The Wellness Scoop - How to Break a Habit & Make Lasting Changes

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

In this episode Ella and Matt chat to the wonderful Shahroo Izadi, a behavioural psychotherapist, about how to create positive, sustainable and long lasting changes. Her background in addiction has informed a refreshing approach to change through reframing your internal dialogue and nurturing a kind relationship with yourself in order to achieve your goals. Whether your goal is less screen time, better nutrition, weight loss or simply moving more, this episode is well equipped to arm you with some of the tools required to get you on track and to stay there once you’re on it.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Welcome to the Delicious Yellow podcast with me, Ella Mills, and my husband and business partner, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So we've had a lot of questions really since day one of Delicious Yellow and in line with the podcast as well about making changes, creating positive habits in some capacity and that whole concept of falling off the bandwagon no matter what the changes you're trying to make are. Particularly

I think around diets as well and people saying oh know, I tried this diet and it was some crazy weight loss diet, and then they fall off it after a week because it's miserable. And I think everything that we've talked about at Delicious Yellow is being able to create change over a long period of time. And I think that's something that we've become just interested in the topic in general. Yeah, completely. And how you make long lasting, sustainable changes rather than the kind of quick fix solutions. And so I kept seeing this book pop up everywhere, The Kindness Method, and it's obviously such a good title. And I was really intrigued by it, so I got it. And it was absolutely fascinating because it was all about how if you treat yourself with kindness and compassion,

that is really the only way to make lasting changes in your life, no matter what you want those changes to be. So the book's written by Sharu, who's our guest today, and she is a psychologist who's been working in behavioral changes. And she's been working in the NHS, initially starting working in substance misuse services. So she's seen a lot of kind of addiction and habit, and therefore is a kind of real voice within that space. So firstly, welcome, Sharoo, and thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. So your book starts by kind of saying, like, how many times have all of us said we're going to make a change?

You know, we're going to break this habit. We don't like this element of a way in which we live our lives or we want to be healthier or we want to spend less time on our phones or you know whatever it is maybe it's weight loss maybe it's starting to run who knows but we commit to these things we say we're going to do it and then we just can't make it happen. I think really making sustained change has a very different criteria to changing in the short term and sort of white knuckling it. And I noticed working in addiction that there were certain things that people were calling lack of willpower when in fact they were just areas that they either didn't have the tools in or didn't have access to information about.

And one of them was increasing in self-esteem, so feeling capable and worthy of achieving ambitious long-term things, feeling resilient and able to sit through short-term discomfort, and also being able to plan realistically. Because a lot of the time when we do decide that we're going to change everything, it tends to be as a result of something making us feel fed up with ourselves. And that tends to be the worst possible place, I think, to create change from. Because you're creating it from a negative. Yeah. And you don't feel empowered to make your own choices. And that's when you hand yourself

over to some prescriptive diet or something that some experts told you when actually, if you have the tools to sort of check in with yourself properly, you don't really need to hand yourself over, especially not when you're vulnerable. And it also it gives you something to rebel against. Whereas if you create your own bespoke plan for any area of your life, you don't really rebel against it. Yeah. I learned that in addiction. I learned that there are these things people are going around calling themselves weak-willed, when in fact, there are very basic ways that they can be helping themselves to sustain change. One of them is expecting it to be difficult, which a lot of us don't, because we think that if we want something enough, that's enough. But motivation wavers

constantly day by day. It wavers minute by minute. So unless we know that and expect it, then we feel like we're caught out and that our actions are impulsive and compulsive. And we forget that there's a conversation that we have with ourselves between thinking about doing something and actually doing it. And I think what you say about willpower is so interesting as well because so often I know I've heard just friends, family, so many people around me say, oh, I really wanted to do this, but, you know, I just don't have the willpower.

You know, I wish I had willpower like that person. And we see it like we're innate failures. And that seems to me again a really something that you either have or you don't have but it's not something you can ever just build or exactly and it feels like a negative place to be again making these changes from because you're making it thinking that you're rubbish yeah i absolutely agree i think it's actually the times when we are most convinced that we need fixing that we go looking for a fix it doesn't help at all to come from a place where you're not cheerleading for yourself essentially because I think you can get going

