Episode 88: The #1 Thing Keeping You Stuck (in Weight Loss and Life)

There's ONE factor that's the difference between living your most aligned, unleashed life...and looking back with regret. Get this one thing under control, and watch your life take off.

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Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Podcast The #1 Thing Keeping You Stuck (In Weight Loss & Life)

SUMMARY KEYWORDS deathbed regrets, unleashed life, middle school teaching, brain development, current habits, future self, fear and safety, comfort zone, momentary sting, investment in self, mindset shifts, taking action,
 facing fear, neural connections, decision making 

 | 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and today's topic is one of my absolute favorites. If you're listening to the audio, not watching the video, I think you're missing half of the Rachel passion, because when I talk about this topic, my hands start flailing, because I truly in my soul of souls. Today's topic is the reason why people get to their deathbed and either look back on their life and say, I wish I had I should have insert regret here, or hopefully we get to our deathbed and we say, You know what, if it's my time, it's my time, because I freaking crush this thing, and as much as it breaks my heart, I don't know many people who are the latter. So the sooner we can get this under control, the sooner we we take control and have a better chance of living an unleashed life, living the life of our dreams, and not looking back with the I wish I had. And so today, we're diving into the number one thing that's holding you back, not only in weight loss, but 01:02 hashtag, bigger life statement, this 01:04 is in life too. Check it out. Back 01:07 when I was a middle school teacher, you know, I tell people I taught middle school, and I get one of two reactions. The way more common reaction is people looking at me with a look of pity and being like, how did you do that? And then there's a handful of people who are like, Oh, I taught middle school too. It's so much fun teaching middle school. You either love it or you hate it, and if you don't love it, you are going to be miserable. And shockingly, the vast majority of teachers that I worked with and I taught in a lot of schools for a long time, the vast majority teachers were miserable. They did not enjoy it. And I think one of the reasons that a lot of people who teach middle school don't enjoy it is that they're expecting kids at that age to think the way that we think as adults. Right? If you study the brains of children, they are not developed the way that an adult brain is their prefrontal 

cortex has not fully developed. So the way that we look at them, and we're like, why did you just make that decision right there? There is a real reason. Now I'm not saying that as a cop out there were some kids, I'd be like, What in the world are you thinking right now? And I would say that to them, but for the most part, there's a valid cop out there. Their brain is not developed the way that ours is, and a lot of these teachers would drive themselves nuts being like these kids just lack common sense. And the answer is, yeah, they're supposed to, because they're 14, and that's what their brain looks like. And when we try to approach square peg, round hole, right, here's my expectation of how you should be. Here's how you're actually acting. When we can zoom out and look at those two things, we can kind of go, Huh? Well, no, that makes sense why they're choosing to act that way. So that's a very roundabout way of getting to today's topic of the number one thing keeping you stuck, not only in weight loss, but in life. And the number one thing keeping you stuck most in weight loss and in life is thinking as current you. That's it. End of podcast. No, I'm just kidding. Right now, the you that exists, the me that exists, your best friend that exists, every human that exists, the US that exists right now is 100% a culmination of our current habits, our current belief systems, our current tendencies, the current people around their current lifestyle we're in so for just like those teenagers, if our expectation is that The US that exists in this moment is going to be making the decisions to get us where we want to be, we are setting ourselves up for a world of disappointment. Let me say that another way, because that's a hard thread to follow. If I am set in a certain routine, right? I have certain habits that I do every day. I have certain thoughts that I think I have certain belief systems, most of which are deep wired into my subconscious and I don't even know they're there. That is why my life is the way it is right, the the good, the bad, the ugly, the things I love, the things I want to change, they are all a result, because current Rachel is going through life with certain belief systems, certain brain wiring, certain habits, certain people in my life, certain circumstances, certain financial situations, all of the above. That is current Rachel, that is current you, that is current best friend. That is not for most of us, that is not our goal person, right? Doesn't mean we don't love ourselves in the moment. Doesn't mean that we're not grateful for the life we have. But most of us have dreams and aspirations and a vision when we tap into it, of what we want our life to be, but what we're expecting is that the US that exists right now is going to be thinking like that future version of us and just like that middle school student. That's not how this works. You cannot expect a. Schooler's brain to work the way a 40 year old brain does, or you are setting yourself up for a world of disappointment, and this, this is why most people never change. Okay, so right now, if you didn't fully follow that, stay with me, because as I dig in deeper, it's going to make more and more sense. I'm as I like to do. I'm starting really big picture, and then we're going to hone in, okay, this is how most people go through life. And before I dive too deep in, if you haven't listened my podcast on fear, if you haven't read my chapter, my book on fear, go start there, because this is the holy grail. You will never transform your life without understanding this and give you the brief synopsis, our human brains is the biology 101, our human brains are not designed to keep us kicking ass and taking names. They 

