RON THIESSEN [00:00:01]:
I actually have a different philosophy than a lot of people that I know, and certainly a lot of psychologists, counselors, therapists, and coaches. The way that they approach goal setting is different from the way I think about it.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:00:16]:
Today dad and I are talking about hacking your brain to achieve your goals. So it's been about five weeks since we stepped into a new year, and that's typically a time when many of us set a goal or we make a promise to ourselves that we don't always follow through on. And as we learned from last week's episode with Ryan Bush, failing to follow through on a promise you make to yourself can really create an internal landscape of distrust, and in some cases it can lead to depression and anxiety.
So we need to either find contentment where we're at or the discipline to take measurable steps toward what we want. That means keeping promises to ourselves, even when we aren't feeling particularly motivated.
Throughout the episode, we're going to talk about how developing a way to measure progress can help us avoid the discouragement cycle and the importance of reevaluating your goals regularly by asking yourself, is this even something I still want? We're going to talk about how to ditch the debilitating guilt and shame of not sticking to your goals by figuring out if you are falling prey to the counterproductive and super unrealistic all or nothing mentality. Hello, that's me. That demands big outcomes in a short time frame.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:01:29]:
Plus, dad has a book recommendation you couldn't possibly miss if you tried. I think this book has come up in the episode like ten or twelve times. So get ready. It's a great resource. Let's get into it.
Welcome to the Human Being Project, a podcast hosted by my dad and I that's an exploration of finding meaning and purpose in who we are rather than what we do. I'm Janelle Thiessen, a keen observer of human interactions and behaviors and an advocate for being. For being present, being authentic, and staying open.
RON THIESSEN [00:02:05]:
I'm Ron Thiessen, a psychologist, educator, and facilitator, and I'm on a personal journey to find a balance between a lifelong habit of productivity and the presence or being state that nurtures my spirit and seems to have the greatest impact on the world around me. In each episode, Janelle and I explore ways to make space for more being and less doing, to focus on spiritual energy, intuition, and the relationship between heart and mind so we can positively impact the world through our conscious doing.
What I've realized in working with people is that anytime that you set a goal, you're going to have resistance. When you have resistance, if the strategy of the goal or the achievement of the goal requires outside pressure, somebody forcing you to do something to make a change, that's when your resistance is going to be at its maximum. And even if realistically you've thought it through and it makes sense that you would make this change, still, you're going to have resistance. Where you have the least resistance is when the idea for the change comes from your heart and you're saying, this is something. For the purposes of my own human being, I need to make these changes. That's when your resistance will be at its lowest, but you still will have resistance.
RON THIESSEN [00:03:26]:
So what we've done in the years as we've really focused on your life needs to be moving ahead. You have to have measures of success. You have to have milestones that you meet and that you cross. This is like a race to the end. That kind of thinking has brought us into a place where we have all kinds of ways of setting goals. And one of the things that I know is very, very common is smart goals. So specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. And when you operate your goals with smart goals, you set hard targets.
RON THIESSEN [00:04:03]:
And so hard targets mean that you either achieve and you feel great that you achieved, or you don't achieve and you feel like schmuck that you didn't achieve your goals. And it's very few people who set goals in their lives and they achieve every single one of them. That's very rare. But what happens then is if you set these hard target goals, it doesn't give you any room to appreciate the changes and the progress that you might have made. You just didn't hit the hard target.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:04:34]:
Right.
RON THIESSEN [00:04:34]:
If you did an 80% improvement, but it wasn't 100% improvement, as your hard target suggested, then you feel like you accomplished nothing, right? That leads to discouragement. So most people, when they set their goals, it's so common when I'm talking to people about goals that they set, and they say, well, I set them, but I never achieved them. And so that leads you into a downward spiral of negative thinking. You start seeing yourself as someone who does not achieve their goals. And that just feeds on itself. It compounds on itself until you're looking at. And, you know, people laugh up their sleeve about New Year's resolutions, right? It's a very common thing. We know people making resolutions and they don't keep them.
RON THIESSEN [00:05:21]:
I know this happens at the gym. I walk into the gym and it's full. I go early in the morning, so there's very few people there. But I walk into the gym and it's full. I'm going like, what happened? Oh, it's the first week of January. That's what happened. And so we see it happen. January, it's full.
