Our Choice To Change

What happens when our choice to change gets questioned? Our family, community, friendship group, or culture can all influence how we feel about making changes in our lives - even when we know, deep in our heart, that those changes are what will most serve us. This episode of The Regroup Hour explores how it feels when we choose to do something different.

Transcript

Welcome to The Regroup Hour,

The podcast that's all about how we make and manage change by building a bedrock of self-care.

Self-care that comes from self-awareness and self-compassion.

This is a gentle hour-ish to take some time out for yourself to simply be and see whatever this time brings.

It truly is an opportunity to regroup.

How many times have you observed in yourself or someone else a desire to justify something that you're doing that you know is really benefiting you,

Really serving you,

But that you suspect the other person won't quite get?

Maybe it's a little embarrassing to admit that you've adopted a new habit or behavior that feels out of the ordinary for someone like you.

Perhaps in your family,

In your community,

In your friendship group,

Or even in your culture,

These things aren't the norm.

And so we can end up either justifying them or caveating what we're doing to perhaps to ward off that anticipated ridicule or judgment or cynicism that we think we're going to receive from the other person.

And I've definitely heard myself doing it.

You know,

Making jokes about the things that I learned to do that really helped me create greater calm in my life,

Which quite frankly is no joke and was absolutely necessary for my wellbeing.

And of course,

Sometimes we're on the other side of it where we're the ones perhaps being cynical.

And I've certainly felt that rise in myself too,

You know,

Where I've come across a different practice,

Come across something that somebody else does.

And I've sort of heard myself think,

You know,

I don't really know how much evidence there is there,

Or I don't really understand the kind of background to that,

You know,

How is it grounded in science?

So there can be a danger sometimes that we dismiss things,

Perhaps because our head tells us there's not enough evidence to prove that it works.

So we can take something like meditation.

There are reams of reports and studies now that clearly demonstrate its efficacy,

Where finally Western science has caught up with thousands of years of evidence that demonstrate the benefits it brings.

And of course,

It's now become a widely practiced tool through positive psychology and secular mindfulness,

But go back a few years and people who meditated were a bit weird.

Look at compassion and look to the incredible work by Dr.

Kristin Neff and many,

Many others for evidence-based analysis of how it's possibly the most powerful tool we have to develop and secure good mental health.

But it's only really relatively recently that that idea of compassion has become,

You know,

Accepted where we're starting to hear the language of compassionate leadership,

You know,

Where even a few years ago that would have been considered to be just woolly nonsense and not something that would actually benefit an organization.

And I say these things,

You know,

I realize I live in a little bit of a bubble actually,

And I communicate with people who now,

You know,

I have a tribe around me of people who think and feel the same way about many of these areas.

And so I'm very,

Very mindful that outside of that bubble,

People still consider meditation perhaps to be a bit weird.

They wouldn't necessarily see it as something that they could do.

And again,

You know,

That point around compassion and compassionate leadership,

You know,

Unless you've been introduced to it in such a way that it feels really resonant to you,

It's ever so easy to dismiss it and to dismiss the evidence that really backs up why it's such a powerful part of,

You know,

How we can create better mental and I believe actually physical wellbeing too.

Also things like gratitude,

You know,

That gratitude is a powerful enabler of change is also underpinned by research into the neuroscience of how it influences the brain.

And actually in my latest book,

The Heart of Change,

I referenced a study by Emmons and McCulloch in 2003.

So that's going back quite a way where they measured the brain's response to feelings of gratitude with functional magnetic resonance imaging,

Which is FMRI.

And the researchers elicited feelings of gratitude in their participants and they found that brain activity increased in areas that deal with morality,

Reward and with judgment.

And they also found that practicing gratitude reduces stress.

So a related study revealed that after 10 weeks,

People who focused on gratitude showed more optimism in many areas of their lives,

Including improvements in health and exercise.

So it wasn't just a psychological benefit,

It was also a physical benefit,

The kind of knock on ramifications of practicing gratitude.

So just in those three areas,

We can see,

You know,

How there's actually plenty of evidence to support why these practices really,

Really serve us.

And yet still they can get dismissed.

We can dismiss them ourselves.

We can find,

You know,

Perhaps in conversation with other people that they dismiss them too.

And even things like the way that we choose to eat can come under fire.

So there is plenty of evidence that denial dieting doesn't have long-term benefits.

It may have a short-term outcome,

But it doesn't have long-term benefits.

And it can in fact create that yo-yo effect that we know can be so damaging for the human body,

Where we end up putting on more weight,

You know,

More than the weight we lost once the time of denial ends because our body goes into that starvation mode.

And then,

You know,

It's just desperate to make sure that we don't experience that again.

And so ends up like building up resources,

Which means putting on weight.

And of course there's an emotional cost there too.

But choosing to eat foods that really nurture us and not eat foods that don't nurture us has been an act of considerable bravery for many people.

