And we tell ourselves, okay. That's it. I'm gonna start waking up early. I'm gonna, I'm done eating sugar. I'm gonna whatever the things are that we say we're gonna do, and then we just so easily blow it off.
And we've done that over and over again and then we wonder why don't I trust myself? And it's because we've proven to ourselves over and over again that we can't trust us. Today, we're diving into one of the most important but overlooked parts of healing, the relationship you have with yourself. Now it's easy to think that better health comes from just a few simple habits, a new diet, a new workout, a new protocol. But what if the real and best catalyst for lasting change isn't outside of ourselves, but within.
Now my guest today is Jody Moore, master certified life coach and host of the Better Than Happy podcast and self help expert extraordinaire. She's here to guide us through a powerful conversation about what it really means to come home to yourself, to really know yourself. We'll be exploring why the relationship with ourself is so important, the far reaching effects it can have when we do it right, and she's gonna walk us through step by step what we can do to get started with it. You'll notice I'm recording this episode as I'm recovering from a terrible case of laryngitis. So thank you so much for your patience with my hoarse voice.
You don't wanna miss this episode. Jody is a wealth of information, and this is an awesome conversation. Let's get started. True confidence isn't just I'm I know I'm amazing. It's I'm amazing, and I'm and I'm a hot mess.
And this is all of me. This is what we got today. Well, Jody, thank you so much for being here. I have been a big fan and listener of yours for a long time, and I'm honestly just sincerely appreciative of this work that you've dedicated your life and your career to of helping women really just I love the name of your podcast and your book, Be Better Than Happy. How do we come to that next level?
So thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. It's really, really fun to be here. I appreciate it. We have an audience of all women, and we talk, as you know, about integrative women's health and about feeling our best.
And maybe surprising to some people, when we talk about our best physical health, very frequently this idea of relationship to ourselves and to our own bodies come up. And when you and I were preparing for this episode, I asked you, you know, what's one thing you really wanna talk to women about? And this was one of the things that came up was this idea of relationship to self. So I think there's so much crossover when we talk about our physical health and our mental, emotional, spiritual health when we're talking about relationships. So I'm gonna let you kind of jump in there.
Tell us what this means when we're talking about relationship with self. Because I think if we just say that one sentence, what jumps to my mind and a lot of people's minds is, like, don't be so hard on yourself, give yourself grace, show yourself self care. And And I think a lot of us feel like that's not at all helpful. Like, yeah, that sounds good. But, like, will you take us through this and go a little deeper to say, like, what is the issue around relationship with self, the importance of it, and really getting into the nitty gritty a little bit?
Okay. There's so much I wanna share. I know. Let me Go ahead. Let me try to organize my thoughts.
I will say I remember even when I was very young and just starting to have children, you know, and having a little bit of experience at that point of working and, you know, being around different people. And and I noticed at some point, people who are confident succeed and people who are insecure struggle. And that's true in any area of life. It's true in your job. It's true in your relationships.
It's true in your parenting. It's true in just your overall experience of life. People who are confident find ways to achieve what they want. They seem to have more fun doing it. And whatever it is that success looks like to you, it's much more likely from confidence than for insecurity.
And so as a, you know, new mom, I started to think, okay, how am I gonna teach my kids to be confident? Because that seems like a tool that will set them up for success. And so I started paying attention and asking around and reading and trying to figure out how do you generate confidence. Seems like some people are just confident and some are not. Did they just get lucky?
Did they have better life experiences? I couldn't connect dots because some people were confident who had had really great lives and great parents. Right? And then others were really confident because they'd been through really challenging things and overcome those things. And so, anyway, I, you know, I'm not a scientist or anything, so I don't have like research studies, but I have been coaching people for eleven years.
I'm obsessed with self help and with neuroscience and with the mind and human behavior and all of that. And, I do think that what it comes down to is when we say relationship with self, we are the one person we cannot get away from ever. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
We are always with our own selves no matter what. And it will be that way our whole lives. And we will have periods of life when we're not even aware of ourselves because we're so busy with, you know, re again, raising kids or whatever else is going on. And then we'll have other times, you know, especially, like, later in life when maybe we have a lot of alone time to be with just ourselves. So do you have a positive relationship with yourself is a game changer.
It literally determines so much of your current success and how happy you're gonna be in the long run. And that relationship is just, do I enjoy being with me? Can I be alone with my own thoughts? Or do I need to turn on the TV or be on social media or be talking to a friend? So many women are not comfortable being alone.
I mean, people in general. But because they don't have a connection with their own selves, they haven't paid attention to themselves for so long, for good reason. Right? In the name of trying to take care of everyone around us, we lose ourselves. We don't know what we want.
We don't know what we like. We certainly don't feel that it's okay to go after those things if other people around us are gonna have to sacrifice, and we have lots of negative self talk. And so that is worth working on because of how it will impact your entire life. So I can break it down into parts, but that's kind of overall why this matters so much. And it it really is just how do you feel when you're alone with just your own thoughts?
I love the simplicity of that and I think that's a great starting point. As I mentioned with with physical health that we're dealing with, a lot of times, what I see coming up as an issue is not being okay with yourself. In fact, being in conflict with yourself, lying to yourself, suppressing emotions, suppressing your true feelings about things in the name of conforming or in the name of making someone else happy. Will you touch on that for a moment of how you have seen that? Because you have dealt with so many women.
