“I Am Dreading The Holidays”

Holiday dread starts even before Halloween. What will we do with all of our leftover Halloween candy? Will we have time to make our children costumes? How will we celebrate during the COVID-19 pandemic? How will the holidays shake out with our work schedule? Will we have time off?

Holidays tend to come with a lot of stress because we put extreme expectations on ourselves and others. But if we do a few key things, we can get our minds in the right place to cruise into this upcoming holiday season feeling great both mentally and physically. 

Having a Plan

When we have a plan, we think, “I have it all figured out.” We feel content. As a result, we’re grateful for having a plan, whatever it may be. As long as you know what to expect, you set yourself up for success. 

So think about the holidays you’ll be celebrating over the next few months. Get a calendar. Mark the time you have off and note anything else relevant. Have conversations with the people who will be involved in your celebration. Communicate so there is no guessing. 

Planning the holiday season will free time up for you and allow you to enjoy the experience even more.

Mental Planning

One great habit to develop is to do a simple thought download. It’s essentially a journal entry where you dump your thoughts down on paper and see what thoughts are coming up. There’s something magical about seeing your thoughts written down. 

Starting now, give yourself three minutes every day to dump all your thoughts down on paper. After a few days, you’ll start to see some trends. You’ll notice what’s really going on for you.

Try this exercise. Pick one person you’ll be seeing during the holidays. Maybe this is a person who typically disappoints you. Write down all the ways that they disappoint you and what expectations you have of them. Once you can see things more clearly, you can decide if you want to communicate what these expectations are. When you do that, you may realize that your expectations are unrealistic or that you never communicated them. This can open the door to improving your relationships with the people you care about. 

Another practice you can adopt is asking yourself “what do I need?”. That simple question will help you understand what you need to enjoy the holiday season instead of stressing about it. 

Physical Planning

Food

Many of my clients find the holidays difficult when it comes to their health goals. They want to enjoy all of the foods and drinks that come as part of their holiday celebrations. And there’s no reason why you can’t do that while continuing to pursue your health goals. It’s all about expectations and planning. 

You have to be honest with yourself about whether or not it’s realistic to stick to your food plan during the holidays. If you know you’ll be at Aunt Betty’s for Hanukkah and you can’t resist her lasagna and triple chocolate delight, you can plan to have it. It’s much better to plan for that than to insist on resisting it and disappoint yourself when you show up to Betty’s house and struggle to meet your unrealistic expectations. 

If you have a plan that you’ll go and enjoy some of your favorite things, you’re keeping the promise you made to yourself. But if you make a different promise and don’t keep it, you’ll be really disappointed in yourself, which is the last thing you want during an already stressful and packed holiday season. In fact, your disappointment may be the very thing that leads you to throw your plan out the window during the next celebration, thinking, “I already messed up so I’ll just go crazy now and try to be good again after the new year.”

One of your most powerful tools during the holiday season will be following your intuition when it comes to food. Learn to determine if you’re hungry. If you are, you should eat. Learn to determine when you’re full. If you’re comfortably full, you should stop eating. These two simple rules will allow your body to tell you what it needs without making any specific foods off-limits.

That way, you can enjoy family and food and all of the things that make the holidays so special while also feeling confident that you don’t have to have strict guidelines and rules in order to achieve progress. All it requires is trust.

Exercise 

We all know that during the holidays, we may be a bit more tired. Maybe we stayed up late. Maybe the wine was flowing. So sometimes we wake up and decide that we’ll save the exercise for next year.

This year, try to make a plan instead. Choose a minimum amount of activity you’ll do during the holiday season. Choose a realistic exercise routine that you’ll be able to stick to during the holidays. It can be as simple as going on walks with your family, going skiing, or doing some laps in an indoor pool. You can get a great workout doing so many different things. Use that to your advantage. It’s not about changing how your body looks. It’s about doing movement that feels good for you.

Accountability 

You have to be accountable to yourself first. The way to make any habits sustainable long-term is to be our own best accountability partner. It’s about continuing to cultivate the relationship you have with yourself by keeping your word to yourself. Show up for yourself like how you would for a friend. Do this because you’re worth it. You don’t need other people checking over your shoulder. 

The more you can keep yourself accountable, the more consistent you’ll be. As a result, others will know what to expect from you. This will help you create the boundaries you want.

Boundaries

There will be situations during the holiday season that will require you to communicate boundaries. It may not be super comfortable. Challenge yourself to set boundaries for yourself and others.

Maybe you want to make a conscious decision to decrease the amount of time you spend on social media on your phone. Sticking to that boundary will give you confidence that you can maintain boundaries with others, too. The first step is to be rock solid with the boundaries you set for yourself. 

If you can plan, set boundaries, and stay accountable to yourself (and others), you can cruise through the holiday season achieving any result that you want. 

“The Holidays Are So Challenging”

In this article, we’ll focus on two of the most common challenges that come up during the holidays: our health and comments from others. 

Exercise

There are a couple of things that typically pose a challenge to exercising during the holidays:  there’s less time and we’re in a place without our usual exercise equipment. But these challenges are surmountable as long as you create a realistic exercise plan.

Sit down and think about a realistic amount of time you can commit to exercise during the whole holiday season. Write out your plan and decide the minimum amount of exercise you can commit to no matter what. Schedule in what works for you.

Let’s say you’ll be with family on Thanksgiving. Maybe Thanksgiving day itself will be a rest day for you. Or, if not, maybe you’ll fit in twenty minutes in the morning before the festivities begin. 

Scheduling in your exercise is how you’ll get past the roadblock of not having enough time or the right equipment. You can get creative with your exercise. You don’t need something elaborate; walking works. Jogging is great. 

Once you commit to a holiday season exercise schedule, make it non-negotiable. It’ll help you enter the new year feeling energetic and amazing.

Food

We know this challenge well: there is so much food everywhere during the holidays. But maybe that’s something to be grateful for. When we come from a place of gratitude, we can savor and enjoy our food. 

If you approach the food situation with gratitude, you don’t have to stress and worry about temptation. Gratitude will put you in a more mindful place and help you eat intuitively. It’s all about asking yourself if you’re hungry or full, and what your body needs in any given moment. 

Commit to one goal: only eat when you’re hungry. If you can live by that rule, you will be so much happier during the holidays. You’ll cruise through the season and even make progress. You can start this habit today and carry it with you forever.

If you’re new to this, you may not have a strong sense of your natural hunger cues. If you’ve been on diets, it can take time to redevelop this sense. But it’s possible to regain that ability, and it’s worth trying. 

Drinking

Festive holiday drinks are so fun, but it can get a little crazy. That’s why it comes down to having a plan. 

Try to really decide ahead of time how much you’re willing to drink. Focus on how you feel after you have a large quantity of alcohol. How are you sleeping? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Yes, in the moment, drinking will be fun. But how will it affect you long-term? Keeping that in mind will allow you to make a better plan for you.

If you know ahead of time that your family likes to bring out the spiked eggnog and frosted martinis for Christmas, you’ll want to plan for that. If you want to partake, own it ahead of time so you can enjoy it. You don’t have to be restrictive, but you do need to have a plan. Every sip of every drink should be worth it to you. 

You don’t have to take the food and alcohol out of the experience and have a boring holiday in order to be healthier. You’re welcome to have whatever you want. Just get hungry first, plan your alcohol, and keep water nearby to double hydrate whatever you’re drinking. That will allow you to feel better and stick to your exercise plan.

Comments from Other People

When it comes to comments from other people, you have three choices. You can be prepared ahead of time, deciding how you’re going to respond and feel. You can be prepared to set a boundary when these comments come up. Or you can just avoid the party and the comments altogether.

Maybe your Aunt Betty will comment on why you’re not eating dessert. You know that Aunt Betty shows love through food and you don’t want to hurt her feelings. You’ll think, “She feels bad that I’m not having dessert, which makes me feel bad.” Then you start considering having the pie that you already planned not to have. Instead, you can say something gracious like, “Everything has been amazing and I’m so full. I’m going to wait until I get hungry again.” Nobody can argue with that.

Or maybe at the dinner table, you’re comfortably full, so you stop eating. And then somebody will ask, “Aren’t you going to finish that?”. Again, you can go back to, “The food has been so amazing. I’m not hungry at all. I’m going to wait until I’m hungry again and I can really enjoy it.” You can own it.

If you haven’t seen your family members for a while, they may notice you look a little different and pay more attention to what you eat. They may say, “You barely ate anything.” This is a great opportunity to educate your family with, “I’m just really listening to my body and I’m not hungry right now.” It may even motivate and inspire other family members to get curious about intuitive eating and food freedom.

Or somebody may flat out comment on your body and ask, “Have you lost weight? You look so thin.” or “Have you gained weight?”. This can be triggering for many of us, so it may be a good time to set a boundary. Maybe you’ll say, “I’ve been really trying to listen to my body.” Or maybe you’ll set a boundary and say, “You tend to focus on my body and it makes me really uncomfortable. I’d prefer if you stop doing that.” Most often, people will listen to you.

I hope these tips will allow you to have the holiday you deserve knowing you’re in complete control.

“I Feel So Alone”

The Feeling of Loneliness

Loneliness tends to hit you right in the pit of the stomach. It radiates to the heart. It’s darker in color. It’s a slower emotion, which is why it can feel like it’s never going to go away. It’s heavy.

What thoughts make us feel this way? “I’m isolated. I have no one. Nobody understands me. No one is there to help me.”

The truth is that loneliness isn’t cured by having tons of relationships and friendships and being around people all the time. Instead, we can combat it by having deep connections. 

Relationships versus Connections

You could have a hundred friends and still be lonely. For example, maybe you have dozens of sorority sisters, but you don’t connect with any of them. An outsider looking into the situation would think that you’re not lonely at all. How could you be? You have sisterhood and camaraderie. But inside, you may be feeling alone because you haven’t made deep, quality connections. 

Resolving Loneliness

Dealing with loneliness all starts with us loving ourselves, being confident, and finding strength within ourselves. When we do this, that can be our first deep connection. If you’re deeply connected to who you are, you can eliminate loneliness by yourself. 

How to Foster Your Connection With Yourself

Awareness

Step one of fostering your connection with yourself is self-awareness: understanding who you are, why you’re here, and what you want. 

There are so many things you can do to learn more about yourself. Don’t be afraid to explore that. You can do a reading with an astrologer. You can do an Enneagram personality test. You can play a get to know you game to get feedback from others.

Anything that can give you more self-awareness is powerful. Ultimately, we’re not who we were yesterday; we’re who we are today. And how we show up today has a hand in deciding who we will be in the future. We have total control in deciding how things will go from here on out. 

Knowing who we are and how we’re unique is really powerful. We start to respect ourselves more when we understand ourselves more. When we don’t know who we are, we aimlessly wander and hope something sticks. In contrast, when we really know who we are, we start taking action, making change, and taking our life in the direction we want.

Acceptance

Step two is self-acceptance. “This is who I am. I was made perfectly imperfect and I can love that.” There’s no such thing as perfection and no need to chase after it. If you try to chase it, you’ll just get frustrated and give up. So accept who you are as you are. You have permission to love yourself as you are today. That’s how you stop feeling lonely. 

When we feel lonely, we wonder who we can find to make us feel better. We feel like we have no one. But you can have yourself. It’s just a matter of starting the process of believing that. You have to do the work to make yourself believe that you are enough as you are to give yourself everything you need.

When you have a solid relationship with yourself, you’ll be able to build stronger relationships with others. When you come into a deeply connected relationship with another person, it will no longer be about you running from your loneliness. It’ll be about how you show up to the relationship with love for yourself and a knowledge of what you want.

If you hold yourself to these standards of how you want to show up for yourself, you’ll attract people that are doing the same thing for themselves, instead of attracting people who always want more and more from you, which may make you retract and stop pursuing finding a relationship.

How to Build Confidence

When you have the confidence to start putting yourself out there into the world to attract deep, meaningful relationships, you can enhance the ability to experience life with other people. 

Take Care of Your Physical Health

By taking care of your physical health and establishing an exercise routine, you can decrease feelings of loneliness. It’s all about confidence building, understanding your unique body, understanding what you want for yourself, and showing up for yourself. 