with tough love and concentrating on what's wrong about your habits and what's wrong about you but you keep going by wanting a better life for yourself and so you need to be moving towards positive things not just moving away from negative things and i think also when you when you shift your focus from what is wrong to what's strong you do um you do start getting a lot more insight into why you're engaging in the habits you're engaging in and therefore when you take those habits away what other things are going to do the same job so if you if if I had everyone in a room and they all told me what was what was bad about smoking we'd all pretty much say the same things whereas if I asked them what was good about it each one of them would have a different story I remember when I was 15 this girl at school was

smoking and I remember thinking that about her or it gives me a chance to get away from the family for 10 minutes in the evening whatever Whatever that is, as a practitioner, I'm not really listening in on what's wrong with people and what's wrong with their habits. I'm listening in on what's right about them and what's right about their habits so that they can forgive themselves for having developed them with the self-awareness and the insight that they require. And then try to create a plan of action that involves putting things in place that give them the same comfort that they got from the habits they now want to change. And replaces it positively rather than through fear. Exactly. Because we will replace habits. Even if you're replacing a habit with doing absolutely nothing, your new habit is

doing absolutely nothing. So I think the mistake a lot of people think is that desire to change is enough to push them through those times when there's ambivalence around change, and it's simply not. So what was it that inspired you to kind of get started with this web, looking at it? Did you have a kind of personal experience or something that, yeah, that kind of really made you very passionate that this is the approach that we need? Yeah. So I've spent my whole life beating myself up, issues around codependency, anxiety, low self-esteem. I have a stammer as well that I manage. And the main thing that was bothering me was that throughout my life, I was gaining and losing huge amounts of weight and abusing food and never really learning to eat properly in a way that I enjoyed. I was either on or off a diet, which meant that I was

either good or bad at all times. And then I started seeing what people in addiction were doing. I went to this OA meet, Overeaters Anonymous meeting. And I don't know how much you know about the 12 steps, but essentially, you need to be abstinent. That's the main takeaway. You stop drinking or you stop taking other drugs. And that's what you have in AA. Exactly. Or in OA. But in OA, exactly. So you can't be abstinent. So what I had in front of me at these meetings, which I went to for research, by the way, but actually really wanted to go and see if I could

get some help. I saw in these meetings, a bunch of people who created their own definition of recovery based on what works for them and their own triggers and their own bodies. And every single one had a very unique idea of what works for them. And it wasn't based on calories or carbs or fat. It was just based on how it made them feel and their mental health and how they felt the next day. And so they had become a real authority on their own bodies. That's so interesting. Yeah. And I thought, fantastic. And they felt empowered. Totally, yeah. And empowered to externalize why they were doing what they were doing and really own it. And so I took from the motivational tools that I was using with my own clients in NHS services, and I took from Overeaters Anonymous. And I myself lost eight stone, eight and a half stone now, and haven't put on an ounce in, it must be nearly three years now.

And I don't even think about it anymore. And that's never happened to me, ever. Another thing that happened, too, was that my, I was in counseling at the time, largely because of heartbreak, if I'm honest. And this, my counselor said to me, what if you're never slim? Because I had this ambition throughout my whole life that I would just want to be slim and then everything would be great. So everything was on hold. Everything, whether I used an ice cream on my face or listened to music or allowed myself to enjoy anything, it was always never going to be quite good enough until I was slim. And she said to me, well, what if you never are? And initially, I honestly, I wanted to kill her because I thought I've employed you to make

me slim, essentially. Yeah. As I employ, as I'm outsourcing anyone around me to make me slim, and then I'll be fine. And a few days later, I started thinking and I thought, okay, so let's say hypothetically, I'm, I'm never slim. Will I never enjoy myself? Will I never wear bright colors? Will I never, do I deserve to not enjoy anything? Because, you know. And then that was a real turning point. I decided that I would start to treat myself as though I had already achieved all my goals.

And then I lost weight more quickly than I ever have in my whole life and more easily. And I barely thought about what I was eating anymore because you had that positive relationship with yourself yeah I was like that makes me feel good that makes me feel bad I know what I know I think everyone knows certain things for you that other people may be able to learn from it was types of eating not weight and not foods necessarily as one of my clients recently who went to Italy told me, he said he identifies the line between use and abuse, something wonderful like food and alcohol, as getting into it or getting out of it.

If he's looking to enjoy something wonderful and nutritious more, then great, go for it, no rules. If he notices that in response to stress or anxiety or to calm him down in some way, he's reverting, he's reaching for food, then he gives it a think and decides whether that's the kind of eating he wants to do. And for me, that really helped because I wasn't binging when I was happy, you know, and I wasn't depriving myself when I was happy. So when it came to understanding that cravings are not commands, they're alerts, that's when I started to have a real conversation with my own body and decide that regardless of what, I mean, I've tried every single diet and they work, of course they work. They just don't teach you how to be happy or healthy or enjoy your life, which are things that I now feel worthy of.

