In this episode Lisa explains why flipping the script on making changes – deciding on the person we want to be and making decisions from there – is the most effective way to get the results you want in life.
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Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:
Hey there, thanks for joining me for another episode of the Small Steps Living Podcast. I love these little podcasts, and I am enjoying bringing them to you in bite-sized chunks. I wonder how you are enjoying the bite-sized chunks. I would love for you to tell me.
You can always reach me at lisa@smallstepsliving.com and let me know what you love about the Podcast. Do you like the little snippets? Do you like the longer versions? Do you like the interviews? I have so much planned for 2018 at Small Steps HQ, where we’re busily creating all the plans. But I’d really love to hear from you.
I wanted to share today one of the biggest mindset changes that I’ve had this year, in 2017. It came to me via my mentor, James Wedmore, and his podcast, which is Mind Your Business. He was doing an interview with this guy called Jim Fortin, and they were talking about this concept of ‘be, do, have’ and the whole idea that when we decide we want something – so let’s say we want to eat healthy – we just try to do things differently in order to be able to have that result, right?
We try to do differently, so we have a different result.
But we’ve missed this critical step, and that is ‘be’. It’s what comes first.
It’s like the missing freaking piece for anyone looking to shift where they’re at in the moment.
So, think about it. You could just change the food, like, you could just decide, ‘I’m going to go to a health food shop, I’m going to get this, I’m going to follow that person’s meal plan, I’m going to do that. And then once I do that, I’m going to be healthy.’
You find yourself reverting back to what you were eating. You find yourself talking really nastily to yourself when you do that. You find yourself sneaking Caramello Koalas in the car after going to the shops. You don’t end up having that different result, because just doing things differently is often not enough.
What we need to do is decide to ‘be’ a healthy person before anything else.
So, we decide to be someone who eats wholefoods. So, think about it. You wake up in the morning and the first thing you’re thinking about is all the things that you need to get done that day, most probably. And you just enter your normal daily rhythm, with your normal daily thoughts.
You end up having no breakfast, because you told yourself you would do things differently to be a healthy person, but it’s really impossible, sometimes. I mean, you can do it for a little while. Whereas if you wake up and you have decided to be a healthy person, a healthy person makes totally different decisions.
So, a healthy person, the night before, will think, ‘What do I need to do to ensure that I have some breakfast tomorrow?’ See, we decide to ‘be’ someone, then we ‘do’ things differently, and then we get the results.
So, a healthy person – you just decide to be that – and then you wake up in the morning and you think, ‘I’m so glad I put my sneakers out so I can sneak out for a 20-minute walk before the craziness hits.’ Or, if that’s not possible for you because of your circumstances, you wake up thinking, ‘Gee, I’m glad that I got that breakfast ready for myself the night before. This is so easy. I’m doing it.’
Therefore you’ve had a great breakfast, and you’re feeling pretty healthy. But you needed to decide to be that healthy person. It’s a huge thing to do, and it can be applied to so many different areas of our life.
I am trying it with being organised. I’m so down on myself sometimes when I am not particularly organised. When things get a bit chaotic, and out of control. But because I’ve decided to be someone who is not chaotic, I’ve decided to be someone who is more organised, I’m just finding that I’m doing things differently.
I’m having conversations about things that I might never have before. I am putting my clothes away every single night, because I am a person who is organised. I am a person who is doing all the ironing on one night each week, while watching a bit of Netflix.
Because I’ve decided to be someone who’s on top of it.
It takes time, but if we decide to be that person – you know, I want to be someone who has this, or does that, or is this – then I just feel I’m working from a completely different place. I then decide that I need to do things a bit differently to be able to be that person, which absolutely changes my results, what I have.
I really encourage you to try this. It’s something that I am infusing throughout everything in Small Steps. I feel like it’s been the missing piece in what we do in the Small Steps membership, and how I can encourage women to make those big changes.
I think we forget that we have a choice, and that all the time, change is available to us.
But we lock ourselves in, we tell ourselves things are a certain way. And they’re not. Because of these big shifts that I am making to my mindset, the ideas that I’m being exposed to, the books that I’m reading, the importance that I see our mindset is in really shifting, for good, the way that we live our life. This stuff is going to be infused all throughout Small Steps in 2018. Can’t ignore it.
Members are going to be getting mindset hacks each month, like this, to really help them shift the needle in their own life. I know so many of us are craving this stuff. Some people call it woo woo, whatever. I don’t. It absolutely makes practical sense to me, and I only bring the stuff that does make practical sense, and that I have tried, and is working for me.
Because there’s a lot of noise out there in the self-help world, and a lot of people doing things a particular way. I will never, ever tell you, here at Small Steps, the exact things that you need to do. But I do reckon that as women, we’re ready for this conversation.
If you’re someone who wants a healthier life, if you want things to change for you, if you want to get unstuck, if you want to feel more ease, less rush, then we actually have to be different people. And I don’t think that’s as hard as you might think.
So, here’s a gentle invitation for a Small Step for you. Who do you want to be, what do you want to have? What can you do differently? Think about it in terms of who you need to be to get those results that you’ve been looking for. Talk to yourself as that person.
Make decisions as though you already are that.
You will end up doing things so differently, which will absolutely change what you have. Be, do, have. Sit with it, journal it, let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you. And if you’re listening to this and the doors to the Small Steps membership are still open, then come and join me.
We delve deeper, we’ll take you further, and you start really seeing results in terms of creating change in your life. You don’t have to stay stuck. You don’t have to stay in struggle town. I’d love to help you take Small Steps to create pretty huge change.
We talk Simplifying, we talk Nourishing our bodies, and we talk about Enjoying life. And all the mindset hacks that I’ll bring the members, well, I cannot wait to see how they change over the next 12 months. Check out the website for more details, and I’ll see you in there. Take care.
Episode Three: Why Juggling All The Balls Never Works and What To Do Instead
Ep 48: My Biggest Lessons of 2017
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