The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 89 Harnessing Self-Talk for Success

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 89

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In this episode I discuss something I see a lot in my consultations with clients. We fail to notice and acknowledge our successes, much to our detriment.

This is demotivating and leads you to believe you can't achieve your goals. This keeps you frozen in a cycle of feeling like a failure. When you acknowledge your successes it actually motivates you, makes you feel good about yourself and gives you momentum. I discuss this in more detail and provide useful strategies to support changing your self talk so you can achieve your goals.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Fiona Kane:

Hi everyone, welcome to the Wellness Connection. I'm your host, iona Cain. Today I will be talking to you a little bit about success and mindset. I want to remind you that it's really, really important to notice your successes and to notice what you're doing well and to notice what you're getting right. It's been a real theme with my clients in the last few weeks when, talking to people, they're not identifying anything they are doing well and it's a real human habit that we kind of only identify what we're getting wrong. So we're very harsh on ourselves and we can always list to everything we've failed at or everything we're getting wrong, or everything we haven't done, but we don't see what we've failed at or everything we're getting wrong, everything we haven't done, but we don't see what we've done. So often I talk to clients and they're saying I haven't done anything to look after myself or I haven't done anything to nourish myself or the different language that people might use. I always encourage people to use the term nourishing yourself and I would say when people say that, I start a conversation with them and sort of say, okay, sometimes I've already noticed, they've already been talking to me about what they've been doing. So I point those things out, and if I don't know those things, I start the conversation as, is that really true? What have you been doing? And I quite often find that they list a whole bunch of things. So when they say, oh, I'm not looking after myself, I'm disappointed in myself because I'm not nourishing myself, and why am I all the other? The question is, well, what are you doing to nourish yourself, or what are you doing to help yourself or whatever? Whatever it is you're talking about, and it's a good one to get in the habit of asking yourself. Now it's not to make excuses so that you know you.

Fiona Kane:

Obviously, in life, if we there's a certain element of when we push ourselves and you know, and um, and what's the word, I suppose, just motivate ourselves to do better, that's, that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to motivate yourself to want to do better and to to want to achieve things and to want to be successful and all those things. That's, that's not a problem. However, in my it's less likely to happen when you don't acknowledge where you've come, how far you've come or what you're actually doing. Reason being is, what happens is if you're in the headspace of, oh, I don't look after myself or I don't do.

Fiona Kane:

Insert whatever it is that you're saying that you don't do, so I don't look after myself, or I'm not clever enough or smart enough or something enough, whatever the enough is thing that you're saying that you don't do, so I don't look after myself, or I'm not clever enough or smart enough or something enough, whatever the enough is thing that you feel like you're not doing. If you spend all of your time in that place, what happens is it's very demotivating, because if you really think you're not doing anything, then you're just more likely to just want to do nothing, right, oh well. And also then you believe things about yourself. So you believe that you're not capable of it, that you're somehow flawed, that you don't have discipline or self-control or whatever the thing is. So when we're in that place of when we only recognize what we're not doing, or we just always see that I'm not doing the thing not doing, or we just always either I'm not doing the thing, it's very demotivating. So that's kind of going to make you sort of go backwards or just keep self-sabotaging or just kind of stay in this sort of go round and round in circles thing. So while it's okay to want to motivate yourself to do better. That's just not the way to do it.

Fiona Kane:

What we do know with human beings, the way to motivate yourself to do something better or to achieve is to do something right, to do something on the list. So I'll give you an example. There's just like in business. There's a really great example of this. I can't remember is it Brian Tracy who wrote the book? I can't remember now, but there's a book called Eat that Frog and there's a lot of science in that book and it's actually a really interesting book to read. And in the book what he talks about is he says that you know, like a lot of people, a lot of business people will have a list of things to do throughout the day.

Fiona Kane:

But there's the thing that's kind of playing on your mind and there's a thing that feels like oh, it's a bit hard. I don't know how I'm going to do that. I'm not quite sure. I'll just put that off until later. There's that thing and what we often do is we do all the little things or everything else except for that thing.