RON THIESSEN [00:05:38]:
February, less people. By March, we're back to all the regulars. And those people that started big ideas, they're not there anymore. Now, that's not saying they're not doing anything, but they're certainly not coming at that hour of the morning to do their workout. So it's such a common thing in our humanity that we look at the goal and we try and try, and then we just don't do it. And I think there are two reasons for that. One is that we set the goals high and people will tell you, well, set a goal high because you need to stretch to reach it. And that's true.
RON THIESSEN [00:06:12]:
But then when we don't reach it, we spiral into this negativity of me being, I'm a person who doesn't keep my goals. Yeah, I make resolutions every year, but I never keep them. Right. Then when you think about a goal, you think automatically it's bound to fail. I'm not going to be able to achieve this goal. So then why should I set it in the first place? And it leads to this whole discouragement cycle. So the first thing is, I believe, is because we set hard targets, and then we set these hard targets at almost unreachable dimensions. And so when we don't achieve them, we don't achieve them because we don't really have a strategy to achieve them that's going to work.
RON THIESSEN [00:06:55]:
We have a strategy that's going to beat us over the head all the time and make us feel guilty that we're not doing what we said we were going to be doing. But we don't have a strategy that says, I'm making progress. We don't build in those markers to say I'm making progress. In Raymond Aaron's book, double your income doing what you love, I found the way that he talked about goal setting, and it's just been a life changer for me and for many people that I've talked to as I shared this concept with them, because it changes the spiral from being, oh, I never achieved my goals, a downward spiral to an upward spiral. I always achieve what I said that I was going to do. And he suggests that you set your goals at three levels, what he calls minimum target and outrageous. And the minimum goal he said, set them in 30 day increments. That means that if you said, this is what I'm going to do this month, if you're running out of time, you still have time before the end of the month to make that minimum goal.
RON THIESSEN [00:07:52]:
And he said you set the minimums at something that you would normally do just in the course of your everyday life so that every month you're seeing achieve that goal. That minimum goal. I achieved that one. Oh, I achieved that one. And then the target is something where you have to stretch a bit. You might be able to do it. It depends on how much priority you put on achieving that goal. And then the outrageous is like, if all the stars aligned and everything just fell into place, then that would be my goal.
RON THIESSEN [00:08:22]:
That's what I would want to achieve. And he makes this point that as you change the thinking about yourself as a goal achiever, you start achieving your outrageous goals. He used this word automagically. In fact, he copyrighted the word automatically. But it's the point that he's making. And it really is true that before you know it, you are actually reaching farther and beyond. You met your minimum as you're thinking about yourself as every 30 days. Man, I'm checking those goals off.
RON THIESSEN [00:08:52]:
Yeah, did that. Yeah, done. And then you go like, well, how difficult would it be for me to achieve some targets in this month? And then you achieve some targets and before you know it, the goal that seemed so big to you is just not so big anymore, but set your goals, your minimum goals, as things that you're going to do every month anyway. And then the target would be if you have to stretch a bit. And then the outrageous is like, if everything all lined up, this would be my goal. And then you start seeing, you create this momentum that's positive. I am a person who if I say I'm going to do something, I do it.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:09:30]:
Okay, so I'm curious. Like, I know we're recording this in November, so just for reference, I'm about to head to the gym. Today will be my first day at the gym. My brother has created a fitness plan for me and sent it to me by email and he took a lot of time to do it, I can tell. So today's the day, right? He just sent me a text that said something like, I know you're going to have a good day today, or something. Like, I think he's really into this. He's going to be my support network.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:09:56]:
I'll be giving you an update in this episode for sure. But what would you say using the minimum target and outrageous goal setting? Because when you say minimum and it's something that you would do every day or that you would do in your life naturally, I think that would mean I don't move my body. So that's not really a goal, right. So you must mean like one little teeny weeny step above what you would do in your normal life, right?
RON THIESSEN [00:10:31]:
Well, yes. Because setting a goal implies you're trying to make a change, right. So you can't say, I'm just going to live and that will achieve my minimum goals. You're saying I need to make a change in some way. So your minimum might be two times this month I'm going to go to the gym, or one time a week I'm going to go to the gym. You may have in your mind, I want to go four times, I want to go three times, whatever. But the minimum would be one time a week I'm going to go to the gym. So now you see what happens following Aaron's example of what he talks about.
RON THIESSEN [00:11:06]:
So let's say you get into January and you don't go the first week because there's so much going on. And you don't go the second week because you ate a lot over the holidays and you feel sluggish. So now you still have two weeks to make those four commitments, right.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:11:20]:
That's cool.
