129 | Example Using the Four Requirements for Change

The Catholic Midlife

This week Karen and Curtis discuss how the Four Requirements for Change might apply in real life. We mostly talk about how it applies to physical health because it’s full of concrete details that make it easy to see how they work. Please send us your comments, we are always interested to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript:

Hello and welcome back to the Catholic Midlife Podcast with Curtis and Karen

Hey everybody.

We are here for episode number 129.

This is going to be a great episode. And Karen, I wanted to tell you, I met this guy this morning. I was buying watches from him on Facebook marketplace, 40 watches for 40$ because we have a family member that likes to fix watches and I met him at a gas station.

And so we were surreptitiously trading cash for this little box of goodies, and I've been watching Breaking Bad with one of our kids And I was kind of expecting

Oh no!

some character to pop out of the weeds and tell us something terrible.

And arrest you.

But it turned out we had a great conversation because he is a high school athletics coach a running coach I believe.

Okay.

And he's really fit and as part of my fitness journey when I see somebody who's really fit I like to ask him for tips just because it's encouraging and it's inspires me and boy, did he like to talk about tips?

He had tips. I bet he did.

had a lot to say and I think I mentioned he looked good. I could tell he was on the job and something he shared with me is that he never eats processed food for breakfast or lunch and then he goes home and he says I'm married so I eat whatever my wife prepares and he probably doesn't eat too much. He doesn't eat sugar except on special occasions and same for alcohol he says sugar and alcohol aren't intended for your body, there for special occasions. And as I was asking for tip, one thing really struck me. He said, we can all practice good nutrition. It's possible for all of us. And that was inspiring because Karen so often we think of some area of life, we think, ah, it's too hard. It's, it's out of reach. I can't do that, it's beyond me, but here's a man sharing a great tip in the physical arena that we really all can get behind.

Sure. So he gave you some practical tips, but it sounds like he also inspired you to the possibilities around fitness and nutrition.

Absolutely.

That is a great introductory story, Curtis, for what we're going to do today because last week we talked about the four things that need to happen to create change.

And after we did that episode, we thought, you know, I bet it would help people if we just took an area of life and broke down some examples around the four keys to change to help people really to have a sense of more practically what we're talking about.

That's great, Karen. Let's stick mostly with the physical fitness, physical health arena because it's easy to understand. The applications are easy to understand. And frankly, because, well, Karen, for our audience, I think we all immediately appreciate that you can't pray your way to weight loss.

It's true. Or there's no novena for weight loss. You have to, you have to figure it out, and you have to create all the habits. And this is an area where the over spiritualization It's really not a trap that we fall into.

Right. We can all appreciate in this area the work that needs to happen.

Exactly. And of course, like everything, it begins with the spiritual that guides us, yet there are many things that are needed. And that's why we're talking about the four predicates, the four things you gotta do for change.

Okay, so let's look at the first one and see if we can apply it to physical health. The first key to change, if you remember, is you have to release your baggage. You have to release your negative emotions, your limiting beliefs, your inner conflicts, the things that are obstacles for you to moving forward with your goal.

So what kinds of baggage might someone have around physical health?

Well, this man I spoke to, he didn't say this, but I could imagine him saying at some point, Well, I don't control the food that's fixed in the house, and I don't feel comfortable Making other people eat what I eat because he said he specifically eats whatever is prepared. So he could have turned that into some kind of big baggage thing for him yet he found other areas of life where he did control exactly what he ate and he's able to make it work.

Sure, so that could have been a belief that made him say, Oh, well, there isn't anything I can do in this area.

Right.

Okay. Yeah, I can imagine someone having baggage from previous say illnesses or diseases and like, let's say you had childhood illness and maybe you were in the hospital and you had a lot of doctor's appointments.

I could imagine that could create a lot of negative emotions around health for a person like anger or fear, anxiety, disappointment, frustration. You could feel really powerless, especially if it happens as a kid, about managing your own health. I could see how that could show up as baggage around physical health later in life.

We could have a lot of baggage that sometimes we do have problems like our knees really aren't that great and it presents a challenge to getting around and moving yet there are ways to get exercise even if your knees are not

the best. So that physical drawback could become baggage if, if you let it, or we can have a limiting beliefs around not having enough money to belong to a good gym. And while we respect people's budgetary limits, and that could be true, often what's true is we're not comfortable spending money on ourselves

because our fitness is not the priority that we could be or we think that well, I should be able to work out at home on the cheap and not have to go to a gym and spend money.