You've coached how many? A hundred thousand women, a hundred thousands of women. Mhmm. You've coached so many women from the the perspective of mindset. I've helped a lot of women from the perspective of physical health, but have you seen that cause issues when we have that conflict with self and and then we'll of course, we'll come back to what do we do about it, but tell us how we see this be a little bit of a problem showing up.
Yeah. A %. Our relationship with ourself is, for many people, our most toxic relationship. So if, like you said, if I'm trying to work on my physical health and I maybe I'm trying to develop some better eating habits or or some sleep more, drink more water, whatever. I'm trying to maybe change some habits that I think will will help me physically.
Right? Then what we tend to do with ourselves is we over commit and under deliver over promise under deliver. We don't usually mostly do that with other people. When I told you that I was gonna be here to talk to you this morning, I made sure to get here and you did the same. Because I value my relationship with you and we barely know each other.
Right? Yeah. But I tell myself all the time, we tell ourselves, okay. That's it. I'm gonna start waking up early.
I'm gonna I'm done eating sugar. I'm get whatever the things are that we say we're gonna do. And then we just so easily blow it off. Yeah. And we've done that over and over again.
And then we wonder, why don't I trust myself? Why don't I believe that I am capable of improving my physical health? And it's because we've proven to ourselves over and over again that we can't trust us. Yeah. And so, really, just a very simple step is to do with yourself what you do with other people, which is under promise, over deliver.
Right? If I tell a friend I'm gonna be somewhere, but I'm not sure I'm gonna be there, I let her know. I'm gonna try to make it, but there's a chance I won't. And it just comes back to telling yourself the truth. Right?
The truth is I want to develop this habit of getting up early. I this is what I tell my clients when they say no. No. No. It's really important to me that I, that I, let's say, you know, lose some weight or whatever.
Stop eating this junk food. And they'll tell me they're very committed to it, but then they're not doing it. I'm like, you're not committed. You're just interested in doing it. Yeah.
You're interested in it. It sounds like a good idea, but you'd rather eat the junk food than stop eating it. And that's okay. What if we stopped judging ourselves so harshly and we just acknowledge, like, wow. There might be a valid reason.
It might be that, again, my gut is craving that or I have cravings and urges or I it's a habit or I have a lot of stress in my life and this is solving for it or I don't have enough excitement. I don't have anything else I look forward to. Like, what if there are tons of valid reasons? And if we stop judging it and we just tell ourselves the truth, which is I I wanna lose some weight, but not as much as I wanna keep eating this food, then we can uncover what those reasons are and we can work on that stuff. And then it does come back to a couple things I'll add here.
So when it comes to relationship with self, there's there's two things. First thing is I'm not just suggesting that you just stop being so hard on yourself and talk nicer to yourself and be kind. Yes. That's part of it. But the reason that doesn't work for most of us, that advice, we can't we can't stick with it, Is because it leaves out the second part, which is also acknowledge that you have lots of shortcomings and weaknesses and faults, and you mess up half the time.
And that's okay. Just like my relationship with let's take one of my teenagers is like, I love you. I think you're brilliant and amazing and you're kind and you're generous and I appreciate how you work hard at school. And also, you you needed we need to work on getting up and getting to school on time because I noticed you've been tardy a lot lately and that's not gonna work out in the long run. We gotta figure something out.
What are we gonna do about that? And we talk about it, and we have an agreement. And then the next day, if it doesn't happen, I'm like, hey. What happened? This is what we agreed on.
This has to happen. This is important. So my relationship with anyone else, yes, it includes lots of positivity, hopefully, and appreciation and love and joy in my best relationships. And it also includes accountability and truth telling and vulnerability and acknowledging this is not okay and maybe maybe boundaries and maybe consequences and maybe, right? And that's what a healthy relationship with yourself is.
It's, for me, it's, oh my gosh, I'm so good at all these things, which by the way, I say that out loud a lot because I noticed in our culture, men say that, but women don't. And I want my kids and and younger girls to see what does it look like to be a confident woman. And so I'll say things like, oh, you guys, I am really good at coaching. If you need coaching, come to me, I'm so good at it. And then I just as confidently say, oh, I am terrible at organization and planning and math and spreadsheets.
Like, I'm not your girl if you need that. I could figure it out. It'll just take me a long time and they'll probably be a lot of mistakes. So I'm showing them what it's like to own my strengths and own my weaknesses. I think you're bringing up so many important points and the one that is just overarching is just honesty.
Honesty with ourselves, you know. And and really, instead of pretending that we are a different way or pretending that we want to be a different way or like, start with just the truth and the fact and the acknowledgement, but don't sugarcoat it and don't shade it negatively either. Like, really try to get an accurate perspective on yourself. I do like to eat sweets. I do like to stay up late.
I see that it's not helping me and I would like to make some changes there. But instead of just being, like, I'm a terrible person for wanting this, well, that's not true either. That's lying just as much as saying, like, I can do anything I set my mind to, and I'm perfect. Like, well, that's not completely true right this moment either. So there's no point in trying to over sugarcoat it or over, you know, make it into a negative self view.
So I just hear so much about honesty there in Yeah. As a starting point. Well and it's not only not only is it okay that we all have, you know, we have strengths and we have weaknesses, but it's actually perfect. Like, it makes us unique. It makes us interesting.
It helps us need one another and connect with one another and rely on, you know, God or whatever the higher source you believe in. So it's actually part of what makes us human. We don't want a bunch of robots walking around who are just good at everything. Like, we want humans. That's what we're attracted to.
