Episode 57 Shownotes - Living as Your Future Self (aka Fake It Til You Make It!)

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode Number 57. Today we are talking mindset and a technique to help get you in the right headspace.

This podcast is the culmination of a discussion with someone I was coaching, and a discussion with one of my kids. You may know I have 4 boys that are rapidly becoming young men. They ask questions about how we live our lives, differences with how other people live and are learning to forge their own paths. We were recently talking about how different families spend money, how they eat, how they spend their free time. It was interesting, because we look at families we know that are super fit, thin, and spending quality time together often and as often as not, outside doing something cool. We compared this to those we know that are couch potatoes, usually not doing things as a family and not eating a healthy diet. (I admit, we may fall somewhere in the middle – we eat together every night, but my kids do play a fair amount of video games and we are not always outside). Our discussion - What are the differences between these families? Is it genetics? Upbringing? Their thoughts about what is important in life? I want the kids to see that you have to think that a healthy lifestyle, quality time, and real food have value to make them a priority. But to get from couch potato to outdoor enthusiast is so challenging, right? It requires changing habits, overcoming our built in inertia, allowing urges to do unhealthy things and more. I am always looking for ways to help people with this. After having this discussion with my son, one person I was coaching recently was talking about “fake it til you make it”. I have always termed this as living as who you WANT to be, but her term is really more catchy, isn’t it? We know that our mindset is the only thing we can always change. The fact is, you can’t change your medical history, who your family is or what your skin and eye color is. But you can change how you think about life. I have also told you in the past that you can’t hate yourself into anything. Change does not come from negative thoughts, even if we really believe it does. I’m going to give you a few examples of this, and then we will talk about how “fake it til you make it” fits into this.

I think the easiest place to see this is weight. You look in the mirror and think you look fat. You think how much you hate your thighs or stomach or butt. Or maybe it is that you put on your clothes and they feel tight and uncomfortable on your body, and you can’t believe you are at this point of having to go up ANOTHER size. These thoughts make you feel terrible. You swear to do better today, that you won’t do the same stupid shit you always do, and eat junk, and not exercise. But you are starting this day HATING yourself. It is depressing, but you slap a happy face on and get going. Then the day gets tough. Something negative happens and your brain sees it as confirmation that you suck. It offers a thought “look, you can’t do anything right. Fat and stupid.” Or lazy. Or whatever your brain offers. Now you feel worse. The day is long, and you are sad and tired and maybe uncomfortable in your tight clothes. You get to the end, and you JUST WANT TO FEEL BETTER. And the thing you know always does that is food. So you eat to ease the discomfort. But now you are too full, feel gross, are disappointed in yourself AND the scale goes up in the morning and it starts over. Your brain says,”See? No matter how hard I try, I suck at this. I am fat and hopeless”. More negative thoughts and feelings, more drive to feel better. The more you hate on yourself, the more you eat to feel better. It is crazy – we know it is, and we just can’t understand why we keep doing it.

Another example from my and many other people’s lives is money, and thinking there isn’t enough. So many times, when people believe there isn’t enough money, they spend MORE. People feel scarcity about money when they are out, and this leads to impulse purchases that make them feel better in the moment. But then, they get the bills, and feel more scarcity, and shame that they aren’t making progress on getting out of debt and they can’t even remember what all they bought. Guilt, shame and more scarcity. These feelings peak when they are out shopping, and they buy more things impulsively and the cycle continues. Another way this shows up is when people buy things that aren’t quality, because they think they can’t afford better. But what they buy doesn’t last, so they end up buying it twice or three times or more. The Walmart black t shirt that lasts 5 washes, vs a better quality cotton that lasts 60 washes with no holes and the stitching is intact. Their closets and houses are overstuffed, and their debt continues to skyrocket.

On an aside – I have to have a little rant at myself, because I am guilty of this with clothes. The disposable wardrobe - this is actually becoming a global crisis in the clothing industry. Did you know that the average person throws away 65 pounds of clothes each year? The people on this planet consume 80 billion pieces of clothing per year. There are estimates that most clothing items are worn only 7 times! There is a movement that encourages people not to buy things unless they think they will wear them 30 times. To do this, we would need to buy quality, not quantity. I keep wanting to do this - start a capsule wardrobe, have my clothing be simpler and my closet less full, and look like an elegant French woman all the time. Sorry – getting off track. I’ll let you know when I figure out how to achieve this!

