Latest / The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast / 327. The Habits You Can't See | Pattern Recognition

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327. The Habits You Can't See | Pattern Recognition · The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast

• 0:00
  Kathie (2): You get a message.
• 0:01
  Kathie (2): It's only one sentence, maybe five words, but something in you drops.
• 0:07
  Kathie (2): You read it again.
• 0:09
  Kathie (2): You notice what they didn't say.
• 0:11
  Kathie (2): You hear a tone that may or may not be there.
• 0:15
  Kathie (2): But before you put the phone down, your mind has built an entire story.
• 0:21
  Kathie (2): You know what this means.
• 0:22
  Kathie (2): You know what comes next.
• 0:24
  Kathie (2): You know how this ends.
• 0:25
  Kathie (2): And now, your body is responding to a future that hasn't happened.
• 0:31
  Kathie (2): Have you ever been there?
• 0:32
  Kathie (2): I sure have, and the hardest part is that that story can feel so clear, it may even look like a pattern recognition.
• 0:41
  Kathie (2): But somewhere between noticing what happened and deciding what it means, I missed something.
• 0:47
  Kathie (2): I missed the pause.
• 0:51
  Kathie (2): Welcome to the Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast.
• 0:54
  Kathie (2): My name is Kathie Owen.
• 0:56
  Kathie (2): I'm a private consultant, an author, and a speaker.
• 0:59
  Kathie (2): I've spent more than 25 years working with people in fitness, wellness, and leadership.
• 1:04
  Kathie (2): These days, much of my work is about what happens to us under pressure, the patterns we repeat, the meaning we give things, and the choices we make when we become aware of both.
• 1:16
  Kathie (2): Today, I wanna talk about habits, but we're going a little deeper than the habits we can see.
• 1:22
  Kathie (2): If you know my background in fitness, you know I believe in repetition.
• 1:26
  Kathie (2): One workout does not build strength.
• 1:28
  Kathie (2): One walk does not change your life.
• 1:31
  Kathie (2): What you return to day after day matters.
• 1:34
  Kathie (2): I've read Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, The Power of Habit, and The Slight Edge.
• 1:40
  Kathie (2): I've learned from all of them, but lately I'm looking at a habit that doesn't show up on a calendar or a fitness tracker.
• 1:48
  Kathie (2): It's the habit of what we assume.
• 1:53
  Kathie (2): What do you assume when a person is quiet, when an opportunity takes longer than you hoped, when money feels tight, when you make a mistake, when something feels familiar, but you don't have the whole picture?
• 2:07
  Kathie (2): You may not hear the assumption as a sentence.
• 2:09
  Kathie (2): You may feel it first.
• 2:11
  Kathie (2): Your shoulders tighten, your stomach turns, you want to send a message right now, fix the problem right now, or shut the door before someone else can close it.
• 2:21
  Kathie (2): The feeling is real.
• 2:23
  Kathie (2): It deserves your attention.
• 2:24
  Kathie (2): But the story attached to it may still be a story.
• 2:29
  Kathie (2): That's a small distinction with a lot of power.
• 2:33
  Kathie (2): Neville Goddard's work made me pay closer attention to assumptions.
• 2:38
  Kathie (2): One question I keep bringing into my own life is this: What have I already decided is true?
• 2:46
  Kathie (2): I might think that I'm simply responding to what is in front of me, yet I may be looking at it through an old belief.
• 2:54
  Kathie (2): This always happens.
• 2:55
  Kathie (2): People don't come through.
• 2:57
  Kathie (2): I have to force things to work.
• 2:58
  Kathie (2): If I relax, everything will fall apart.
• 3:02
  Kathie (2): Those thoughts can become so familiar that they feel like facts.
• 3:07
  Kathie (2): There's no shame in that.
• 3:08
  Kathie (2): An assumption may have formed at a time when you were trying to protect yourself.
• 3:13
  Kathie (2): It may have helped you make sense of something difficult.
• 3:17
  Kathie (2): I'm not asking you to scold yourself for having it.
• 3:20
  Kathie (2): You know I say no shame, no condemnation.
• 3:24
  Kathie (2): I'm asking you to notice when it takes the wheel.