And as a result, they don't last in the long term. One thing I was really thinking when you were saying that, that I think we've talked about it before in different episodes, it just seems like such a recurring theme in the world we live in today, is the like when I concept, you know, the kind of idea of like what is enough and that we're all living with like when I achieve this I will be happy and whether that is a kind of a goal like for you you know weight loss when I'm happy or wear bright colors or whether it is you know when I do this at work or when this stressful project at work's finished or when I have a nice boyfriend

or when I'm and it's kind of like we're living now and almost on pause in the meantime because we're waiting. And as a result, we make ourselves so unhappy because we don't think that we're good enough as we are. And in the world we live in today, where we have such easy access to other people's lives, I feel that phenomenon is becoming ever increasing. And it's a really, really sad thing to to see and it feels that your approach is really relevant to anyone who's looking at their life in terms of kind of step by step and not allowing themselves to enjoy the process of it absolutely and well if you think about the amount of effort that we put into the journey compared to the amount of time we put into the

destination it's it's quite sad It's quite a sad ratio. And I work with a lot of young people and that's something that I keep trying to help them to understand. You know, one of them just got into this college and she immediately started thinking, right, well, how am I going to get funding? And what if I don't make any friends? And da-da-da.

And I just thought, you know what? We've just spent like two months talking about whether or not you're going to get into this college. Yeah, just celebrate right here. Just give it a minute, you know, just give it a minute. And what I try to do is encourage people to remember that their achievements haven't gone anywhere. They are just as worthy of being celebrated today as they were four years ago or five years ago. It's part of them and it demonstrates their capacity.

So actually it's really important when it comes to self-esteem and demonstrating to ourselves what we can put ourselves through, if you will, in order to achieve our more ambitious goals. It's integral to that process that we can recall times when we felt really proud of ourselves and really accomplished. And so, so much of my job is just getting people to literally think back and develop what I call an emotional CV. You know, we have these professional CVs. And so, we say to ourselves things like, you know, now that I've learned how to use this software and I've worked with these kinds of people for this long, I am worthy of earning this much and not being supervised as closely anymore. But we don't say, now that I've worked on not being passive aggressive, and now that I deal with things with much more healthy coping strategies, I'm worthy of being more boundaried. I'm worthy of this sort of relationship. But we don't have

that provision. I hope to create that in some capacity for people, ideally people who are much younger than I am. But yeah, we don't have that. And so you're absolutely right. We just move on to the next thing really quickly. And with the social media element, I mean, I could work, I work 15, 16 hours a day and I still, I look at images and I just think, never.

It's just never gonna, you know, if I, it's just never. There will always be someone who I won't be able to do better than, I guess. But what's better than? Exactly. That's what I mean. And you don't even know, like, are they happy?

We have no idea. Like, kind of looking at people through glass boxes. Yeah. Okay, so people are listening to this and they're like, right, I'm going to make that change. And I really like this idea of approaching it with kindness, with compassion. I'm going to kind of apply the kindness method to my life. What's step one? Like, where do we start? Well, identify what you want to change. Yeah.

I'd say first and foremost. And then the first thing, and this is really, really important, be totally honest, at least with yourself, about why you want to change. Yeah. So often people give me really noble answers and things are really slow. You know, I want to change because I should and, you know, I shouldn't drink so much because my partner doesn't like it, etc. They're all valid. But that's not what keeps people going when things are hard. There are real reasons that sometimes things we're not proud of. So the way that I learned this was when I was really overweight. I used to go to the doctor and every single time I was reminded about diabetes and heart disease.

Every single time. But when it came to getting up on a week where I hadn't lost an ounce, and it was raining, and I had to carry my 16-stone body around Victoria Park running, it wasn't the prospect of not getting diabetes that got me out of bed. It was wearing certain things and feeling comfortable, going on holiday and having lunch, wearing a swimming costume. That was always something I always aspired to do, to eat while I was wearing a swimming costume. These were the really specific, really unique things that got me out of bed and kept me on

a treadmill. And those are the things that I think first, just admit why you want to do it and don't be ashamed. It's fine. If it's for your sex life and not your health, whatever. If it gets you there. Okay. So we've addressed, you've decided what you want to change. And then what's next? Then you look back at what's worked in the past and what hasn't worked in the past.

