Challengers

This is episode 147 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider.

Hello, amazing human. Today is a incredible day.

It's, it's windy, it's crisp, it's cool, it's summer.

There are so many amazing things about today.

I just wanted to point that out before we dive into our topic because I'm really focused on the winds. I'm focused on looking for the good things. I'm focused on making sure I'm in the habit of seeing the gifts around me. And that's why I'm sharing that with you just in case there are some gifts that you want to look at in your day. Today. And today's topic, we're talking about challengers. Challengers are something, we've coined this term out of the concept of a 30 day challenge.

So a challenger does not have to.

Be a 30 day challenge, but a challenger is something that is really challenging to do and something that you probably find so hard that you wouldn't do it permanently. You might only do it occasionally. You might only do it for a short period of time like a 30 day challenge, or you might only do it with someone. And that's what we call a challenger within our empowered team. And why are we talking about challengers today is because I believe strongly that humans are meant to grow. When I see humans grow, whether they are teenagers or retired people or athletes or business people, when people grow, that is one of the main keys to happiness and long term fulfillment is growth. So challengers, although they seem to be kind of fraught with discomfort, they are this thing that also is this key to human fulfillment via trying something out that is really challenging, but that is a recipe for growth every single time. So that's why we're talking about challengers today. And of course, we have a challenger coming up in September, so I will tell you about that too. So how does it fit within our program? Our company called the Empowered, our Empowered team coaching program. This fits in in a very specific way. We have a system, it's called performance peak. And if you visualize a triangle that kind of looks like a mountain peak, you've got this triangle on the very bottom of the mountain. The foundation of the mountain is our identity. And this is what drives all of our habits, whether we realize it or not. Our identity is what causes who we believe we are, is what causes our actions. And when we Take these actions and repeat them, they become our habits. Now, those habits can be good habits, they can be bad habits, they can be in between habits. But our habits, all these things that we're doing on the regular everyday, are coming from who we believe we are, our identity. And some of those habits, we try and either shift a little or even introduce new habits. And when we do this within our programs, called the reset, we call them vitality habits. When we intentionally create a habit and we bring it into our lives with a lot of certainty that we can do it, it's not at all a challenger. It's something that we think we can introduce with ease. And we call these vitality habits, these things that will grow our mindset vitality, our spirit vitality, and our physical vitality. And so those are what we call vitality habits, but they're another step up above habits on this performance peak. Now, if we want to do something called a challenger, it usually is something that is rare. We don't do it often. It's something that is really tough. We wouldn't be able to do it on our own. And it's something that is designed to grow us towards bigger goals or targets that would be higher up on our performance peak, but they're designed to grow us towards our targets. And that's where challengers come in. And that's why I'm describing challengers, because most people that listen to this podcast or are involved in our coaching programs are looking to grow towards a goal. They're looking to have the support to learn the techniques to develop the skills to grow towards the tool or the targets that will provide the type of life that we want, the type of life that we envision for ourselves that could be within our family, within our business, within our physical vitality.

And sometimes when we are creating a challenger for ourselves.