In fact, some of the strongest relationships I ever had came from sports teams. That’s because, through activity, you’ll gain confidence and meet other people who show up for themselves. Gyms and classes are a supportive, community environment where you can build strength from within and externally with others who want the same thing. When you confidently move your body and create a complete awareness of who you are, it feels safe. Those types of relationships take off. 

Take Care of Your Mental Health

There’s also the facet of mental exercise, constantly challenging yourself to be aware of your thoughts and how they show up. Our thoughts create our feelings, our actions, and our results. We can reevaluate our thoughts, create new beliefs, and create the results we want based on a belief. This takes time, work, and commitment, but it can be one of the best things you can do to combat loneliness.

Set Small Goals

2021 is coming up. Instead of making all or none goals for the new year like “I’m going to eat perfectly,” set a small goal for yourself - any goal that will help you overcome any resistance you’re feeling. Go to the place that feels heavy and then pick the smallest goal possible, the smallest step forward, to get out of that situation. 

Maybe what feels heavy is that you feel overscheduled. You commit to too many things on the weekends. You want to have the flexibility to sit around if you want to. Instead of committing to not scheduling anything every Saturday for the rest of your life, try to pick one Saturday this month to have two hours of unscheduled time. Own it. Show up. Try it and see how it feels. If it feels good, do it again. Keep building until you hit it just where you want it. 

This is how we change and develop new habits. This is how we’ll stop feeling lonely. It’ll give us the confidence we need to believe in who we are to have an improved relationship with ourselves so that we are willing to create deep and meaningful relationships with other people. 

“I Can’t Let Go of My Anger”

You know that stirring feeling deep in your body that won’t go away? Mostly, it doesn’t feel good... But there’s a littlepart of it that does feel nice, which makes us want to hold on. That’s anger.

Anger is typically located in your chest, and it radiates to all different areas like your head. It’s fast and aggressive. It’s gnawing. It’s bright red or orange. 

Back in the day, when homo sapiens survived based on their ability to vanquish enemies and bring food home to their tribes, those who made it tended to have dopamine released when they were angry. That’s why sometimes anger can feel really good and be hard to let go of… Could that be because we have good reason to feel angry? 

What Anger Does

Why is it a problem when you can’t let your anger go? What is the problem with holding onto anger? Let’s say anger is the circumstance. Your thought is, “I should not still be mad about this.” So what comes up? Typically, when we say “should,” it can bring up a good amount of anxiety. Because what it says is, “Where I am right now is not okay.” When we feel anxious, what actions do we take?

We ruminate. We think about the scenario again and again. We relive it. We’re irritable and snappy and in a bad mood. Some blame comes up, maybe for yourself or the other person in the situation. It becomes this drawn-out drama. Typically, our anger makes us want to do something. But we can’t go out and do the physical things anger makes us want to do, because it’s not socially appropriate. So what do we do? We bottle it in. The result is a mess. We don’t want to feel this way but we don’t know how to get past it.

Anger is Your Friend

But what if I told you holding onto anger is actually your friend? What if anger were our little buddy that reminded us that we have the ability and right to keep our boundaries? Maybe it’s the voice that protects you from other people stepping past your boundaries.

So let’s say instead of thinking, “I should not still be mad about this,” we think, “Anger is here to protect me. Anger is trying to remind me to not ignore it.” What feeling comes up? Relaxation. I feel like I can let my guard down. One of my actions is that I’m not so uptight. I can let everything be. I’m not afraid of confrontation or others trying to cross my boundaries. In fact, I’ll probably respect other people’s boundaries even more. The result is that anger can stay. It’s welcome any time.

Embracing Anger

Let me offer a personal example. Once, I hired somebody and was working with them on a project. We had clear conversations about my expectations. Not all of them were in writing, but I had trust and open-mindedness that things would go as we discussed. But as the months went on, the things that were promised verbally weren’t happening and I started to have a gut feeling that something wasn’t right.

Four months in, I knew it was time to move on. I spoke to the individual. And in the end, we agreed. But after all was said and done, I was angry at myself. I thought that I should have stood up for myself even more. But this was all-or-none thinking. I had stood up for myself. Did I say every single thing I could have said? No. But maybe that is how it was supposed to go. Maybe the positive end result was that I knew what the next step was.

When I started to look at it that way, and realized it was my dear friend anger that pointed out to me that my boundaries were being crossed, it changed everything. I started to open my eyes to all the other places in my life that I was letting boundaries slip and slide. I realized that for me to be able to serve my family and clients and self, I needed to be much clearer about these things.

I started deciding how I wanted things to go, and I noticed that every time I was just starting to make a decision, I paused and thought, “But what would so-and-so think about this? Wouldn’t it make them feel bad?”. 

Then, my coach dropped a life-changing truth bomb on me: “Your life and your business is not a democracy.” This powerful and clear thought allowed me to take ownership of what I really want and not be afraid of my anger.

My word for 2020 was boundaries. And it’s just now, two months before the end of the year, that it’s all starting to fall into place. So now, as we’re starting to approach the end of this year, it’s time to look toward choosing a word for 2021. What do you want for yourself? What can you commit to? 

“I Can’t Be Happy Unless I leave Clinical Medicine”

My Story

I am a neonatologist by training. After I graduated fellowship, I just had my first baby and I was ready to start a brand-new job. I signed on to stay at the institution I trained at. It was more time than I wanted, but I was so tied to my training institution that I couldn’t imagine leaving. 

Thanks to my mother-in-law, who essentially became our live-in nanny, things went smoother than they usually do. But I was away from my baby nearly all the time. I was either working full days and coming home to see her for just a couple of hours, or I worked overnight shifts. And that’s not to mention the other responsibilities of the job like research and projects. 

I realized three months in that I wasn’t sure I took the right job. I would even go in and stalk the schedule of the other institution I interviewed for on AmIOn. And it looked great. I thought it could work for me. And I second-guessed why I hadn’t taken that job in the first place. 

I thought I had to leave my current job for a different job to get the result of having the life I wanted. So I interviewed with the director of the new hospital that I was hoping to work at. It seemed like a great fit. I was ready to go.

When I took the job, I felt relieved. I loved my colleagues. I loved being back into the delivery units. I loved every second of it. 

But we will always find reasons why we can’t be happy. Just switching the circumstance alone will never improve everything. And even though my schedule was improved in terms of time, I noticed I had to work more on weekends and holidays. 

The truth is, there are trade-offs no matter what we do. But at the time, I didn’t realize it. About four years into that job, I started feeling like things weren’t right, and I heard a pretty big corporation was looking for a neonatologist. I’d have set hours. No weekends or holidays. An increased salary. 

I believed that a set schedule with no holidays and weekends was what I wanted. So I changed my circumstance yet again. I took the job. I thought this would be the thing that would finally make me happy. I started the job. It was a very steep learning curve.

Around this time, I found coaching. It was a huge epiphany for me. I learned that we really do have control over our thoughts and situations. I realized I couldn’t just keep trialing a bunch of different positions with the hope that I’d eventually be happy. I had to find contentment from within and then make the decision to move on if I wanted to.

I decided that I wanted to be a coach. I went to coach training. I started coaching as a side gig. I was loving it. I wasn’t sure where it would go, but I started to see that this could be what I do all the time. Yet I realized I couldn’t just jump straight into having my own business. I couldn’t just change the circumstance without first getting really clear on a few things: how I want to feel and what result I wanted.

What happened? The coaching felt natural and good. I kept going. I took more clients. I created programs. I gained a great group of women physicians. They saw progress. The momentum moved. It felt right. I got so busy with my business that I didn’t’ know what to do with my full-time job.

Ultimately, I made the decision to leave my full-time non-clinical job because I found happiness. I wasn’t running away from it. But I had found what was driving me. Things made sense. I found clarity. I made the decision that I wanted to go in a different direction. 

That’s how you have to make decisions and changes. It’s about doing it because you’re ready to move forward with an open mind and go for it. Not running away or changing something in hope that things will get better elsewhere.

You Can Find Happiness Today

At this point, you’ve probably figured out the lesson of my story. Just changing a circumstance and leaving medicine won’t make you happier. That happiness has to come from the work you do within. 

Think about it. Whatever circumstance you find yourself in, how can you find contentment today? No matter what’s going on at work, with your boss, with your colleagues, with your patients, how can you find some kind of contentment right now?

The answer is working on your thoughts, choosing what you want to believe so you can gain the feeling that you want to feel. 

I promise you can find contentment somehow right here, right now, today. The question is are you willing to do so? We often indulge in thoughts that keep us trapped. It’s difficult to let go of the thoughts that are protecting our ego, like “I’m right. This shouldn’t have happened to me.” 

But all that does is create more pressure. It holds us back. It prevents us from finding the contentment we’re really seeking. While you may choose to leave your current situation, the first step is having a conversation with yourself saying, “I can find contentment today from within. How will I do that?”. 

When this comes together, the amount of mental space you’ll create will blow your mind. Our chief complaint for today was, “I can't be happy unless I leave clinical medicine. I can’t find contentment in my current situation.” But you can.

How to Find Contentment Today

So let’s find contentment today for right here and now. We can do that by finding a belief that creates contentment. For me, content is soft blue. It radiates from my chest. It’s slow and smooth. When I feel content, I want to pause. I want to smell the roses. I want to be intentional and deliberate. I want to honor all of the amazing things that I have in front of me here and now. I want to enjoy my life. 

I generate all these things I want to do by feeling content. From there, I can work backward and find the thought that’s making me feel content. For me, it’s, “This journey is going exactly as it’s supposed to. Everything that I’ve done has led me to this point. I had to go through all of this to learn that contentment has been staring me in the face all along.” As a result, I believe that I’m living my life on purpose. 

I hope you can find that contentment for yourself, too. 

“No-one can do it as well as me”

Do you have trouble delegating and asking for help? Do you say that you’re doing too much because nobody else can do it other than you? I personally do, and here’s why.

Asking for Help is Hard

What happens when you think that no one can do it and only you can? For me, it makes me feel a lot of pressure. I take the action of yelling and saying things I don’t want to say. I dwell. As a result, I believe that I’m really the only one who can do it. 

Sure, there will be certain things you’re the best at. But there are also thing that other people can do just as well as you. Maybe they won’t do it exactly like you, but you can probably train them to do it well enough.

To do so, you have to be willing to feel uncomfortable that something might get done not exactly as you’d have wanted it. As long as you can accept that, or you’re ready to have the conversation about how you want something to be done, it’ll be okay.

If you’re trying to grow as a person, to bring joy back into your life, to unload some of the unnecessaries, it’s worth the discomfort to see what’s on the other side. 

For example, about two years ago I started noticing that it was very difficult for me to keep up with the laundry. I asked myself why I wasn’t asking for help. It wasn’t that I thought I was the best person to do laundry. I was just afraid of the unknown. It was all a matter of me not being as flexible as I could be. 

In the end, I ended up going out of my comfort zone, asking around, and finding an amazing woman to do the laundry. And it completely changed my life. By being open to something that was uncomfortable, I learned a lot and overcame my hesitation to ask for help.

Why We Have Difficuty Asking for Help

Even though my husband Mark wants to help me, time and time again, I avoid asking him. Why? In my mind, I’m protecting him by not asking him to do something. I’m not willing to give up the control of knowing that if I do it, it’s going to get done. 

But by doing this, I’m not helping Mark. I’m setting myself up to resent Mark. In my mind, I’ve protected him, but I’m actually developing some irritation or resentment, because I’m thinking, “Why can’t he be doing this?”. 

I’m also enabling him. Because I can’t ask Mark for help, he’s more likely to rely on me. In return I start to resent him for not knowing how to do it himself. And all of this has nothing to do with him.

So maybe by “protecting” other people, we’re really hurting them. In fact, asking for help can really help the other person.

If you find it hard to ask for help, think about why. Does it lead to thoughts like, “I should be able to do this?” and “This shouldn’t be a big deal”? Often we think we’ll be weak if we can’t do it all. That it makes us not enough. 

But what if you just started by asking for help with something small? Even just something like pairing the socks. You might be surprised with how well it goes. After you do that, you’ll gain comfort with asking for help. It’ll make you feel empowered, not weak. 

It’ll create a sense of partnership, equality, and positivity in your relationships. Because part of relationship building is give and take. And it helps your loved ones feel more comfortable asking for help when they need it. By asking for help, you set an example and inspire others to do the same.