RON THIESSEN [00:11:21]:
And so that's only twice a week. So I go twice a week. I get to the end of the month. Did I go four times this month? Yes. So then you could say, okay, well, I achieved that goal. So now I'm going to set a target goal next month. I'm going to go once a week. That's my minimum.
RON THIESSEN [00:11:38]:
My target is to go six times in the month, let's say. And my outrageous would be if I went two days every single week. And this can happen. You start seeing yourself as a goal achiever. You go like, I'm on my way. So the first week you go twice and you go, I'm a third of the way toward my goal. And the next week you go twice and you go, I've got four out of six already and I'm only two weeks into the month, right. So if I said my outrageous would be to go two days every week, well, that's eight times now.
RON THIESSEN [00:12:13]:
If I just keep the momentum that I'm doing right now, I've been going two times a week. I keep that up. I'm at my outrageous goal. Isn't that amazing?
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:12:21]:
Right? Yeah.
RON THIESSEN [00:12:24]:
It just changes the whole concept in your head because this is where the problem is. This is where the resistance comes from. Right. Changes the whole concept of what you're doing in your head. Because if you said, okay, my end goal is I need to be going to the gym three days a week. Okay. So I need to go to the gym twelve times a month. How long is it going to take you to get there? And how many months will you go through when you didn't go twelve times.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:12:54]:
Right.
RON THIESSEN [00:12:54]:
Probably quite a few. And every month that you don't go twelve times, he goes, I didn't do it again.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:13:00]:
Yeah. And then three months later you give up.
RON THIESSEN [00:13:02]:
Exactly. And you could have gone to the gym six times, but you didn't go twelve. So you are six times more engaged with your goal than you were in January, but you're not giving yourself any credit whatsoever for achieving that. In fact, you're beating yourself up about it. Well, how many times did you go? Well, I went six, but I didn't go twelve. You see, it destroys your own credibility, your own internal credibility.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:13:32]:
Right. So you're talking about basically you're saying, hey, slow down and set some realistic goals. That speaks to that all or nothing mindset. Because for me that's how it is. I decide Monday is when I'm going to start a diet. And on that diet I'm going to deprive myself of all things, right? I'm going to eat like only good things and I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to walk every day. I pile drive myself with goals and tasks and there is no way that I'm going to make that drastic of a shift in my whole life overnight, just on a Monday. It's not going to happen.
RON THIESSEN [00:14:11]:
Exactly. That's exactly right. And on top of that, you have to think about the resistance that you're going to have to achieving that goal.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:14:19]:
Yeah.
RON THIESSEN [00:14:20]:
Are you going to really enjoy this? I'm going to hate every minute of it.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:14:23]:
Yeah. Life's going to suck.
RON THIESSEN [00:14:25]:
Are you to follow through? Right. I think sometimes with goals you need to ask yourself, do I really want to do this? Because my resistance is going to be at its maximum if I feel like quotas at work, for instance. Okay. So if you're having to be hammered with quotas all the time and you have to struggle and struggle and struggle to meet these quotas, maybe that's not the job for you. Yeah, maybe you need to make some changes in your working environment to get something that more aligns with who you are as a person, the values that you carry, you have to be careful about those things. And you say, well, yeah, but I need. Yeah, but another point that Raymond Aaron makes in this book, double your income. Doing what you love, is that we know, research has shown that if you do in your life what you really love to do or what you're passionate about, you will make, on average, twice as much money in your lifetime.
RON THIESSEN [00:15:18]:
That's why it's so important, I think, for people to discover what is my passion? What am I good at? Because there is a place for you with your skills, your abilities, your particular mixture of who you are. There's a place for you that's really valuable in this world that we live in. And you just need to find that place and be there. But when I have people that say, well, I'll take any job because I just need the money, and those people end up being really miserable and unhappy with their lives, and work becomes this drudgery that you have to go to, and you have to do it because you have to do it right. And it doesn't have to be like, mean. It is a risk. And it does take reflection and thinking and challenging yourself. But it is possible to figure out what is it that you do that you would be passionate about.
RON THIESSEN [00:16:06]:
And actually, Raymond Aaron's book, double your income. Doing what you love, takes you through that process in detail. So if you get to the end of that book, you will know what you're passionate about and how you can turn that into money.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:16:18]:
Wow. I think you should be an affiliate for Raymond Aaron's book, double your income, doing what you love. And if you're not going to be an affiliate, I think I want to be an affiliate.