And if it hasn't worked for you, stop trying to make it work. Yeah. You know, give up on that one and find something that suits you. Then start looking at creating urgency. And to do that, you need to think about how things are going to look in six months or a year if you do change and compare that to how they're going to look if you don't. So that you kind of zoom out a little bit. And then I would say start thinking about the times that you're going to find really, really, really difficult to stick to your plan and reframe them as intentional challenges that you're going to put yourself in front of 20 or 30 or 50 times before they become your automatic behavior, regardless of what you're trying to change.

It's really as simple as that, but it's about drawing that wisdom out of yourself. And so that's, I think, you know, I see my job as just helping you to do that for yourself. So a lot of the research I did for that book I did on the dark net. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow.

Because you can just, people are telling the truth straight away. Yeah. But if there's a mother and she's driving her kids to school every day, she probably doesn't want to tell me and social services and the DVLA how much she's drinking. Yeah. But if she's completely anonymous. Then why not? Then why not?

So I got so much truth from there but this this capacity that you say that you've you see of people when they they feel like they're they're kind of hiding behind something on the dark web or something and suddenly they can they can really be honest is that something that you really do feel is in within anyone if they dig deep enough to get there. So I've seen friends and family and they just have this wrestle where they just cannot be honest with themselves. And there is something clearly that they can recognize and they can see it and it can be completely obvious to the people who are around them

who care and love them. But they just cannot have that breakthrough to actually just be completely frank and honest with themselves. How can you crack through that barrier? I would say, first of all, a lot of it does come down to low self-esteem and not feeling understood at the same time. And a lot of the time, we don't know why these very core, very embedded, long-held reasons why people stay, for example, in unhealthy or toxic relationships or delay change. For the most part, it does come down to thinking that they are not worthy of it. thing that can help massively when people don't want to externalize and be sort of academic about

changes. It can help a lot to just help them get into exercises, mindful practice, physical exercise, etc. that I found helps you tune into how you feel as opposed to how you think you should feel. Yeah. I think a lot of us are led by how we think we should feel based on what sorts of upbringings we've had, how we think life should look on the outside. So what you're saying is that we shouldn't expect ourselves to be honest straight away. We may have to be able to go through a pretty sizable process until we can actually get to that place where we can be completely honest with ourselves. Totally.

And I think it's important for us to remember that when we're defining what honesty looks like to someone else, we're also projecting what we think it should look like. Whereas I guess that's why I want to give people the tools to find out what that means for them personally. Because there may be all sorts of things at play that are pulling that person back. You know, very often people have 50 reasons to change and one reason to stay the same. And they're staying the same because that one reason is so profoundly important to them. And I guess it's about being honest about what that one reason is and being okay with it having developed. And I think a lot of people confuse realizing that something wasn't your fault with saying that you're not responsible for doing something about it.

And if they realize that you can do both of those things at the same time, you can say... That's a really amazing message. Yeah, it isn't my fault that I'm here, but I can totally change it. The only person who can change it is me. Yeah. Yeah, and taking complete responsibility for that.

But not blame. Yeah, totally. Not guilt, but you're in the driving seat, which is actually an empowering concept, actually. You weren't in the driving seat up until this point, but now you can be. Yeah, totally. We're all working a program, right?

So either we pick our program or we keep going with the program we've been given, as far as I'm concerned. So self-esteem, obviously, it's quite a buzzword. I feel like it has been for a long time. Self-worth, however you want to define it self-confidence you know feeling comfortable on your own skin I feel like it's quite in a kind of elusive concept you know I feel like if you went up to lots of people and you know even someone who's like reasonably confident and happy

and pretty comfortable in their own skin and you're like do you have high self-esteem I feel like not many people be like. Are there things that you think really do help to kind of really build that up? Personally, certainly from my own experience, what's built my self-esteem was starting to ask, why not me? So I would see the lengths that I would go to for other people, the energy I would give to other people, the kindness I would want to show, the forgiveness, the compassion, the amount that I would want to boost them and see them do well. And then I started thinking, why not me? Yeah.

Why wouldn't I do that for myself? Just a little bit, at least. Why am I not deserving? And then starting to ask that question of myself, when did I start to learn that I wasn't? Who told me that I wasn't? And, you know, very often I'll have clients who are wildly successful, 50s, 60s, 70s. I have a gentleman in his early 70s who would consider his health as having low self-esteem because a lot of the core beliefs that he's carrying around are still from boarding school.