Obstacles to Asking for Help

When we believe we have to do everything, it’s a choice. But you have to overcome the belief that you have to do everything and give up control. You might find that watching somebody else do it will even be preferable or advantageous to doing it your own way. 

If we want to make a change and give others a chance to show that they too can do things, we have to communicate directly and give the other person the space to try. We have to express our needs.

How to Ask for Help

Nobody’s a mind reader. In order for somebody to help you how you want to be helped, you have to be ready to have conversations. 

For example, I recently started working with a new coach. It became immediately evident that we have very different styles. It made me uncomfortable. So I had to do something brave: I had to have a conversation. I had to ask what his vision was and be honest that I didn’t believe we see eye to eye. 

It was a straightforward conversation with a lot of silence and pauses. But it grew our ability to work together more. When we met each other halfway, the magic started flowing. We both had to be patient with each other, do the mature thing, and come together.

My thought of “nobody can do it right. I have to do it myself” came up in the situation. I could have stayed there. But I realized it wouldn’t be helpful to me or the people I serve to do so. I wanted to grow. And to grow, you have to let go. For me, letting go is getting rid of the desire for control. It’s communicating to work toward a mutual goal. 

The conversation is hard. We don’t want to hurt people. We don’t want to create discomfort. But if we’re willing to be open in conversation, we can achieve so much. 

If you need more help in your life, what’s holding you back? If you can get past this obstacle and ask for help, what could your life look like? What if you were willing to watch somebody else do the task instead of you? What if you gave them that trust? What if it worked out? 

There are people out there who want to help you the same way that you want to help people. If you’re scared, evaluate it. Start small. Go all in. Ask for he

“Everyone needs something from me”

This is such a common thing that happens to women physicians. In our profession, we’re always giving to everyone. We take care of our patients, our staff, our families, and our friends. It’s only natural that you feel stretched thin.

I don’t know about you, but when I think that everybody wants or needs something from me, it makes me feel burnt out and unworthy. Because if I believe that everybody is around me just because I can do something for them, I start to think, “I’m not enough. I need to do something for someone to prove my worth.”

So when we’re feeling unworthy, what comes up? Typically, it takes us down a negative spiral. We start thinking about all of the inadequacies we have in our life. We think, “Do my relationships even mean anything at all?” The result is that we continue to believe that we always have to be serving and giving.

So how do we recognize that this is happening? How do we reflect on it and move forward? How do we start setting and owning boundaries?

Why It’s So Hard to Set Boundaries

First of all, many of us don’t even know what a boundary actually is. Boundaries are a verbalized contract between two people. And if they’re a contract, they serve as protection. Setting a boundary protects a relationship, whether that be a friendship, marriage, parenthood, pet ownership, work relationships, or other family relationships. 

So why don’t we set more boundaries if they’re going to protect us? We don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. We don’t want to make people feel bad by telling them no. But the truth is that if we don’t communicate our boundaries to other people, in the long run, it’ll just damage the relationship by leading to resentment and disappointment.

Each party in a relationship sets an expectation for the other party. Without boundaries, these expectations go unspoken and unmet. Without communication, everybody grows apart, rather than together. 

How to Stop Thinking of Setting a Boundary as a Difficult Conversation

Think about somebody in your life who sets healthy boundaries. Do you resent them for communicating and standing up for what they want? Probably not. Chances are, you probably respect them. Maybe you even admire them.

When you can stand up for yourself and what you believe in and you have the guts to verbalize it, you’ll also be somebody who is excellent at setting boundaries. We have to be proud of setting boundaries. It’s about internalizing what you want and what makes you feel comfortable within each hat that you wear. 

Because the boundaries you set in each relationship will all be different. It’s with reflection ahead of time that you’ll decide how to show up and have the confidence to verbalize your boundaries. And ultimately the thought of “everybody needs something from me” won’t be so predominant anymore. Because when you set a boundary, you say, “This is exactly what you can expect from me.” It’s no longer about what others try to take from you, it’s about what you can give. Then there’s no ground for disappointment anymore. 

Setting Boundaries With Yourself

Now that you know what a boundary is and why it’s so important, you can start in a place where it’s not so uncomfortable to set boundaries: with yourself. Maybe you’re somebody who spends more time than you want on social media. You can set yourself the boundary of only spending one hour on social media a day. Verbalize your boundary. Write it down. Tell your friends. Do what you need to do to have accountability. 

It has to be realistic. If you don’t follow through on boundaries you set, you’ll lose confidence. Because when you set a boundary, you do so to improve your life. And if you don’t stick to it, you’re telling yourself that you don’t deserve the boundary and the improvement. 

So we have to be deliberate and specific about the boundaries we set, especially with ourselves. That’s the hard part. Then we can move on and get comfortable setting those boundaries with other people. 

Setting Boundaries in Relationships

Do you have a stressful relationship in your life? One in which you give more than you receive? That the other person always seems to need something? What qualities do you associate with this person? Typically, it’ll be not-so-favorable, which will strain the relationship. But if we can call out these qualities, it will take the power away from them. 

Let’s say you have a great aunt. You don’t live that far from her, so she always ask you to do things. She wants rides, and a place to stay, and a cat-sitter. So every time you see a phone call from her, you feel like you have to do something you don’t want to do. But you keep doing it, because she’s getting older, she doesn’t have anybody to talk to, and you want her to feel bad.

So you have to make a decision. Is it worth it to set a boundary? How much is this stressing you out? Maybe you can change your thoughts around the circumstance to, “I’m so blessed to have my great aunt in my life and I’m happy to help her as much as she wants.” 

But if you can’t, you have to set a boundary. That’ll protect the relationship, tell her what to expect from you, and what you’re willing to give. That puts you back in control.

You have to come up with a plan. Decide specifically what you’re willing to do and what you’re not willing to do. So next time she calls and wants to stay at your house for the next two weeks and you think it’s super inconvenient and you don’t want to do it, you can say, “No, that is a little much for my family right now. We’re not able to accommodate you.” 

Because your aunt is used to hearing yes from you, she may fight it. That’s why it’s so important to own how you’re showing up. Give your boundary and stick to it. You can’t go back on it. Even if she calls you tomorrow and asks again and again. If you go back on the boundary, you’ll backpedal instead of making strides in the relationship. You’ll have to work even harder next time. So it’s your responsibility to have your own back.

Looking Forward

If you become excellent at setting boundaries, you may just keep getting tested all the time. But that doesn’t have to be a negative thing. It’s just more practice for you to show up for you. And if you do that, you’ll generate feelings of worthiness. The more you do it, the more that thought of, “everyone needs something from me” will transition to “I make it obvious what I’m able to give to people.” 

Instead of feeling unworthy and overwhelmed, you’ll feel empowered and in control. What will your action be? You’ll keep setting boundaries. People - employees, patients, partners, and family - will know what to expect and you’ll keep living the life you want to.

You’ll be tested. You won’t be perfect. But your willingness to keep learning, trying, and improving will keep you growing and evolving.

“I Don’t Know How To Feel Better”

Typically, the whole reason why we engage in different activities is that we either have to or we want to do them for pleasure, to feel good. Think about how many things in your life you do just to feel better. 

But what if we had such a handle on our emotions that we could comfortably feel any emotion, even uncomfortable ones, and quickly shift into feeling however we want, whenever we want? Can you imagine your life if you could feel however you wanted to feel whenever you wanted?

But it takes work to get there.

Common Negative Emotions

Overwhelmed

In my coaching groups, a lot of people’s thoughts make them feel overwhelmed.

Overwhelm is when there seems to be a powerful force over us. This typically comes up when we think we have a million things to do. We think the thoughts, “I have nobody to help me. I don’t even know how to get started.” 

Close your eyes. Picture a time in your life when you were completely overwhelmed. For me, it was when I had my first daughter. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Breastfeeding wasn’t going well. I had post-partum depression. I couldn’t even keep up with washing the bottles. I had no idea how anybody actually enjoyed this. I had this tremendous sense of overwhelmed.

When I channel this feeling, I feel it at first in my chest, but it’s so powerful that it radiates into my stomach and shoulders. It’s a very powerful emotion for me. It’s a flashing, bright red. It’s actually very slow, but within that slowness, there is a burning sandpaper back-and-forth, quick movement. It makes me feel trapped. That’s how the negative spiral continues, by making you feel like you have no choice or power.

Typically, when we feel overwhelmed, we actually don’t do anything. We avoid anything at all that we potentially could do because we really believe there is no help or time. The result is that we keep believing that this is our life and we have no choice.  

How We Start Feeling Better

So what do we do now?

The first step is recognizing and calling it out. Just by saying out loud, “I’m overwhelmed,” you automatically take the intensity and the power out of that feeling by half. 

After you recognize, you have a decision to make. You can decide to stay in that place of overwhelmed, or you can choose to create a different thought that will create a different feeling.

When you practice this work long enough and at an intense level, you can say to yourself, “I’m overwhelmed and I want to feel content.” You figure out the opposite of what you’re feeling and channel that pretty immediately. You can just flip into the new feeling. 

But for now, to feel content, you have to think a new thought; you have to reframe. That means you have to come up with a thought, a belief, that makes you feel content. 

So what does content feel like in your body? For me, content is below my chest, in my stomach. It’s powerful, nearly as intense as overwhelmed. It’s an ocean blue and it’s slow, but with a repetitive, slow wave back and forth. 

I think, “Everything is as it should be. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Nothing has gone wrong. Everything is perfect. There is nothing I need.” 

Now that I deeply understand the difference between these opposing feelings, I have a choice to make. Which one do I want to feel?

Confusion

Confusion is by far one of the most common negative feelings. It’s a very indulgent emotion. It’s a cycle. We get confused about something, and get a little frustration, which amplifies the confusion. Then we just give up. The longer you stay in confusion, the more it’ll spiral. 

My school district is doing an amazing job at virtual schooling. But there are a lot of components and I found myself getting confused, thinking, “There are so many components. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know where to start.” I feel the confusion in my head, in my temporal region. It’s gray. It’s a medium speed, and it seems like it’s going to go on forever. It’s like rubber. 

When I feel confused, I want to vent. I want to create drama. My result is that I believe that things are too complicated and there’s something wrong with the system. I go from confusion to blaming. My ego thinks, “This confusion isn’t myfault. Something’s wrong with the system.”

And when we blame, we believe we have zero ability to change anything, and we’ll just have to stay confused, and we indulge in that confusion. As a result, we feel powerless and don’t make any changes. 

How We Start Feeling Better

Step one: we recognize we’re confused. We say, “I’m confused.” 

Step two: we make the decision. Do we want to stay here or do we want to change it? Staying confused isn’t such a big deal because when you recognize it, you can start gathering data. You can ask yourself, “Why? Why am I confused?” It’ll troubleshoot and get you the answer. 

Step three: reframe. If you don’t want to stay confused, where do you want to go instead? Certainty. Unlike confusion, certainty you can feel all day long. It triggers confidence. Instead of feeling powerless, you can feel certain and confident. 

For me, certainty is in my chest. It’s navy blue. It’s slow and smooth in texture. I could sit in certainty all day long.

When I feel certain, I think, “I know how to do this. I’ve done harder. I can figure this out. I’m capable. Nothing can stump me. I’ve got this.”

My actions as a result of certainty are not indulgent. I take action. The result is that I truly believe I can do absolutely anything. 

Anger

Believe it or not, anger feels pretty good in some people’s bodies. It releases dopamine.

The last time I was angry, it was when I got a letter in the mail from the IRS. It turned out my husband made a filing mistake and we owed $12,000. I was so angry, thinking, “I do so much. This is the only thing I asked my husband to do and this is what happened.” I felt anger in my head, my neck, my chest, and upper stomach: everywhere. I was fired up. It was red, fast, and flowing smoothly. 

My actions? I yelled quite a bit that day. And as a result, I believed that my husband should have met my expectation. 

So how did I make myself feel better? I called it out. “That’s anger.” I made the decision that I wanted to move on. I decided I wanted to reframe my anger as compassion.

Compassion is always the first step in healing. For me, it’s right in my heart, radiating out. It’s bright pink. It’s a perfect speed, not too slow or too fast. It feels like a fluffy blanket. When I feel compassionate, I think, “If we are all human, nothing has gone wrong. This is life. This is okay.” 