Fiona Kane:

But the problem is, when we don't do that thing, it's still in our mind. We're thinking about it, we're mulling over it, it might be making you feel stressed and it's like another tab that's open in your brain and so sometimes, actually, that can slow you down and it can demotivate you and you can be having these kind of avoidance kind of behaviors. So in fact, when you actually eat that frog which is what he refers to as like doing the hard thing or doing the challenging thing first so at the beginning of every day you eat that frog, you do the hard thing. Then after that everything's easy, because a few things happen and I can't remember the science of it, but essentially the science of it is that once you've eaten that frog, because you've done the hardest thing, now everything else seems easy.

Fiona Kane:

The second thing is you feel really good about yourself because you've eaten that frog and you feel like you've achieved something, and it's a real weight off your mind as well, because if you've eaten that frog and you feel like you've achieved something and it's a real weight off your mind as well, because if you've been holding all these browsers open in your brain or if you've been mulling over or stressing about things, having it done makes it much easier. It gives you a lot more space to get on with things. So you feel much better about yourself and you get more confidence in yourself that you are capable and that you are able to do things, and what happens is it actually gives you momentum. So you get momentum because of all those things you know. You know you can do something, you've seen yourself do something, you've gotten something kind of off your list or off your mind that might be playing on your mind and you know everything you do for the rest of the day is going to be relatively easy after doing that hard thing, right? So, uh, so the way that we so when we sort of continually say, oh, I haven't done anything, I'm not doing anything, I haven't done anything, it's usually not true.

Fiona Kane:

Usually we've done something and it also depends on the situation you're in as to what that something should be. So if you are, for example, if you are someone who is, you know, if you're generally well and everything's going all right and you're sort of feeling okay, then your level of what that something could be or should be might be a little bit higher. You might expect a bit more performance from yourself and you might have kind of higher standards, whereas if you're in a situation where how I was a few years ago when I was grieving, when my mother passed away, in that sort of early, sort of few months when I was grieving. Sometimes having a shower is an achievement, or making breakfast is an achievement, or going for a walk is an achievement, right. So what we judge to be kind of having done something can be quite different depending on where we're at and how much of an achievement that thing is right. So if having a shower is a huge achievement to you because you're you know, you're really struggling with your mental health or because you're struggling with grief or something like that, then the shower is the achievement and that's perfectly fine. Whereas in sort of normal everyday life, if things are going well for you, well, shower's great, but you would want to hold yourself to a higher standard for more things. So essentially it's kind of like be realistic and adjust it to different times for yourself.

Fiona Kane:

Because the other thing that happens is people kind of, you know, they go through these things where they go through grief and loss or illness or whatever, and then they get really angry at themselves that they're not performing at 110 two weeks later or something. It's just not realistic. Now, if two years later you're still not performing, then maybe then you need to get more support or figure out what you need to do or whatever. It is Everything's relative and everything's individual. So even that two-year mark might not be so if you lost children or something, I don't know. I don't want to get out the measuring stick and measure how long grief should be or how long you can feel a certain way or whatever. There's so many different circumstances for why we feel the way we are, so I'm just giving you the gist of it, as opposed to hard and fast rules. So please don't take it as a judgment on the timing of any of those things.

Fiona Kane:

This is just a general conversation about this stuff. So, just essentially, what you need to remember is that it is really, really important to look at your successes. It is really important to, when you hear yourself saying you haven't done anything, question that, because often it's just not true. And when you say I haven't done it, and when you verbalize it, when you say it to yourself, what you do is you demotivate yourself every time and you prove to yourself that you're not capable, hopeless. Whatever the language is that you have, whatever that negative language it is, it just confirms it and it just kind of, it's just as completely. It just goes around in a loop. You keep confirming, confirming what you already know, which is you're hopeless, or whatever the stories you have about yourself.

Fiona Kane:

So defining and looking at, and even you know, with success to celebrate your success. So you know, if you've won an award, share that online or with your friends or with your clients or whoever it is. If you've achieved something, share that. If you've reached a milestone with something, or if you just feel really proud of yourself about something, share it in the appropriate place with the right person, right situation. Uh, but share it.

Fiona Kane:

Um, as um Brene Brown talks about this, she talks about um candle blower outers and they're the people who don't enjoy your success. So you learn who to share your success with and who not to. So you don't take your success or that little sort of like that little thing that you've just started and that you're really proud of, but it's just small and you're doing your best with it. You don't take that to the person who's going to blow out the candles and jump on the cake, right, because that person is going to absolutely not going to support you. You take it to the person who's going to say that's fantastic, let's celebrate. Well done, good on you. That must feel great, whatever. So you'll quickly learn in life who your candle blower outers are, and they're not the person you take something to when it's really fragile and when you just need that bit of support or that bit of affirmation, right?

