3462: Yes, How You See Yourself is Holding You Back by Jill Coleman of JillFit on Self-Identity

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[00:00:29] This is Optimal Health Daily. Yes, How You See Yourself is Holding You Back by Jill Coleman of JillFit.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik, your host. Hey there and welcome back to another bonus Sunday episode. This is where I share an episode from one of the other podcasts in our network where we read articles to you, often overlapping with topics and authors we talk about here.

[00:00:52] Definitely the case today, because this one comes from an author I frequently narrate, Jill Coleman of JillFit. But you're actually going to hear from my brother's podcast, Optimal Living Daily, where articles covering mindfulness, personal development, and minimalism are read to you every day. You can find and subscribe to or follow that podcast by searching for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're listening to this. So with that, here's my brother Justin as we optimize your life.

[00:01:24] Yes, how you see yourself is holding you back by Jill Coleman of JillFit.com. I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago and she was telling me about an opportunity she got to speak at a conference. She's never done public speaking before, but in her local area, she's become a leading trainer and more and more people are wanting access to her brain. Such is the case when you start becoming an expert in your field. I asked her if she'd accepted yet and she said,

[00:01:53] Not yet. I don't know. I'm not a public speaker. This got me to thinking about self-concept, how we think about ourselves. What do we consider like us and what we consider not like us? It's natural to self-categorize, but I have to ask, how effective is it when we're constantly reiterating to ourselves the kinds of people we are, and by doing so, hindering ourselves from discovering what maybe we could do if we started seeing ourselves in a new light?

[00:02:23] Examples of ways we categorize and use self-talk to keep us in a holding pattern? Or, I'm addicted to sugar. I can't handle being around french fries. I'm just a food addict, always have been. I can never do a competition, Tough Mudder, or triathlon. I'm not someone who does that. You don't understand, I can never do that. That might work for you, but it would never work for me. Or, I just have to try harder than most people. It's the way it is.

[00:02:52] Can you see by hearing these phrases how settling into these realities might hold us back? Statements about the ways in which we are limited only serve to reaffirm those biases. If I think that I'm addicted to sugar, then I'll continue to find ways to affirm that, indeed, I cannot handle myself around sugar, and what do you know, I will continue to struggle with sugar. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But here's the thing. Our words have weight.

[00:03:21] I think most of us don't even question the things we say about ourselves, never mind the things we think. We just assume that's the way it is, and we accept it blindly. We form a self-concept around it, and then we spend our lives trying to defend that self-concept. Really, it's a protective mechanism. If you're even in your mind right this second defending, but Jill, you don't get it, I am addicted, then I would ask you to simply look at that. You don't have to change anything yet, but just notice.

[00:03:51] If I continue to say that I'm a sugar addict, then it takes me off the hook when, indeed, I, just as I knew I would, overindulge again. If we say it first and then it happens, we get to be in on the joke. See, I told you. I get all that. But I'm also calling bullsh**t. Resigning ourselves to a reality that is anything less than full of possibility and the ability to change, grow, and get better is no way to live. It's actually not living.

[00:04:21] An example, one way I did this for most of my life was saying, you don't understand, I have such a huge appetite. I always have. Funny, right? Because if you think about it, the statement seems benign enough. But because I had always exercised so much, often to excess, my reality was that I was always ravenous. I spent hours every day trying to avoid eating too much and then eating frankenfoods like sugar-free chocolate and Splenda,

[00:04:48] drinking a million cups of coffee and chewing packs of gum every single day to try to not eat. So did I have an actual huge appetite? Yes. But the key was that I didn't see any reality in which that could be different in the future. I was pigeonholing myself. Jade would say, Jill, if you just stopped doing so much cardio, your appetite would decrease. I laughed in his face. It wouldn't change. It would never decrease. This was the way I was built. And because of that fact, he didn't understand,

[00:05:18] I had to exercise as much as I did to offset how much food I was consuming. Can you see how this is a trap? Exercise like crazy and your hunger and cravings increase. It's physiology. Then, eat more volume as a result. Compensatory cortisol response. And then, have to do even more exercise to atone for all the food you ate and repeat that whole process over and over until you can't see any other reality.

[00:05:45] Until, I was finally so fed up with the excessive exercise and the constant white knuckling I was doing to try to avoid eating that I just threw up my hands and said, screw it. I don't care if I gained 50 pounds this week. I just want to stop doing this. And so, I slowly started backing off the cardio. And what do you know, within six months, my actual appetite also tapered off. I could not believe it. No one was happier than me that I was wrong about the way I was built.

[00:06:15] See, it takes courage to question old beliefs. But before that, it takes introspection and awareness to even decipher what things am I just taking as fact about myself. What are you subconsciously believing about your own abilities that is holding you back? You have a say in them moving forward. It's a cop-out to just assume things are the way they are and won't ever change. It's lazy to surrender your abilities to unquestioned beliefs.

[00:06:42] And frankly, it's a huge disservice to yourself to assume you can't change. Self-concept is fluid. You can change it anytime, so long as you believe you can. It's worth a look. This is one of my favorite topics, questioning how we think about food and introspecting on how we interact with it. We always have a say in our own reality. So if you can harness that little bit of courage and self-trust to try a new way like I did with my exercise,

[00:07:10] you never know, you might be just as pleasantly surprised as I was. Not to mention experience a ton more liberated living and mental space for other things. Life is too short to stress about every morsel of food that passes your lips. No thanks. You just listened to the post titled, Yes, How You See Yourself Is Holding You Back by Jill Coleman of jillfit.com.

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[00:09:03] and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy. Thank you to Jill. I'd be surprised if this didn't apply to your own life in some way, where you say with certainty that you're a certain person, when in reality, that specific trait could be changed. And this could even be for good things.

[00:09:32] Like, I don't know, saying I'm a neat freak, for example. That's not necessarily something you want to change, but when we start to say things like we heard in this post, things like, I always have a massive appetite, or I'm addicted to sugar, or so-and-so, then it probably is reinforcing a behavior that maybe we're trying to limit or get rid of altogether. The words we choose are really important. I was checking out some research on pain,

[00:10:00] and even something as silly as removing the word pain from our vocabulary and replacing it with something neutral or positive or funny even, like bananas, can change our relationship with pain, and then that can change our experience of it. It's really interesting stuff. It's all based on the words we choose. So I'd imagine the words we choose to define ourselves can have a huge impact on our lives. So I think that introspection and awareness

[00:10:30] that Jill mentioned can make a difference. What things are we taking as fact about ourselves? It's definitely something to think about. And with that, thank you for being here. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow, as usual, where your optimal life awaits. And I'd like to talk to you tomorrow, as usual. And let's watch your kids. .