I can rewrite the story. I can think, “Mark didn’t want this to happen. He did everything he could to prevent it from happening but he did, and that’s life, and it’s okay.” 

As a result of compassion, I don’t yell. I’m soft-spoken and accepting. I start appreciating my relationship and myself. As a result, I believe that we’re all just doing our best all of the time. We never set out to hurt people, but as humans full of emotion, these things happen.

You can do this whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at this for a while. Spending some time on our emotions will transform and change your life. 

“I Don’t Have Confidence with Money”

A practicing gastroenterologist and money coach, Dr. Latifat Akintade helps women physicians have financial peace of mind, something that so many of us are unfortunately lacking. But she wasn’t always a money expert. 

When she graduated fellowship four years ago, Dr. Akintade knew nothing about money. She loved being a physician but when she looked around, she saw that there was so much burn-out in medicine, especially amongst women. Her goal was not to let that happen to her. She wanted to work because she wanted to, not because she had to. 

See, Dr. Akintade was achieving her goals - but slowly, feeling like she was depriving herself. After learning about the psychology of money, she was able to integrate what she learned, achieve her goals faster, and ditch the sense of deprivation. Now, she wants to help you do the same.

And achieving this isn’t just a matter of having confidence in the amount of money you have, clarifies Dr. Akintade. It’s having confidence in money - period. There’s not a certain amount of money you have to earn before you can get this peace of mind. It’s all about your mindset.

What Money Coaches Can Do

There are a lot of different reasons why somebody may choose to work with a money coach. Maybe you’re tired of living from paycheck to paycheck. Maybe you’re afraid of money or don’t enjoy your money. Or you want more money but you feel bad about that. Or you have misconceptions about how money should be spent. Basically, if there’s an imbalance between what you earn, what you have, and what you spend, a coach can be of help to you.

Your Money Story

Like a lot of things in life, we all have a money story that’s a product of all of our life experiences and the things we’ve learned - mostly unconsciously - throughout our lives. For example, one of Dr. Akintade’s clients is very financially wealthy by most standards, but sought out a money coach because she felt she still had a lot of money issues. Through her work with Dr. Akintade, this client realized that her money problems stemmed from a lack of self-love. Ultimately, she learned that how we relate to our money is a reflection of how we relate with ourselves and those around us.

When you start evaluating your money story, you might be surprised about what you find. After all, these are unconscious beliefs. One client of Dr. Akintade’s came to her saying she’s a physician who lives paycheck to paycheck. They discovered that the client doesn’t spend money on herself. Rather, every time somebody is upset with her, she spends money on others. Essentially, she was trying to buy love. Again, here, the solution came down to working on self-love; when you love yourself, you don’t need others to love you.

The reality is, when it comes to fixing your relationship with money, it may not require conversations about money. Rather, you may need to talk about everything else first to get to the bottom of the true problem.

Scarcity Mindset

What we don’t realize is that the baggage that we’re carrying with us affects more than just what we make, but also how we enjoy what we have. That’s why it’s worth making investments in ourselves. That’s what makes expenses like coaching - whether they be a life coach or a money coach - so valuable to us.

When you have a scarcity mindset, saying things like “I can’t afford this,” it causes you to do things like hoard money which stops you from investing it - whether it’s in yourself or in the market. The result? You don’t have money. It’s a bit of a cycle. You think you don’t have money and, as a result, you don’t have it. 

The same way that there are people who don’t know how to have money, there are those who hoard money. Some are so afraid of decreasing their cash reserve that they don’t invest or pay off their debt. 

People will also often say things like, “I don’t have the money.” But what does that mean? Well, it’s up to you to define. According to Dr. Akintade, as long as you have enough money to afford your basics, you have enough. From there, you choose what you spend your money on. It’s like with time. When you say you don’t have enough, it’s not usually because you actually don’t have any time. It’s because you’re choosing not to spend your time in this way. Money is the same way; it’s all about putting your money where your values lie.  

How to Become More Confident With Money

Somewhere along the line, fear starts to seap into some people about money. They worry they’re going to mess something up. 

The first part of building money confidence is learning to overcome that fear or making the choice just to allow it to come along with you on the ride. The second part is breaking the taboo of talking about money, findind people who can talk about money openly, whether it’s saving, spending, or goal-setting. Having people who are understanding and like-minded to be your champions is crucial. 

In fact, focusing on and writing down our goals can be incredibly helpful because the more we achieve our goals, the more confident we are. Before you know it, you start building a muscle that makes you feel more confident with accomplishing your goals.

Objectively rating yourself on a scale of zero to ten where ten is amazing confidence and zero is “I suck at everything money-related” can be helpful. If you’re currently at a one and want to be a four, you can make a plan for how to make that jump. 

Dr. Akintade’s bottom line? It’s all about having choices. You can make as much or as little as you want to make. 

“I Don’t Know How To Feel My Feelings”

Typically when my clients come to me, it’s because they’re having a problem. I hear complaints like “I’m drinking too much,” “I’m eating too much,” “I can’t stop snacking,” “I’m over-exercising,” “I’m undereating.” Which really means, “I’m doing something that’s allowing me to not feel my feeling. 

These habits are all behaviors that we do to get rid of a feeling we don’t want to feel. It’s called buffering: using an external source to create neutrality or even pleasure so that we can get rid of uncomfortable feelings. We do it because our feelings feel uncomfortable, but also because we just haven’t practiced feeling them enough. 

Frustration

Recently, a client described a situation with her children in which she would get really frustrated and just want to scream. But she couldn’t name the feeling. So we talked about the thoughts that were going through her mind. Things like, “Why can’t they just do what I ask? Why does everything have to be so cumbersome?”. The thoughts told my client that her expectations weren’t being met. How frustrating.

So after she learned to name the feeling, we worked on learning how to describe how it feels in her body. Knowing how our emotions show up in our individual bodies allows us to have great insight into our lives. Eventually, you’ll be able to know exactly what’s going on with you when you feel a particular feeling. Instead of saying, “I just feel lousy and I don’t know why,” you’ll be able to understand what’s happening.

For my client, her head felt like it was going to explode. The feeling felt burnt orange, fast, and sandpapery. And it makes sense that a burnt orange, high-pressure, fast, sandpaper feeling in your head makes you crave release as fast as possible, which my client did in the form of yelling at her kids. Then an hour later, she would beat herself up for it and go into a downward spiral of guilt, comparison, and self-doubt.

So how could she allow the frustration without giving into an action that she wouldn’t be happy about?

How to Process Emotion

The first step is just allowing the feeling so you can later channel it into something different. Allowing the feeling is letting your guard down. It’s letting the feeling in, allowing the frustration to dissipate throughout your entire body. You’re not avoiding or resisting it. It’s knowing that the feeling can’t hurt you. 

What if you can’t allow the feeling to dissipate through your body? If it stays all jammed up in your head? Well, that means you’re resisting the feeling. You’re saying, “No, frustration, you can’t come in.” Allowing it in means it can come through your head, flow through your body, and leave. But with resistance, you’re building more and more pressure that you’ll eventually have to release.

When we allow the feeling to come in, it can go away much quicker than if you resist it. All you have to do is believe that it won’t hurt you. 

Restlessness

A lot of my clients come to me when they’re buffering a feeling they don’t want to feel with overeating or overdrinking. Physicians, in particular, often feel restless. They have a million things to do and have to do them perfectly because lives are on the line. They’re expected not to make mistakes and can never take a break. It’s a lot of pressure, and it can cause restlessness.

We usually feel restlessness in our upper stomach. It’s fast. It’s orange or red.  It’s slippery. You can’t really catch it. So you’re chasing after it. You can’t slow down. You wonder if this is normal. This is the type of feeling that leads to buffering. Eventually, you can’t deal with it anymore. 

I had a client who buffered by overeating for decades. She had the hardest time slowing down the feeling of restlessness. So we made a deal. We said she could eat anything she wanted whenever she wanted. But if she noticed restlessness in her body, she had to allow it to slow down before she proceeded. That was the only rule.

When she allowed restlessness to dissipate in her body, she could understand what she was thinking. Thoughts like, “I should be doing something. I should have done that. I shouldn’t have skipped my workouts this week.” She was using the thought distortion of should statements, which is a way of telling ourselves we are not good enough. All of that led to tremendous restlessness and drove her to eat. 

Once she started allowing this to be there, she would recognize and reset and then decide if she wanted to reframe her emotion or her thought. She’d allow the restlessness to dissipate and notice right away that the intensity of the feeling went down significantly. 

Guess how many times she went to the pantry after the mastered this skill? Zero. As long as she could allow the feeling and decrease its intensity, she never went to the pantry, curing a decades-long history of overeating to overcome restlessness - and she did it immediately. Realizing that this was normal, that she could feel any feeling, and that she could have any result she wants, changed her life forever. 

How to Accept New Feelings

So let’s say you get really good at recognizing, feeling, and dissipating your feelings, and you’re ready to really take ownership of your life. Did you know that you can flip into any emotion you want, any time you want? 

It’s all about recognizing an emotion you don’t want to have, calling it out, realizing why you’re having that emotion, and deciding how you want to feel instead. 

Let’s say we’re restless and we want to feel calm. Calm is my favorite feeling. It’s in my heart. It’s soft blue and breezy.

For me to feel calm, I have to understand what thoughts make me feel calm. For me, calm is “There’s nowhere I have to be.” “There’s nothing that needs to get done.” “I can choose to slow down and still live the exact life I want to live.”

If I make the decision to feel calm, I go to that place. I feel calm in my body. I let it right into my heart. I think, “Everything is perfect. I’m perfect right here. No changes have to be made.” And what action does it make me want to take? Go outside, sit in a lounge chair, and pet my dog. Not running into the pantry and snacking. 

When you recognize, call out, and allow your emotions, you have all the power to choose how you want to feel. You can have anything in your life that you want. It all starts with feeling your feelings.

“I Have Life Circumstances that Are Ruining Everything”

I want you to close your eyes and think about something that’s happened in your life. Maybe it’s something you wish hadn’t happened. Do you believe that the circumstance was the problem?

When I was in college, I played softball and was pre-med. And I was absolutely miserable. I didn’t get along with my coach. I felt alone and isolated. I just wanted to quit. And my dad did not want me to. He wanted to show me that walking away wasn’t always the answer. So I blamed my dad, and I blamed the college: everything but myself. I didn’t take ownership of what was happening. I thought it was happening to me and I had no control over it. I thought my circumstance was making me depressed. 

But the circumstance doesn’t actually make us feel a certain way. Being at the university and playing softball wasn’t making me feel depressed. It was my thoughts about the circumstance. 

The Thought Model

See, this is how it works. We have a circumstance, which can be a person, a place, a thing. The circumstance is what we have thoughts about. It’s these thoughts that create our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions and then our actions get us our results. 

So let’s say a circumstance is my goldfish passing away. It makes me feel a bit guilty, and I think that I didn’t feed the fish, so this is my fault. Out of guilt, I think of all the things I could have done differently, all the times I forgot to feed the fish, and I forget about all the good things I did. Ultimately, the result is that I’ll believe that I’m the reason for my fish’s death. 

If you’re not educated in the thought model, you’d think I was feeling guilty because the fish is belly-up. But, that’s not it. I feel guilty because I thought I caused it. 

Identifying the Circumstance

Let’s say you have a job. At this job, you feel like you’re being picked on a lot, possibly bullied. You don’t feel like you have a lot of strong connections. They’re asking you to work longer hours and you haven’t gotten your paycheck in a month. A lot of the time, my clients would describe this circumstance as “my job is toxic.”

But the circumstance is just that you have a job. You get to think whatever you want about the job. But those thoughts are what will lead to your result. Thoughts like, “I’m not fitting in,” “I’m isolated,” “I’m being asked to do more than I should be.” 

The reason why we spiral when we have a heated situation is that we’re generating hundreds of thousands of thoughts about it. And you can’t run through a thought model about each of them. 

But you can start by picking one. Let’s say you choose the thought “I am being asked to do more than I should be.” The feeling is probably frustration or disrespect. So what actions would you potentially take as a result of these feelings?

Most likely, you’ll do a lot of venting. You’ll think about leaving your job but you won’t. And, ultimately, you’ll make zero changes because you’re staying in that place of thinking these things are happening to you. 

But you can be in control of your emotions and thoughts. The only step you have to take to do so is understanding what a circumstance truly is. 