RON THIESSEN [00:16:30]:
Okay, so you need to buy the book through me.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:16:33]:
Exactly. But another thing I was going to say while you were talking is reassessing the goals as well. Sometimes I think that a certain goal, I set a goal because I'm like, okay, if I drink more water and I move my body every day and I cut back on all this stuff, then this will get me to the place that I want to be. But actually, sometimes I'm not actually thinking about the place that I want to be. Is this actually what it's going to take or do you just pick things? Because people say, well, you need to do this and you need to do that. You need to do this. If you want to increase your sales at work, then you're going to need to improve your networking skills and you're going to need to broaden your whatever. But sometimes you have to reassess and say, have I just randomly picked some things that aren't actually getting me to my goal? Am I focusing on the wrong things and making them a rule? And now I can't live by those rules.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:17:24]:
But really there's another way to get what I actually want. You know what I mean? Like reassessing the goals might be a good plan as well.
RON THIESSEN [00:17:31]:
I think you would get that advice even from highly successful people. Many that I've talked to, they do this reevaluation at least once a year and sometimes once every six months where they go back and they say, okay, this is the goal that I set. Is it something that I'm actually still wanting to push for? Because what happens as you take steps and especially if you're improving your situation, you're changing, you're becoming a better human being, whatever better means to you, you get more insight. And as you get more insight, what you saw at the beginning, you go, yet actually, that's not the important thing. This is the important thing right here. And this is actually where I need to be making my adjustments and my changes. And that obviously changes the strategy for doing what you're doing. So yes, reevaluating is a very good thing to do and you can look at it.
RON THIESSEN [00:18:25]:
People that are highly successful, that we would all recognize their names or whatever, they're the kind of people who do exactly that. And usually they're doing it a few times a year and recognizing that if you make a change, that's not a failure. If you adjust, it's not like, oh, well, I said I was going to do that, now I'm not doing that anymore. No, as you take your steps, you're figuring out what's working. We've done that with the change evolutionist, which we're going to talk about, the journey of the change evolutionist. We've done that a number of times where we go, okay, this is the idea and now we get focused on it and we start doing it, we go, yeah, that's not actually what we need to be doing. We need to be doing something else.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:19:04]:
Yes, many times we've pivoted like that. And the importance is not to say, okay, well, we never did achieve that goal, so we suck. Because sometimes, yeah, that goal has to be revisited. I wanted to talk about the guilt and shame that comes with making a resolution. And then shortly thereafter, whether that's a few weeks or a month or two months, just not following through. So when you have that guilt or shame, I think exactly what you've just talked about. Do you want to say the guy's name in his book again?
RON THIESSEN [00:19:33]:
Dad, it's Raymond Aaron, and it's double your income doing what you.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:19:38]:
Yeah, yeah. What that guy said. So based on what that guy said, you can eliminate all that guilt and shame by simply saying, I will make these minimal target and outrageous goals and give myself the grace that I need to slowly transition. This is one of the drawbacks of an all or nothing mentality. I am so one of these people that says, well, if I didn't do it to perfection, I'm not doing it at all. If I started on Monday and I didn't stick to my eating plan for that day, it's a crapshoot. The whole week is toast. On to next Monday, right? That self sabotage is actually the reason that I'm in this position today.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:20:18]:
20 years of, let's say, obesity, right? Because I did that, I decided it was all or nothing. So guess what? It was always nothing, right? And if you're an all or nothing person like me, just say, I'm going to try something different. Instead of trying to change 1000 things all at once, I'm going to change one little thing one little bit. And I'm going to be prepared that this goal that I'm trying to reach is going to take longer to get to, but I'm going to get to it versus I'm never going to get to it. It's understanding that you're playing a long game and that the instant gratification and results that you want are not realistic. They will not happen. It doesn't happen that way for anyone, not even Justin Bieber, because that kid was showing up on YouTube for ages and ages and ages before he made it big. So nobody gets like this big payoff instantly.
RON THIESSEN [00:21:10]:
It's not, as you pointed out a number of podcasts ago, Denzel Washington saying that between the setting the goal and achieving the goal, there's discipline and consistency. So it takes time. Always it's going to take time. And now we come back again to the huge importance of mindfulness being in the moment. Because your gym example, for instance. So when you go to the gym to be mindful at this moment, what am I doing? What, you couldn't lift a 50 pound barbell yet? What's the problem? You take the five pounder and you do your reps and you feel the muscle and you feel what it's doing in your body and you go, okay, you see, there it is. Achieving, it's doing something that this is part of my goal, what I want to do. You walk out of the gym, if you were there ten minutes or 15 minutes or five minutes, even if you just walked in, you got there and you walk out, you have done something to move towards your goal.