• 3:28
  Kathie (2): Think about a driver on a road they know well.
• 3:30
  Kathie (2): They've made the same turn hundreds of times.
• 3:33
  Kathie (2): Then one day the road changes.
• 3:35
  Kathie (2): There's a new lane and a different sign, but the driver is already turning before they see it.
• 3:41
  Kathie (2): Our minds can do that too.
• 3:43
  Kathie (2): We recognize something familiar, we make the old turn, and sometimes we don't see what's actually in front of us.
• 3:51
  Kathie (2): That's why I don't find it useful to sort every thought into a good habit or a bad habit.
• 3:59
  Kathie (2): I'd rather ask,"What happens when I keep following this one?
• 4:03
  Kathie (2): Does it help me see clearly?
• 4:05
  Kathie (2): Does it leave room for new information?
• 4:08
  Kathie (2): Does it help me choose how I wanna respond, or does it lead me straight into a conclusion?" When pressure hits, this gets harder.
• 4:18
  Kathie (2): Strong emotions can make one moment feel much bigger and much more permanent than it is.
• 4:24
  Kathie (2): A hard morning can start to look like a hard life.
• 4:28
  Kathie (2): A delayed answer can feel like a final answer.
• 4:31
  Kathie (2): One setback can seem to explain your whole future.
• 4:36
  Kathie (2): I know how convincing that can feel, and I don't think the answer is to slap a positive thought over it.
• 4:43
  Kathie (2): If I'm scared, telling myself everything is wonderful usually does very little for me.
• 4:50
  Kathie (2): I'm still scared, and now I'm trying to argue with myself.
• 4:54
  Kathie (2): What helps me is coming back to what is happening right now.
• 5:00
  Kathie (2): I'm feeling fear.
• 5:01
  Kathie (2): My mind is telling me this will last forever.
• 5:04
  Kathie (2): I don't actually know that.
• 5:06
  Kathie (2): That is awareness, and awareness creates choice.
• 5:12
  Kathie (2): The pause is where that choice begins, but the pause is more than waiting a few seconds before you speak.
• 5:18
  Kathie (2): You can pause on the outside while the same story keeps racing on the inside.
• 5:23
  Kathie (2): A useful pause has awareness in it.
• 5:28
  Kathie (2): It gives you a chance to notice your body, your thought, and the assumption beneath the thought.
• 5:33
  Kathie (2): You might still feel upset.
• 5:35
  Kathie (2): You might not be ready to make a decision.
• 5:38
  Kathie (2): That's okay.
• 5:39
  Kathie (2): The pause is a place to stay for a little while, not a test you have to pass in 10 seconds.
• 5:46
  Kathie (2): Sometimes I pray, sometimes I meditate, sometimes I hold a finger and give my body time to settle.
• 5:52
  Kathie (2): Sometimes I go for a walk, and sometimes I have to come back to the same pause more than once.
• 5:59
  Kathie (2): That last part matters.
• 6:02
  Kathie (2): We tend to imagine a habit as something we do perfectly every day, but this habit may look like catching yourself after you've already reacted.
• 6:10
  Kathie (2): You may think,"Oh, I decided I knew what that meant before I asked.
• 6:15
  Kathie (2): I treated a feeling like a forecast." That moment still counts.
• 6:19
  Kathie (2): You noticed you can return.
• 6:22
  Kathie (2): If this gives you a new way to think about habits, share this episode.
• 6:26
  Kathie (2): We talk a lot about what we do every day.
• 6:29
  Kathie (2): I think it's time we talked about what we assume every day, too.
• 6:36
  Kathie (2): So let's take another example.
• 6:37
  Kathie (2): Say you're trying to grow a business.
• 6:39
  Kathie (2): You send this note to someone and hear nothing back that day.
• 6:43
  Kathie (2): What happened?
• 6:44
  Kathie (2): You sent a note.
• 6:45
  Kathie (2): You have not heard back yet.
• 6:48
  Kathie (2): What might your mind add?
• 6:49
  Kathie (2): "I said the wrong thing.
• 6:51
  Kathie (2): They aren't interested.
• 6:52
  Kathie (2): This will never work.