Changing the Circumstance

We all want to change the circumstance. We think it’ll make everything get better automatically. Does it? Well, let’s take a look at an example. 

When I was in full-time clinical medicine, I was away from my family a lot and doing a lot of 24-hours shifts.

Circumstance: full-time clinical neonatology 

Thought: “I am away from my family too much.”

Feeling: sadness

Actions: blaming the job, venting, complaining about choosing the wrong profession 

Result: I believed my job made me really sad. 

Then an opportunity presented itself for me to be a national medical director at a company. I could work from home. The pay was better. I had a set schedule, no weekends, no holidays. It sounded pretty amazing. So what did I do? I changed the circumstance. 

Suddenly, I was working from home. I was seeing my family all the time, but I wasn’t spending time with them. The nanny was. So I had a lot of thoughts. “Why do I have to work? This job is taking over. Now I’m working until 8 at night.”

I wasn’t able to accept that these were all thoughts about my circumstance; I wanted to change my circumstance. I spun on that hamster wheel for years.

It wasn’t until learned about life coaching that I understood this was about me, not any of those jobs. And I had the ability to decide how it would go. The answer wasn’t continuing to switch my circumstances. I had to accept where I was - that my reality was all on me - to attain the clarity to understand when to change my circumstance again and become a life coach. But I never ran away from a circumstance again. 

Limiting Beliefs

Do you have a circumstance that you keep trying to change? The answer is not to change it. It’s to change your thoughts about it. If you’re not willing to, it just means you’re not ready. You have to take the time to break down some of the limiting beliefs that may have been ingrained in you since you were a little kid.

Growing up, I saw my parents a lot.  I had the belief that a good mom is home all the time with her kids, because that’s what I saw. This is what led me to think that my job was making it impossible for me to be a good mom. 

If we’re willing to do it, tracing back your limiting beliefs can give you greater awareness of yourself to be able to start creating new beliefs. If you have the same thoughts coming up over and over, there may be a limiting belief at the root. See how far you can go back. Where did your thoughts originate? That awareness will take the power away from your limiting beliefs. 

Today, I want you to realize you are in complete control of your life. You can have any result you want. If there’s a circumstance that you believe is causing a huge problem, go a step further. Evaluate your thoughts. It will change everything for you. 

Writer’s Note: In order to keep this to about 1100 words, I had to cut out the thought model example about relationships as well as several other sections such as the explanation of emotional childhood and adulthood, more detail about the college example in the opening, and more detail about the different jobs Dr. Novitsky tried before life coaching. 

“My Urges Are Out of Control”

If you’ve ever taken some time to sit with your emotions and figure out how your feelings actually feel, then you’ll know what an urge feels like. If you were to close your eyes right now, think about what it feels like to have an urge. Where in your body is this feeling? For me, it’s in the pit of my stomach and the color is bright red. It’s moving super fast and it makes me want to do something, anything. It’s like I have all this pressure built up and it’s uncomfortable and I just want it to go away. 

Not a pretty feeling. No wonder we start to feel like our urges are out of control. 

Thoughts That Create Urgency

So let’s dig into this a bit deeper. We know that our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings create our actions and our actions create our results. What are the thoughts that generate feelings of urgency?

Maybe it’s something like, “This day is too much to handle. I can’t even deal “ or “Today is a full schedule” or “Oh geez, Sunday is here. That means Monday's tomorrow.”

As innocent as they may be, these thoughts are unsettling and uneasy. They tell you that you can’t sit still for another minute, you have to do something, so you build up the feeling of urgency. It has to be taken care of right now. 

Buffering

Typically, we want urges to go away. That’s where buffering, when we use an external something to take away an uncomfortable feeling, comes in. Typically buffering behaviors secrete feel-good hormones in our brain, like dopamine and serotonin. And when you have an urge and it feels really uncomfortable and you just want it to go away, your brain will remember the things you did in the past to feel better, whether that’s food, alcohol, shopping, exercise, whatever it may be. 

I have a client who first came to me because she was buffering with overeating and, as a result, gained some weight and was not feeling good about her life. But talking about urges led to a huge breakthrough for her. She realized that when she drove home from work, she would get to a particular stop sign. If she could drive past that stop sign and not have the feeling of wanting to raid her pantry, she knew she’d be fine. But if she got there and had urges or thoughts of “I’m not getting through tonight without overeating,” she was done. That stop sign determined her evening. 

So we made a deal. My client was allowed to give in to her urges, but only after she could slow her restlessness down first. That meant she had to recognize that she was restless, pull that feeling into her body and notice where it was, what it felt like, and had to allow that feeling. She knew she was resisting it if she wanted her treats even more and the feeling was so powerful she couldn’t possibly sit with it for one more minute. Guess how many times she proceeded to eat her treats after she processed the feeling? Never. To this day. If she can slow down the feeling, she doesn’t give into it.

When my client learned to sit with the discomfort and process her restlessness, the stop sign lost its power. She went from a 20-year history of overeating, giving in to urges, and buffering, to it completely going away. She’d thought that this was just a part of her, that she didn’t have control over her life. But that just wasn’t true. Even though we may be doing certain behaviors for years, my client learned we can make changes almost immediately. 

Allowing the Feeling

For some reason, humans respond to negative or red, bouncy, uncomfortable feelings by wanting to get rid of them. But the power lies in being willing to feel that feeling. Because anything that could happen in your life will only create a feeling. If you can handle any feeling, you can handle anything. 

This cognitive thought work - the ability to tap into our automatic thoughts and identify the limiting belief system that is not serving us well and is holding us back - is magic. If you have any bad habit or want to take on a new positive habit, this is the type of work that will make it happen. 

When you get to know the feeling, call it out and recognize it, and you are there in the moment with that feeling, you can watch it dissipate. It loses its power right before your eyes. All you have to do is acknowledge it and not push it away. Say “Hey restlessness, how are you?” You get into your body and you just sit with it.

What this does is stall the behavior that you’d typically take. It makes you pause. Pausing disrupts the programming that would have led you in the past to go straight to the pantry. That pause alone will allow you to feel the feeling, watch it go away, and not want to pursue the behavior. Over time, when you feel restless or urgent, your brain won't even think about the pantry because you will have retrained your brain. It’s all about the pause.

If you don’t like the feeling of restlessness and you push it away, it’ll escalate. The minute you resist it, it amplifies and gets even more powerful. On the other hand, sitting with it will give the power back to you. 

Step One in Overcoming Your Urges

Believe it or not, taking the first step to overcoming your urges is that simple. Recognize that you have an urge. Feel how it feels. Understand the associated thoughts and what the urge makes you want to do. Know that you have power over your urges, you’re in control. You can do anything you want to do, even rewire your brain. Maybe you’ve been dealing with this for years and feel so overwhelmed, like it can never change, but it can. You can do this.

Chief Complaint: “I Don’t Know How To Advocate For Myself” with Dr. Linda Street

Self-advocacy is essential to our functioning both as physicians and as human beings who want to grow. And when it comes to advocacy and negotiation, Dr. Linda Street is the woman to go to. A maternal-fetal medicine specialist by day and a negotiation life coach by night, Dr. Street was inspired to give back to others by her own journey successfully negotiating an additional $65,000 raise in one year in her academic job. For her, negotiations were critical for her growth, opening so many doors for her career and life. 

These skills have helped both Dr. Street and her clients boost their earnings - and more - significantly. That’s because negotiations are everywhere. We negotiate with ourselves, our cable providers, and our employers. The same few key steps can be used in every negotiation to achieve the same results. 

Mindset and Self-Worth

For Dr. Street, it’s all about starting with mindset. How can you look at the negotiation like you can’t fail? That no matter how you come out on the other side, you win. Because the one variable we can’t control is how the other party responds. 

At the end of the day, if you approach a negotiation knowing your value and believing you’ll come out a winner, you will. Because a negotiation is just a discussion with the goal of making an agreement. That’s it. You don’t need a master’s degree to do it.

If you think of a house, it doesn’t matter how pretty the walls are if you don’t have a solid foundation. For every discussion you have, your self-worth is that foundation. If you don’t value yourself, you can’t expect others to value you. That’s where the thought work and confidence-building come in. 

Negotiation 101

When a client comes to Dr. Street with something to negotiate, she breaks it down into several steps. First, the question, “What are all the things your brain is offering about this negotiation that make you want to puke?” If your boss is a jerk, or the organization doesn’t value you, or they never give anybody a raise - all those things that are in your way - just get them all out there. 

You don’t have to be a world-class negotiator to make progress. All it takes is recognizing your worth and looking at a Venn diagram of what you offer and what your institution wants. If you can find an overlap between what you want and offer and what they want and offer, you can shift the conversation from “I need an OB/GYN” to “I need this particular person.” That increases your leverage and the perception of loss that the other party has if they don’t make this deal happen. 

There are two numbers in a negotiation: the bottom line (“I have to have this or I’m not going to say yes”) and the stretch number. If you focus on your bottom line, that’s where you’re going to end. If you focus on a stretch goal, you’ll get a lot closer to it. Men don’t tend to have difficulty picking a high-enough stretch goal, but women usually do. That’s what makes it all the more important for women to learn these crucial negotiation skills.

As a female physician, you’ve already overcome so many hurdles to get to where you are. In comparison, negotiation is a piece of cake.

Going Beyond Salary

Very rarely are there situations where the salary is fixed. But if you are in that scenario, think about what else is negotiable. Maybe you want to work a four-day workweek. It’s a 20% difference in time, but will make a 50% difference in your life. Or maybe you want to have an office near your clinic as opposed to eight buildings away. 

There are little things that may not necessarily be financial that will impact your life that you can ask for. Even in those jobs where everybody gets the same salary, there is room to negotiate things that matter to you. A reserved parking space may be a low-hanging carrot that the organization doesn’t mind giving you at all, but will make you very happy.

Who Should Be Negotiating Their Contracts?

To put it simply: everybody. 

If you can honestly say that you go to work every day, that your pay reflects your value, that you enjoy your work-life balance, you don’t need a scribe - that everything is great - then don’t negotiate. You have a perfect job. But if you’re like most of us, there’s room for improvement. Know that if the only options you’re considering are to take the job as is or to quit, you’re skipping all the in-between. 

What If You Need This Job?

If you’re the primary breadwinner in your family, the idea of negotiating and potentially losing out on a job can be terrifying. But this job you’re doing now isn’t the only way to pay your bills. It’s hard to accept, but it’s true. There are so many different ways to earn income as a physician that a 9-to-5 day job (let’s be real, more like 12-hour a day job) is not the only way to get there. There are plenty of other opportunities, like locums, board review, and coaching, just as a start. 

Being scared of having the negotiation is normal, but the reality isn’t as fearsome as you’d think. Even if your goal is to stay in the job you currently have, as long as you approach your negotiation from a positive place, they’re not going to think you’re greedy, say no, and fire you. All you have to do is come in with a good mindset, offer your market value, and state what you need. No lawyers and courtrooms necessary. In fact, it’s better not to go into that hardball negotiation zone, at least not for physicians.

How Negotiation Can Change Your Life

Once you’ve gotten over the fear and gone through the negotiation process, the results will reverberate throughout your whole life. You’ll prove to yourself that if you think a certain way and it impacts your actions, you can have a different result. That foundation can apply to literally anything. 

It just takes embracing that discomfort. Because the reality is, both options are uncomfortable. You can be uncomfortable because you chose to learn the skillset and try negotiating, or because you’re being undervalued in your job. It’s your choice.

Success in Negotiation

A success story looks different for everybody. Sometimes, even just getting to the point of being willing to ask for more despite it being uncomfortable is a win. But, of course, numerical results are nice, too. So here’s an anecdote to inspire you.

It’s never too soon to start negotiating. Often, new fellows and residents interviewing for their first jobs are just so thankful to get any job that they just take their first offer. After all, they’re used to being told that ten other people would happily take their place. But when it comes to attending jobs, there are often more jobs than there are people to fill them. 

That’s how Dr. Street recently managed to work with a woman fresh out of residency to successfully get an extra $50,000 on her contract, a sign-on bonus, and higher production numbers - all for her first job. There’s no reason you can’t do the same. 

If you want to take back power in your own career in medicine, you can find Dr. Street at www.simplystreetmd.com. Whether you want to work with her one-on-one or learn on your own terms with her DIY product, the results can be life-changing. 