So let me give a what might be a more concrete example for everybody listening is like, I'll coach a lot of people who are like, oh, I just wanna be a good mom. They'll say to me, what I I I mean, I think I am. So something will trigger maybe, like, let's say their mother comes to visit and says, you shouldn't be feeding your kids that or you shouldn't be doing this this way. And then they it triggers the part of them that it worries maybe they're not doing a good job. And they'll say, but I mean, I know I'm a good mom.
I'm a good mom. Right? That's what I just need to think. And I'm like, well, yes. And also you're not a good mom.
Right? The most confidence comes from I am a really good mom some days in some ways. And also, I'm a terrible mom some days in in other areas. Because to be a good mom, you have to be good at everything. Did you notice?
So I'm like, I am really good at at being a mom in some ways, and some days I'm just not. I'm just I'm probably doing it totally wrong, certain things. And when you can confidently embrace all of that, suddenly, you there's nothing to hide from anymore. Yeah. Right?
That's what true confidence is. True confidence isn't just I'm I know I'm amazing. It's I'm amazing, and I'm and I'm a hot mess. And this is all of me. This is what we got today.
There's another part to relationship with self that we could dive into here, which is it's helped me a lot when I started breaking it up into my past self, my present self, and my future self. I think about these three versions of me. I think of the three of us like roommates. Right? So for anybody that had roommates at one point, roommates are so much fun.
And and I have really close connections today still with girls that I was roommates with twenty years ago. And also sometimes they're pain in the butt and they're kind of annoying and they sometimes they make messes or they have stupid boyfriends they would bring around or what, like, like it's fifty fifty with roommates, right? And yet you love them and they drive you a little crazy. And that's how I think about these three parts of me. And and it goes back to what we were just talking about with, like, strengths and weaknesses.
So past me, I I spend a lot of time thanking her because she has hooked me up. And that's true for everybody listening. Even if even if you're thinking, oh, no. I've made so many mistakes and I didn't finish this thing or that thing or whatever. I promise you past you has hooked you up because you're here today.
You're listening to this podcast. So that means past you got some kind of device and access to the Internet and has a job or somehow makes enough money and has brushed your teeth enough that you still have whatever teeth you have in your mouth. Like, she did that twice a day at most days for, like, your whole life. She had babies. She got college degrees.
She whatever she did, like, she has hooked me up. Thank you. Pass me. And then also she there's other things that she did that I'm like, oh, girl. What were you thinking?
But I'm not mad at her. Just like with a roommate that I love that also kinda drives me crazy. I'm like, I'm not mad at her. I just am like rolling my eyes at her and I'm like, you know what? Don't worry.
I got it. I'll take care of it. It's okay. You did a lot of great things too. So that helps me now think about my future self in a useful way.
Right? Like, I think about future me and I'm 50 now, so my body's gonna is changing. Like, I'll probably be weaker in many ways, and maybe my brain will be less sharp. I don't know. Like, she's gonna have some hard things that she would look back at me and say, I kinda wish you would have, like, set me up a little better.
Right? So when it comes time to, let's say, go for my daily walk or go lift weights and my present me is like, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna change my clothes. I don't wanna get sweaty. I don't really have the time.
I have these other things I need to be doing. But I think about future me. I'm like, I got you, future me. I'm a take care of you. And there are other times when I give in to present me, and I'm like, sorry.
Sorry. Tomorrow morning, Jody, you're gonna be tired because I'm gonna watch one more episode of this show. Thanks in advance for taking one for me. So what it does overall is help you live a better life because you're making better decisions, but, also, you're not trying to change, not trying to improve your health or anything else because you hate yourself. Right.
You're trying to improve your health because you love yourself. And it's so much more effective and so much more fun. I love that because one of the things we see with women especially is, you know, put not putting themselves first. Right? We're so like, if our kids have needs, we will do whatever we need to to show up for our kids.
As a business owner, if our clients have needs, we just do it. We just show up and we do it. It it's in some way, it's so much easier to do for future you than it is to do for myself. And part of that is the idea of instant gratification. Right?
You know, for for current me, for me to say, I wanna go work out. No, I don't. Mhmm. It's not doing much for current me. Like, maybe I get a little endorphin boost and maybe I feel a little better when I'm done, but honestly, sometimes you don't.
Sometimes you feel tired and sweaty and you just wanna go go back to bed or whatever. But for future you, you can really see, like, I'm doing this for you. I'm doing it for this greater purpose. So I really love that model. I think that breaks it down really nicely.
I mean, it's the motivational triad, right, is what present us is always operating from. Avoid pain, seek pleasure, save energy. Yeah. And that is human nature. So when when when we judge ourselves for not overcoming it, it makes no sense at all.
Healthy humans are operating from that triad. And to overcome that triad, you have to have a motivation, a reason why. And really thinking about your future self and not that future self always wins. It's okay to enjoy the present too. But more often, take care of your future self than your present self and your life becomes amazing.
My I have a 11 year old son. He likes to get up and have a little time before he goes to school to just kinda hang out. And so if he doesn't get up early enough, that doesn't happen. We just have to get ready and go, you know? And and he said, mom, the other day I had this I realized that when I wake up in the morning and I don't wanna get up, I just tell myself, your future self is not gonna appreciate it if you don't get out of bed right now.
He's like, and then I just get up. And I was like, that's awesome, kid. It's you're gonna have a good life if you keep operating from that viewpoint. Yeah. I love that.
It's keeping the focus on where the focus belongs, which is what we want out of life, right, instead of this moment how I feel. Because most of us know if we operate from the state of how I feel at this particular moment, you know, that's when I am unkind to customer service representatives or say things I regret is when I'm operating from this point of how do I feel in this current moment. Most of us need to step outside this current moment to say, I I can do better than that. None of us are perfect at this. Yeah.
