to enjoy the success that you have had. If you're at 35% body fat and you get down to 25% especially if you're a guy that's awesome. It's not where I would recommend stopping. You ideally want to go to below 20, probably under 15 if you really want to be really healthy, but it doesn't mean you have to go immediately there. But also understand that even though you might be at what was your high school or college weight, until you get that body fat test done, you don't really know exactly where you're at, because there's a lot of changes that can happen in a decade or more. So all right, friends, quick, short and sweet, but we really want to just help you make 2024 your healthiest year ever and we just really want to encourage you to keep those commitments to yourself. Don't overcommit, but it's amazing how many times we will see either ourselves or others go. They'll go crazy to keep a commitment to a boss that they can't even stand, or to some goofy commitment that they make yet

Speaker 1: 16:26

when we make really important and profound commitments to ourselves or to our family, we won't keep them, and so we just want to encourage you this year, and every year moving forward, to keep those commitments to yourself and have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Uncommon Freedom Show. We believe Freedom isn't man's invention. It was created by God. If you are enjoying the show, please give us a five star review on the platform we're listening to us on, then subscribe and share with friends and family that you think will enjoy the show. You can connect with us at BeckandKevcom for more resources to learn biblical principles, central disciplines and the winning habits that help, once average people, lead the life they want instead of accepting the life they were given.