Fiona Kane:

So it is really, really important to celebrate our success, to acknowledge our success and to let ourselves know that we're doing well or that we're proud that we've done something, because that is actually what gives you momentum and that is where you get the proof, over and over again, that you can do it. You start to believe you can do it. You start to believe you're capable, because when you see yourself doing stuff over and over again, you believe you're capable. So it goes the same thing when we write ourselves those to-do lists. If you write yourself a 3,000 sort of thing to-do list, you're never going to get through it, and then you're going to feel bad about it, whereas if you write yourself a short to-do list and you can get all those things done, you're going to feel great about it, and then you might flip to the next page and do the next thing, which is fine, but it's kind of one of those things, right, if you say you're going to get three things done, you quite possibly will get four or five things done or more. But if you say you're going to get 30 things done and you only get five things done, you're going to feel bad about yourself. Or even if you get 10 things done, you're still going to feel bad because you didn't do the 30 things.

Fiona Kane:

So it's kind of about expectations. We've got to think about what our expectations are for ourself. Are they realistic? And is our language, is our sort of mind language, supporting us, or is it actually debilitating you and holding you back? Because often that language is quite debilitating and is holding you back more than it's pushing you forward. So it's always kind of just trying to figure out where that balance is. But, um, but when we do, when we can acknowledge what we've done, it makes a really big difference to how we feel.

Fiona Kane:

And I invite you, in regards to this, to think about how you would feel if it was a friend. So often when it's ourselves, we've got all this judgmental language for ourselves and we're not seeing our achievements and all of those things. But if it was a friend, you would actually be really kind. If it was a friend or your child or someone you would say, oh, wow, well done. I know that's a real achievement for you because you know again, like I said, the shower might be an achievement for one person. You know Elon Musk. It's like catching a rocket type thing when it comes back to Earth. Sorry, I don't know what it's called. I call it a rocket type thing, it's. Whatever it is, it's pretty amazing. So for him that's an achievement. Maybe he doesn't have too many showers I don't know, he probably doesn't, but you may. But you get what I'm saying right. So for him that's an achievement.

Fiona Kane:

For someone else, having a shower might be achievement at that time in their life, depending on their health, their mental health or their physical health. That might be a real achievement and that's fine as well. So it's kind of really recognizing where you're at and what level of support you need, but also being kind to yourself, because we often are not kind to ourselves and I don't mean, you know, sometimes people think being kind for yourself means that sort of just lying in the lounge and, you know, eating junk food and watching Netflix forever. That's not being kind. It might be kind for a day or two or whatever the situation is. It might be kind momentarily, but kind is actually doing the thing that helps push you forward in whatever your goals are. It's absolutely doing that thing. But kind is also being realistic about where you are, what your resources are, what you can expect from yourself at this time and what are the best goals and what's the best way to do that, and measuring it accordingly and not measuring it against your best friend or somebody else or whatever.

Fiona Kane:

Another situation I saw recently was someone where I think they made a pact with a friend and they were both going to lose weight on the journey. And I won't go into the detail but suffice to say my client has been through a lot in that time and it's very, very valid reasons why this person has not achieved those goals at this point. It's very valid, very real and very justified and it's totally normal that you would not have. But she was holding herself accountable to what someone else had done. It's like, oh, the other person's achieved their goal, why haven't I? Well, you know, hands tied behind your back for a whole bunch of reasons and all these things going on in your life that's why.

Fiona Kane:

So again, we've kind of got to look at what we're holding ourselves accountable for. Is it realistic, is it helpful? And if we don't hold, it's kind of again, like I said, it's that balance sort of thing, right, because stress is good to a certain point, because if we didn't have any stress we wouldn't do anything, we wouldn't get out of bed if we didn't have the stress of getting to work on time or whatever it is. But at the same time, causing ourselves unnecessary stress and just hating on ourselves and putting ourselves down and holding ourselves accountable in a ridiculous way is not helpful, right. So it's kind of figuring out what that balance looks like for you at the time. But causing yourself unnecessary stress by putting yourself down is not helpful.

