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Ditch The Default - Spotting patterns that are holding you back · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: To the woman who has ever tried to change anything in her life, so whether you've been on a diet, whether you're a business owner like me, and you've looked at how can you grow your clients, grow your income, whether it's a relationship change, like whatever it is, I'm pretty sure that what you believe is that you have to find the plan and execute the plan.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what we're told.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst, of course, we need to execute and we need to take action, what if in line with keeping things simple, your starting point was not defining the plan, but actually identifying, owning, and rewriting patterns, strategies of behavior that you are doing unconsciously that are keeping you where you are at right now.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mad, isn't it?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have strategies for literally everything from falling in love to feeling more motivated or courageous to how we show up for our business, for our children, for our spouse.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are running strategies all of the time, almost always unconsciously.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So today, my intent, my intention is to give you some information and to have a conversation around what it looks like to execute strategies and why some of them, when you change them, will literally change your life.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready, grab your brew and let's dive right in.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said in the intro, it is completely understandable that when you want to create a change in life, we immediately go to the how, because it's bombarded down our throat on social media all of the time, the seven steps, the blueprints, this specific way, like it's everywhere, telling us that we just need to find the plan and execute.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I've probably said this a million times already.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the plan, the strategy were the answer, there would be so many more happy, healthy, and wealthy people in the world.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact is, there aren't.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more people buying program or strategy after course after whatever, trying to find that magic fix to give them the result they want in the least amount of time with the least amount of pain, with an absolute solid guarantee.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And like I've said before, that doesn't exist.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to talk to you about patterns, a little bit about pattern interrupting and what it means to be running these strategies, um, identifying them and what it means and looks like for you to be able to change them.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it just creates a little bit of simplicity in your life around the transformation or the results that you want to have.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because my intention is always to get you where you want to go in the most loving, empowered way possible.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we just need a little bit of information that we haven't got.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about some very simple ways to identify strategies that we have that we're running unconsciously.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts as simple as when you get dressed in the morning, which leg do you put into your knickers first?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm almost positive that you're going to go one leg all the time.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about when you get in your car, do you get in your car and put the seatbelt on straight away, or do you get in the car and turn the engine on and then put your seatbelt on?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're just a couple of like really simple things.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that was just to allow you to understand, oh, I didn't even realize I was doing that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the point.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even know that we're running these strategies.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They've been created for the most part for ease because it's repetition.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And our brain likes to save time and energy by going to the shortest route possible, the path of least resistance, which is why habits are so hard to break, because your brain has to think differently and you have to exert greater energy.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So these strategies have served you to do things quickly and unconsciously.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you're saving energy.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So these strategies are not your fault.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't probably, it's very unlikely that you designed them for yourself.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They just occurred for you because your brain thought it was useful.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's thank the brain.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not make it the enemy, but now we're going to have a look at a different, a different screen.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we've talked about the reason that they save energy so they've been good.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And some strategies really don't need changing.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think your life is going to massively change if you start putting the opposite leg in your knickers first, or if you start brushing your teeth with the other hand, or if you start putting your seatbelt on before you turn the engine on.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, as Dr.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Joe Dispenser says, when we make these little shifts, it challenges us to be more present.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It challenges us to change the identity that we have about ourselves by creating these little shifts that could actually lead up to you creating a new identity.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to leave that with you.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm talking about today is some of the strategies that will completely change your life when you change them.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as I was thinking about this podcast, I remember hearing or listening or reading to something before about this.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a fable, probably, uh, but you know, that the this the message is very important.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So a woman goes to a witch doctor because she is really having trouble with um marital issues.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like her and her husband are fighting all the time, they can't seem to find the time to connect and actually just talk things through.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: She's just like she feels like she's on him all the time.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes to this wicked witch doctor and she says, I really need you to give me something so I can help my marriage.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he gives her a little potion.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to her, When your husband comes in from work, I want you to drink the potion.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't need to swallow it right away.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to kind of like hold it in your mouth for a minute and then swallow it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So she's like, Great.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So she does exactly as she's told.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a few weeks later, she's noticing that her and her husband are having much better conversations, there's less anger, there's more connection and communication.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: She goes running back to her witch doctor and is like, I need more of that, I need more of that magic potion.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Give me more, give me more.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, There was no magic potion, it was just water.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what actually happened was as she drank the water as he came into the house, it stopped her from stepping into the pattern of going at him, identifying what was wrong, like bringing up all the old stuff, bringing up stuff that was just bubbling away that might not have even had anything to do with him.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: But he was her scapegoat, if you like.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was the easy, we all it's often said that we like we're hardest on the people closest to us because they think they're gonna take it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to think that's a really destructive thing to say, but it can be true.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this strategy where, so let me show you the strategy.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: She sees her husband.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for her, it was going to be a um a visual trigger.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: She sees her husband, she immediately feels agitated.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: She can hear herself in her brain telling herself, oh my God, he always comes home when everything else is done.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's happy, he isn't stressed like me, he doesn't have to look after the kids, you know, whatever she's saying in her head.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the action is that she bites, bitches, berates, and belittles.