Right. And that's going to maybe get in the way of achieving a goal around physical fitness. I remember I had a limiting belief. I didn't realize until I spoke it out loud because I've had some physical illness myself. And at one point I said, well, I'm just gonna have to deal with this for the rest of my life.

And someone very wise pointed out to me that, that was a limiting belief and if I really believed that and kept saying that it was going to be an obstacle for me to address this and get to a better level of health. I had to change the way I was thinking about that issue.

Karen, we keep talking about baggage, but do I always know when I have it?

Well, there's different levels of awareness, obviously. It can take some practice to get in touch with the signs, but it's very clear when you are thinking about an area and you have a lot of negative emotion around it, that's probably baggage. And it comes out in your language, either what you're telling yourself interiorly, or as in my example, something I said out loud, to someone else that was recognizable as baggage when the person reflected it back to me.

There's also some signs around action, like if you're super stuck in an area and you just can't take the action, you likely have some baggage to release there because you can't move forward.

Right. You can't take effective action if the emotion doesn't support you, or you can't take much action.

Yeah. So I would even say to our listeners, Hey, just take a few minutes, think about the area of physical health and notice what emotions come up for you and if you've got the negative emotions, or notice if you have some, some negative thoughts or beliefs about that area that wouldn't support you in your physical health goals.

After you release your baggage and by the way this is of the big contributions we make is Helping you release your baggage and release it a lot faster than you can do physically

with your own time and effort. But as you release this baggage and you start to look into your goals, you may be surprised at some of the new things that come up with. It's sort of like crawling out of a hole and up onto a ladder and all of a sudden you look around and you, you see more possibilities than you did.

I think Curtis, if you had somebody set some goals prior to releasing baggage and then set some after there could very easily be a shift because the baggage really gets in the way of seeing what's possible for us and what kinds of goals we could set.

Karen, we've talked about goals in this podcast before it was episode, I looked it up. Aren't you proud of me?

I am. I wouldn't remember offhand.

Is episodes 46 to 49 that's somewhat granular and then more tips and big picture stuff at episodes 101 to 103. So we've talked about goals and let's try to dig into this example

of goals in the context that we're, you know, at this physical fitness, what, what are some goals going to look like here?

Yeah, actually, this is a great area of life to talk about because you're going to set a very good goal for you, a specific goal for you. And very often, we, we can get information from our communities or people around us about, you what ought to be a goal for us. And there's a process we go through with people to really specify what is a good goal for you.

And a lot of it has to do with, well, when you come out of this process, what do you want to be different? Is it something you want to be able to do? Is it something you want to have? Is there some kind of way of life that you don't have now that you'd like to have? And it's going to be different for every person.

Some people are like, well, you know, I have to care physically for a family member and I want to be fit enough to do it. Or, I am on this medication and I can get off this medication if I do certain things in my physical health well.

And we're going to have goals at different levels.

Some of them are going to be very end point kind of goals. And supporting those longer term bigger goals are going to be a lot of very granular ones. And we want our big goals to be motivating, goals that inspire us and empowering. In other words, goals that let us be at cause and step into doing what we need to do to reach them.

And we want them to be towards kind of goals as opposed to avoidance goals as much as is possible for us. We want to move towards something, more than moving away from something.

And I think I mentioned this last week, Curtis, I'm not totally sure, but when you're thinking about your goal, you do have to look slightly ahead to the next step, which is taking action because you do have to ask yourself, is this a goal that I'm willing to do the actions it will take to achieve the goal?

And that's a really important way of helping to discover what's the right goal for you.

Absolutely. We have to have a sense of what it is we're going to do. We're going to be willing to do. And we've talked about goals elsewhere for instance, the smart kind of way of, of looking at things specific, measurable, achievable realistic time based in time. Some of those bigger goals might be so I can play volleyball, so I can golf having the strength and the flexibility.

Those are some bigger ones and a more granular goal could be around nutrition. Like I'm going to eat nutritious dense food, and, and not food that has a bunch of wasted calories.