And a lot of the time it really just takes a moment to sit down and think, hold on, why am I assuming that I'm not as deserving as anyone else? It goes back to free will. And as human beings, the one thing that no one can take away from us is our ability to see the world in the way that we want to see it, if we allow ourselves to.

And, you know, last year was the worst year of my life when I lost my mum. And I remember some things I've been most proud of in my life was being able to shape it in my mind to be able to take myself from that place of desperation and using the free will within my brain. It was up to me in my head to do that was something that was really enabling for me and something that I want to try and share with as many people as I can with now is that it really is within your grasp and within your means. You just have to reach deep in there and grab it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that is so, so, so important

and kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier. I mean, how capable does that make you feel compared to a professional accomplishment, for example? You know, and I think that's what we need to kind of remember is that we're measuring success in a very unhelpful way, in a very specific way, when actually the kind of success that makes us feel truly proud of ourselves is things like what you've just said. My equivalent is that I've managed to reframe triggers as alerts. So if something upsets me or I'm presented with a challenge where I feel fearful or I've got imposter syndrome or something, I think, oh, brilliant, because I'm never going to get better at this

unless this happens. And then I welcome it. And that's helped me change you know help help myself enormously too so I know exactly the lens with which you put any situation isn't it totally but I think I don't want to um downplay the extraordinary thing that you've just described because I think that is it's honestly that is huge watching it was absolutely extraordinary and it was it was such a difficult time obviously after, after the diagnosis. And, you know, if you kind of forgive me for this, but I think for the first few months,

obviously it was such a horrendously horrible thing to admit to yourself was happening that you almost kind of pushed it down. And then a few months later, Matt had a... He was walking to get lunch and literally, like, collapsed on the street and couldn't speak. He was throwing up everywhere, rushed him to a and e and he you know it was a physical expression of the stress and we we booked like an emergency holiday the next day and we went away just the two of us and kind of sat with as you said like

actually allow yourself to sit with what's happening even though it's horrible and you really took that time to kind of process it and you could see your brain switching as you kind of process how awful it was, but that you only had one way to get through this and make the most of every single day that you had left. And that was to see it in a positive way. I think it's just to create the awareness that it is within the human being's power to shift. However bleak and darker situation is there is somewhere within you there is a way to be able to see it in a different light and it to be something that can be the

bottom point that helps you leap towards there again well and we need to give people credit for it because even you know myself in the industry that i, to sit next to you and hear you say that makes me think, this guy's going to be fine forever. Yeah, I think he is too. That's it. I actually really envy that, the fearlessness with which you can live now. Because you face potentially, I presume, because we're all the same in that sense, the hardest thing I can imagine and manage to teach yourself really what we've been trying to learn from spiritual leaders forever which is that we our thoughts can become our feelings yeah and that's you know that's the biggest I mean you might be enlightened yeah I think I think you're enlightened

I think it's this realization that that in one sense is that thoughts are just thoughts and just because you thought something doesn't mean it's real you know you can you can think anything but it's not real and i thought it it's this it's the spectrum of the thought can just be a thought can be a throwaway but a thought can also be what is able to transform you from looking at a situation as terminal and life ending to something that actually enables you to continue. Because sometimes you have the deepest, darkest, most, or you have thoughts that are completely ruinous to you, or you sit there and you have self-doubt,

or you're sat there and you're about to talk to people and you're having self-doubt, but they are just thoughts. They're nothing else but thoughts. Absolutely. And they've come from somewhere. This is what I mean, again. Like a lot of us, I don't know whether it's just, there's nothing else but thoughts. Absolutely. And they've come from somewhere. Yeah. This is what I mean. Again, like a lot of us, I don't know whether it's just,

I learned this working in prisons, actually, with young gang members. I remember thinking, at what age did someone tell you that you were bad? Yeah. You know, like at what age did someone tell you that you, all the thoughts you have

that don't help you or other people are your fault. And that from today onwards, whatever you've absorbed, that's just how your head works. And no one's going to help you to address it or change it. And there's no provision in Western society to stop and go, OK, well, are those still valid? Do you need to think about them again?

