Episode 16: Quitter's Day

Hello and Welcome to the Love Your Life Podcast - this is Episode 16 - Quitter’s DayI I am so happy you are here with me again today! It is definitely not quitters day for my podcast. I am committed to turning out weekly episodes each Friday that deliver tried and true principles that help you think new thoughts, and create new results in your life - all in 15 minutes or less. Today has the promise of being an impactful one if you listen to the end. Did you know there is a day called quitter’s day? It is not labeled on calendars that you buy and it doesn’t populate onto your online calendar when you click the box for holidays in the United States, so you might not have heard of it before, if you haven’t let me be the first to introduce it to you. Quitter’s day is the second Friday in January. You can probably guess where it comes from now that you know the date. And you are right if you are guessing that quitter’s day is the day that most people quit their new years resolutions - One of the resources used to arrive at this specific date is Research by the fitness app Strava, based on data from millions of users. They found that this is when motivation tends to drop, and people abandon their goals. Strava is an app that you can link to watches and phones that record your minutes of exercise daily. It records your routes, your time, breaks down your minutes per mile, and then keeps the information for you and can give you reports on your exercise trends throughout the year. It is also able to connect you with your friends and family that are doing the same. It has all kinds of nifty features. I became familiar with it when two of my daughters trained for and ran their first marathon in September of this last year. Their friends made them a sign that said pain is temporary but posting on strava is forever. I decided to use it after watching my girls cross their finish line, and I signed up to run a half marathon a few months later. It was an awesome tool as I planned, trained for and completed the running of my own race and I thought it was very clever how it connected you to your community. It’s fascinating to me that even with all of this social support and connection, record keeping, and live interaction with your goals, that the majority of people using it only made it two weeks into a new year's goal. A Pew Research Center Survey from January of 2024 found that only 3 in 10 Americans are making new year's resolutions in the first place, and then only 9 percent of them made it to their goal. And the older we get, the less likely we are to even make resolutions. I don’t know if these numbers represent how likely people are to make goals at other times of the year, but I am curious about this as we discuss goals today. A good definition of a goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envision, plan, and commit to achieve. Notice here that a goal is simply a result we want to create in our future. The majority of people look for me as their life coach when they are really tired of the results they have created in their present lives and are willing to go through the discomfort that is required to create different results in their future. And I never tire of teaching them that the results of our lives are created by what we think and feel and not by our circumstances. Which is such fantastic news! Because circumstances are rarely in our control, but what we think is. And If we get to choose what we think in any given circumstance, then those thoughts will create specific feelings and those feelings will drive specific actions that create specific results. Let’s say it backwards - Results are created by the actions we do or do not take, those actions are fueled by our feelings. Our feelings are created by our thoughts. If we want to create a specific result or goal, then we can go about it in several ways. We can think about the result we want to create, and then figure out what actions we need to take to accomplish it. We map out those actions in our mind or on paper. Then we look at them and ask ourselves what we will need to feel like to complete those actions, and then we figure out what we will need to think to create that feeling. The result will be created by doing the actions, yes, but the actions will only be able to be done if we stay in the mindset that creates the fuel to do them. Here is a personal example of this. When I wanted to start running again, I decided I wanted to create the result of the ability to run 13.6, 12 minute, consecutive miles in a row. I was 51 years old, and I hadn’t been a consistent runner in more than 10 years, so I was starting from zero. My immediate actions were to run two minutes alternated with walking two minutes, and I would do that 7 times in a row the first week. Then weekly expand the running walking ratio until I strung together running an entire mile without walking. The actions of this process were repeated over and over again for three months - In the past I had plenty of my own quitter days when thinking about or starting up running again, but this time, I had this thought model in my back pocket. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to push through the discomfort of it all if I was giving myself pressure or talking negatively to myself. I also knew that I was inspired because my daughters did something that they used to believe they couldn’t do. And it reminded me of myself as a 14 year old freshman in high school watching the one mile relay for the first time. I saw the anchor leg runner, grit her teeth and sprint an entire quarter mile. Her determination was inspiring to me, but I instantly thought that I could never be that tough. As long as I thought that thought, I never even tried. Which is what we call failing ahead of time - or in this time quitting before I even started. Eventually, I got curious enough to question that thought telling me I couldn’t do it, and I started to wonder if I actually could do it, until I decided to at least try it, and I was able to try it because I told myself that I didn’t have to be amazing at it. I just had to try. And when I tried, it turned out I could do it. And when I realized that I could do it, it gave me the guts to dare to be amazing at it. And when I dared to be amazing, it turned out, I actually was amazing at it. As I remembered this experience in my past, I could see that I had let my thoughts trip me up again in recent years - there were thoughts that told me I couldn’t run anymore. They said I used to be a runner, but I was too old now. They told me it was too hard, and I didn’t need to do hard things anymore. And I