So certainly,

You know,

Until again,

Until relatively recently with this new mainstream emphasis on plant power,

Which is,

You know,

Just amazing to see people who are,

You know,

Really committed meat eaters,

You know,

Starting to swap out meat for some more kind of plant-based meals.

Until,

You know,

Until those,

That sort of evidence came through,

It was,

You know,

Often something that,

You know,

Certainly myself when I think about when I became vegetarian about 30 years ago now,

I used to find myself having to justify what I was doing and why I was choosing to eat the way that I did.

And you know,

Even though for me,

The evidence was very clear that actually it benefited me and it also benefited the planet.

So partly the reason why we can find ourselves either receiving this kind of response from others or hearing this internal response from ourselves is because when we change,

We're sending a signal to those around us that something about what we were doing before is no longer fitting for who we are today.

And that can make other people bring into question their own behaviors.

And not many of us like that,

You know,

Being really,

Really honest.

It can feel very challenging when somebody questions the way that we behave or through their own changes that we see,

We get an internal sense that they're no longer the same as us and they no longer think the same that we do.

They no longer feel the same that we do about things that we thought we were aligned on.

And so that can be met with deep resistance and then that can be expressed with cynicism,

With judgment,

With justification or the demand for justification.

So when we notice it inside us,

When we hear ourselves resisting something that perhaps another little quiet voice is saying,

That's quite interesting.

Another little quiet voice inside us is saying,

That's actually quite interesting.

But we have this dominant,

Critical voice stepping in.

What's getting in the way?

What's happening here?

My sense is that sometimes we dismiss things saying it's not scientific,

Perhaps from a very traditional Western science perspective of needing things backed up by numbers and proof.

But really underneath that,

That very critical voice might simply be scared of putting in the work or even scared of what the outcome might be if we do put in the work,

A sort of fear of the unknown.

And of course,

It's not easy,

This path of creating deeper self-awareness.

You know,

It requires time and it requires attention and it requires a willingness to experiment with things that perhaps feel a little unusual,

Back to the point I was making earlier.

And on the face of it,

If someone could give us a pill to make the changes that we think we want to make,

Then that could feel like a much more immediate route.

Medicine,

It's been backed by double blind trials.

So it must be good.

It must be,

Oh,

That's this evidence there.

But while some of these seemingly quick fixes can work,

Of course they can.

And it's really important not to dismiss medical interventions out of hand,

Just as it's important not to dismiss other traditions out of hand.

Quick fixes can end up being a sticking plaster over a deeper need.

And to really resolve things,

To make long-term changes,

Then it may be that we need to go a little deeper.

And that's really often what scares us.

I know my own experience,

I think I might've shared this before actually,

But when I,

So I was hypnotized,

I don't know,

Several years ago to stop smoking.

And then I went back to the same hypnotist,

Wonderful woman called Juliet.

And if you're looking for a hypnotist,

I'd happily recommend her.

I went back to her and I said,

I just would like you to hypnotize me so that I make better food choices.

And I had a long consultation with her where we talked about what that meant.

And she helped me kind of unearth a little bit more about how I felt about food and where some of my stories,

My internal stories about food were coming from.

And she quite rightly identified that the need was not for me to be hypnotized with some like,

You know,

Magic spell over me to make better food choices.

Actually,

What I really needed to do was go deeper.

I needed to address some old family stories and I needed to address my,

You know,

Quite sort of desperate lack of self-care.

And I needed to address my lack of self-esteem actually,

Which for people who've known me for a long time can sound a bit weird because,

You know,

On the outside,

I've always seemed very confident,

But inside I felt like rubbish a lot of the time.

Not always,

Obviously,

But you know,

It was there.

And I thanked her at the end of the session.

I said,

That's really interesting.

And I never went back because I was terrified about what we were actually going to uncover if we carried on working together.

And instead,

I took the very slow route and spent the next kind of four or five years probably doing the work that we could have done in a series of months.

But that was the path I took and,

You know,

I'm very grateful for it actually,

Because it's brought me here.

But,

You know,

Recognizing that this fear about going deeper can often be what scares us is really useful,

I think.

You know,

We can worry that once we face into old wounds,

Old pain,

Old sorrows,

That we won't be able to turn away again.

And that these pains that they'll engulf us,

But it doesn't need to be that way.

And I think this is so important.

You know,

I did not understand when I was in that session with her,

I trusted her.

I think she's an amazing hypnotist.

She's a psychotherapist.

But I didn't really understand that actually I could go through this process with her at my own speed.

And so it's one of the things that I'm very keen on all of my clients understanding that this is our own process when we choose to make changes in our lives.

We choose the speed at which we do it.

We choose the way and having,

You know,

Working with somebody alongside us,

You know,

Part of their job is to help us move at the pace that we want to move at.

So by being open-minded,

Non-judgmental and open-hearted,

We can create the environment where we can experiment with different approaches to help us create the deep and lasting change in our lives.

So instead of looking for a quick fix or looking for something else or someone else to fix us,

Word fix or big one,

We can turn our attention inward and see what we really need on a deeper level.