When we talk about it to other people, it might seem like the easiest thing in the world to someone else, because that's not at all challenging to them, but to us, to us, it's a major challenge. So what's different for each person isn't the actual challenge. It's the person themselves. It's the identity of the person themselves. So I want to give a couple of examples of times when a challenger or something that we perceive as being a challenger might have kind of snuck into our lives because of our identity. So if I think back to way back when I was in, When I was in, even before high school, I ran track in a high school and a private school in the US And I was doing cross country running, I was doing track, I was playing basketball, doing all these things. But if someone had asked me at that time if I was a person who would have worked out every day, I would have absolutely said no. But then if I actually took a step back and looked at the math, I was working out almost every day because I was involved in cross country and track and basketball and downhill skiing. And then I decided that I'd want to ride my bike to school because I didn't want to ride the city bus. And suddenly all these things that were actually workouts, but I didn't consider them workouts were within my life. And so in my mind, I wouldn't have considered myself a person who worked out every day. However, my actions were showing that I was. Because my identity was that of someone on the cross country team. My identity was that of someone who wanted to ride my bike instead of the city bus. My identity was someone who was on the downhill ski club. So even though I didn't consider myself someone who worked out every day, quote unquote, I did consider myself as someone who was part of those groups or teams or bike rider. And that's how we sometimes find ourselves doing things that become easy, whereas we wouldn't have considered ourselves someone who did that thing if we labeled it in a different way. And the reason it becomes easy for us is because of our identity, is because of who we believe we are in that particular context. And this holds true for work, this holds true for school, this holds true for sport or life or parenting school. So an example would be if I think of Paul, and he was at a stage in his life where he wasn't sure what direction he wanted to go, and he knew he didn't like the job he was in, and so he left that job. That's how much he didn't like it, is he didn't have another position to go to. And he knew he could be inspired by working in. Within my business, within the gym. So he was considering that really strongly. That was his number one pick, actually. He really wanted to work within. Within my business. He was being asked to take a look at another offer, though, to work with a software company. And he immediately, when I presented it to him, he immediately said no. And he said no because he didn't want a desk job. He didn't think he'd like computer work with a software company. He wanted to be more physical and more physically active. He didn't. Wasn't inspired by the software company. He didn't think that would be a good fit for him. And so it was an automatic no for him because his identity didn't support that particular thing. So eventually I convinced him just to go for the meeting and he hear about what the company was about, just to see if it was something he might be interested in. There was no harm in having the meeting. And so he had the meeting and then was a little more intrigued. Based on the description of the job, based on the team environment, based on a leadership role, based on the potential salary in the future. So all of the things he didn't like about it in the beginning now he wasn't focused on, he was focused on other parts that he was interested in. Well, it turns out that he tried that job and flash forward six years later, he's in a key role of director of Sales and with other responsibilities as well. And he has really, really enjoyed that position within that software company because of the team environment, because of the regular challenges, because of the leadership role, because of the salary he can produce, because of the dynamic product and the development of new products that they can provide to, to other companies, to universities. And if you had gone back and asked him now, would you be the type of person who'd want to put extra hours, even if it meant sitting at a desk on zoom meetings for hours on end, would you want to be at a desk job? Would you want to? He would have said no to all of those things. However, his identity as a provider, his identity as a team member, his identity as someone who works really hard served him really well. So something he would have said no to in working at a desk job for six years straight that was primarily on the computer, primarily sedentary, he would have said absolutely not. He actually said yes to. And it became something that was part of his life.

So this is where something that you.

May not identify with in a certain description actually resonates with you for other reasons.

This is where the person who didn't.

Think they ever wanted to cook every day suddenly becomes a person who cooks every day because they want to make sure their family eats really well every day. Or the person who, because that identity of wanting to eat really well or wanting to provide really healthy food for the family, that identity overrides the identity of I don't want to cook every day. And I see this with people whose families change their dynamic with the kids leave the home and the kids go to university and suddenly the mom and dad are left just for themselves and they stop cooking, they stop making the meals that they used to make because their their reason or their identity around it wasn't because they loved cooking, it was because they loved providing healthy food for the family. The same thing happens in business. Somebody who is not inspired like Paul, not inspired to work long hours at a computer every single day and would never say that they would be the person to do that. They are inspired and they do do those exact things when they are extremely passionate about the startup business that they are endeavoring to go into. If someone cares deeply about their health and deeply about their sport, suddenly finds themselves injured all the time because they care so much about showing up for their team and performing well for their sport. So we see these shifts all the time where people may not understand why they're doing certain things when previously they never thought they would. And it's simply because the actions fulfill some part of their identity and that they are really rooted in. So where we go further in this is when you look at the research. The research shows that it can take people between anywhere between 21 days and 264 days to form a habit, to generate a long standing habit.

And people like to latch on to the lowest number or latch on to something that sounds really convenient.

But the reality is it's very wide range of the amount of time that it takes someone to form a habit. So why is it so varied? Why is it so broad in the amount of time that it takes? And it's simply because, as I've said, we all have different identities and we may not even be aware of the identities that we have and how they play in to what our actions become. And you see that in the example with Paul, in that he's very certain that he wouldn't want or wouldn't like a certain type of job. But his other parts of his identities, the work ethic, the team environment, the developing new things, the connecting with others, those parts of his identity are so served fully within that role that yes, he does tolerate being at a desk job or in front of a computer, but for years on end, even though he never thought that would be something he would do. And he finds that to fulfill his identity portion of the physical activity and the outdoors and the moving and the dynamic nature of health and physicality, he fulfills that part of his identity in other ways with our workouts, with our challenges, with our healthy eating. That's how he fulfills that. And it didn't have to come from his job. And but he falsely believed that it did have to come from his job because he that's how it came to him in the past. He had to learn that it was something a different way he could fulfill those particular wants or needs or portions of his identity.

So we all end up with positive.

Byproducts, with challenges that we step into. And, and Paul and I learned this so succinctly back in 2019, when life was a little different. Before the pandemic, we were in. We were in this stage where we wanted to grow ourselves individually and we wanted to grow ourselves within our relationship. So we agreed together to do a 30 day challenge that was different. We planned it out for every single month of 2019. So for the whole year, if you don't know this already, for the whole year, we did 30 day challenges for the entire year of 2019. And it was unbelievably hard.