RON THIESSEN [00:22:17]:
So instead of saying, I couldn't go in there and the guy next to me who's been going to the gym for years, I couldn't do what he was doing or what she was doing. No kidding. And that's totally okay, but you're that much further ahead now. If you can be in that moment and say, this is what I'm doing, and this is the moment in which I'm doing it, and there will be a moment down the road, whenever it is, where I'll look at that and I'll go, that was a peanut. I could do that with one finger now. But you're not there yet to mindfully be in this moment and say, I am moving deliberately towards a change that I want to make.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:22:58]:
Yeah.
RON THIESSEN [00:22:59]:
And be satisfied that you are moving deliberately.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:23:03]:
Yeah. I think we know what mine is, but I would love to know if there's a goal that you're working towards right now, dad.
RON THIESSEN [00:23:10]:
Absolutely. So if I'm doing minimum target and outrageous, my minimum will be that I maintain the reduction in my schedule without feeling guilty. Okay? So I have to do that every month. I'm going to look at how many clients did I see this month. So now, as you're listening to this podcast, I'm in the midst of not teaching this semester at university and minimizing the number of clients that I see. So this is my minimum. Now, my target would be that I would have my schedule under such control that I could do the amount of work that I've determined I'm going to do. I'm not just stepping away.
RON THIESSEN [00:23:53]:
That's it. I'm done. So the amount of work that I've determined that I'm going to do without 1oz of guilt, that would be my target because I know I'm going to have some level of guilt, I'm going to feel some level of guilt. And my outrageous would be that I'm pretty sure I'm not going to achieve this for a couple of months, but that my outrageous goal would be that I have a schedule that is completely manageable for me in what I've determined will be my input in terms of the work that I'm considering, and I'm doing that and managing all of my other time with things that I want to do and enjoy doing without any feeling like, well, I shouldn't be doing this because this is for me. I should be doing something that's for somebody else.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:24:38]:
That sounds a little reminiscent of our little combo with Josh. What you just said there, maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
RON THIESSEN [00:24:48]:
That was interesting that in that podcast recording, I thought that a few times. I didn't realize I would not have ever drawn that parallel between him and me, because he just approaches that very differently, or it appears to me that he approaches it very differently than I do. But yeah, there are some parallels there. And the sense of responsibility I need to be doing this for others. And I've been thinking now, as I'm driving, usually it's when I'm driving and I'm usually listening to one of our podcasts when I'm driving or some other podcast, and I'm thinking now, am I content to be a human being? And I'm not sure that I have the answer to that question yet. Am I content to just, if I put that in quotations, be a human being? Can I let my life as it is speak for itself without having to do to prove right? This is a really deep question for me.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:25:51]:
I think that you, as a doer, interpret being as doing nothing, and I think Josh perceived it that way as well. And I think probably many people do. They think, well, it's either that I'm being or I'm doing, but it's not. It's like bringing presence into everything you do. And then if you're not doing, like, if you're relaxing on a beach, you are still being present with the person who's bringing you your margarita or your martini or whatever. Or in your case, it's virgin, virgin Margarita. For me, it's like, I'll take a double. You're being present with everybody, and you're being present in your life.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:26:30]:
And so it just radiates from you, that sense of being. It doesn't mean you're doing nothing. It doesn't mean you're sitting at home watching Netflix being. And I think that might be a common misperception of the idea of that. And even in this podcast, we're trying to explore how we find the balance between being and doing, right. So I think it's good that you're in your own personal journey of trying to see what does it even mean to be? What does it mean to do? And is there like a place in the middle where you can do both?
RON THIESSEN [00:26:59]:
Yeah. Is it either or? Right?
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:27:01]:
Yeah. It's not.
RON THIESSEN [00:27:03]:
So. No, it's not. It's like we say at the beginning of the podcast, what if we made room for more being and less doing, but we're not saying for just being and no doing. Right?
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:27:15]:
Right.