• 6:53
  Kathie (2): I need to do more faster." You may feel that rush to push, explain, post three more things, or rethink your entire business by dinner.
• 7:03
  Kathie (2): There may be useful next step to take, but can you see it clearly while you're trying to outrun that feeling?
• 7:12
  Kathie (2): This is where David Hawkins' idea from the book Power Versus Force comes to mind for me.
• 7:17
  Kathie (2): I think about the difference in how I act when I'm clear and how I act when I'm trying to make uncertainty go away.
• 7:26
  Kathie (2): I may still send the next message or do the next piece of work.
• 7:30
  Kathie (2): The action could look almost the same from the outside.
• 7:34
  Kathie (2): Inside, it feels very different.
• 7:37
  Kathie (2): Force says,"I have to make this turn out right, right now." Power says,"I can take the next honest step without deciding the whole story today." That doesn't mean sitting back and doing nothing.
• 7:52
  Kathie (2): I care deeply about taking action, but I want my actions to come from a place where I can see what I'm doing.
• 8:00
  Kathie (2): I've noticed this in fitness, too.
• 8:02
  Kathie (2): You can follow a plan because you enjoy feeling strong and wanna care for yourself, or you can follow the very same plan while telling yourself you're never doing enough.
• 8:12
  Kathie (2): From the outside, both people went to the gym.
• 8:15
  Kathie (2): On the inside, they had two very different days.
• 8:20
  Kathie (2): That's why the habit beneath the habit matters.
• 8:25
  Kathie (2): What are you practicing while you do the thing?
• 8:27
  Kathie (2): Are you practicing trust in your ability to respond?
• 8:31
  Kathie (2): Are you practicing curiosity, or are you rehearsing the belief that every moment is a fight you must win?
• 8:39
  Kathie (2): I'm asking myself these questions, too.
• 8:41
  Kathie (2): I still miss the pause.
• 8:43
  Kathie (2): Sometimes I see it much later, but I'm learning that I don't need to turn a missed pause into one more reason to be hard on myself.
• 8:51
  Kathie (2): I can notice it now.
• 8:53
  Kathie (2): That is the next pause.
• 8:56
  Kathie (2): If this episode is helping you look at your own patterns with a little more room, please like it and subscribe to the channel.
• 9:04
  Kathie (2): It helps more people find this conversation, and I'd love to have you back for the next episode.
• 9:11
  Kathie (2): Before we finish, I wanna give you something simple to try today.
• 9:15
  Kathie (2): You don't need a new morning routine.
• 9:17
  Kathie (2): You don't need to catch every thought.
• 9:19
  Kathie (2): Just notice one moment when your feelings make an answer seem certain.
• 9:25
  Kathie (2): Then ask yourself three questions.
• 9:28
  Kathie (2): What happened?
• 9:30
  Kathie (2): What am I assuming it means?
• 9:33
  Kathie (2): What would help me see more clearly before I choose what to do?
• 9:37
  Kathie (2): You might need to breathe first.
• 9:39
  Kathie (2): You might need to feel sad or angry.
• 9:42
  Kathie (2): You might need to wait until tomorrow.
• 9:45
  Kathie (2): The point is not to get the right answer on command.
• 9:49
  Kathie (2): The point is to give yourself room for an answer you couldn't see when the emotion first hit.
• 9:55
  Kathie (2): That room can change a conversation.
• 9:58
  Kathie (2): It can change how you approach your work, and over time, it can change what you practice every day.
• 10:05
  Kathie (2): I've written a article to go with this episode with bonus resources you can explore at your own pace.
• 10:10
  Kathie (2): You'll find the link in the description or show notes below.
• 10:14
  Kathie (2): The article also has a way to contact me if you'd like to book a conversation about the patterns showing up in your life, leadership, or work.
• 10:24
  Kathie (2): And before you go, think about today.
• 10:27
  Kathie (2): Where might a familiar assumption show up?
• 10:31
  Kathie (2): If it does, see if you can notice it.
• 10:34
  Kathie (2): Feel what you feel, and stay in the pause long enough to choose your next step.
• 10:40
  Kathie (2): No shame, no condemnation, just awareness and the chance to return.