So when I was writing this episode,

I suddenly remembered sitting in France on,

I think it was my 51st birth.

No,

That can't be right.

It must've been my 40,

No,

It's my 48th birthday.

Of course it was because 51 was only last year.

It was my 48th birthday and I was sitting in France.

I was driving through France with my dad and my son on our way to my niece's wedding.

Anton,

My husband,

Was cycling to meet us there,

But that's a whole other story.

He had a whole series of adventures along the way,

Which maybe one day I'll share some of that.

But I suddenly remembered sitting there and writing an entry in my journal and amazingly I've actually managed to find it.

And this extract is related to this need we can sometimes have for proof.

And it's all about how we can become obsessed with numbers.

And I remember that this came up for me at the time because I realized I was becoming too focused on how many days I'd been journaling for.

So if you've listened to the podcast before,

You'll know that rather than write the date at the top of my journal entries,

Right from the very beginning,

I've just written day one,

Day two,

Day three.

And I did it deliberately because I didn't want to be judging myself if I missed a day or if I missed a few days.

I just wanted it to be a continuous process.

However,

I also noticed at this time,

That I'm talking about,

That I'd started to become slightly obsessed with the fact that I'd reached day 50.

And I thought I will share this with you.

So this is like a little extra bit at the end of the podcast episode,

Really.

So before I read it to you,

I'll say goodbye now and I'll just leave you with Angus's beautiful music at the end,

Of course.

And thank you as ever to Angus for his production and his help with all things to do with the Regroup Hour.

And I'll also leave you with the invitation to get in touch with me if you want to explore some of that deeper work to create your own deep and lasting change.

I call it self-awareness with self-compassion.

And if you prefer the idea of working through things on your own,

Which I also really recognize and I know that that for me can be a really useful process,

Then take a look at The Heart of Change.

So my latest book,

It's very interactive.

I love a book that you can write in and that's what I wanted to create here.

So The Heart of Change essentially helps you explore the world of change and helps you explore what you think,

Feel and believe about change in order to help you work out what might be getting in your way and how you can move forward with the changes that you may or may not choose to make.

And it's written,

Of course,

From a stance of no judgment and plenty of compassion.

So I send you a hug and a wave and I'm now going to read to you from day 50 of my journal.

Some of this might not make sense by the way.

I'm just gonna,

I'm gonna read it unedited.

So day 50.

Why do these days seem significant?

This numbering,

Counting,

Recording.

When does it just become something that is done instead of measured?

It's like time or age or wealth or friendships.

This measurement,

Assessment,

Referring one against another and maybe almost surely finding one wanting.

Meditations can be measured.

A marker to say well done on achieving 10 days or 20 days or 200 days.

But why is that helpful?

Does it give us a vicarious thrill to see our stats go up and compare them to others?

Just as with age,

When we're young,

We love the superiority of being 10 when our best friend is still just 9.

What is this thing?

I'm struggling.

So there's something about stats.

There's something about wanting to compare ourselves against others.

But it gets wrapped up in success and is called things like encouragement or goal setting or hitting targets.

But I don't want to hit anything.

I just want to be.

I just want to be able to understand what's happening today instead of looking back over past achievements or future ambitions.

Is that right?

I'd never noticed this before,

This need for numbers.

As though unless it's measured and counted it's somehow valid.

It's not somehow valid rather.

But I don't think you can quantify love or happiness or joy or friendship or peace or balm or soothing kindness.

I don't think any of these things,

These really really important things can be measured.

Though I expect people have tried.

Even the Institute for Happiness quantifies happiness and I expect that does some good in some way.

It probably validates it.

Well if you can measure it then it must be real.

But we can't measure the way the air feels when it brushes our skin on a warm sandy beach in June.

We can't measure the upswell of love we have when we see someone we adore turning a corner and walking towards us on an unfamiliar street.

This is all about owning things.

That if we can measure it then we can in some way control it.

We can make sense of it and it's become the language of business.

Everything is referred to in quantifiable terms and while lip service is paid to the importance of qualifiable matters it really doesn't count.

And there it is.

Even the language we use to dismiss something is in the language of numbers.

It doesn't count.

So just because you can't measure it,

It is meaningless.

Bullshit.

I hesitated to write that word as this is a special place but it felt appropriate.

Nonsense and that is a much better word.

It literally makes no sense and that can't be measured or can it?

Oh lord I expect it can.

Of course it can.

IQ test for one.

Anyway where was I going with this?

I think it was that numbers do help us make sense of the world.

They help create order out of chaos and they do give us a means to measure success but they're also a trap.

If we only ever measure in numbers and bypass feelings and intuition and instinct then we lose touch with the stuff that really matters and we become obsessed with passing time,

Money earned or lost,

Numbers on a weighing machine or amounts of days journaled.

I always end my journal by writing thank you with three kisses.

So thank you.

Kiss kiss kiss.

Thank you.

Reviews

What a beautiful talk & journal entry. Thank you for sharing. Xx

I found this a real source of comfort today 💗