“I Am Exercising So Much and the Scale Is Going Up”

Our intentions are always so good, right? We decide we’re going to get healthier. We have an exercise plan. We’re all in. We’ve made the commitment to ourselves. It’s day one. We do it. We tell all our friends. Day two. We do it again. We’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. Day three. We’re on fire. Our clothes are fitting a little bit better. We’re feeling pretty energetic. Already we can tell the difference. So we think, “What the heck? Let me jump on the scale. Am I losing weight?”.

And… we’ve gained two pounds. 

Skrrt. let’s back it up a little. One of the most important things is to decide what your goal is and how you’ll measure it. If your goal is for the scale to go down, obviously that will be your focus. But let’s say you want to see a body composition change: to be leaner overall and gain some muscle mass. In that case, the scale can’t be your only measurement tool. 

But let’s say you do see an initial increase in weight in the first week after starting a new exercise plan. Most likely when you start an exercise routine, you’re trying to eat better, as well. That’s why people often feel disappointed in this scenario. They’re thinking, “I’m exercising, I’m eating right, and gosh darn it, I’ve gained weight.” What is that all about, anyway? 

Reasons for the Initial Weight Gain

Inflammation

When you put your body under stress - which exercise does - you induce some inflammation. Our body heals by sending white blood cells and different co-factors to help. And with that comes some fluid retention. That can be the case even when you don’t necessarily feel muscle soreness. 

Glycogen and Water Retention

After you work out, your muscles are primed to store glycogen. With glycogen, your body also stores water. So with a new exercise routine, when your muscles aren’t used to what you’re doing, your body will take up a lot of glycogen and therefore also retain a lot of water. That can absolutely account for an increase on the scale. (The plus side? This also makes your muscles look bigger, which is why you may already start to look better.) 

Muscle

Realistically speaking, that weight gain in your first three or four days of a new workout routine most likely won’t be muscle. It’s too soon. However, it’s an indication that muscle is about to grow, which is great news!

So how do we keep going despite the potentially discouraging result of seeing an initial weight gain? Well, let’s go back to what we said about goal-setting and measuring. If you’re working toward a change in body composition, I highly recommend tracking changes in your body using photos. You may even see a change in your pictures in as little as one week. 

Reasons for Your Weight Being Up Later On

Four weeks in, after consistent working out and healthy eating, if your weight is still stable or up a few pounds, there are a few things you’ll have to think about. 

Water

If you’re not drinking enough water, your body will store as much fluid as possible to keep its electrolytes in check. So a good guideline is to drink half of your body weight (in pounds) every day, though if you drink caffeine, you’ll want to drink even more water. So the more water you have every day, the less fluid you’ll retain.

Sleep

Sleep affects ghrelin, which is the hormone that makes you hungry. If you’re not getting the recommended hours of sleep, around seven to nine hours a night, you’ll potentially have an increase in ghrelin and feel hungrier. And when we’re exhausted, our upper brain isn’t going to want to make good decisions. Our lower, primal brain will want to make us feel better and we’ll end up reaching for the sugariest, fattiest foods we can find. 

Increased Appetite

Exercise can and will make your appetite increase and it can be easy to unintentionally eat back all of the extra calories we’re burning. That’s why, before we even embark on a body transformation, it’s so important to have a good handle on our hunger scale.

Muscle

Women can expect to gain, on average, about a pound of muscle in one month when following a strategic exercise and diet plan.

Takeaways

It may not seem that way, but even small changes are worth celebrating. If you’re down “only” half a pound in scale weight after four weeks, don’t be disappointed. You could be like one of my clients, who gained 1.5 pounds of muscle and lost two pounds of fat for a net loss of “only” half a pound, but looked significantly different in photos. We often don’t realize just how much space one pound of fat takes up.

That’s why it’s so important to have more than one way of measuring your progress. It can be a Bod Pod, photos, calipers, a DEXA scan - so many different things. Sure, weigh yourself, but if your goal is body composition change, you’ll need another way to measure.

So, let’s review.

1. Know your goals and how you’re measuring them. 

2. Is your appetite in check? How is your food quality? Notice what activities are making your hunger increase. Eating calories is much easier than burning them. You’ll have to be able to track your hunger and how much food you need to be satisfied. 

3. Trust your body, your coach, and your information. Don’t freak out if you see your weight go up on the scale. 

4. Make sure your sleep and water are in check. If you know you’ll have a late shift and be sleep-deprived, make a plan for how you’ll deal with it.

5. Be patient. This is probably the hardest one. Keep your expectations realistic and enjoy the journey. If you’re having fun, who cares how long this takes? 

As you’re achieving your health goals, get in touch with yourself on a mental and physical level. Clear some headspace to figure out what you want. What are your passions? What do you want to do? Your life shouldn’t fit into your food and exercise; your food and exercise should fit into your life. There’s more to life than a perfect diet and exercise. Know your why. Why are you doing this? That’s what will allow you to enjoy life and actually maintain the amazing results that you achieve. 

Chief Complaint: “I Am Having Difficulty Getting More Toned”

If you want to get more toned, what does that mean you have to do? When I ask my clients what “more toned” means to them, almost all of them tell me that they are going to weigh less on the scale. Typically, we think getting more toned means we have to exercise, diet, and by default will see a drop on the scale and that’s how we measure our success of getting more toned.

So let’s say you’re exercising and eating right and you lose weight on the scale. Do you think that it’s working and that you’re getting more toned? People will typically say, “Yes. 100%.” But what if you’re eating right and exercising and step on the scale and have gained weight? Most of my clients will tell me, “This isn’t working. I’m super frustrated. I’m not getting more toned.”

To be clear, these are two very different things. We can lose weight on the scale and what that means is we have less gravitational pull on the earth. We could have lost fat, muscle, or water. Now, let’s say we weigh more on the scale. That means we have more gravitational pull on the earth. This could mean that we’ve gained fat, water, or muscle. 

That’s why I don’t even use the scale when I’m helping somebody achieve a goal of getting more toned. I have to see photographs. That’s how I can tell if there’s progress being made. 

Ultimately, there are three ways to look more toned, all of which are perfectly fine. It’s all about deciding which one that you want. 

First Scenario

Let’s say that your goal is to lose fat, decrease your weight on the scale, and look more toned. That means you want to maintain muscle mass and lose fat by creating a deficit in your nutrition. That is how you’ll look more toned. 

Second Scenario

Maybe you want to look more toned, but you’re less concerned about the scale. This is usually the most common thing I see in my transformation groups. If the scale stays the same, that means you are going to lose fat and gain muscle. This can be the most challenging one, because you have to have the genetics to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Mesomorphs are the ones who will probably be able to do that. 

Third Scenario

I don’t see this that often with my clients, but it’s an interesting one worth thinking about: wanting to look more toned and being okay with the scale going up. Very few clients are totally okay with gaining weight. But if they’re an ectomorph body type, then if we provide the proper nutrition and exercise, their weight will go up. That means maintaining fat and gaining muscle mass. There are some women who will put on some weight and look way more toned because they’re just gaining muscle, and that takes a different nutritional approach. 

My Story

Growing up, I was quite athletic. And whenever I started getting more toned, if I saw the scale stay the same or go up, I would stop what I was doing and start restricting my food. I wasn’t willing for the scale to stay the same. Because I'm a mesomorph, I don’t have that hard of a time putting on muscle and losing fat, but my weight will always stay the same. 

I just turned 40. At this point in my journey, my body fat is on the lower end of my range. My photos show defined abs, a defined back, and a pretty significant amount of muscle mass, because I lift weights and eat balanced nutrition. But I also drink wine and eat cake and live my life. It’s all about balance.

It may come as a surprise when you see my photos, but my body is almost in the overweight BMI range. I share this because it provides an example of being able to be toned but not necessarily weigh how much you think you should. 

About ten years ago, if I had these photos and looked at my scale weight, I would not have been satisfied. Today, I look at the scale and think, “Okay, cool.” Ten years ago I would not have been cool. I would have stopped eating cake, beaten myself up, and tried to reach a different number. And, ultimately, I would have looked less toned because I’d restrict my intake so much that I’d lose both fat and muscle mass.

So how do you proceed to get the results you want?

First Scenario

If you want to look more toned but for the scale to go down, you’ll focus on maintaining muscle mass by fueling effectively. Based on all the evidence, the best results are with balanced nutrition. Being strategic will be key, and the timing of your training and eating is going to be crucial. Fasting can work, but you have to be really strategic that during your eating window you’re eating a balanced diet. Ultimately, you have to pick what’s going to work for your lifestyle. There are so many ways to get the result you want. Every individual is different and responds differently. 

Second Scenario

If you want to gain muscle and maintain the same weight, you have to be on point with your protein intake. It’s all about making sure you’re listening to your hunger scale, eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, and having protein at every meal while also getting carbohydrates and fat. The idea is to fuel the metabolism. Think of it as feeding the muscle and slowly burning fat. Over time this scenario will result in scale weight loss, but it will take at least six to eight weeks for that to happen, so don’t stop when it gets frustrating. That’s usually when the results are going to come.

Third Scenario

What about if you’re okay with the scale going up? This is a fun place for most people to be, but it’s not a free-for-all. It’s not about eating whatever you want. Maintaining a balanced nutritional approach will be what puts on the lean mass. This is a focus on getting enough calories, with maybe eating over instead of at a deficit, and using exercise to help build that lean muscle. 

Here’s the bottom line. Have an honest conversation with yourself. Dive into what you want. Understand your body type. It all comes down to accepting your unique body. If you can do that, you’ll blow your mind with the results that you get.

Chief Complaint: “I can’t stick to an exercise routine.”

I want to tell you a story about one of my clients, Daisy. One day, she came to me and said, “Ali, I dislike exercise. I don’t want anything to do with it. I want to be a person that exercises but I just don't like it.” Now, there are a lot of reasons why we have difficulty sticking to an exercise routine, but it always starts here, with our thoughts. Daisy’s thought was “I dislike exercise.” When she had that thought, she felt pretty discouraged, so the action was that she didn’t exercise.

So why did Daisy have that thought of “I dislike exercise”? Well, our automatic thoughts come from experience. For Daisy, one of the only reasons she’d ever exercised was for losing weight and changing her body. She never approached exercise from the point of view of it feeling amazing in her body. She stopped believing in exercise as being good for her and started thinking of it in an appearance sense.

So if you have this thought or similar thoughts, go back and ask yourself how this thought developed. Was exercise an important part of childhood for you? Adolescence? College? Often, we start wanting to change how we look in adolescence and turn to exercise not as a positive thing but as a punishment or a way to change ourselves.

That’s what happened to me. When I was a young kid, our family used to take four-mile walks every Sunday and go out to dinner afterward. So I had a positive early association with exercise. But then when I hit my teens, I got tired of being the bigger friend so I decided to lose some weight by restricting food and overexercising. The reality is that I was a good athlete, being recruited to play softball in college, so my strength and size were a positive thing. But I didn’t see it that way. I thought something was wrong with me, so I had a shift from exercise being a positive thing in my life to being something I had to do to change me.

Now, back to Daisy. See, there’s something cool out there called the baseline minimum approach to exercise. You pick a small amount of exercise that you’re willing to commit to on a weekly basis and make it happen no matter what. You don't have to start running three days a week or weight training five days a week. If you’re new to exercise or have a hard time sticking to an exercise routine, it’s about setting such a low number that it’d be almost impossible for you not to complete.

So I asked Daisy what her baseline minimum amount of exercise is that she could commit to no matter what. And she committed to three ten-minute exercise sessions a week. That’s where she started. And when she had automatic thoughts of “that’s not good enough, what’s that gonna do?”, I said, “it’s okay, just go with it.”

That’s step number one: make a commitment to something small. Ask yourself “what am I willing to do to say that I’m a person who exercises?”. For you to have the result of sticking to an exercise routine, you’re going to have to take action to make that happen. So that could be scheduling your workout for right now, today. It could be asking your partner to keep you accountable. It could be finding a workout buddy. 

And remember, actions come from feelings, which come from thoughts. So to do those actions, you have to feel a certain way: motivated. And the thought that’s going to make you feel motivated isn’t “I don’t like exercise.” It’s more like, “Exercise is good for me. Exercise can help my health. Exercise feels good.” You have to buy into the thought that’s going to make you take action. 