It was unbelievably rewarding.

It shattered so much of what I believed about how it would go or what I thought it would be on each of those challenges. And it shattered all of those preconceived notions that I had because we actually did it, because we actually lived it. So when people say to me, I could never give up coffee for 30 days, I could never work out every day for 30 days, I could never get up at 5am for 30 days. When people say I'm not an early riser or they say these things, it's because they haven't done it. It's because their brain doesn't want to get uncomfortable. It's because they want to stay in what they think they already know. But the truth is that once they get into it, once they try it, they learn so much. Just like we did in that challenging year of 2019. And we did challenges from everything from meditating daily for 30 days, to eating vegan for 30 days, to sweet free for 30 days. We did so many different things. We did acts of kindness for 30 days, reached out to loved ones for 30 days. We did, you know, having sex for 30 days. There was all kinds of things that were really challenging for us and we learned so, so much. But it just knocked out of the water the notions that we couldn't do it. We just decided we would and tried to. Instead of, instead of the question of, I don't know how to do that, how could I ever do that? It became, how, how am I going to find a way to do this? Because I've already committed to doing it, I've already agreed to do it, I've got a partner to do it with, so how am I going to do this? What is it going to look like?

And that's where we really learn about ourselves.

We consciously choose, by the end of that challenge, we consciously choose to keep some of those habits or discard it, to truly decide by trying it on whether that's something that we wanted to be in our lives going forward. And so many of the things we kept in our lives. So for instance, we eat so much more meat free food. We have whole foods, we always ate whole foods a lot. But we had almost every one of our meals based around meat. And when we were challenged to eat meat free and vegan for an entire month, we had. I had to learn new recipes, I had to find different things that the family would like. I had to go out of my comfort zone completely. And in doing so, I learned so much about what was possible and also learned what I could really enjoy in eating vegan. So now we love it so much that we call ourselves flexitarians in the sense that we eat a lot of vegetarian based meals and only choose to eat meat occasionally because we've really reduced that in our lives. But we never would have known that had we not really tried it on and really experienced it and really gotten uncomfortable with it. And that's, that's how we could consciously choose after. When I say consciously choose, what I mean is that I'm not taking the easy route of listening to my brain trying to keep me comfortable. The easy route would be, oh no, I like meat and I'm always going to eat meat and so I'm not going to do that thing because I just would never do that. And instead I tried it on and we really went for it for 30 days. And then by the end of it, what the conscious choice became was, well.

I still want meat in my life.

But I don't want very much of it.

And I'm only going to eat meat if it's very specific meat, perhaps organic or a special occasion or, or prepared a certain way. But we just weren't going to eat meat all of the time anymore. And that was the conscious decision. So the challengers really allow you to consciously decide because now you have more of an experience, an education that's very, very personal instead of just a speculative idea that your brain's going to throw.

At you to keep you comfortable.

That's what we've really learned from the challengers. So I want to give you three key ways to prepare for any sort of 30 day challenge or anything that you're looking to do as a challenge. And this could be something you do with us, it could be something that you do on your own, could be something that you do with a completely different group. And it doesn't matter what the challenge is. It could be a challenge of, you know, reaching out to make a certain number of offers within your business. It could be a challenge of doing acts of kindness to someone every day. It could be any sort of challenge, producing a podcast, writing a certain number of words for the book that you want to write. Whatever the challenge is that challenges you, these three steps can help you dive into it. Because remember that the point, point of a challenge is that it's not easy, that it's not something that you would.

Be able to do every day, because it's not something that you already do every day.

That is, the point of a challenge is to get out of your comfort zone. So much so that it's going to take some extra steps to actually do it. And these are some of the steps.

That I think will really help. And there are three of them.

Number one is to plan, plan it out. So much so that you look ahead in the calendar to see what you're facing. When we were doing a challenge of meditating every day, the planning of it was looking at, well, where am I going to fit this in? My days are already very packed. I had already convinced myself I didn't have time to fit in 15 to.

30 minutes of meditation every day.

So when was this going to happen? If I was going to plan it.

In, how was I going to make it consistent?

And those were all, some, all of the steps to plan. Same thing with eating vegetarian or vegan. I had to plan a ton for that simply because we didn't ordinarily shop in that manner. I didn't know what recipes to make. I didn't know if my family was going to like the food. I didn't know if it was going.

To be enough food for how we ordinarily ate.

And so there were all kinds of ways that needed to be planned for.