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just made that strategy up, but you can see where I'm going with that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I may or may not have executed that a few times for myself in the past.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that I'm working on.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're all a work in progress.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the strategy is so well rehearsed and instantaneous and unconscious that when he walks in the house, it's like this red mist goes up or a fog and it's you step right into it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how powerful, but also damaging strategies can be when we don't have that awareness.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to now share a personal story with you.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You may or may not know that currently I'm running a 21-day sprint inside my Facebook group.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea of this was to help people to decide an area in their life that they wanted to work on, pick one or two actions that they would take pretty much every day so they can understand the power of little things consistently, get some results, and therefore build self-belief.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as the leader of the group, I'm like, I have to be here with them in the trenches, doing the work, as my coach says, living in the breakthrough.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, what's going to be really hard for me?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was giving up alcohol for 21 days.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love wine.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I, you know, it's what I've found interesting in taking this time off is really identifying with myself, my strategies, my self-talk around alcohol.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking about what happens when I when I want to have wine, and I realize actually I've got quite a few strategies running.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the simplest one was for me is often visual.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll often see myself like holding a glass of wine, and it could be a glass of wine at dinner, it could be a glass of glass of wine in the garden with my husband, it could be a glass of wine sitting outside the camper van.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I automatically feel this sense of happiness and relaxation and contentedness.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: But what I noticed in that as well, there was no head drama.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't worrying about whether I was saying the right thing on the podcast, I wasn't worrying about social media, I wasn't worrying about, you know, my fitness, like I was like worried about nothing.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was really present in the moment, and I've made a very powerful, unhealthy connection between drinking wine and being present and joyful in the moment.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Can you see how damaging that can be?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the action then is I will drink wine.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now there might be some other little steps in that because I don't necessarily keep wine in the house.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I might have to go to the shop, whatever that is.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been really interesting for me to be on this journey and hear all of my head talk around alcohol and how it's in it's so intrinsically linked with so much joy and so much happiness and celebration.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I just wanted to share that with you so that you can start to think about some of the habits that you have that are perpetuating a result or an experience in your life that is making you unhappy or it's making you unfulfilled, or it's basically just not giving you what you want.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the broad spectrum of your life.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just about the way that you look or the amount of money that you earn.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, how do you feel purposeful?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel connected to your life?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel connected to your partner, to your children?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you doing what you want to do at this stage in your life?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because if not, there's a strategy that you can shift that's going to start changing that for you.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: The big ask that I'm asking of you now is to recognize that a life lived in default strategy is very limited.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's producing the same results over and over and again.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: But as you probably know, that over time we intensify the results.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about arguing with your partner every day for a week versus arguing with your partner every day for five years, the results are never going to be the same.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's only going to get worse.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you skip the workout for a week and that skipping the workout goes in for an entire year, what's going to happen to your health, to your body, to your energy, your vibrancy?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about um holding on to the negative, destructive self-talk that's going on in your head for a year, and a year's a really long time, versus holding on to that for five years, what vision of your life are you creating?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, can you see how if you start going straight to I need to execute this new plan, but you've got these very powerful, unconscious default strategies running, you're gonna feel like you're never gonna have enough willpower and motivation to get to the end line.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why so many people quit.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want you to quit.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So to honor some simplicity, um, what about we just start with a few?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three steps for you here in in terms of helping you to identify your strategies.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one, the first part of the extra the strategy is acceptance.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't have acceptance, we are carrying resistance, and resistance is heavy.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Resistance is like pulling a sled, right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not comfortable, it's not fun, and it doesn't make life very easy for you at all.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, accepting that as a human being, we run almost entirely on default.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is not personal, this is general.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst human beings run on default, we can choose to not do that anymore.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: That might be the biggest strategy that you implement is not living by default.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me, you're gonna need a lot of energy for that one.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to sleep a bit more, but we'll come back to that.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, acceptance.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: The second one is your willingness to begin identifying strategies that you execute in areas of your life that you want to change, and you do so without blame, shame, or judgment because you didn't create these strategies on purpose.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, your body, your brain and body created them for ease.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: It thought it was doing you a favor, and now it's like, thanks for that, friend, but really not helping me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can we do something different?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to raise, you've got to be willing to go there and be aware of your strategies.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm even gonna go as far to say that when you start to notice some of your strategies, they're almost going to mirror.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you talk yourself out of doing something that you know you want and need to do to change your life, you're gonna probably execute that strategy in various areas, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the good news is here that as you start to raise this awareness, you kind of like do a little bit of a sweep up and you identify a strategy, there's a really, really high chance that pattern interrupting that strategy will have an impact on so many other areas of your life.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: More banging for your buck.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't like that?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing is the commitment to breaking the pattern.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I will say here, and I say this to every single client, probably every single day, is that when we are breaking patterns, when we are consciously creating new habits, there are a couple of things that you're gonna have to learn.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is you're gonna have to accept that hard emotions are part of the process.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of avoiding them or letting yourself believe that it feeling difficult means it is not working, you just have to learn to create being okay with the hard emotions.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just part of the process.