Step two is having realistic expectations. Unless you want to gain a lot of muscle, we’re not thinking of exercise in terms of what it can do for our appearance. We’re focusing on what it can do for our health and function. Start by having the honest conversation of “Why are you exercising? Or why don’t you exercise?”. From there you can set a realistic expectation. 

Maybe your “why” is “I don't’ have anything in my life right now that makes me feel really good. I just want to feel alive.” So that “why” may lead you to try an hour-long walk and reflect on your thoughts. You’ll set your routine based on what will make you feel alive. And maybe your “why” is that you want to shed fat and put on muscle. That’s okay. Just know that you have to be in the right headspace emotionally and mentally to make that happen, so it doesn’t become addictive or obsessive. 

Step three is putting it into action. The truth is that we all have the necessary knowledge and resources. Realistically, committing to an exercise routine is a conscious choice and you are 100% in control. I’d rather you honestly say you’re not ready to take action than say you can’t stick to your routine. 

If you are in that space of not being ready yet, the best thing you can do is give yourself compassion and acceptance. Because ultimately how you’re going to achieve any results is by first loving yourself. It’s okay to say, “Right now I’m not going to pick an exercise routine.” That is empowering. It puts you in control. 

If you are saying yes to exercise right now, make the commitment of sticking to your exercise routine. Think about what would make you excited to put on your sneakers and get out there. For me, there’s a correlation between moving my body and my mind/body connection. It feels good, so I could never give it up. Exercise doesn’t have to change your body. It can bring you peace, make you feel connected, and relieve your restlessness. 

I’m telling you, you can stick to your routine. Do you want to? Are you ready to? If you’re not that’s okay, too. If you are, I invite you on this amazing journey. You are in control of everything in your life and it all starts with your thoughts.

Chief Complaint: “I am Exercising So Much and Not Seeing Any Results.”

Let’s break this chief complaint down a little. We have to start by asking what we mean when we say “not seeing results.” Because when most people say this, they’re measuring one thing: the scale. 

Here’s how it tends to go for most women:

You’re motivated and you have a goal in mind: look more toned and hit your goal weight. You start an exercise routine and do all the right things. You feel like you’re sacrificing a lot to make your routine happen on top of work and your home life, and just having no time. You’re also cleaning up your eating, which just adds to the feeling of sacrifice. And because of all of this sacrifice, you feel like there should be a great reward. 

So you go at it for a week, and things are going well. Your pants are fitting a bit better, you’re feeling excited. Then comes the day you step on the scale to see all the fruits of your labor. You jump on the scale... just to see that you have lost no weight or have even gained a couple of pounds. 

What goes through your head? “This isn’t working. Why am I even getting up an hour early to do this? I’m never going to reach my goal. My body is broken. This isn’t gonna work for me.”

And then you start scrolling through Facebook, seeing all the people who are making great achievements and reaching their goals. You start making comparisons and feeling even worse. 

That’s the typical scenario of what can happen when we expect great results immediately with exercise and we don’t see them based on the scale.

Having an Honest Conversation

So let’s rewind and see how we can do things differently to avoid getting to that point. First, it’s 100% necessary to have an honest conversation with yourself. You have to dive into what is realistic and how you’ll measure results. Let’s say all you know and all you’ve ever done is measuring results in one way - the scale. If you continue to do that, you’re going to continue to get the same results and have the same thoughts. 

But if your goal is to gain muscle or lose fat, there’s not going to be a drastic change on the scale unless you have a significant amount of body fat to lose. Then again, your goal may actually be to lose scale weight, and that’s okay, as long as you have the honest conversation with yourself and decide what your true goals are. Then, you’re going to be able to develop a wonderful plan to reach that goal, consulting experts for help as necessary. 

Measuring Results

So now you know what your goal is because you’ve had that honest conversation. You’ve determined that this is a realistic goal for you. So how do you measure it?

If your goal is to be a lower number on the scale, you’re not as concerned with body fat percentage or what your photos look like, you use the scale. Super easy. But what if your goal is not weight loss on the scale but rather gaining muscle mass and losing body fat? That's a whole different approach.

Because it’s quite difficult for most body types to gain a bunch of muscle and lose a bunch of fat all at the same time, especially if you’re more of a mesomorph/endomorph, which most of my clients are. In that case, the best that we can do is feed ourselves in a way that we are slowly adding lean body mass and slowly decreasing body fat mass. 

Feeling Better

And what if you have that honest conversation with yourself and discover you just want to feel better? What if the result has nothing to do with the scale, with body fat percentage or lean body mass gain? What if truly the reason that you are exercising and eating to fuel your body well is that you just want to feel better? 

Well, that’s a great goal and that result absolutely will set us up for more success than we even realize. If you exercise for what it is, enjoying the movement of exercise, you're going to do it again and again. It’ll be part of what you do every day. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, it can even just be going outside and walking around the block, enjoying nature, and having the mindful experience that exercise can bring. The more you can get yourself into the place where you enjoy exercise, the less you’ll have the thought of, “I’m making a huge sacrifice.” 

See, if exercise can be for pleasure, to feel good, it will make you consistent, which is the hallmark of what will keep you going. And if you keep going, you’ll have amazing results: you’ll enjoy things more, be in the moment more, be fitter, and hit other goals like scale loss, body fat loss, and muscle gain anyway. 

The Relationship Between Exercise and Results

There is a science to exercising for results. You’ll often hear that if you’re trying to lose scale weight, exercise can sometimes be counterproductive. And that’s true. Even with the most strenuous activity, the amount of calories you usually burn isn’t so significant, but it does increase your appetite. So exercise won’t necessarily lead to a calorie deficit, which is what you need to do in order to see scale weight loss. 

Yet exercise is one of the best things you can do for yourself, so would you really want to give it up in order to lose pounds? Instead, let’s say you decide you want to lose scale weight and will incorporate exercise because it’s healthy. Start with a small amount of exercise. Notice how it feels in your body and what it does to your appetite. Then choose to slowly add more exercise or stay where you are. 

With a transformation goal, it takes more of a nutrition-combined-with-exercise approach. That means getting the correct and right amount of macronutrients. But counting macros isn’t always sustainable. You want to be able to go to restaurants and on vacation without food worries. That’s why intuitive eating is so effective. It requires trust in yourself, which combines mind and body awareness, making a mind/body pact to agree and move forward with what you planned for. That’s when the magic will happen.

It takes a lot of self-reflection to get there. But if you do so, the changes in your body and mind will happen by default. 

Chief Complaint: “I Suffer From Constant All-Or-None Thinking.”

Today’s post is about a chief complaint that is near and dear to my heart: “My all-or-none thinking is out of control.” All-or-none thinking is a thought distortion that perfectionists tend to experience which tells us that we always have to be either all in or all out. 

Here are a couple of examples.

• You decide to step up your exercise a little bit. You want to get strong and toned and you’re going to go all in. So you make an exercise plan: you’re going to work out every day, get your cardio in, your weight training in, and even go on family walks. You’re so excited the night before but then Monday rolls around… You were supposed to get up at 6 AM but you were really tired and you didn’t. So you think, “Well, I didn’t get the workout in at 6 AM and it’s not worth it to do later in the day, so I’m just not going to do it at all.

• You’re doing a summer fitness challenge. Your exercise is tuned in, you have your eating plan ready to go. Monday comes. You stick to your plan at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But then some really special brownies from a famous bakery show up on your countertop. You just have to have one. But your plan was not to have dessert today. Well, the plan is ruined now, so you might as well eat the entire pan of brownies because you’ve already ruined your diet.

What’s happening here is that we throw our whole day out the window because we believe that we’ve already ruined everything, including the possibility of making improvements to our health. We let ourselves down.

All-or-none thinking comes up in every realm of life, not just food and exercise. It can come up with work, relationships, parenting… And if you’re a high achiever, it’s probably served you pretty well in the past. As a physician, you’ve probably had to accomplish some really hard things to get where you are, and you’ve maybe had to go all-in on them. And when you do that, and succeed, your brain remembers that pattern, so we think that to succeed in anything we have to go all in. 

The Grey Zone

But the good thing is that there is a magical grey zone. We don’t talk about it all the time, but it exists. The challenge is finding it. Because that grey zone can feel very uncomfortable. When you’re in it, you’re being asked to slow down. Not go full speed ahead, not completely stop, but stay in that grey zone rhythm.

On the one end of the spectrum, there are fast feelings like motivation, excitement, movement, and momentum. For overachievers, those are the norm, and that’s where we want to stay.

On the other side, there’s the “none” end. It’s one we’ve practiced many times, and our brains like it because it’s familiar. 

But the grey zone does exist, it’s just a matter of slowing down and getting there. To do that, you have to be very aware: of your surroundings, your body, and pretty much everything. 

The grey zone is all about intuition and mindfulness. It’s about feeling and reflecting upon thoughts and feelings you’re maybe not used to confronting. 

So think about a situation in your life in which you tend to go extreme. And ask yourself what it would feel like to pull back a little. Take the pressure off yourself and change the thought to, “I can do my best in this moment.”

How does that feel? It changes things a little, right? Instead of fast and aggressive it feels slower and more reasonably-paced. 

Perfectionism

Typically, when you miss your 6 AM workout, an all-or-none thinker would throw the whole day away and start again tomorrow. Because tomorrow is a fresh start, a clean slate, and a chance to be perfect. 

But being perfect is not real. “Perfect” is just a thought we define in our heads. Perfectionism is striving for something that doesn't exist. And it leads to us spinning our wheels, dealing with a lot of negative emotions and disappointment in pursuit of something that isn’t even real.

But, instead, you can choose to live in the grey zone. If things don’t go according to plan, use it as a chance to reflect. Figure out how to turn the day around so it can still be what you wanted it to be. Have a plan B. Maybe it’s just a simple ten-minute walk. Doing that is not only beneficial to your health, but even more so to your mind. It retrains you to say, “no big deal. We don’t have to be ‘all’. We can live grey today.”

One of the most common limiting beliefs that comes up when people face the grey zone is the idea that, “If I’m a grey thinker, I’m not going to achieve anything. It’s throwing in the towel.” But that’s just programming. It’s because we’ve had so much success pushing so hard that we don’t know what it’s like to find success without that push. But it exists and doing so will leave you with even more energy to potentially achieve more and be more present in what you’re achieving. 

The Journey

The truth is that when you have goals, you need to focus on the journey. If you’re present in it and allow yourself to enjoy it, you create space for your goals to change. By being aware of the process, you can find what you actually want. You slow down your momentum. Pause, reevaluate. Stop and ask yourself if this is what you want, if you’re enjoying this. Because the end product means nothing if you’re not enjoying the journey. Finding enjoyment in the journey will create the result you want in the end. 

If your goals don’t match your lifestyle, it won’t work out. Along the journey toward your goals, you have to check in with yourself. Ask yourself if you’re enjoying the journey. If not, you’re not going to want to do it for very long.

My approach is all about being in tune with your body. Hone in on true hunger. Know about balanced nutrition. Put the exercise piece in. From there, you can just let it flow. If you’re buying in, enjoying the process, motivated along the way, you’re going to arrive at the final destination you want to be at. 

Throughout the journey, a lot of things will come up. You’ll have days when you’ll be disappointed. If you are, it’s most likely because you’re pulling the perfectionist card, at the “all” end of all-or-none thinking. If you’re falling off the bandwagon, you might be on the other side, the “none” end. The magic is in the grey zone.

Chief Complaint: “I Lose All My Progress On The Weekends”

I hear this complaint all the time: “I lose all my progress on the weekends.”

So, let’s talk about it. Why do the weekends become so powerful? How can we make them work for us when we’re trying to achieve goals? 

Take a moment and think about the weekend. What comes up for you? For most of us, weekends are sacred. It’s time for fun, time to let loose. It’s parties and soccer games and coffee with friends. Time to relax.

We might think, “I deserve this weekend.” I’ve worked so hard, stuck to my plan all week, and now it’s time to treat myself. And maybe this is the only time during the week that we get to see our partner, friends, and families. A major social component is at play.

With all of that, we’re trained to consider that weekends are different from weekdays. And here’s a pretty typical way that that plays out. You’re trying to lose a couple of pounds. During the week, you have an intense exercise routine and a stringent nutrition plan. You’re powering through the week just to get to the weekend knowing that you’ll be able to let your guard down and exhale. 

