Episode 36 Shownotes - Three Reasons We Don't Take Action

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode Number 36!
Well, hey, my Best Lifers! I hope you are doing well, safe and warm and snug somewhere! We had about 16 inches of snow over the last 2 days, and I am so grateful to have the ability to work from home doing telehealth. Over the weekend, I spent a ton of time just sitting by the window Sunday watching the snow fall and the birds flutter around the feeder while I sipped a hot drink. So perfect, calm and peaceful! Sometimes I wish all days could be like that.

I have been thinking a lot about where I am and where you might be this week. And I realized that maybe I needed to give both myself and all of you a bit of tough love. I have been sliding on my food protocol, which has led to some weight gain recently, after holding steady for most of the pandemic. At the same time, I have had a number of people tell me “I just don’t know how to change where I am” or “I am overwhelmed”. So, I am devoting this week to calling out ALL of our brains, and discussing a bit why we don’t take action sometimes. The three things I am going to focus on are first, the emotion of overwhelm, second - the thought “I don’t know” and third, the thought “I don’t feel like it today”.

I want to start off with a quote from Albert Einstein. He said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. I think we can take much wisdom from that thought from one of the most brilliant minds of the last 100 years. For me, continuing to eat off my plan, eating flour and sugar, drinking more alcohol than normal, and expecting that I won’t feel like crap and gain weight is insanity. Considering I am currently wanting to lose more weight, taking those actions is even crazier. I have found that flour adds to my aches and pains, yet I still hear my brain asking “why are my joints hurting so much?” after a week of eating flour daily. My brain wants to deny that what I am eating is causing so many of my problems. For many patients, they continue to tell themselves the same story about cancer and their lives, yet keep wondering when they are going to feel better. This is the same degree of delusion. If you continue having the same thoughts about where you are, and thinking “why don’t I feel better?”, well, you may need to question the sanity of that pathway. We know we need a different chain of action to get a different result, so WHY aren’t we doing it??? I believe there are 3 main reasons that I outlined previously. So let’s jump into the first – OVERWHELM.

Overwhelm is what we call an indulgent emotion. What does that mean? It means that it is an emotion that keeps us stuck. Our brain indulges in it, using it as an excuse for inaction. When we think thoughts like “this is too hard”,” there are too many things to do”, or “I can’t do all of this”, we feel overwhelmed. For most of us, this leads to spinning in indecision about which thing to do first, or jumping from thing to thing without completing anything. I often see it keeping people from taking any action that could be helpful – not starting an exercise or smoking cessation program, not making a plan to change their eating habits, or not jumping into a coaching program to work on their thoughts because their brain lets overwhelm stick them where they are. Overwhelm tells them a lie that if they don’t do everything at once, it isn’t going to fix the problem. But I want to tell you – letting your brain stick you in place with overwhelm is a CHOICE TO STAY EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. So if you think that overwhelm is keeping you from making a decision, don’t lie to yourself. You have decided to stay exactly where you are today, in whatever discomfort you are currently in. To get out of overwhelm, we need to figure out what things we need to accomplish, and then prioritize them. What is the MOST important thing to accomplish? What will have the biggest impact on your life or health? Once you have decided what to accomplish first, then you need to figure out how to start. You don’t have to figure out how to get to the goal. You just have to figure out what the first step is to move you towards it. Is the goal reducing your risk by exercising 150 minutes per week? Well, then the first step is figuring out an exercise you can do, and doing it for some number of minutes the first day. Then make a plan to increase the number of minutes and days slowly each week. Plan an alternative in case the weather is bad, or the power is out or whatever other things could derail you. Overcome overwhelm by just taking the first step forward. For me right now, the overwhelm is “I have gotten so far off plan”. The first step for me is to JUST MAKE A PLAN FOR TODAY, and then stick to it today. I don’t have to drop all the weight today; or beat myself up for getting off track. I have to take the first step of making a plan of what I want to eat and drink TODAY and just do it today. I don’t have to worry about tomorrow yet. If you are overwhelmed with thoughts post cancer, then you need to make a plan how to address them. It is ok if you don’t know exactly how – you just need to take the first step and then continue forward until you get where you want to be. If you are stuck in overwhelm of “I just want to feel better” an easy first step would be signing up for one of my webinars to learn what steps to take, or making a consult appointment to discuss my Freedom from Cancer Fear Program. On your own, it could be figuring out ONE thought that makes you feel like crap and brainstorm one alternate thought that is believable and feels better.