I'm going to drink more water.

Right. Or I'm going to learn how to wait until I'm hungry to actually eat.

Yeah, and, and, If

to eat a carrot, you're probably not happy, hungry.

Yeah, and part of the process here is, you know, there's no, there's no one nutrition plan that works for everyone.

So there's a process when you get into the action step of really being flexible to figure out what works for you. A lot of times I think we think about the granular goals and we haven't really connected and focused on our motivation for the bigger goal. And if you don't have that, it's very easy to get discouraged and frustrated with the smaller goals, especially if you're struggling with them.

Karen, let's push forward. We've talked about goals kind of a lot elsewhere. Let's talk about

oh, action.

Taking action.

It's the weak point, but your goals are going to support you and taking action because you have a lot of, you have the big goals, but you have some little ones and then you have some tiny goals just to do the next thing because, and this is what you like to say, there's a momentum to action.

There is a momentum to action.

I think you all can appreciate this that oftentimes it's just the getting started that takes the effort and then you create a momentum and really change at any level is a change in your unconscious habits. That's ultimately what you're going for if you want consistent long term change, it's going to be around creating the behaviors at the unconscious level.

And installing them consistently in a way that supports you.

And remember, your unconscious it's mysterious, but yet it's not. It's something that is always present. You know how to open doors and you don't think about it. It's because your unconscious mind just kind of does it for you. Or you get on the freeway and pretty soon you're two thirds the way to work.

While your young adult is like, uh, dad, we're actually going to blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, why didn't you say so? Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't have let me turn there. It's because my unconscious mind is just taking me away.

Yes.

And, and it's not a mysterious thing, even if it's not something I, I mean, I don't know how my body regulates my calcium levels, but it does a great job of it and it's mysterious, but it's also familiar and Karen, you were just talking about training, learning in our unconscious and yes, that's what we're talkingabout.

There's plenty of techniques and tools and resources to address how to get that to happen. And how to support you in getting those behaviors really working consistently for you.

And often habit formation is going to be the key in many of these actions, especially I think in the physical arena.

And, repetition, understanding triggers understanding anchors for new behaviors. Thinking about what inspires you to change your behavior in the moment when it's difficult. All these things are part of getting cooperation from our unconscious, from that awesome elephant. The conscious mind is the goal setter and the unconscious mind is the goal getter.

Goal getter.

I really like that you brought that up, Curtis, because part of what it takes to really get the change we want is to get to know our unconscious mind and how it works, because if it's on your side, you're going to get there.

And if it's working against you, then you'll be blocked and that will be an obstacle and, and there are ways to really connect and be clear with your unconscious mind because it wants you to tell it what to do.

And connecting with your intuition, connecting with your unconscious, those things that you see around you, that for some reason, you're talking to this guy in the parking lot as he slips you 40 watches. And he's telling you these things about nutrition. That's telling me, Hey, I've got more things I can do in this area. My unconscious mind is, is flagging it for me. And there are so many ways that we do this kind of thing.

Your unconscious mind can be your best friend.

Yeah, there you go.

Absolutely.

Well, Curtis, as you know, and I know, one thing that can happen when we're taking action is we can get a little distracted.

Oh, a little distracted. Do you

think so? Just a little, just a little, at least in my experience.

What's for dinner, by the way?

Very funny. And what do you do? I mean, and what's the antidote to distraction?

Focus.

Focus is the antidote. That's the word that we like.

So sometimes what happens when we're taking action is we'll start to get the feedback from the action. So there's this feedback loop as you start taking action that gives you more information about what's working, what's not working, if there's an action step that needs to happen first before you take that other action step.

And so there really is this kind of flexibility we have towards the action steps we're taking that are going to get us to a goal. And it's not always a straight line. Sometimes it's a little bit more of a wiggly line in fact, usually it's more of a wiggly line. And when you appreciate that and expect that then there's things you can do to maintain your focus on the goal and change what action is needed based on the feedback that you're getting.

In the context of the physical health, we can try different ways of getting our nutrition. Your approach to it may change over the years and you may find that some things work better than others. I'm kind of down on keto these days. I just couldn't stick with it. I mean, doing the whipped cream shots was, it just, there's something wrong with that.