But back to where we compound our problems. It may be that you feel like there isn’t enough time to get everything done. The amount of work that is on the list for today seems impossible to complete, and some of the tasks are really challenging, maybe you aren’t even quite sure where to start. This feels really stressful, and to feel less stressed, you pick up your phone and open a mindless game or scroll through facebook, delaying starting and having to face the list. This wastes time and makes your time crunch even greater. So you have a thought, “I need to get moving!”. You complete the first task, but then you look at the list, and think, “I just need a breather”. So instead of continuing to work, you find yourself back on the phone wasting more time.

Or maybe it is family life stress. Things are stressful at home, so you come home and have a few drinks to “take the edge off”. This often increases the tension between you and the people in your home, because we may be less present when we drink – less interactive, less helpful, more likely to veg on the couch and not be productive. So maybe it triggers an argument with your spouse, making it more stressful at home. Or maybe you aren’t interacting with your kids, so they are running wild, making the house more stressful. In addition, you may not get to bed on time, and when you do, you sleep poorly because the alcohol disrupts your sleep. So the next day at work is rough, because you are tired, have a headache, and feel sluggish. You get home and it is loud and chaotic at your home again, and the work from last night isn’t done, and your spouse is cranky. So you think you need a few more drinks to take the edge off. And so it goes.

It is paradoxical – where we feel we are lacking, we often do things that make the scarcity worse to feel better. Why? Because if we use food to feel good when we are thinner, we gain weight, but we still use food to feel better when we are heavy. If we shop to feel better when times are flush, we still use that to feel better when we have spent all of the money. If we play on our phone to relax when we have time, and it makes us feel good, we may resort to that when we are stressed because we don’t have time. Truth told, many of us do more than one of these things. Many of us overeat, overdrink, overspend and waste time.

We have talked in the past a lot about allowing urges, which means letting the urge to do something be there, not forcing it down or away, and not acting on it. We have talked about awareness of our feelings, and not forcing down feelings as well. But for so many of us, this is still a HUGE challenge. You are certainly NOT alone – even those of us who know and understand this struggle and need help! I have been working with a one to one coach recently, because it is often so easy to see things like this when we are coaching other people, but so hard to see them when it is US!. In my life, we had a bunch of changes at work with a new electronic medical record system, some challenges at home with one of our kids, and I am personally struggling with some weight that had crept on during the pandemic. I see so many of these maladaptive techniques at play in my life right now. I don’t love how I look, so I want to shop to find clothes that make me feel better about myself (like the clothes covering my body will fix what I don’t like that is under them!). So my closet gets too full, and that stresses me out (remember the global epidemic of disposable wardrobe!). I want to have a drink after work because the days are more stressful as I try to learn a new computer system. I know I am forcing those feelings down during the day because I think I need to keep going and not get behind. But I also want to be true to who I am, which is a doctor that follows the recommendation she gives patients to keep their alcohol to 5 drinks per week or less, so my brain is in conflict when I do have a drink on a weekday. I feel anxious about one of the kids, so I want to eat for comfort, but then my clothes are tight, and I don’t love how I look, and that creates discomfort and anxiety as well. Often, at the end of the day, I tell myself I just want to relax, but truth is, I just want to check out completely (currently with the show Lucifer). When I do that, I watch a show in bed on my laptop. Often one show becomes two, and I am up later than I should be and the blue light from the laptop disrupts my sleep. And I am hiding in my room and not spending time with my kids. With my coach, we discussed that what I am looking for in all of these is COMFORT. Understanding what my brain is searching for helps. How can I get comfort without having to result to all of these techniques with consequences that increase the issues? Physical contact like hugs, a warm bath, a walk after work, time with friends, exercise, meditation, reading, a cup of tea. There are so many things I have used in the past. I know when I am thin, not stressed, and in harmony with my beliefs, I naturally turn to these things. So, how can we get to a place where we don’t feel the need to do these things that make our lives worse? If we know that we can’t hate ourselves thin, if we can’t berate ourselves into fiscal responsibility, what can we use? This is where the living as your future, or ideal, self comes in, or as my client says, the “Fake it till you make it”.