We just carry them with us. And I think sometimes we're almost programmed to think that it's almost like self-indulgent to sit and kind of sit with your feelings and reflect on them. But actually, it feels like it's incredibly important to make that space and make that time and say it's okay to sit and think about it and reflect on it. And actually, that's going to... And also, I think if you can help yourself in that situation, you know, we always say the same thing, like if you can't love yourself and show yourself

love like it's quite hard to see how you're going to really love the people around you and really invite that into your life and so actually spending some time on cultivating that relationship with yourself feels like it will only have positive benefits to everyone you ever come across in your life for the rest of your life going forward I always feel these things are a work in progress. Like there's no such thing as finished. You know, you'll forever be reframing your thoughts and forever bring yourself back to that place of gratitude or looking at something as an alert, not a trigger or kind of checking in with yourself or whatever it is. And I always feel like you've got to put those tools into your life that allow you to do that. You can't think like, okay, I'm going to dedicate the next three months, six months,

five minutes to it, and then like, I'll be done. Absolutely. No, it's a toolkit that you're going to need different tools from and to different degrees across your whole life. More often than not, the changes that people came to me hoping that I would help them make become a byproduct of liking themselves more. So that's all I really do is I help people to like themselves. And not even that, I undo it. Really, I'm an undoer. I help them to start doubting the things that they've picked up along the way about how incapable or weak or, you know, these self-fulfilling prophecies like, I'm the kind of person who starts things and doesn't finish them. It's like, well,

then you're going to be one of those people. So I feel like you almost just answered this question. But this was the last question I wrote down from reading the book that I wanted to ask was, how do you kind of strike that balance? Because so often when people want to make a change, they want to make a really extreme change, you know. So they're like, I want to look like a Victoria's Secret model or like I'm going to run a marathon or I'm never going to drink ever again. Or do you know what I mean? And it's like, wow, these are big sweeping statements. So first of all, like you're setting the bar potentially unrealistically, unhealthily high.

But second of all, it feels kind of like it's a kind of unattainable goal in general, but also one that could potentially push you to taking what could be a positive habit, like starting to exercise into something that could potentially become something that becomes kind of compulsive and obsessive. And how do you strike that balance between creating positive changes, sustainable changes, and not taking a change and making it a kind of, yeah, I guess just taking it too far? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's about diversifying. So, for example, one of the reasons a lot of us drink to excess or find ourselves in times in our lives when we're drinking in ways we're not

happy with is because from early on, we got this coping strategy that's really effective in the short term. And so we didn't go out to find other ones. So if you see it as an opportunity to always be collecting new coping strategies. So there will be some nights when I've had a long day at work and I'll go have some cocktails with my friends and I will be completely aware that I'm doing that to unwind and I'm cool with that. There'll be other nights where I exercise instead. Some nights where I do both. Some nights where I intentionally do nothing so that I can sit with my discomfort and know that I can do it and just go to bed.

Sometimes I'll have a bath. Sometimes I'll go to a breathwork class. Sometimes I'll go see a friend. Sometimes I'll book a night away. It's just about having as many tools as possible so that you're not defaulting onto one thing. And when you're looking to... It's just increasing the consciousness, it sounds like. It's a consciousness that you acknowledge your actions in a much more active way rather than just kind of getting on the hypothetical treadmill and just

kind of keep on going with all of these actions actually thinking through what you're doing each day each night and understanding how that fits within your plan absolutely and caring about how your life looks yeah feeling you're like you're allowed to care about how your life looks and more importantly how it feels yeah giving your permission self-permission to think like i am enough and i'm worthy of making a life that makes me happy. Totally. And owning it, you know, I do this thing on Sunday nights, which I started doing a few years ago, again, because of heartbreak. And I always noticed that on Sunday night, I would want to binge. And people kept giving me all these options, like,

why don't you go to the Buddhist center? Why don't you go to this place and that place? And I kept thinking, okay, and I tried them once, but it never quite stuck. And then I remembered how when I was younger, I used to love to sing. I wasn't good at singing, but I loved it. I loved being in a choir. And so now what I do on Sundays is I go to Brick Lane to the karaoke booth by myself for two hours. And just belt it out. And just belt out for two hours. What's your favorite song? Right now it's Graceland by Paul Simon. Nice. But before it was Oasis, She's Electric.

Yeah. I've just been really going for it. I mean, I do the full thing. And I do it for two hours and I feel amazing. But the point I'm making is that I couldn't do that without self-esteem because every time I go in there, they go, oh, just one microphone. Yeah. And if I'd gone in there when I was really overweight and feeling really crap about myself, there's no way I would have gone back. So in order to even do those things and put yourself in a place of discomfort in order to grow, you need to feel like it's okay and that you're okay.