And so this is the other key. Let's say my child says they're gonna do something and they don't do it. If I'm having a healthy relationship with that child, I'm not like, what's the matter with you? You're such an idiot. I knew you weren't gonna do it.
You're never gonna succeed. Who do you like? That's what we most people do themselves when they don't. And and this is everything when you don't follow through in the way that you plan to or thought you were going to, it has to be like, hey, hey, hon, what's going on? I thought we talked about this.
What's going on? Do you need something? Do you need some help? Do you need more tools? Maybe we need to revisit this goal in the first place, or was today just a hard day and we're gonna try again tomorrow.
Okay. It's cool. I'm not mad at you. Let's just make sure we understand this is important. And if we need to get more help or we need to find more tools or more resources or whatever, I'm here for you.
I got you. But this matters. I love you too much not to encourage you to keep going. So it sound people are like, I don't understand. If I like myself, I'm not never gonna improve.
I'm like, I mean, you like your children, right? And you still think they're gonna learn to read and they're gonna one day have relationships and, like, it's the same. So if you can't figure out what to say to yourself in your head, ask yourself, wait, if this were somebody that I loved that I have a healthy relationship with, what would this conversation sound like? That's what you have to train yourself to talk to your I literally look at myself in the mirror and I have conversations like this all the time. Well, it's so helpful because I think in our minds, if you talk about this and you say, like, you know, what would you say to yourself in this circumstance and you're like, you idiot.
Why didn't you do this? Why did you let me down again? And people think that the only alternative to that is to be like, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Don't bother.
Take it easy. Put your feet up. But really, if we're thinking about someone we love or our children that we're guiding or, you know, people we care about, we don't do that. Like, we don't just say, like, don't worry about it. I know that was hard.
Give up. Right. Go sit on the, you know, sit on the couch and watch a show. You deserve it. Yeah, right.
Instead, we're gonna say, gosh, I see that's hard for you. And you're gonna respond with love and That's right. Understanding and empathy. And then you're gonna say, what's next? What are we doing next?
How are we gonna how are we gonna do this again? How are we gonna do this better the next time? That's exactly right. So there really is so much perspective when we look outside of ourselves, but then bring it back into the way that we're interacting with ourselves. Mhmm.
Yeah. I wanna be really clear about why this is so important. And one of the things that you've already set it up and said, that our relationship with self, this voice in our head, this communication with ourself, the way that we perceive ourselves, it is our operating system. Right? It determines everything else out there.
Do you wanna regroup there? Do you wanna add anything to that about why this is so important? I mean, it really comes down to we get what we expect. And so if I view myself as someone who is happy, successful, healthy, our brains want to be right. That is your one of your brain's primary objectives is just to be right about what you're thinking and believing.
If I believe I'm a successful person, my brain wants to be right about that. And it will start finding ways to make that true at my subconscious brain even without me even trying. And so if I believe that I'm not successful, important that you choose to believe in yourself just like you would choose to believe again in choose to believe in yourself. Just like you would choose to believe again in for me, it's easiest to think about one of my kids. Right?
If they if they're like, I really wanna play soccer and they go go to soccer practice and come home and go, it's really hard mom. I don't I don't know how to kick the ball and I'm tired. I'm like, yeah, it is. But you'll get there. We just have to keep trying.
And and, we encourage the people we love and we support them doing hard things. When you can do that for yourself, the sky's the limit actually. Anything you desire to achieve, you can. I didn't say you can achieve anything. I said anything you desire.
Yeah. And that's important. Distinction. Yeah. Because people like, well, I couldn't play for the NBA.
I'm like, do you want to? Mhmm. Well, no. Okay. So anything you you that you have an interest in, a desire to do, you have the capacity to do.
But you have to choose to believe in yourself and hold yourself accountable. Right? Hold yourself accountable to, hey. I thought we're gonna do this. What happened?
And part of holding yourself accountable is also remembering to go, I'm so proud of you. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs building businesses, and they'll say things like, well, I'm trying this marketing thing, and I did this webinar or whatever, and it didn't work. Nobody nobody signed up. I'm like, okay. But what would you say to, like, your kid who did a webinar and they were scared and it was hard and they had to figure out technology and they they got people to come.
You'd be like, oh my gosh. You just did a webinar. Way to go. That was hard. Right?
Was it scary? I'm so proud of you. K. Now we're gonna do it again. This time, we're gonna get people to sign up at the end.
Or maybe maybe it's gonna take 10 times, but let's keep going. And so you have to also congratulate yourself, be proud of yourself, thank yourself. Like, I do this when I'm brushing my teeth because it it's just I already do it in the morning and at night. And so in the morning, I look myself in the mirror. I'm like, hey.
Today's gonna be a good day. Right? We got a lot on the plate today. I know you can do this. I'll be there with you.
You're gonna be you're not gonna wanna go to the gym later, but side note, we are doing that. So you don't you don't have to argue with me when we get to that point. Right? I have, like, little just kind pep talk in the mirror. At the end of the day, when I'm brushing my teeth before bed, it's either sounds like, oh my gosh.
I am so proud of you. You you did so much today, and you really executed and way to go. Other days, it sounds like, hey. What happened today? We had a rough day.
Something totally didn't went off track. What was that about? Are you okay? I just want you to know how much I love you. I appreciate you.
This is not a big deal. It's gonna be fine. But also, I need to make sure you tell me if you need something, you're not getting what you need. You need more support. You need more help.