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not personal, general.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sign that you're really stepping up for yourself, not that it's hard.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to believe in yourself that you can do hard things, even if that's as simple as breaking the strategy where you don't feel like crap and go to the fridge and eat chocolate cake.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you that breaking the strategy is easy.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you that the process is simple, but there's gonna be a whole lot of emotional and mental talk about that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is the how?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just reframe, let me just kind of reiterate that.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance as humans, we run it almost entirely by default up until now, because you're gonna change that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a personal general.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The willingness to identify the strategies without blame, shame, or judgment, and now the commitment to pattern interrupting, to changing, to breaking the pattern, to changing the strategy.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do it?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I told you before, I gave you the illustration with the woman who saw the husband, went into a rage, bitch berated, belittle, all that kind of stuff.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the results are going to be pretty damn crap, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I share with you one of the strategies that I run around drinking alcohol.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to start noticing when you talk yourself into or out of something that you know is not helping this particular area in your life and think like globally in your life.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just think about, you know, one thing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is it, what is it that you see or hear?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that could be hearing outside or hearing in your own head, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're saying to yourself, like what is the trigger that starts the thing off?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try and give you a make up another example right now.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I need okay, I'm gonna give you an example from somebody in one of my groups, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So she says that she'll often come like go to the fridge, open the fridge, and see what's in it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: She's not hungry, she's probably bored, but it's become a pattern.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when I asked her, like, what is it that makes you do that?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: For her, it was a sense of um feeling very much feeling challenged around the tasks that she was doing.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So emotional discomfort and the task had her feeling like she needed to take a break, she had to get away, she couldn't manage this stuff.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's telling herself that a piece, something to eat, taking a break, a piece of chocolate would be great.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: She goes to the fridge.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was something like that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, all you're gonna do be aware of is as you talk yourself in or out of something, ask yourself, just stop.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: What just happened?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: What did I just say to myself?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: What did I just feel?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: What did I just hear?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: What did I just say?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: What did I just think, touch, whatever it is?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because the triggers can be any one of your senses, uh, along with something you're saying to yourself, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then I want you to think about where is and then and then you're gonna start to notice, like, okay, so then what happens?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we tend to focus on visual, which is things that we see, and we can see outside of ourselves, but we also create pictures in our head, can be things that we hear outside of ourselves or things that we're saying to ourselves inside our head with things that we feel in our body, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there could be two, three, four, five steps to your strategy.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: So just have some awareness of what the trigger is and maybe what the next couple of steps are because I want you to feel like you can find the easiest place to interrupt that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example, right?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've given you some examples already.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could get yourself some magic water, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: To stop you saying the thing you don't want to say.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's no reason why you couldn't do that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: For me, with the the drinking alcohol, I have to actually say something to myself.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have to actually sort of remind myself that I have had plenty of great times without having alcohol, that I'm enjoying the extra energy and clarity.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that you know, not having good, nice stuff so often makes it even more special.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm always thinking of new things that I can say to myself in that moment.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I also just sometimes say, thank you for offering me that, but we're not that person anymore.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do that anymore.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's very much something I have to say to myself.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't yet practiced changing the vision.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps that's something that I can practice moving forward.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you in when you pattern interrupt, you want to make it something that's really doable in that moment.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to end up like, oh, I have to go and do like 30 push-ups if it, you know, you're at the middle of the supermarket and you you're going to the chocolate aisle.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Look, if you want to get on the floor and do 30 press-ups, I'm not going to say don't do it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to applaud you for that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: But let's make it as easy to implement as possible.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, what can you say?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: What could you to yourself?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: What's a vision that you could bring into your mind?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Could you just do some breath work?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Could you shake your body out?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Could you leave the room?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Could you take a 10-second pause?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's the easiest way to put a little doorstop in that strategy so that you open up a new program, open up a new possibility?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then you guessed it, the third part you should just keep practicing that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really hope that has given you something else to think about, a different way, a simpler way, a more self-loving way to get started.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And trust me, when you start to see these strategies and you start to think about what strategy do I need?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: How can I create a better, more powerful aligned strategy for me?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It just gets you thinking differently from the whole goal achievement thinking.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've just got to have a goal and I've just got to do the things and I've just got to get to the outcome.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: It changes who you are as a person, and that is where results happen and where they stay, like stay happened.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's the word I'm looking for?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: They said you sustain them.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having problems finding my words today.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you love this email, my gosh, I've just read email on my piece of paper.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you love this podcast, please you know what you do.
• 20:14
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• 20:17
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• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It really massively helps me reach more people.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, I would love to invite you into my free Facebook community, Seeking Simplicity, where we just have nice conversations.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have a free weekly book pub, and I would just love to see you there.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I will put a link in the show notes and I will speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.