In order to have a successful 30 day challenge.

And that's going to be the case for any 30 day challenge you have is looking at the calendar and understanding based on what comes up. Are there birthdays coming up? Does that mean it's going to be a challenge for the amount of words that you wanted to write in a particular day? Because you're going to be traveling or in an airport for a birthday trip? Who knows what it is? But look at that calendar. Because if this challenge is going to happen for 30 days or 60 days or an entire quarter, then you're going to have to know what is coming.

Up and how you are going to mitigate any of the roadblocks that will come up with your challenge that you're stepping into.

Anything that's new, anything that's challenging, as soon as there's extra resistance in your.

Brain is going to look for a way out.

And by planning, you're already planning on.

Your solutions for any of those upcoming problems or areas that can be extra.

Challenging during the challenge. So number two is prepare.

Once you see where the roadblocks are, you see what you're facing, you look.

At the schedule, you're going to prepare.

Exactly what it's going to look like.

For success around any of those areas. It could be the weekends, the weekends could be a challenge for you. It could be the travel, it could be the not having recipes. And so that's where the preparing comes in.

If you're preparing to make offers in.

Your business and you know you're only.

Have, you only have enough people to offer to for a week and you.

Want to do this for a quarter, then it's going to take a whole.

Lot of preparation on where you're going.

To take a look to make those offers or where your lists are, what that looks like.

The preparation has to happen so that.

You don't fizzle out within the first.

Few days of a challenge, that you can keep going and have the staying power over the course of the 30 days or over the course of the quarter, whatever your challenge duration is.

So preparing might look like recipes, it.

Might look like scheduling, it might look like talking to key people, getting into key groups.

Preparing might be your extra scheduling on.

Your calendar, it might be having materials ready.

Whatever it looks like for you, make.

Sure you're taking the steps to prepare for your particular challenge. We have Sweet Free September coming up. The way I prepare is I buy more fruit, I buy more nuts, I make sure I've got certain other foods around so that when I have a sweet hankering, I can have that apple or that orange or those frozen berries.

Because Sweet Free September means that I'm going to be, for me, means that I'm going to be eating more fruit for someone else, it might mean they don't include fruit at all, but I do. So I'm going to be preparing in those particular ways. I'm also going to be making sure that I'm. If I have an event that I know what I want to have to eat, if I'm eating out for dinner.

I know what I have a decision and a plan ahead of time and I've prepared that.

So those are going to be some.

Of the ways that I prepare going into sweet free September. Now the third thing we've got plan, prepare and the last one, another P so we can remember it. Proximity. This is the people you are around. So I don't care if you remember people or proximity. But this third one has to do with support via who you are around.

If we don't have support in something that is really challenging for us because.

Our brains want to stay comfortable, our brain will talk us out of it really quickly, talk us out of staying the course because we don't have the other support or we don't have the people around us. Remember when I described being someone who wouldn't. I considered myself someone who wouldn't necessarily work out every day, but because I was on a track team, because I was on a cross country team, because later I was on a soccer team, I naturally followed through with what I had as a commitment to my team. That proximity and those other people. It didn't matter if I didn't feel like working out. The commitment to the team and the proximity and other people had me still follow through even though I didn't feel like it. And that's how this kind of insidious change in my life happened where I became someone who worked out every day and even though that wasn't my intention, even though I didn't consider myself someone who would work out every day, but that's who I became partially because of the proximity of the people I stayed around with the teams that I was on.

So that's the same kind of thing.

That we provide with our empowered team. We want to be the kind of people that are supporting what other people are endeavoring to do in their personal growth. So when we endeavor to do a sweet free September and go into a 30 day challenge, we're supporting each other within our 30 day challenge. We're supporting each other by knowing that there's someone else doing it with us and supporting them and we don't want to let them down by us failing ourselves. So that proximity and having the people.

Around us and verbally telling them what we're doing and what we're struggling with.

And what's succeeding and that keeps that action going, even though it's hard to do, even though there's times we're not going to want to do it because we simply are not feeling like it or we're up against whatever resistance it is. The fact Is is that before a 30 day challenge, we typically want to do the 30 day challenge because we know there's going to be some positive byproducts, some really amazing side effects. So we want to do the 30 day challenge. But reality is, is once we're in it, it's usually hard enough that there's going to be some serious days where we don't want to do it. Maybe it's moments, maybe it's days, maybe it's a whole week where we just don't want to do it. And that's where the proximity and the people come in to really support continuing to take action that we've already decided to do and we want to follow through with even if it's uncomfortable or we don't feel like doing it in the moment. So to be able to go into a 30 day challenge really powerfully, it looks like, number one, planning, number two, preparing, and number three, the proximity of the people you are around, those are going to be key for success in having a really amazing challenge. So lastly, it's our 30 day challenge that we're heading into very soon. And that's our sweet free September. We've done this for a number of years. We've done this before our 2019 year of challenges. We did it during that year. We've done it for many months after that. It was such a powerful challenge for me personally that I got all kinds of incredible byproducts, positive byproducts, positive side effects from it. It's helped my business. It's helped my business because I sleep better when I'm sweet free. I have, my moods are more consistent, stable and better moods. I have more energy when I'm not.