do not care if we are hitting our weight loss goals. They do not care if we live a life that sets our soul on fire, or if we live a life that we're going to regret. They do not care that's not how the human brain is designed. The human brain is designed for one thing and one thing only from a biological standpoint, and that is safety. Now, your brain's measure of safety is familiar. So when we do something that we are not familiar with, or we do something that we're familiar with, but it has caused pain, the way that our brain gets us to stop red light. Do not proceed. Do not cross, go, do not collect $100 get back in your comfort zone. Is through fear. This is why you know you go to you start thinking about getting a new relationship, and your brain shows you every time your heart was broken, and images of you laying on the bathroom floor sobbing, and it's like bruise, bruise, bruise. Let me push as hard as I can, not because it's being a jerk, but it's designed to keep you safe. It wants you to go back in your comfort zone and not put yourself out there. It's the reason when you want to start a business, it's going to throw everything in the books. You Are you kidding? How selfish is that? How are you going to provide for your family? What if it fails? It's so incredibly one sided of you to gamble all your family's money on this, right? It's not light and fluffy stuff. It is finding your 

deepest, darkest fears, and it is pushing on them again, not to be a jerk, but in the interest of getting you back to safety. So the way most people go through life is we sit there and we complain about the things we don't want, right? We talk about our goals, we talk about our aspirations. We talk about. I am so miserable in my skin. I am so uncomfortable. I don't even recognize myself when I look in a mirror. I hate my nine to five job. I 

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am miserable every day that goes by. I'm 

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digging the hole deeper, right? I 

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can't stay in this toxic relationship. I'm so lonely. I need to find someone who loves me. We talk about this stuff all day, every day, and we decide kind of that we need to change, right? That we talk to our friends and we say, I need to change something. Maybe we write in our journal and say, I need to change something. We put post its on our mirror as little aspirations and mantras in the morning that we need to change beautiful. Right? All of that is beautiful. I don't say any of that to mock any of that. The more clear we can be on what we want, what we need, what's a must, the better. Here's the problem, though, any time that we want to change, fear is going to come up. You've been listening. You know that by now, with fear always capital, A, capital, L, the whole shebang capitalized, always comes a sting. The Sting can be financial, that's usually the biggest one for people. It can be emotional, it can be time, it can be change, it can be all of the above. But if we're going into change, not expecting a sting if we are going into a new situation, not expecting sting to come with fear, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Because what most people do is we sit here, we put our posters, we I want, I wish, I must. I have to change right then we get to the the cusp. We get to the breaking point. It's time to leap. It's time to invest in a program. It's time to hire a coach. It's time to launch that business. It's time to take out your credit card and buy that well, domains, only a few bucks. Terrible example, whatever it is, there is a moment that is the decision between, am I just saying I want this, or am I taking action? And this moment, it is a moment in time that we can put our finger on. This is the moment where 98% of humanity runs right back to their comfort zone. And you know, one of my favorite expressions, you do what you've always done, you get what you've always gotten the number one reason that people don't change is because they are not willing to get uncomfortable. They are not willing to take a momentary sting of taking out a credit card. They are not willing to feel a momentary sting. And I'm saying momentary loosely, right? A. Of this is going to break my heart, and I'm going to have to figure out a ton of logistics of where I'm going to live, and I don't know what my life looks like. On the other side of this, the momentary sting of, God, this feels awful and vulnerable. And what if this person breaks my heart again? The momentary sting of, what if I invest all this money in my business and it doesn't come to fruition, the momentary sting of I know I need a health coach, and Good Lord, do I not want to spend money on it, because everything in my brain is saying, What if this doesn't work like nothing else has. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. And 98% of people will let the what ifs will let the discomfort, will let the momentary sting push them right back into their comfort zone, and this, my friends, shatters my heart every time, every time. Obviously, I work in the field of nutrition, so that's what I 