I got you. I love you. Look. Tomorrow's a new day. It sounds so much like talking to my four year old when you get ready to leave the park and you say, okay, five minutes.
I know you don't wanna go because we're having such a good time, but we are gonna go and we're gonna do it with a smile. And then we're gonna go home and go to bed and you're gonna love it. So we can model it that way. Yeah. That's right.
Hey. It's Malorie. Can you do us a big favor? If you're loving the uplift for her podcast, we would be so grateful if you could leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It only takes a second, but it helps us reach even more women who may need to hear our message.
Click that five star button and let us know what you love about the podcast. Your support means the world to us. Now back to the show. Well, I wanna give you a chance to to dive into the how to a little more. Yeah.
So we talked a little bit. I love the paradigm of the past self, current self, and future self. Mhmm. What are the other how to's of how we actually cultivate this relationship with ourselves that is I mean, as you mentioned at the very beginning, it's ever present. We're the ones that are with ourselves all the time.
Everyone else can come and go, but we're stuck with ourselves. How do we cultivate that relationship to help us to have it be as productive is maybe the right word, you know, how to have it work for us, although that doesn't sound quite right. But how do we cultivate that so it works for us and also so it feels really, authentic to us? The first thing is the best way to improve your relationship with yourself is to experience something difficult. So sometimes No one likes that answer.
I know. I hate to say it. But the the reason I point that out is because, you know, if, let's say, I have a a friend or a let's just take a family member, like a sister. I have a couple sisters that I'm pretty close to. So, it's really easy to have a a close, good, healthy relationship with my sister when everything's going smoothly.
And she likes how I'm behaving and I like how she's behaving and neither of us have a big life challenge or anything and it's just it's really easy to have a positive relationship. But it's when something goes wrong, right? Something's hard. Somebody maybe offends someone or whatever. That's when your relationship is really tested.
And that's when you figure out, wait, do I have a solid relationship? I mean, this is true in any relationship, right? When your marriage and your parenting and in your friendships, whatever else. And so that's true of ourselves too. So that's why I love people setting goals.
And and your goal might be to improve your health. That's a it needs to be a challenging goal. Right? But improving your health is a challenging goal for most of us because it requires habit changes and things. Building a business, another thing I love helping people do because it's challenging and it's gonna bring up I always say we we need to bring up your stuff.
Let's bring it up. It'll do it. That'll do it. So yeah. Those are two great ways to bring up your stuff.
Actually, getting married tends to bring up our stuff. The same. Being a parent will bring up your stuff. So going through hard things whether they're, you know, kinda life things or you you pick a goal or you pick something, you gotta go through something difficult. But those are the best times to work on your relationship with yourself.
And I say that because usually we don't have to go find hard things. Usually they're just readily available. But sometimes I have people that I can tell are kinda stagnant. I'm like, you need to set a big goal. Let's set a big scary goal.
Anyway, so then you start paying attention to your thoughts. That's the first hard thing for people because we think we're just observing the world around us. We're just observing what's true about the world or about ourselves or about our behaviors. If people say things to me like, every time I try to change my eating habits, I I do good for a little while and then I fall off the wagon. Right?
And they say that as though they're telling me about themselves. What they're telling me is their thoughts about themselves. They're not really telling me their past behavior. They're telling me their story of their past behavior. Right?
And so that's the first thing I teach people is, like, listen, let's just separate out facts from thoughts. Sometimes people even say to me, I'm trying to eat in a certain way, but then yesterday, I totally binged. And they again, they think they're telling me a fact. I'm like, I binge does not affect. I've had so many people tell him tell me that, and I'll say, tell me exactly what you ate.
And some people will say, I ate two gallons of ice cream and three bags of chips and a whole box of licorice and and other people say, I was having pretzels, and I was only gonna have a few, but I ended up having about 20. And I'm like, these are both binges in people's mind. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So you separate out facts from thoughts. Okay. I ate this food and I I make people list out exactly what they eat ate and how much of it in this situation. Or maybe it's I yelled at my kids. Okay.
Tell me exactly what you said to your children, and you can tell me the tone in which you said it or whatever. We just get facts. K. Everything else is a thought or a story, and your thoughts and stories are creating your feelings. Okay?
Your actions are not creating your feelings. Other people are not creating your feelings. Other people's words are not creating your feelings. Other people can't hurt your feelings. And so when you realize that, then you realize, wait a second.
What I'm thinking and believing in my head matters a lot. I need to pay attention to it. And it doesn't mean you'll be able to direct it all the time. And I'm not saying only think positive thoughts. I'm just saying notice the difference.
This is a fact. This is a thought. And they are not the same thing. My thoughts are creating my feelings. This is important because your feelings then are either making it easier or harder for you to create the life you want.
So back to changing my eating habits. Changing your eating habits is hard because of the motivational triad we talked about before. The brain's like, wait a second. Why would I say no to this doughnut? I like doughnuts.
Okay. Why would I not eat the doughnut? Why would I forego the pleasure? And then I'm gonna have to tolerate an unanswered urge or craving, which is allowing pain. And I don't know that there's an energy component there, but it it it's saying no to pleasure and yes to pain, to not eat the donut.
It's saying yes to pain and spending energy if I'm gonna go get on a treadmill at the gym. And the brain's like, why would we do any of that? So in order to overcome that, we can overcome that. We can override it. But the more positive emotion we're operating from, the easier it is to override that.