Fiona Kane:

And if you recognize you're doing that, then it's useful to start just asking a few clarifying questions like where's your proof for that? Okay, well, what are you doing? What am I doing? And probably ideally, you'd talk to yourself like you would if you were talking to a friend, because if you're talking to a friend you would be kind. If you're talking to a friend, you'd be gentle and you just ask the questions and you'd get evidence and a lot of because of the way our brains work and because of the stories we tell ourselves and a lot of the programming we have in our brains, a lot of life skills, is actually collecting evidence, and it really is.

Fiona Kane:

So, whether it's collecting evidence just in life, in general, you collect evidence. If you're going to do something to manage your health, you'll get evidence about whether or not I should try this thing or that thing. Or if you're going for a job, you might be going for two different jobs and you'll be looking at the evidence for which one maybe is the better option. Or if you're voting in an election, if you're like anything in life things we do we look for evidence to see which is the better option or what is the answer. So the same thing goes for our mindset. With our mindset, because we have all of these different stories we tell ourselves, what we need to do is we need to look for evidence. So when we hear ourselves telling all sorts of stories about ourselves or putting ourselves down or being really judgmental with ourselves, the question is where's your evidence for that?

Fiona Kane:

So it's going on evidence gathering and sometimes that's why you need to do something like a gratitude diary where every day you write down something you're grateful for, because sometimes we just don't see any evidence that there's anything good in the world and there's a lot of good in the world. There's bad in the world as well. There's both. But if you're not looking for it, you'll often only see the bad and you won't see any good. So sometimes we're writing down the evidence for that, or the evidence might be the evidence that we are looking after ourselves, whatever that looks like, right? So literally it's like sitting down every day and writing that list, whether it's a list about what we're grateful for or whether it's a list of what we've achieved and what we've done to support our health. That's collecting as data, as evidence, and sometimes that's actually what we need.

Fiona Kane:

Sometimes, just because of the way our programming is and our brains are and all sorts of stuff going on in our heads, we actually just need to create that evidence. And when we create the evidence then we can change that self-talk, because now we've got the evidence is in, we can no longer tell ourselves that story because we know that that story is not true. So sometimes it's just a simple evidence gathering thing. Now, if you really struggle with that is not true. So you know, sometimes it's just a simple evidence gathering thing. Now, if you really struggle with that, and if you're really really struggling with that, obviously, then maybe it's a good idea to see a therapist or see someone who will support you around that I support my clients around that to a certain point. If it's a really tough, deep, traumatic stuff, then maybe you want to see a therapist or someone like that.

Fiona Kane:

But essentially, a big part of this is finding that information, creating that evidence, those sort of receipts that can help you see for yourself the truth of a matter, because we convince ourselves of a matter and seeing the truth of it. And there's so many things in life that we tell ourselves stories about and those stories are just not helpful and their stories are not true. And we don't realize that a lot of the stuff that goes on in our brain, a lot of that talk that we do, is just a bunch of stories. There's just nothing to it. There's not necessarily true, it's not necessarily based on any evidence and if it is, sometimes too. I've talked about this before.

Fiona Kane:

But human beings, we're what's called one-time learners. My friend, linda Campbell, who's been on the podcast before, taught me this and she said that because we're one-time learners. That's how we survive. So, for an example, if a baby touches a hot plate and it burns its hand, it learns not to do that again, right? So the good thing is it's a one-time learner, so it's learned not to do the unsafe thing. The bad thing is, it's a one-time learner, so now it becomes risk averse.

Fiona Kane:

Now, risk averse to the hot plate is probably a good idea, but it could be something else that's happened. It could be you went to a social event and someone embarrassed you or someone said something bad about you, and now you don't want to go to any social events because you think they're all bad. Or you had a friendship where you were burned in a friendship and so you just don't want to trust friends or partners because you've been treated badly in the past. The whole sort of you've been bitten by a dog. Therefore you don't want to go near a dog or go for a walk or whatever. So there's a whole bunch of things where we create a fear around something because we're one-time learners and it's actually what helps us survive as a species.