know best. I cannot even begin to tell you I do. I've done 1000s and 1000s of strategy sessions with women, and I sit there on a call with them. Okay, we'll just call it an hour. They're usually 45 minutes. Sometimes they go 90 minutes. We're gonna call it an hour. Okay? They sit there on a call with me, and for an hour I hear things like I am miserable in my skin. I don't even recognize myself when I look in a mirror. If I keep going, I know that every day that goes by, I am digging that hole deeper and deeper. I This is not the example that I want to set for my family. I need to change now. Now, not another day, not another second. Then we talk through the program, right? I know we've talking for an hour. I know I got the keys to the kingdom without a shot of a doubt. Seven years, 2500 people. I have three pages of notes in the hour we've been talking. Do you believe I have the keys to the kingdom? 1,000% this is what I need. I understand the education piece is key. I need to stop yo yo dieting. I need to get educated. Let's go. What is the number one thing that stops them? The thing I hear most is it feels really selfish for me to invest in myself. I have bills, I have a family, I have kids, and listen, I'm not poo pooing on anyone's financial status. I am a believer that finances are always figureoutable. One of my one of my past business coaches, he is a it's a terrible line, but it's effective. He doesn't just say gun to your head. He says, gun to your gun to your wife's head. Gun to your husband's head. His program's $10,000 my program, I mean, if you want to pay me $10,000 Let's go. My program's not $10,000 but he always says, gun to your wife's head. Could you find $10,000 right? Because suddenly, the importance, the urgency, is there. Most people say they want things, but when we weigh the sting of temporary discomfort versus the sting of how bad do you want it, that's the answer. You have not truly decided until you take action and there is nothing more in life, and this is me. I mean, now I'm I'm projecting here, but my biggest fear in life, if you've listened to my my podcast, read my book, my biggest fear in life is being on my deathbed looking back saying, I wish I hadn't let fear run the show. I wish I had, I wish I had, I wish I had. I want to be on my deathbed and be like, alright, like, if it's my time, take me out. Because I freaking did everything I wanted to do. I never let fear run the show. Doesn't mean I don't feel fear. Anyone says, don't feel fear. It's BS. Fear is biological. The difference is, can you face fear? Say, I see you thank you for being a warning sign. Maybe I need to come up with a plan. Maybe I need to dig a little deeper, but I'm going to make this happen. And most people won't do that. Most people feel fear. They take it as capital T truth. They run right back into their little comfort zone of life. They get on their deathbed and they say, Where did my life go? And you know, I started this podcast, me saying, If you could see me, my hands get flailing, because there's nothing more important than this, right? You tell me, No, Rachel, my family is my most important thing. Cool. What is your life with your family look like, yes, there's love there. But are you showing up as your best self? Are you modeling what you want your kids to reproduce, right? Are your kids hearing you talk about the shame blame guilt around food? Are you living a life where, if they grew up to be exactly you right now, you would be like, Yes, way to go. Hell, yeah. Do better than me. Or would you be like, Oh, I wish I had modeled something for you right there is nothing more important than this conversation we're having right now, because until you learn that you have not made a decision, until you take action, and anytime we take action, it comes with a sting, until we embrace that, we're going to stay exactly the same. What I like to do is I like to expect this thing to be 10 times worse. And look, I'm not a I like to call myself an optimistic realist. I'm a very realistic person, and in general, I tend to have a very optimistic view on life. But if I'm going into a setting, I know there's going to be any time I. 

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I hire a new business coach, 

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I get on that call bracing myself for the largest number I can think of, because when it's less than that, Oh, easy peasy. But I'll tell you this at this point in my life, if I get on a call with a business coach and they tell me too low of a number, the call is done there. And I'm not saying that price equals value for everyone. But if I'm hiring you to help me grow my business, and you don't know your worth, peace out, love and light, you are not for me, and it took me a long time to get there. Most of you heard my story. The first business coach I hired, they told me that price tag of $30,000 I almost had a freaking heart attack, because the only thing I spend $30,000 on at that point, was a house and a car, never a person, never a gamble. I didn't know that that was going to work. I done my due diligence. I believed it would. That was one of the scariest decisions I ever made in my life. But at this point, seven years into mind strong, my brain has a lot of data that when I get comfortable being uncomfortable, it always comes back tenfold, and now my mindset is different than the vast majority of people. If you're undercharging me, the answer is no, because if you don't know your worth, I'm not going to know your worth. That's kind of the next step to all this. But when you can start going into change, not just like here we go, I hope I change, but no burn the boats line in the sand, not another day, not another minute, not another second. And it's one thing to say it. It's another thing to face fear. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, feel the sting and leap. That's how you change your life. And the beautiful part, I'll leave you with this thought. The beautiful part is, the more you do it, not only the easier it gets, the more fun it gets, right? And I'm not saying it's it's never fun. It's never fun to take out your credit card. And you know, when I hired that next coach, $10,000 was a lot easier than $30,000 but I wasn't chomping at the bit. Please take $10,000 for me. It's not like I had disposable income out the wazoo. But the difference was, my brain has a lot of data that every time I invest in my business, it levels up, right? So this gets easier and easier and easier. The first time you invest in yourself, it is going to take a world of mindset work. This is the least selfish thing I can be doing, because the me that shows up in the world is the energy that I'm attracting back, not only for myself and for my family, there's a lot of mindset shifts we have to do to get to that breaking point. The second time you do it, 

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it's a little easier, not much. The third, fourth, fifth, 