If we're already at a a negative place of shame or guilt or self judgment or self loathing, then trying to override that motivational tryout is 10 times harder. But if you're at a more neutral place and again, your emotions come from your thoughts. And so pay attention to your thoughts and then we wanna choose some that are useful. You don't have to control every thought. You're still gonna be a human being.
You're still gonna have a bunch of random ones come into your brain that don't serve you. But you do get to control which ones you keep, which ones you linger on, which ones you look for more evidence of and make the story bigger. And, that is the work I do with people in coaching, that can change everything in the end. Yeah. That's so wonderful.
And, I'll just direct people to your podcast. If this is news to them, if this is a new concept of this idea of of thoughts creating feelings creating actions, because it it takes a minute to wrap your mind around it, but it really is life changing. I think going back to this idea of relationship with self, you know, if if the thought that comes up for me is like, why even bother because I fail every time? Like, why bother trying to get up in the morning and exercise? Why bother trying to mend that relationship?
Why bother trying to share my opinion because no one respects me anyway? No one's gonna listen to what I have to say anyway. If that's our thought coming up, we can pause that and say, where's the fact there? Is the fact that no one is ever going to listen to me? Well, that's that's a bit of a stretch.
Right? There's no fact there. Is it a fact that I speak and don't get the reaction I'm looking for? Closer to a fact. Right?
But we have control over that. And so if we can change that to say, I wanna I wanna share my opinion because I have something to that matters. Mhmm. And we keep cultivating that thought of, I have something that matters. I have opinions that are important.
I have something that's important for me to share. That's going to change our behavior. It's going to change the way that we show up in life, and that's cultivating that relationship of how we're reflecting back to ourselves. And so just kind of, hopefully, maybe an example there of what you're demonstrating is so important. And one other thing you're kinda reminding me of here is we tend to get binary just because our brains are trying to simplify things.
So when when we say, you know, hey, let's not let's not walk around thinking why bother because no one will listen to me. That's probably not serving you. Then people think that what we're saying is instead you should think, I have something important to say, and that would be better. That would be ideal. Right?
To get to I have something important to say that could help people. I'm gonna go say it. But for some people, that's a big stretch. And and I kind of think of it as going across a bridge. We're on this side.
Why bother? And we wanna get to the other side, which is I have something important that could help people. But it's okay to just take a step across the bridge, and it's okay if it takes some time. And so you just wanna find a thought that points you in that direction that you already believe. You may not believe yet that you have something important to say that's gonna help people.
But do you believe that it's okay for you to get online and say something just because it's on your mind? And maybe nobody listens and maybe it doesn't help a single person, but it's still okay to do. And it's, like, a lot of times with that one, we're afraid of the judgment or afraid of haters or whatever. And so when you when you recognize, like, it's actually not dangerous, Brain. There's no danger in somebody judging, not liking what I say.
Yeah. It's okay if people don't like it. I'm gonna say it because it's on my heart and it's on my mind. And, like, one of my favorite thoughts is I'm just gonna be not good at this. Instead of being like, I'm gonna go out and and get a talk or write a book or post content, and I'm gonna do a podcast.
It's gonna be so good. I just I'm like, I'm gonna go do a podcast and it might not be good at all. And I'm still gonna do it. Because the only way I'm gonna get good at doing podcast is doing a lot of not good podcast. So let's go.
And so it's like finding little I already believe that I could do a not good podcast. So why don't I go do that? Finding those little steps that get you headed across the bridge the way that you wanna go. I love that. And I wanna bring attention to as we're talking about the how do we cultivate this relationship with ourselves.
One of the examples you've given several times but maybe we haven't highlighted is you've mentioned how much you talk to yourself and how consciously you're talking to yourself. And I think I have so many examples in my life of relationships that have maybe fallen by the wayside because we're only communicating out of necessity, you know, like, oh, dinner plans, and then we kind of don't check-in with each other any other time. And those can be any kind of relationships, family or friends or whatever. But if you think about the people you're closest to, you're reaching out, you're remembering what what they were going through, you're reaching out to check-in on them, you're sharing with them like, hey, I just wanted to share that this is important to me and this is going on in my life. And cultivating that within ourselves can be surprisingly difficult and surprisingly foreign.
Mhmm. I don't think most of us do that naturally, some people do. But I don't think most of us intentionally pause and say, I'm gonna check-in with myself and and, you know, have this conversation, have input. We live so reactionary Mhmm. So much in a reactionary state that we get to choose to be proactive.
We get to choose to have a say. Will you comment on that a little more? Because I know it's something that you're so good at. Yeah. Well, it's such a good point because like we said in the beginning, we are the one person we can't escape.
But what you're describing is such a valid point that, like, if I'm not talking to myself intentionally, then all I'm doing is listening to myself, listening to my own. Our default brains have a lot of scarcity and insecurity and judgment and fear. And and hopefully, it's not all that, but there's a lot of that because that feels important to the brain. The brain's like, hey. I'm on I wanna make sure you're okay here.
I wanna I'm looking out for danger. I'm looking out for trouble. And so that's its main focus is what's wrong. That voice in your head talks to you all day long. If you don't talk back to it, and like you said, I'm talking to myself and it's usually happening in my head.
It's not usually happening out loud, but I'm just intentionally having a conversation. And I do think of that part of me as kind of childlike because it it doesn't usually completely make sense. And I don't even believe most of what it says. Right? Like, when we slow it down and and if somebody's afraid of posting content online and they're trying to grow a business.
And I'm like, do you okay. So what if somebody does come along and comment and say, I disagree. I think you don't know what you're talking about. Would that be okay? And they're usually like, yeah.