The second thing keeping us stuck is the thought “I don’t know”. Any time we have that thought, it shuts down our problem solving ability. We think the thought “I don’t know how” and we feel confused and uncertain. We hesitate to make any decision for fear of it being the WRONG decision. When we think “I don’t know” our brains don’t make guesses or explore theories. It just shuts us down and keeps us where we are. One of the ways to combat this is to ask yourself, “But what if I were to give my best guess?” or “What do I THINK the right answer is?” Your brain may want to tell you that the guess might be wrong, but I want you to be really clear on something – if you make no decision it is DEFINITELY the wrong decision if you want a different outcome, because no decision is no movement from where you currently are. For me, I keep thinking “I don’t know why I am eating off of my food plan”. So I asked, but why would I guess? My brain popped up a thought of “I thought once I was vaccinated, things would be better, but there is still a pandemic and I still can’t go to concerts, the theater, out dancing and so many other things I want to, but I can just eat food that makes me feel happy for a bit”. Well, for sure that answer will lead to me eating off plan. Maybe the first step for me is to recommit to following my plan because I want to look good in a bathing suit when we can have people over again. If you are feeling empty, and your brain says “I don’t know what thought is causing that” ask it to take a guess. Maybe it comes up with “I am physically limited now”. Well, that is a thought you can work on. My first question here would be “Why? Why am I physically limited?” and this will give you something that you can work on. Maybe the thought is “I have less joy now”. Again, ask “Why? Why do I feel less joy?” and then answer the question. That answer is what you need to work on to get past these feelings.

The third thing that keeps us stuck is the thought “I don’t feel like it today”. For me, that thought leads to me now allowing my food urges and eating off plan. For my survivors and thrivers, that thought may lead to not exercising, not following their alcohol plan or not doing their thought work. I want to point out that the thought “I don’t want to today” means “I don’t want to reach my goals”. Because “I don’t want to today” is a mini-quit. What that means is that we have a lot of little quits, it often leads to big quits. For instance, with my weight loss work, if I think “I don’t want to follow my plan today” and I eat things I hadn’t planned, it slows down or stops my weight loss. If I do this enough, I will maybe even gain weight. Then, a month from now, I think “I have been following this plan for 6 weeks, and not lost any weight – it doesn’t work!” Not true – it does work, I just didn’t follow it, and now those small quits lead to a full quit. Let me put that another way – “I don’t want to today” is the equivalent of “I quit, and am no longer trying to meet my goals”. When we put it that way, our brains are like “wait, THAT isn’t true – I do want to meet my goals” and it lets us get to a place where we realize maybe we DO want to follow our plan today.

The place I think this is most important is actually with exercise for the survivors. It is so easy to think “It’s snowy, I don’t want to work out today” and skip it. But if people understood that skipping days lead to a worse survival, and asked their brains “ok, does that mean I am willing to accept a worse survival? Am I willing to give up the goal of maximizing my odds?” Often, their brains will say “Of COURSE that isn’t what I want. Why would you even ASK that?” Well, then we need to point out – this is the day I said I would exercise. I looked at the schedule on Sunday, and saw that this was the day it would be the easiest to fit in. If I skip it, I likely won’t get the number of minutes I’m shooting for this week, so skipping it today IS saying I am willing to give up on that goal. I highly encourage you have multiple plans for exercise. One at home. One outside. One that you can do after dark. That way you know – oh, it’s sleeting – I don’t want to walk outside, but I can do the pilates video on YouTube. Or, oh, the power is out, so I can go to the mall and walk before it opens. Having a back up or two makes it easier to follow the plan in the moment when something comes up that makes your brain think you “can’t” work out today. For me with food, that means having several plans. I am going to eat this for lunch. Then I get up, and one of my teenage boys ate what I planned to take at some point in the night (this happens surprisingly frequently!). I have back up plans that include what I will pick up if my first plan doesn’t work out or I forget my lunch on the counter (also surprising how often THAT happens!).

I want to give you another example of how much “I don’t feel like it” poisons our brains. It gives us an out – you previously decided what you wanted to do, but now you have this little caveat – I will do this, but only if I **WANT** to. Let me give you a clue – you are never going to WANT to exercise, or eat the food you planned, or skip the wine tonight like you planned. As soon as you don’t feel like it, you are giving control of the decisions to your primitive brain that is all about in the moment pleasure, instead of the frontal cortex that can plan ahead and make good decisions for your long term happiness.

Imagine if we had a friend who 1 out of 3 times we were scheduled to meet for lunch, texted us after we were in the restaurant, “oh, I’m not going to make it – I just didn’t feel like it today”. How long would it take before you didn’t make lunch plans with her? We do the same thing to ourselves when we use the planning part of our brain, but then in the moment, we think “I don’t want to”. Too much of that and the PFC says, oh, why even bother to plan? We never follow it anyway, and there you are at the full quit. The “I give up”.

Ok, my friends, so if we are not meeting our goals, whether it is loosing weight, following an exercise plan, or working on feeling better after cancer, we have to ask why. If we are doing the same things, and looking for a different result, we need to question that. If we aren’t taking different actions, we need to look for where we are wallowing in overwhelm, thinking “I don’t know” or thinking “I just don’twant to today”. If you are looking for more help, consider booking a minisession my website: bestlifeaftercancer.com to help brainstorm the steps to take to achieve the results you want. This is a free and easy first step towards a different outcome! I look forward to speaking with you soon!