Consuming as much sugar.

I tend to want to have some sort of little sweet thing in the afternoon and I use it as a way to procrastinate from my work. So instead, when I'm not having it, I don't procrastinate. I get right to the work that I want to get done and it would have me more confident in honoring my word to myself and all of those things. So this is a really weird byproduct, positive byproduct of going sweet free is.

How it's helped my business in all of those ways. And I never in a million years would have thought that going Sweet free for 30 days would help my business. But it did and it does. It helped me in my sales, it helped me in my communication, it helped me in my confidence. And that's the last thing I thought And I thought I'd show share that with you as an example, because the.

Byproducts or the side effects of challenging yourself in a way that you've never done before have side effects that you would never expect. And that was one that I never expected.

I never anticipated I would have those kinds of positive effects for my work.

I thought I would just have positive effects for my health.

I didn't realize that it would carry over into a completely different area of my life. And now because we've gone Sweet Free, I go two months a year where I don't consume any refined sugars. I sometimes cut out flour as well, which is technically refined sugar as well. But I do this twice a year now because it's become so powerful for my life, both both personally, professionally and for my health. And that's why I continue to do it. And this is what happens with something that's a challenger, is that sometimes instead of it just being a one time thing, a one time challenger sometimes, and this has happened for a lot of our clients, sometimes it turns into a.

Vitality habit, it turns into something that we want to keep doing that it becomes easy to do. And what I've noticed with Sweet Free September, it's become really easy for me to eliminate certain things that I used to eat as sweets and, or reduce certain things. So I really like wine gums from England and now I still have them, but I rarely have them. I don't have them in, in the house all the time. I really, really like dark chocolate covered almonds with sea salt. And I used to, I, I usually have them in the house, but what it used to be was milk chocolate covered almonds and I would consume so many of them that I'd have to keep them out of the house completely. And now if I have an 85%.

Dark chocolate almond, I might have four to six of them in a day instead of having a whole bunch of them. So I noticed what the challenges do for me in my palette, in my future choices, in how I consciously choose.

Instead of just do what I've always done.

And so those are just some of the ways that they've positively impacted not only the Sweet Free challenge that we.

Do at least twice a year, but also any of the other challenges that we've done. So on that note, we have this Sweet Free September coming up in September. We are really excited to do it.

We're going to be supporting our coaching group, the Empowered Team, and, and any.

Of our clients who choose to do.

This challenge with us and Sometimes people join in on the challenge, but they don't do the exact same one because they know themselves really well. So maybe sweets aren't challenging at all to give up. So sometimes people give up chips or alcohol or something like that, but they join in on the challenge because they know they're going to have the proximity of other people doing it too. And that's the fun part as well. So we invite you. We'd love to have you join us in our Empowered Team in September. Not only do we have our Sweet Free September Challenge happening in September, we also have an incredible coaching topic for the month on our coaching calls. And that is the topic of confidence. And I think it pairs perfectly with our three 30 day challenge. Because if there's one thing that comes from completing a challenge of any sort is an increasing confidence in yourself, the.

Increase in belief in yourself from following.

Through with your own word. So we would love to have you in our Sweet Free September Challenge and doing this within our Empowered Team Coaching group. You can find out more information on www.theempowered.ca thempowered ca and you'll find access to more information about our Empowered Team on our Learn More section. So we'd love to have you in our Empowered Team group and on our Sweet Free September Challenge. And even if you don't come into our coaching group, find something to challenge yourself for September because it's such a great transition month within the year and I love challenging myself in that month because it sets me up powerfully for the last quarter of the year and it really allows my brain to be very conscious of what I'm choosing to have in my life and go forward with my decisions in my life. So join us and I hope this inspires you to challenge yourself in some.

Form or another and enjoy the fruits.

Of what it means to really grow and feel that fulfillment within your life.

Have a beautiful rest of your day.

And week and I look forward to getting to know you or seeing you on the team.

If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@infompowerconditioning.com with subject line team. That's info powercondition. We can't wait for you to be on the team.