That's amazing. I absolutely love that. So I have one final question because I know people will be thinking this. Okay, so you do all this, you start making the changes and you kind of fall off that bandwagon, let's say, and you go back to the old habits that you don't like. How do you get back to the happy habits? First of all, you've got to see it as a learning curve. We're on a continuum throughout our entire lives. We're going to be trying to improve in different ways. Yeah, so you've never failed. You've never failed. That's just take that out of the equation. We're on a continuum throughout our entire lives. We're going to be trying to improve in different ways. So you've never failed. You've never failed. That's just take that out of the equation. You're never bad and you've never failed. Just let today be the last time you say those

things about yourself. I love that. And I think the other thing is, remember that you decide whether a lapse becomes a relapse. So in addiction, we tend to call a lapse is a sort of a brief deviation from your plan. And a relapse is when you've reverted back to where you started or things have got worse, whatever that means. It's all about the conversation you have with yourself. So if, say, a lapse for you is binging on 15,000 calories of food in one go, that in itself won't make you put on weight. What you tell yourself about the situation,

which dictates your next act and the habit after that and the habit after that, is what will make you put on weight eventually, cumulatively. So what I always tell people is the act itself of relapse is actually not the thing that causes the problem. It's what you tell yourself about yourself in the context of that relapse and what you tell yourself about the incident itself. So the key learnings are not to tell yourself that yourself in the context of that relapse and what you tell yourself about the incident itself. So the key learnings are not to tell yourself that you're a failure. No, in fact, quite the opposite, to do exactly what by all of us, by our own mission. If I said to you, the person you love most in this whole world has come to you and said, I want to do this difficult thing.

I keep falling off track. I just don't feel like I can do it, but I really, really want to. What sorts of things would you tell them? Yeah, you say you can do it, you know, I actually really believe in you. You know, I'm going to support you through it. How can I help? Exactly. Because you know that that's what gets people back on track. Yeah. So what do we say to ourselves? You know, we say to ourselves, oh, I'm good for nothing. And this was never going to work out. Well, of course, you're going to carry on relapsing. And again, the change will come as I believe it only ever really does in a sustained way when it becomes more difficult to stay the same than to change on balance. Yeah.

So the fundamental takeaways is really working on our self-esteem, on real honesty with ourselves about where we are with something. And then from that, really building a relationship that's encouraging, that's supportive, and that really connects in with ourselves and how we feel on a day-to-day basis. And if we can do that, we can do anything. Absolutely anything,

in the same way that we think anyone we love could as well. Why not us? Yeah. So this chat has been fascinating and thank you so much for coming on i am too i feel like i've i've learned a lot it's been amazing listening to you and one thing we do with um each of our guests that come on our podcast we finish the episode by just asking what a daily practice routine mantra saying something

that that you live by these days? Absolutely. It's a practice. Every single morning, I spend five minutes writing down quickly the things that I think will test me that day and how I'd like to react that will make me proud of myself tomorrow. That's really cool. I love that. Yeah, and it works a charm because when it comes to habits,

forewarned really is forearmed. So sometimes, for example, this morning I wrote, I had to see some clients who I expected were going to say things that I was going to find a little bit upsetting. And I thought, you know, afterwards, when you've spoken with this client, you're probably going to want to do this. Yeah. You're probably going to want to eat this or say this or do this thing that you know you don't want to really do to soothe yourself. Do this instead.

And I feel like I've given myself a little plan. When everything's good and I'm feeling calm and at my most rational, I give myself some insight into the version of myself that I want to see all day that day, regardless of what the world does to me. And that really helps me. Amazing. I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this with us. It's been absolutely incredible. Thank you does to me. And that really helps me. Amazing. I love it. Well, thank you. Honestly, it's been absolutely incredible. Thank you for asking me.

So I hope you all enjoyed the episode and hopefully you're feeling as inspired as we are to create that really positive relationship with ourselves. I think we all secretly deep down know we'll only be a benefit to ourselves. And so allowing that deep down nature

to come to the surface. And if you did enjoy the episode please do rate it review it share it it makes all the difference especially if you think someone else could learn from it and then do check in next week next week we've got Fern Cotton as our guest and we're talking about insecurities and overcoming the challenges in your life to create that kind of ever elusive search of happiness. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads.

Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.