had been believing them. Those thoughts fueled the action of not running. But what if I was wrong again, just like I was wrong in highschool? As I questioned my limiting, quitting producing thoughts, I started to get curious. But what if I could still run? What if I just don’t need to be as amazing at it as I used to be? What if I could do it even if it wasn’t pretty? What if I could do it even if it was hard? What if it was even supposed to be hard? Could I still do it then? And then I found my thoughts, I remembered that I’m a person that can do hard things. and I granted myself permission to not be good at it. That permission made room for lots of new feelings. First off was Desire. Permission allowed the desire to be louder. The next feeling was a surprise. It was Humility. I had been prideful when I didn’t want to do it if I couldn’t be amazing at it. The feeling of humility allowed me to do something without needing it to look good. I also felt hopeful for the first time in a long time because I was able to kick the thoughts out that predicted failure. They had kept me from even starting for years. Once I felt hopeful, a little spark of determination started and then I caught sight of my old familiar friend grit. Grit showed up after desire, hope and humility, and determination got the gears turning. Grit had to come in and provide fuel when I was out running and I wanted to quit. I summoned grit by thinking, “all I have to do is to put one foot in front of the other. It doesn’t have to be pretty.” And I did! I kept putting one foot in front of the other - and created a new result in my life. All because I thought new thoughts and I created better fuel for my actions. Ironically, I did it with Strava measuring every minute I ran - I guess I was actually an outlier for their statistical average measurement of goal quitters. And isn’t that just the thing - There will be times in each life that we fall in line with the statistical averages of our demographics, but there is always a chance to be an outlier. I have found that the odds are not in our favor if we want to really love the lives we live. It’s hard to feel true satisfaction and connection in the relationship we have with our life and the people in it when we are allowing our lives to be fueled by unintentional thoughts. Our brains are wired to show us the things we don’t like, don’t want, and are scared will happen. It requires a little bit of present day awareness about the things we habitually think - to be able to give ourselves the chance to disagree with these thoughts and practice thinking new ones. Running a half marathon is small potatoes in the race of life, but it had big lessons and reminders for me. Feel free to learn from my past mistakes with thoughts that kept me quitting for over a decade before I even started, so that you don’t stall yourself in the things you want to do for as long as I did. I have learned that it is important to pay attention when my brain offers me the thought “ I could never do anything like that.” or “I could never be that good.” or “That is too hard for someone like me to do.” I now know that when I think these thoughts - it is like a huge flashing light telling me this is exactly the next right thing that I NEED to do. Vincent Van Gogh said -"If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." – Ralph Waldo Emmerson said, Always do what you are afraid to do. Joseph Campbell said “ The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” And of course my favorite German Philosopher Wolfgan Van Goethe has given me these words to live by since I was 17 - The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would have never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. I didn’t know when I was 17 that the secret behind deciding to set goals and making commitments to myself and my life was fueled by feelings that were created by the thoughts I think And yet, even now with this knowledge it does feel like it is a bold and magical experience to think up the new results I want to create in the future while I am still just the same old me in the present. But my friends! This is how we move towards creating better for our future selves whether we are 17, 47 or 77! NO matter what your practice with goals has been in your past - the act of noticing the results that you have in your life today that you don’t want, and the practice of thinking ahead and setting goals that will create results you like better for your future self is only one thought away from where you are now. So what is it you want to improve this year and gift your future self with something better than you have now? Maybe you will know what you need to do because you are scared of it like I was, or you have been believing that you cannot do it? Is it the time to improve your relationships or create new ones? Is it the year of fiscal responsibility or health? Could it be the year that you choose to become more emotionally mature and you decide to stop letting the people and entities around you determine what you feel on a daily basis? Maybe it is a year of transition and the schedules and people you have relied on in the past are all changing - and you have to figure out how to change with it? Maybe you have grown lax with your spiritual and emotional practices and you want to recommit? Or you have struggled with self confidence in the past and you want to be more intentional about how you show up in your life? Perhaps you need to just start with one little thing like van gogh says and learn how to paint. Or like I had to remember I could run, so that you will then have the evidence to tackle the next big thing in your life. I can promise you that if you stop the judging, minimizing thoughts your brain offers you in any area you are considering that lead you to quit before you start or shortly thereafter, and you muster even the tiniest desire to get curious and believe you are capable of something new, that you will be on your way to loving your life more tomorrow than you did today. And that my friend, is an amazing feeling. Have you ever noticed that a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, and the more candles that are lit the brighter the path for others to follow? It’s amazing to me that light is such an easy thing to share. In fact, when a light turns on - we can’t stop those around us from seeing it. Especially if they are in the dark. If this podcast is helping you see things in a new light, I would be honored if you would share it with the people you know who want to see their own path better and thus make it easier for those who come behind them to follow. Talk to you soon!