And I guess you don't have to do that on keto, but I was ready to move on and I think, we experienced the making different plans to adapt to the changing situation. And the key to focus is we're planning on getting there. The plane is going to land at the place where we want it to land.

We're going to figure out how. One of the things, Curtis, that happens to women in midlife is the things that we've done to keep ourselves healthy for a while now aren't going to always work the same when we hit menopause or pre menopause.

When we're in a different physical phase of life, there has to be some flexibility to research more, choose new actions, get more feedback and stay focused on where we want to be.

Wow, Karen, that sounds like a really fun time of experimentation.

Yeah, well I'll let you know how it goes. I'm sure it's gonna go great.

All right, you ladies don't charge down and just come chop my head off. Okay. I know it's not a fun time of experimentation. And we talked about focus last week. You know, here's a little I don't know, hack for focus and that is keep getting inspired. Listen to the audio books that inspire you, read the things that inspire you. When you find somebody that's doing the thing that you're trying to do, talk to them, look at them and think how great they are and ask them questions.

People are always happy to talk about their successes and it's a great way to maintain your focus by giving your unconscious mind some examples and inspiration.

Sure. That's a great point, Curtis is giving yourself something to focus on. That's what you want and not what you don't want.

Karen, we've given some, I don't know, more or less specific examples of the four things you gotta do to have change. And we've talked about the physical arena because it's easy to understand and it's hard to over spiritualize. But I was talking to a lady that was in a multi level marketing program. She, was selling the things and she had a small team about four people that she was inspiring and what had happened to her was she was having a certain amount of success in her sales and then she got a coach that did a breakthrough session for her, a coach that's familiar with the practices that you and I use, Karen.

She went there, she went to Denver from California, had the breakthrough session and released a ton of baggage around her business and she tripled her sales in the next year. And she attributed it directly to that coaching so much so that she was at the training you and I were at wanting to learn, well, how do I do this?

How can I teach my team these techniques so they can make more money and she can make more money?

Sure. So that's a career example of really addressing from step one, what's needed to get the change.

Exactly. And multi level marketing, that's things like doTERRA, Melaleuca, even like Livia, those kinds of things where you sell and then you recruit other sellers and you get a portion of what they sell and then you can get a portion of what the people they recruit sell. That's what multi level marketing is. Here's another area, Karen, how about marriage.

Oh yeah, Tell me.

Tell me.

oh, wait a minute. Maybe you shouldn't. What are you going to say? So

so often when we think about marriage, we think about, oh, couples therapy or, oh, I'm going to get with my spouse and we're going to do blah, blah, blah together. However, If you clear out your own baggage in your marriage, you're going to show up differently.

And it's probably the best thing you could do for your spouse is show up in a better, more positive way because we always have more to offer. And then as you get your own, you know, stuff under control it's easier to deal with your spouse's stuff and, and either ignore it or create boundaries or whatever it is.

I love Laura Doyle's book, The Empowered Woman. She likes to talk about how women, by following her empowering tips, which means they're at cause for their own behavior, they can start to drive a different dynamic in their marriage, because relationship, it's like dancing. She takes a step, and he has to take a step to, to keep the show rolling.

And I'm not suggesting by any means that marriage is all on one person, yet it's true that, hey guys, we're a cause, okay? If we want a better marriage, we can start working on that right now. We can start working on it and ourselves and for my friends that aren't married often it's working on ourselves that begins to almost, you know call forth those other potential, dating relationships because we're taking care of our stuff.

And all of a sudden our, our vision starts to clear up.

I did hear a great story recently, Curtis, and the, the person was saying, they were a coach and they were working with someone who wanted to find a life partner. And so they had the person, you know, talk about the things that they wanted in their partner, and then they looked at the list together and the coach says, so are you the person that that person has on their list.

Yeah.

And there was kind of this ouch question and you really have to say, dang, I need to do what I need to do to be that person. And I think that's true even after you get married is to have that vision of who do I need to be in this relationship.

Oh, wow. Wow. I bring up the marriage thing at my own risk.

Ah, you do.

There's a lot of, lot of accountability to be in charge of yourself. But as we, as we grow, we can, it's easier for us to grow together and that, that can be very beautiful.

Thanks for being here on the Catholic Midlife Podcast

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