Fiona Kane:

But sometimes it's actually a story we tell ourselves that's not necessarily true. So just because we had one friend let us down or one partner let us down, doesn't mean all people are going to let you down, or people are bad, or dogs are going to bite you or whatever. The situation is right. So if you understand that we're one-time learners and that's just so we can save ourselves and survive, it's a good thing. It's a good thing that we learn not to speed when we're driving our car and all those things. However, it can be a bad thing in that we create stories that hold us back throughout our life. So it is really useful just to notice the stories you're telling yourself and start looking for evidence, because when you start looking for evidence, you might find that the evidence is actually not there for that story that you're telling yourself. And I think it was Henry Ford who said whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right and that's really really true.

Fiona Kane:

We really talk ourselves into or out of things, and you also see in videos with them. There's videos where they've got I've been watching dog videos lately, but there's cat and dog videos and things where they kind of will put some sort of they'll have a hallway and they'll have the dogs just run through the hallway and then they'll put something in the way that makes it harder, some sort of barrier that makes it harder for them to run through and the dogs have different personality types, like one dog will just jump over and the others dogs will be a bit more stressed, or some dogs will give up and won't try and do it and others will jump over it. Uh, and, and you see, with the different personality type dogs, and, but you see the same thing. There was a study done Guy Wint talks about it in his first TED Talk and there was a study done with these babies playing with Jack in a Box and it was the same thing. There was one child who just did everything until they made it work. And they eventually made it work, but they tried 50 different times or whatever to make it work.

Fiona Kane:

And then there's's other two children. I think one of them eventually just cried and gave up. Just saw the other one do it. Oh, I can't do that and just didn't do it, and I can't remember the other. I can't remember the exact story, but it's essentially the way it is.

Fiona Kane:

It's like some people have the mindset they can do mindset and that's kind of the Elon Musk's of the world, whether you like him or not. I know some people don't like him, but I mean he achieves a lot right. So the people who achieve a lot in life, whether you like them or you don't like them, whatever that's kind of irrelevant to the point here, but that they've got that go-get-it attitude. Or you'd see the same thing with a lot of sports people, a lot of people who've kind of do really well in whatever their thing is. They've been prepared to do it really badly for a long time, or to practice, do it a thousand million times over until they get it right, kind of thing. And so that's the difference in the personalities. Where some people will kind of give up. They just kind of they convince themselves it's too hard or it's too dangerous or they're not going to be able to do it after a couple of goes, sort of thing.

Fiona Kane:

Uh, really, the, the stories we tell ourselves are really powerful, and it's sort of the same situation with the dogs or with the babies or whatever, and one can do it and the others can't. And often it's really really simple and the reason we can't is because we've actually convinced ourselves that we can't. We've gone into something convincing ourselves that you can't. So I just want you to be aware of your language that you use, and if you hear yourself saying can't a lot, change it to looking at what can I do? What can I do?

Fiona Kane:

And the other thing, too, is when we talk about things that we feel like we can't do or we haven't done or whatever, rather than saying I can't do that, and look, I'm talking to myself here as well. I know I do some of these things. But rather than say we can't do that, just say we haven't done it previously. Okay, I haven't done that in the past, but that does mean I can't, it just means I haven't. There are some things, maybe that are like I really truly can't, but there's obvious things like I can't be a basketball player. I don't have the height and I don't have the coordination. It's never going to happen for me.

Fiona Kane:

So there are some things that you just like, just not. You know there's reality, right, but there's a lot of other things that the can't is just us, a self-limiting thing that we do to ourselves. So be aware of how much you're limiting yourself with your language and look for evidence, because often there's a lot of evidence and sometimes we think like just pushing ourselves, like this is actually going to be motivating, but not look at the results for yourself, like if what you're doing is working well, then good on you, but if what you're doing is not working, then there's a good chance that you're demotivating yourself, not motivating yourself, and I see that whether people are talking about being on a diet or business things or whatever it is. So just be aware of your language, be aware of measuring your success in an appropriate way, but also acknowledging and noticing your success, and be aware of the language that you use around what you feel like you're capable of doing. So, anyway, I hope that was useful.

Fiona Kane:

I would really like you to please to like, subscribe and share, and I've had lots of guests lately, so this is the first what I've done on my own for a while. But, yeah, like, subscribe, share, please rate and review as well, and if you have any comments or anything you'd like to say, I'd be happy for you to share that with me as well. So I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you all again next time, and you know this is, you know, the podcast where I have real conversations about things that matter. Thanks, bye-bye.

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