I know. It's okay. It's not it really is fine. Like, we know this. But it's that toddler like, that child like part of us that's like, but I'm scared.
I don't want people to judge me. I don't want people to think that I don't know what I'm talking about. So I talk to that part of me the same way, like you said, that I would talk to a child. I'm very tender with that part of me. Just like, oh, honey.
That's so sweet that you're scared of that. It's totally fine. It's totally understandable that you're scared about that. And it's also okay. It's not dangerous.
We're gonna be fine. I got you. I'm gonna protect you. Not gonna let anything get too out of hand. Let's go.
I'll I'll be there with you. So it really is, like you said, talking to yourself more than you just listen to yourself. I love that. And that's the difference. Yeah.
I think it the image that's coming up for me is, like, when you move to a new home and some of us are kind of hoarders with our things and some of our brains are hoarders with our prior coping mechanisms and experiences. And I think about moving to a new house and you have everything in your old house and you wanna take it to your new house and find the perfect spot for it and you realize, this couch doesn't match my new house, I don't need it. I can let go of it and replace it. And instead, you get people who take everything and they're like, I will jam this couch into this smaller living room just because it's mine and it's old and it's what I'm used to. And and like I said, you get those hoarders who are like, I'm gonna keep everything I've ever owned forever, and I'm gonna carry it around with me, I'm gonna jam it into this new house.
And instead, it's okay to go through phases where we do some house cleaning and we say like, I'm gonna get rid of that. I don't need it anymore. It was great. I loved it in my old house. I hope it goes somewhere wonderful and I'm okay parting with it.
I wish we were better at doing that, like, spring cleaning of our brains and saying, I see you, brain. I see that coping mechanism. That coping mechanism served me so well when I was eight. I am so grateful to you for coping that way. I'm good now.
I've replaced it. I've got a new coping skill, and I'm just gonna set you down with no negativity and no shame and no guilt and no harshness. Just pass on you for now. Yeah. It's such a good point.
And I think there's two things I see come up over and over again when people like, I wanna get rid of this couch. I just don't know how. It keeps coming up. I keep thinking it. I can't let it go.
Number one, it feels useful or important. And number two, it's a habit, right? So we have habits of thinking just like we have habits of behaving memorized stories, memorized thought patterns. This is why we have memorized feelings and memorized behaviors. We call these people's personalities Like, oh, she's very laid back and funny or he's quiet and more reserved.
And that's just because they have memorized ways of thinking, memorized ways of feeling, memorized ways of behaving. And so to change a habit requires intentional focus and time and routine. And so you can do it, but it it will require for most people some practice and some time. The second thing though is, like I said, it feels so useful. Your brain thinks it's useful.
If, for example, I coach a lot of people who are like, well, I'm just really worried about my child. Right? This thing is going on for my kid and I'm worried that, she's struggling or, or she's not gonna, she's not gonna come through this. This isn't fair. And worry feels so useful.
It feels important. It feels loving. It feels like it pretends to be love, I should say. It's not. It's not useful.
It doesn't help people. I love, Esther Hicks says, you can't be sad enough to make sad people happy, and you can't go into enough scarcity to help scarce people get to abundance. And you can't get sick enough to help sick people be healthy. And you can't like, she goes through this and you realize, like, oh my gosh. You're right.
If my daughter's struggling and I'm really worried about her struggling, now I'm struggling about her struggling, and we have two people struggling. And so again, it's like really slowing down and again I'm not saying that we wanna feel positive all the time. There's a lot of clean pain and a lot of my work is about helping people process emotion, know how to feel emotion, allow emotion, open up to emotion. That's an important part of it. But there's a lot of what I call dirty pain, which is this story that you think is important, this couch that you've brought with you to this new house because it for me to go, listen, you don't have to worry about her.
You're allowed to just believe she's gonna be fine. And they're like, but what if she's not? Okay. But but is she okay right now? She's struggling.
Okay. Maybe she's always gonna struggle in ways and she's always gonna be finding ways and and that's the human experience. And when we realize me worrying about it isn't taking away her struggle, then the brain will let it go because the brain needs enough proof for the new way of thinking to let go of the old way of thinking. If it doesn't have enough proof, it's gonna keep trying to go back to the old way of thinking because the brain thinks it's just looking for what's true Right. In the end.
So anyway, there's there's some time and some effort that sometimes needs to go into it. But just the you know, for listeners today, I would just say, if you can just recognize that's a thought, that's not a fact, it's a thought, then your brain can start to play with whether or not it wants to keep it and whether or not it's actually serving you. That's perfect. I wanna be sure we cover this because I think it comes up so much. Is anytime we have a conversation about self help or self improvement or, you know, trying to change yourself, it brings up a lot of negativity for people who are like, I don't want to.
I just wanna be happy. I just wanna, like, be okay with myself. And I have my thoughts about this because I don't think they're mutually exclusive. But will you comment on that idea of, like, why do I always have to change myself? I see this a lot with people who are like, I don't do New Year's resolutions.
Like, I hate them. I'm not gonna do it. They're they just provoke guilt in me. They provoke shame. Will you comment on how we can still be making these positive changes, but not provoke the guilt and shame and the gross stuff that comes along with believing we should be improving our relationship with ourselves.
Yeah. I if somebody says to me, why do I need self help? Why do I need to be changing myself? I say, you don't. I'm totally cool with you not doing any of that.