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forget it. At some point it's like, if it's not scaring me, it's not big enough. And I'm saying that in that statement lightly, but that is truly you will hit a point in life where you're like, if it's not scary enough, if it's not if it's not scaring me, it's probably not big enough. That's the goal. You know, you're leveling up when it scares the crap out of you. But in the meantime, it's going to be the little things that scare the crap at you, because we're not used to putting ourselves, making ourselves important. We're not used to investing in ourselves. We're not used to taking the leap. We're used to feeling fear and going right back to our comfort zone. And we've all heard the stories. We've all seen the reels, we've all heard the testimonies. I don't believe that anyone in the history of ever has looked back on their life and said, Thank goodness I saved a few bucks when I was 50 years old. What we hear time and time again is, I wish I hadn't led such a fearful life. And the only reason that happens, and I'm saying only sarcastically, because it is a huge one, the reason that that happens is because we need to go into change knowing that fear comes with it, and we need to know that if we're going to face fear, if we're going to truly face fear, we have to be ready for a sting. And the people who transform their lives, the people who are living a life or on their deathbed, they look back and they say, if it's my time, it's my time, because I freaking crush this thing. They are the people who could look fear in the face. They 

could take the sting. They could say, this is momentary, and they leapt and the people who look back with regret are the people who let fear call the shots. So I will leave you with this thought. We can either be that teacher frustrating the ever loving heck out of themselves because they're trying to get a 14 year old to have the same brain as a 40 year old, which they simply don't or we can say, You know what? That's not where their brain is. I can't expect that of them. So I'm going to lead by example when we can take that scenario and turn it on ourselves. Okay, I'm going back to my original story. If you're not tracking here, our brains right now are not wired to face fear unless you've been practicing this and consciously practicing this, your brain the you that exists right now, I love you, but you can't be trusted to face fear and feel the sting and make the leap, because right now, your brain is wired for safety, so at some point. We have to stop thinking as current us, and we need to start making decisions as future us. And this is not some cheesy self help. Woo, woo, rainbows and glitter and unicorns thing. If your brain was wired right now to take risks, to face fear, to leap, to feel the sting, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast or watching this video, if you're on YouTube, the US that exists today is because this is how our brain is wired. It is not the US that we're working to be. If we want to step into that person, the only way that person happens is through repetition. You've hung out here, you know how neural connections work. We think a thought, we take an action, we repeat, repeat, repeat. Myelin coats those neural connections until, boom, a habit is formed. That's who we are and what we do right now. Chances are most of us that is not who we are and what we do, who we are, and what we do is we let fear call the shots. We go back right, right, back into our comfort zone. That's why we're here, the you that exist today, again, I love you and that we are all guilty of this to some degree, we can't be trusted to make these decisions. The person who can be trusted to make these decisions is the person that we're working to be. So in those moments, this is what I use for myself. In those moments, I'll go back to my story. When my the my old business goes drop the $30,000 price tag on me. That was a conversation I myself cool. You don't have to do this like, lord knows your brain is screaming at you right now. Go right back to your comfort zone. You have that right, and you do what you've always done. You get what you've always gotten. Or I can draw a line in the sand. I say no, I am freaking done spinning my wheels. If it was going to work by now, love and light, it would have worked by now. Today is the day I don't just talk about it. I be about it. And what Rachel in the future would do, Rachel with the the multi eight figure business that we're working to grow, and the millions, not just 1000s, but millions, of women we have helped. The decision she makes is that this is a drop in the bucket on the path to that. It was not a drop in the bucket at that time, but for that Rachel, that was nothing. So who are you going to think as the Rachel who does what she always does and gets what she's always gotten and spins her wheels for the next five years? Or do we say, Screw it? Life is short. I want to look back and say, I freaking crushed this thing. And if it means getting uncomfortable in this moment, take my freaking credit card and to this day, now that I am living as current future Rachel. And I'm saying that because there's more on the other side, right? 

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She wants to kiss past Rachel in the mouth for making that decision. 

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This is the path, if there is a different one, tell me about it. Everything in life has light with the dark, right? There are certain things in life. I'm sorry, and I wish it wasn't true, but you can't have both. You can't sit here and tell me I want lean, sculpted arms with with really sexy biceps, but I never want to lift up a weight. Both can't be true, right? You can't tell me I want to be in complete control of my 

nutrition and not have to think about food, but know that I'm going to hit all my goals without mastering the skill in nutrition. You can't have both. There's light with the dark. And what most people do is they go through life talking, talking, talking about the goals they want to achieve. And when the rubber hits the road and they're faced with decision time and fear comes up, and with fear comes a sting, as it always will, they bail out. And the only difference whether you're talking about weight loss, whether you're talking about starting a business, leaving a relationship, getting into a relationship, having a card, hard conversation, hashtag, bigger life, statement. The only difference between those people who are like, if it's my time, it's my time, because I crush this ride, and people who say, I wish I hadn't been so fearful. The only difference is, are you willing to look fear in the face? Are you willing to feel that temporary sting and still 

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leap in.