RON THIESSEN [00:27:16]:
And I'm sure that in my mind, I do sort of equate that to, because of that whole productivity, and you need to show results out here, then that automatically sort of equates to you need to be doing something because we need to see something happening and for me to just be there. And by being, I am doing. Yeah, that's a deep concept. And that you're actually sort of putting your finger on exactly what I've been thinking in this process of analyzing this and going like, my whole life has been about proving that I'm doing right.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:27:56]:
And that's what resolutions are. Resolutions are trying to prove to yourself and sometimes others that you are doing right. And I'm not saying that that means you don't have New Year's resolutions. They can be very good for you. And having goals is very important. Actually, they give you direction and steer the ship so you kind of always know where you're headed. But to reevaluate the goals and to break the goals down into tiny little bite sized pieces that are accomplishable and realistic and still give you reason to enjoy life and thrive, I think it's finding that balance and giving yourself that little bit of grace that says, I don't have to have all this figured out tomorrow. It's not like January 1 happened and now I have to be like a rock star for 2024.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:28:43]:
You can still bring a presence into your doing and even chill out a little on the doing in order to accommodate that while you're learning the balance, I think that's very important part.
RON THIESSEN [00:28:55]:
And it just reminds me of something somebody said one time. They were talking about making a quality decision, and we've been talking about that, making a quality decision to make change, but to be realistic about it. Right? And this person was talking about a quality decision to fast, and he said this, he said, if your attitude is, well, I believe that I ought to fast today. He said, do you know what you're about? Or I ought to fast tomorrow? Said, do you know what you're about to do? You're about to eat between five and six of the biggest meals you've ever consumed in your lifetime because you're anticipating the drought of fasting and so I'm going to get everything I can right now and it throws the whole thing out of kilter.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:29:43]:
That's true. Honestly. I mean, when I hear the word fast, certain things clench. Okay. I'm not going to lie exactly.
RON THIESSEN [00:29:52]:
It's a good example. And the outcome is a really good example because that's exactly what happens. You go, well, I'm about to deny myself, so right now I have access to it. And now I should do it without feeling guilty. I better ingest and consume as much as possible. Right? And it can be the same with any kind of goal setting. I'm going to start going to the gym next week. Okay.
RON THIESSEN [00:30:14]:
So I better really laze around this week because next week I'm going to be working hard.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:30:19]:
I'm glad you brought that up because again, that is part of the all or nothing. I got to gear up because it's going to be famine next week. Whether it's famine of anything, whatever you're denying yourself or whatever you're incorporating that you really find unattractive or unsavory to have to add to your life either way, right? It's that all or nothing. And it really does sabotage success. So you got to live in the gray area. Sometimes it just has to be that way.
RON THIESSEN [00:30:48]:
Well, because that's the way life unfolds, right? It's just not all or nothing. And perfection is an illusion. It's not perfect.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:30:56]:
Okay, so it's time for some uncomfortable real talk. I promised an update on the gym experience, and I have to say it's a little underwhelming. I didn't go to the gym as planned on the day we recorded this episode in late November. In fact, I pretty much fell face first into about of the closest thing to depression that I've ever felt for the whole month of December and most of January. There was a day mid December where I talked myself into going to the gym to at least sign up for a membership because I figured some action was better than no action. So I did. I signed up for a monthly membership, but unfortunately, that is the only thing I did. Just a few days ago, actually, I went back to the gym to cancel my membership because it's just obviously not my first step.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:31:47]:
I need the babiest of steps. And right now the gym feels like Everest. My minimal target and outrageous goals are currently centered around hydration because, hey, you got to start somewhere, right? What about you? What goal are you working on right now? What hurdles do you need to overcome and what's your plan to get there? We'd love to hear about it in the change evolutionist community chat. As always, the link is in the show notes. Join us next week when we welcome former Southern Baptist preacher turned licensed therapist Brent Peak, who talks about his transition from a deeply patriarchal religion to a more equality based and balanced approach to life and relationships. In his practice, Brent specializes in addressing childhood trauma using post induction therapy and empowered self compassion. Throughout the episode, we explore the relationship between spirituality and organized religion, asking the question, is it possible to believe in a higher power without subscribing to a religion? Also, we explore the relationship between spirituality and therapy. See you next week.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:33:02]:
Do you have your own story about being versus doing? We want to hear it. Or maybe you have a different perspective on the things we discuss in this podcast. We'd love to have you as a guest. To get started, visit thechangevolutionist.com/podcastguest.
What did you think of this episode? Join the private Change Evolutionist Community chat to share your thoughts. Find the link in the show notes.
You can now record or text a question through fanlist. Just head over to fanlist.com/human beingproject and set up an account.Your question, comment, or feedback and our response to it may be featured in one of our new Q&A episodes coming soon.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:33:39]:
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