Why don't we just not do any of it? There are moments I feel like in life where we're just content with how things are and this would be with how I am, how my health is, how my money is, how my business is, how like in general, we're we have moments, I hope, of just content and that that is happiness. The reason I call my podcast and my book and everything better than happy is because those moments don't last. We as human beings, we are wired for growth and evolution. We are wired to keep learning, to keep trying new things, to be challenged.
Part of that challenge includes contribution where we feel like we're making an impact on and and, you know, providing something useful to our families or communities or the world. And so stagnation is a different kind of pain, but it's still painful. And that's how you'll know you're stagnant is because you'll start to feel maybe some depression or some kind of, you know, lack of fulfillment people say or or like this kinda lost, I don't know what my purpose is type feeling. That's because we are we are not wired to stay in one place. Staying in one place is not an option.
You're either going to grow and evolve and move forward or you're going to decline and move I mean, move backwards, quote unquote. In in other words, become less thriving. When people say to me, I I don't have any desire to try anything new or learn anything. I'm just content with my life right now. I say, great.
You should soak that up as long as you can. But I, the reality is that doesn't last very long because we eventually get bored. I mean, we saw this when the pandemic hit, right? And suddenly we couldn't go to sports and, you know, all the things that we were doing, everything kind of shut down and, and we were all just at home. Like, what could be better than just sitting at home other than obviously the health challenges and some things going on.
But I'm I'm talking about for the average family sitting at home, nobody's sick, still getting paid even from your job. In most cases, you just couldn't go to work. That's the ultimate, right? Just sit on the couch watching TV, eating whatever food. No.
It kill it hurt us so much. It was so painful because we're not wired for stagnation. So the pushback that has come in the, you know, the last decade or so around, I'm not setting New Year's resolution like New Year's same me, you know, is because people were constantly trying to change because they thought there was something wrong with them. And and that still can be the messaging, but I always say any tool that's a useful tool can be a weapon if it's misused. So trying to grow and change itself, the tools of self help are like scissors that are really useful if you wanna cut paper or cut hair.
But those same scissors you can you can stab yourself with. You can hurt other people. You can damage your furniture, and you can do a lot of harm with those scissors. So if self help is something you're using as a weapon against yourself, I agree. It's better to just put it down.
But it doesn't mean it's not a useful tool. It just means sometimes it's been misunderstood and misused. Yeah. Thank you for saying that because I I I think it's painful for some people to to go through this process. But also just like you said, it can be both, you know.
You can you can want to improve and want to make changes without hating the person that you are. Like, it doesn't mean you're super dissatisfied. It means if you feel stagnant, like, I wanna go the next step. I wanna see what I can do. I wanna explore and and just go one step beyond.
Mhmm. Is there any kind of final message you would want to leave with our listeners, to wrap it up? I would say that your mental and emotional health is just as important as your physical health. In the past, I think we've all understood that we can do a lot to improve our physical health, and we don't have to be sick to wait for that. I don't need to wait until I need to go to a doctor to think maybe I wanna pay attention to what I'm eating and drinking and sleeping and, you know, how I'm moving my body that might serve me.
The same is true for mental and emotional health. You don't have to be to a point where you need a therapist or need to see if you should be medicated for some kind of clinical depression or anxiety or whatever to think about your mental and emotional health. And if you think about it before you're at that point, you have a lot of agency and ability to improve your mental and emotional health. And when you do, your life will become easier and more fun. And so whether it's through coaching or any other means that you choose, I don't care what the method is, but most people have, you know, a gym membership or they go on walks or they whatever.
They use my fitness pal to track their food. They have something they do to help them stay on track physically. And I'm just always asking people, what are you doing to maintain or strengthen or stay on track with your mental and emotional health? And if the answer is nothing, I like coaching. But, again, whatever method you choose, I want people to have something because their future selves will thank them.
And I'll just give one other story to wrap this up. There's a a woman I'm working with because I train coaches. I have a coach training, and she's 80 years old. And she signed up to go through my coach training program. And she's sharp and, like, mentally, but we went on this really tough hike, and she did the whole hike with us with no problem.
She's physically sharp. It all goes together. She works on herself. She gets coached. She uses the tools of mental and emotional health and physical health.
And she's 80 years old and you wouldn't know it because she's thriving at that point. And that that's what we all want. We all wanna live our best lives while we're alive. And and it all goes together, the physical, the mental, and the emotional. Thank you for sharing that.
I've loved our conversation. I think it's so key in every aspect tonight. Of course, I love that you brought it back to the idea of balancing, mental and emotional health with our physical health because turns out they're all connected. Turns out they're all they're all part of our being and they affect each other. So I love that you brought it back to that.
Will you tell our listeners where they can find you? And also, you have several different things that that that several different resources you've created to help women thrive and to make these changes. Will you share your abundance of resources and and where to find you? Yeah. Definitely.
So my podcast is called Better Than Happy. You can check that out. And then, if you just go to my website, jodymoore.com, there's also some free resources on there. And there's a free coaching call that you can come to if you wanna see what is coaching like. And you can raise your hand and get coached, but you don't have to.
You can just be a silent observer and see what coaching is like. And it's a great way to just kind of test out, like, does this resonate for me? Is this the way I wanna take care of my mental and emotional health? So you can go to jodiemoore.com, to get all of that stuff actually. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and, I think people will really benefit from learning from you and and hopefully making these really positive changes. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Mallory. It's been fun talking to you.
I hope your voice comes back. I know. It's ridiculous, laryngitis, but, yeah, hopefully hopefully it was okay. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guest for sharing their insights and time with us.
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