Here are some ways to handle it so the weekend no longer throws you off track. 

Evening Out the Playing Field

Step one is evening out the playing field. We have to start thinking about how to make the weekends less relatively powerful. And we do that by making the weekdays equally as powerful. 

There are so many ways to uplevel our weekdays to meet our weekends and adopt a uniform lifestyle that doesn’t rely on extra alcohol and food on the weekends. 

So think about the power of the weekends. What do they bring? Relaxation, food, parties, fun, wine, pizza, brunch. A lot of the time, we plan these things because we’re lacking excitement, pleasure, and community in our lives. 

That means that we’re going to have to even off the playing field by creating more community, pleasure, and excitement in our life every day.

Community

Especially lately, a lot of the community we’re relying on is on the internet: social media, zoom, phone calls, and that’s great. It’s just about finding that consistent community where you feel that you have a place and support and people around you that want to see you succeed. 

That is one of the ways that you can start to even everything out. If on a Monday you’re looking forward to a Zoom call with your best friend at 4 pm, then Saturday doesn't seem like so much of a big deal. So take advantage of online communication to use any day of the week to create communication and community.

Pleasure

Some people get pleasure from having a clean, clutter-free space. They love the clean countertops, the flowers, the candles, the high-quality sheets, and the best bubble bath. So what brings pleasure to you? A workout and a long meditation? Shining your silver? It may not seem like a big deal but finding ways to incorporate pleasure into your daily life is a game-changer. 

Excitement

Excitement brings on dopamine and all of the feel-good feeling that come with it. So how can you get more of it in your life?

You can get ideas from other people and see how they are creating excitement in their daily lives. For example, in my life coaching society group there are some Peloton riders who get a lot of excitement from joining each other and doing a ride together. It’s something cool for them to look forward to, move their bodies, feel good, and have community and excitement. 

Another option is intimacy with another person, which can bring a lot of excitement. It doesn’t necessarily have to be physical; deep conversation is also so wonderfully intimate. We often don’t make time for intimacy because we are so overwhelmed, stressed, and tired. So if we can breathe and take the time to create intimacy, it’s usually pretty exciting. 

Willpower

One of the reasons the weekends are so powerful is that we’re using a lot of willpower to get through the week. We segue from a place of “don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it” to “let loose, baby!”. 

For example, if you follow a plan in which you abstain from sugar, flour, and dairy throughout the week, but you like those things, you’ll struggle to stay away from them during the weekend. You’ll think, “I waited all week. I deserve this. I worked really hard and I earned this.” You lose your defenses and take part in all of that sugar, flour, and dairy. Weekends become a free-for-all and then you have that Monday morning hangover. 

The beauty of creating a food plan that is uniquely perfect for you is that it fits into your every day; from Monday to Sunday, every day should feel like the same day. It’s another way to even out the playing field. 

Because when your brain spends all week saying, “don’t do it, don’t eat it,” you get a lot of decision fatigue. You’re overwhelmed and tired and the minute you let down your upper brain, your lower brain takes over and - boom - you have your all-out weekend. To work on this, you have to learn to sit with an urge. Because when you give into urges, like a slice of chocolate cake, you get the positive reward of a dopamine rush and your brain learns that this is a way to feel better and it becomes a habit and pattern. But you can take the power back by learning to sit with your urges. 

To do so, you have to allow uncomfortable feelings. If you can do that and even out the playing field, you won’t have the problem of weekends derailing you. 

Owning It

And maybe you’re okay with letting weekends be your pop-off valve. That’s all right! Own it. Whether you choose to level out the playing field throughout the week or accept that weekends will be a bit extra, just don’t beat yourself up. Make your decision. But don’t live in negativity, confusion, and self-doubt. 

And when you understand your unique body type and set realistic goals for it, you learn that there are a hundred goals you can pick that don’t involve your weight. And if you do choose to focus on weight, you learn to find a realistic number that is unique to you.

This is a whole new way to look at it. Because it’s not okay to go through life not loving your body. You deserve to love your body. It won’t happen overnight. You won’t be able to just flip a switch. It’s going to take work.

The truth is that if you can take one minute today to close your eyes and adore your body the way it is now, you’ll generate amazing feelings that will allow you to act in a way that honors your body. It really works. 

The pressure to never let go or let up will hurt you every time. Acceptance, love, and compassion will help you every time. 

Power Meals

When you think about your body type as part of the process of setting goals, you may realize that weight loss isn’t the best focus for you. Maybe you’re a mesomorph who puts on muscle easily. If that’s the case, when you eat healthfully and move your body, you’re not likely to lose much weight. In fact, you may even put on a pound or two. 

Or maybe you do choose to lose some weight because it is indicated for your health. Often, as part of the process, you get to a point in which your weight stops decreasing and you have to reevaluate whether you’ve arrived at your natural healthy weight or you’re just plateauing. 

An option that works for both of these scenarios is instituting a power meal, which is a meal that tastes amazing and we look forward to. It’s not only psychologically welcome for people who have been following a deficit meal plan, but it’s also capable of helping you stay on track for your goal. Because eating at a deficit for an extended time decreases your leptin levels, which tells your body to stop dropping fat. Your power meal will then give your body the signal to increase its leptin and allow you to drop more weight once you go back to your meal plan and deficit. 

Just a word of caution: don’t start doing this until you have everything else dialed in. And don’t do it alone. It’s so important to have support because if you throw a power meal in and don’t work on the urges, you’ll set yourself up for the willpower cycle. We don’t want that. What we want is for it to be a part of your plan so that you can think of things in a balanced way and eat something decadent every so often without thinking so much about it. 

It’s the mental work, the urge work, being in touch with your emotions and thoughts and feelings, understanding willpower, and navigating urges so you don't have to use willpower that will allow you to be successful.

Know your body. Love your body. Set realistic goals. Create pleasure, community, and excitement in every day. Take time. Slow down. All of this will feed into how you show up. You got this. 

The Chief Complaint: I’m Confused About Which Food Plan to Follow

For years, I spent my time worrying about this: what should I be eating? What’s the best meal plan out there? Should I do low-carb? Should I do high-fat/low-carb? How about intermittent fasting? How about the Zone diet? Should I just use moderation? Maybe I should divide up my carbs at breakfast, protein at lunch, and fat for dinner? There’s just so much out there.

If you’re reading this thinking, “Yeah, this is me. I still don’t know what to eat, what food plan to follow,” then you’re in the right place.

I’ve seen so many smart, amazing men and women with so much to give to the world struggle with feelings of needing to stick to a diet because they want to reach a certain goal. And I, myself, have had an obsession with food and weight gain. From an early age, I was confused about food, my body, exercise, and my worth. I feel so privileged now to be able to share my experience and how I got through it. 

One of the first things we need to do when we start the process of picking out a food plan is evaluating who you are as a unique individual. It’s not as simple as, “If you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic, you should be low-carb and if you’re fine, then anything goes.”

There are so many wonderful books about food plans out there that sound like they make sense. But the truth is that what is going to work for you isn’t necessarily going to be written in a book. That’s why it’s so important to know your body type and set realistic goals. When our goals are unrealistic and we’ll stop at nothing to get them, we put pressure on ourselves and end up living in a way that we don’t enjoy. 

Going Slow

I once had a client who had a hemoglobin A1C close to 10. She’d been trying low-carb and fasting, but it wasn’t working for her, and she was desperate. So we looked for the one change we could make to take her in a positive direction. What we landed on was allowing her one serving of sugar, a small can of coke, every day. That’s what worked for her. Over the course of the year we worked together, she lost 35 pounds, got her hemoglobin A1C into the normal range, and was happier than ever. The idea is dialing in on the one thing that you can change to get you further to your goal - and maintain it.

Because if your eating plan isn’t going to balance with your goal, then it’s either not a good eating plan or not a good goal. Your food plan has to fit into your lifestyle. 

The best way to do that is to make one change at a time. Wait. Be patient. You’ll arrive at the right food plan for you after you do this work. 

Instead of diving in to make a million changes at once, start with one that will take you closer to your optimal health. Once you make that change and own it, don’t make another one until that change becomes a part of what you do.

This is very much a process. But the beauty is that when you go slowly, two things happen.

First, your plan becomes a forever plan. You learn how to live this way and it becomes a part of your lifestyle. You can stop trying to mold your life around your food. The whole idea is that your food plan should fit into your lifestyle; you should not be trying to fit your life into food. 

Second, you’ll be able to practice that all-important body love. Because when you decide you want to weigh a certain number or wear a certain size, and you want to do it immediately, you’ll usually find the thing that will get you there the quickest, which is often a crash diet. But if you don’t have the time to work on loving your body right where it is right now, when you get to your new goal, you’re not just going to magically love your body. True body love with unconditional self-acceptance doesn’t happen through crash dieting. 

To achieve these great things and make a forever food plan, you need to know:

1. Your body type

2. Your goals

3. That your goals are realistic

4. That you are committed to going all in

From there, you’re able to work slowly. In the grand scheme of things, if it takes you six months to make really good progress, that’s not so much time. Instead of thinking about how to get to your goal in a month or two weeks, think of it in the long term. 

The right food plan to pick is the one that’s going to be absolutely customized to you. If you like eating low carb, have gotten good results and made huge health strides doing so - great. Maybe you’re a person for whom keto works. Maybe a balanced approach works for you. Maybe you’re more about fasting. The idea is to choose one thing and then go from there. 

Intuitive Eating

Now, let’s talk about intuitive eating. It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot and we often don’t really know what it means. So think of what intuitive eating means for you. For me, it makes me think of my mom, who always taught me that my body knows what it wants. 

Over time, we can learn what foods feel good in our body. When we do, our body starts to crave them. I love roasted veggies so much that I crave them now, which I never thought I would.

Intuitive eating is tapping into your body and first asking, “Am I hungry?”. That’s it. Simple question. With my clients, we use a hunger scale, where +10 is Vegas buffet-full and -10 is so hungry you’ll eat your friend. The goal is to live somewhere in the middle. 

Of course, the hunger scale can be adjusted for your goal. If you’re looking for fat loss, you may choose a lower number on the scale. If you’re trying to increase muscle mass or change your body composition, it might be a little higher on the scale to account for your extra exercise and protein needs. Knowing your body type will help direct you. 

And you can train your body to be hungry when you want it to be. If you fast continually, you get good at not being hungry. And if you eat every three hours, you can also train your body to be hungry every three hours. 

The next piece of intuitive eating is that when you’re not hungry anymore, don’t eat. When we’re eating when we’re not hungry, it’s usually emotional. Now, that’s not a negative thing. When you go to a party and you’re excited and celebrating and eat a bit more, that’s part of life. Realize that it will happen and that's okay. If you like to celebrate and enjoy and experience life with food and drinks and you’re not willing to give that up all the time, be honest with yourself. 

Sometimes and All-The-Time Foods

I don’t like to call foods bad. Instead, I refer to them as sometimes foods and all-the-time foods. Our goal is to figure out what we’re going to eat sometimes and what we’re going to eat all the time. You’re going to have to come up with that list because it’s going to be very individualized to you. What feels good in your body will be on your all-the-time list and the foods that cause you to bloat or retain water or feel low in energy will probably be on your sometimes food list. 

Some people can do dairy without a problem. Others have a huge issue. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to notice how foods really feel in your bodies instead of going by what works for somebody else. 

This and the hunger scale will allow you to go on vacation and not allow food to be your primary focus in ruling your life. Instead, you’ll enjoy every part of your vacation and food will just get to be there, too. We don’t get that many vacations. Why waste them worried about food? Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and you’ll come out of that vacation just fine. 

As toddlers, we are intuitive eaters. But then so much happens: society, learning, habits. But we can get back to that place. You don’t have to be confused about what your food plan is. You can decide what it is. It all goes back to your body type, goals, and lifestyle. 

Think about how you want your next ten years to go. What do you want? For me, it was important that food wasn’t the number one concern in my life anymore. I wanted to eat the same meals as my family. I wanted to go on vacation without freaking out. I wanted to be in the best shape of my life without restricting.

All of that is possible and starts with knowing who you are. There is no one perfect food plan for everyone. All of us will have a slight variation that will work for us - our unique self - in the long term.