A really helpful way to do this is to ask yourself “who would I be if I was thin? Or out of debt? Or organized?”. How would I think? What would I tell myself? How would I respond to this situation? Let’s look at a person who is thin, and for the most part likes their body. They have a situation at work that bums them out. They would never say, “Look – here is confirmation that I suck!” They would not get home and use food to feel better. They love themselves, and would think, “today was rough, I’m going to take a walk before dinner, then a nice shower, and then eat something that is going to fuel my body and make me feel good after”. A thin person isn’t asking food to solve their problems. Often, they just eat to fuel their body. They don’t eat for entertainment, to feel better, because they are bored or sad. They are asking food to do one thing only, fuel their bodies so they can live their life.

What about someone with plenty of money? How do they think? It is so interesting. Having had the opportunity to watch all sorts of people as I work with patients in medicine, many of the most wealthy don’t look like they are. They drive a nice, but not flashy car. Their clothes are beautiful quality, but not emblazoned with a brand name across their chest. Their shoes and bags don’t have pricy labels on the outside. They don’t feel that they have anything to prove. Some of the thoughts they have may be “I have everything I need” or “I don’t need more things to make me feel fulfilled”. They many not even be aware of these thoughts, but they are running on a subliminal level. Many people who have money actually spend LESS. They don’t shop that often. They have classic items of clothing in their closet, some of which they bought 20 years ago. They leverage their money to make more money. The people with flashy cars and clothes are often those who have newly acquired money, and feel that they need to prove it. How do you use this knowledge? If you imagine yourself debt free with plenty of money, you will not feel the need to grab a shirt at Target because it is cute and on sale – an impulse purchase because it is a good bargain. If you think like a person with plenty of money, you will go out when you have something you need, and look through the stores to find exactly that. You will buy that one perfect thing when you find it, not 25 poor copies along the way. If this topic interests you, there is a book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach their Kids about Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not”. I haven’t read all of it, but have had it recommended by multiple people. I will admit – I grew up in a family that had enough, but not a ton, of money. It has colored the way I think as an adult. I still feel like there is not “plenty” of money, and find myself getting the bargin t-shirt at Target much more often than I would like to admit. But in the same vein, this colors a conversation we have often with our kids. They want the latest iphone or brand name fancy sneakers because their friends have them. We want to teach them that in terms of money, we have choices to make. We can buy designer clothes, shoes, iphones and each new video gaming system that comes out, or we can choose to spend our money in other ways. We are big on prioritizing experiences, which, by the way, research has proven brings more happiness than stuff. We want them to understand, fulfilling those urges for stuff in the moment means that we can’t do other things later. So we will often tell them, no – that isn’t how we choose to spend our money – if you really want it, you can earn more spending money and get it yourself. The place I have found this most useful is in thinking like someone with enough - CHOOSING not to go randomly walking through stores after work if I am feeling negative emotions. The solution to my discomfort is not in a Target shirt or a Bed Bath and Beyond kitchen gadget.

What if you want to be someone who routinely exercises? Think like someone who exercises every day. They know it feels good afterwards. They love feeling strong and fit. They may not want to some days, but the knowledge that they will be happy after that they did it makes them do it. They love looking at their strong bodies in the mirror. They love going on hikes and not being winded. They love living an active lifestyle. If you want to get into the habit, imagine that you are someone that exercises routinely. What would you think when you aren’t motivated to exercise today? How would you overcome your inertia? Because trust me – even the people who are religious in working out have days that they don’t really want to. You need to tap into the wisdom of your future self – she knows what she would tell herself that would make her want to do what she knows will help her long term. It is different for each of us, so me telling you what my future self would say is not necessarily what your future self would say. Take some time to dig into this.

What if you want to be someone that sticks to the recommended amounts of alcohol each week? Again – it is the process of thinking who you would be weren’t asking alcohol to numb you, entertain you, make social situations seem more fun. Ask yourself who you would be, and then be that person.

If you are looking for a jump start to this work, I have a free future self worksheet on my website – Best Life after Cancer under freebies – check it out to do some writing and start to figure this out for yourself. Ok, my friends, have a great week and I’ll talk to you soon!