EP76 Mindset Monday - Use urges to create confidence!

This is the Empowered athlete podcast Mindset Monday 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life. Is your team ready to grow into better performance? Team building values, workshops and personal and professional development will set your business group or sports team up for success. We are ready to take your team to the next level with keynote speeches, educational presentations, workshops and retreats so you can tap into what it takes to grow. Contact us to find the best fit. Happy, happy Monday. Okay, we'll see if anybody hops on and if not, no worries. We will go forward into this fun topic today, how you can use your urges to create confidence. That's kind of a crazy thought here, but I'm going to tell you where this is coming from. Some of you know it is sugar free September. That's when I'm recording this and that's what's going on right now. We're on day two. So I am a hurting unit right now. Hey, Kelly. And the reason I'm hurting so bad is I just took a red eye last night and I came from being in B.C. for the last five days. So not only jet lagged from the time there, but also taking an overnight flight and I don't sleep on the planes. Hurts my back. You know, things just aren't good that way. So I am on no sleep. And that is one of the times that I want sugar the most. I'm going to crave sugar when I've had very, very little sleep. Now in this topic, I'll tell you where this topic idea came from. Hey, Ann, this topic idea came from the fact that for me, I am going to crave sugar. I'm going to crave sugar when at certain times of the day, I'm going to crave sugar. When I'm really tired, I'm going to crave sugar. If I'm kind of emotional about things or looking for comfort. There's going to be all kinds of situations where I'm going to crave sugar. And there's a concept that a coach that I follow had put out there, and it was called an urge jar. And so it came back to me in the beginning of this challenge because I realized I started counting the times that I was having urges for sugar because I'm on day two, it's the 2nd of September, but yesterday I was at the, you know, everybody's finished partying for an amazing, beautiful wedding in the Okanagan in B.C. and yesterday was a brunch and there were Pancakes and bacon and sausages and all these amazing things and cupcakes from the night before and chocolate bars and all this stuff. So I started kind of counting the urges. But here's the thing that came to me, and that was that Paul and I have done this challenge before and our level of confidence is so much greater because we've done this challenge before. And in what I know about our brain and training, I started to think about why that is the case. Why is this challenge going to feel easier? Even though I'm coming off a late night from a wedding, then I'm taking the red eye, coming home, I'm on no sleep, I'm going to be craving sugar, but I still have this confidence that it's going to be easier. So why is that confidence there? And this is what this topic is about today for Mindset Monday, how to use urges that you have to create confidence. And I'm using the example of sugar right now because we're going for sugar Free September. But this could be anything. This could be your urge to have a glass of wine. It could be an urge to go onto social media, play video games. It could be anything that you are using to buffer your life. Basically numb yourself out. So here's how we go. The first thing in terms of using urges to create more confidence in your life, number one, be aware of what triggered the urge. If you know what that trigger is ahead of time, before you have the urge to have the thing or do the thing, whatever the thing is, that's just kind of buffering who you really are before that urge comes along. What was the trigger for me yesterday? The trigger was a pancake breakfast. There's a pancake breakfast. There's maple syrup, there's all these amazing foods. And I'm like, ah, there's the urgent. I know what triggered it. It's a group of people, it's a brunch, it's a weekend, it's post wedding. There's all these amazing things that would have me want to treat myself with sugar or have more sugar than I would ordinarily have, which is nothing wrong with that, but it's just this challenge is causing me to be more aware of it. So there was my trigger. So another trigger in being aware of what triggers your urges. Another one was when a bunch of people were passing around some chocolate bars that were for the kids at this wedding. We were at a campground. There's lots of activities for the kids passing around those chocolate bars. And a whole bunch of the adults were having Some, too. I would ordinarily have something like that. A third trigger would be after I eat lunch, I almost always have something sweet, and that might be dark chocolate covered almonds. It might be a cookie, like a oatmeal chocolate chip cookie or things like that. I would almost always have something sweet. So the fact that I eat lunch, that alone will be a trigger. Anything after dinner, too, is a trigger. Anything, because it's summer and it's sunshine, let's go for ice cream. Can be a trigger. So I started to count some of the triggers. Knowing your triggers will have you have more awareness of when the urge will come out. So that's number one. Number two, be with the urge. Once we understand that negative emotions are not going to kill us, and we can be with the feeling of, oh, I really want that thing right now and be okay with it. That gives us power. We gain our power back. When we understand that we can be with the urge that we have and just sit with it and just hang out, not go, oh, my gosh, I need something sweet, or, oh, I have to do this right now, or whatever the trigger is. But being with that urge is okay. Negative emotions are okay. And you're going to find that if you just sit with it without making it right or wrong or without being afraid of it, that it tends to dissipate, it tends to go away. And also knowing that you have the power to make that urge more intense or less intense. And once you have that awareness and you're with that more often, you're not going to be as likely to take action on that urge in the way that maybe you don't want to if it's a thing that you're trying to gain more power over. So number two is being with the urge. Number three is give yourself recognition every time you get through that urge. Now, this is psychologically important because there's a reason that teachers give gold stars. Kids love that acknowledgment, love that recognition. And as we go into adulthood, we get very, very little recognition. We get very little acknowledgement for the things that we're doing well. So this coach that I mentioned for this urge jar, she created just a little jar and a whole bunch of glass beads, could be marbles, could be anything like that. And in that urge jar, every time the person, the client, she was doing this for weight loss for people, every time the person got through an urge without acting on it, say they wanted to just go for snacks in the fridge, but it wasn't their mealtime or Say they wanted to overeat and they had already eaten their meal. Whatever it was, they got through the urge. They put a bead in the jar. And that recognition is, is huge because not only do they see that they're getting acknowledgement for it, then mentally we also feel rewarded and we don't want to go back on that reward that we just got through that urge. So we're less likely to succumb to the urge because we've rewarded ourselves for getting through it, if that makes sense. So it could be gold stars. It could be. There are apps that track things as well. When you go on a streak, all kinds of great options to track the fact that you got through that urge, then you're more likely not to succumb to it. The fourth thing is with an urge jar, with tracking, you can see, you can visually see your progress. And when you can see ticks on a calendar, or you can see stars on a day, or you can see marbles in a jar. To our brain, we love pre progress. If we are making progress, that becomes a new positive addiction. A new positive addiction is the kind of thing that we can counteract our urges or our negative addictions. So that progress is huge. So those are the four key things. I'm going to recap them and then I'm going to show you how that builds your confidence. So number one, being aware of what the trigger for the urges. Number two, being with the urge, allowing yourself to experience maybe something that's uncomfortable or maybe a negative emotion. And be with that urge before you act on anything. Just allow it to be there, it will dissipate. Number three, give yourself acknowledgement or recognition when you get through an urge. Gold star, marble in the jar, tick on the calendar, something on an app. You name it, but give yourself the recognition. And then number four, the seeing of the progress is what allows you become more addicted to something that's positive versus something that's negative. Now here is where it builds your confidence. This is the critical part. If you so think of the past times, maybe I've done a 30 day challenge and I've gone through it and I've successfully completed 30 days of no sugar or adding in outdoor activity every single day or whatever. Whatever I've done for that 30 day challenge. Hey, Jen. If I've actually completed that and I have not succumbed to the urges to, you know, sit in my pajamas all day or eat a whole bunch of ice cream, whatever the urge was, that listening of myself or how I occur to myself ends up growing in terms of the confidence I have that I will actually follow through, this is the same kind of thing if you've got a family member or a buddy that shows up late all the freaking time, then you start to expect that they will show up late. We do the same things to ourselves without realizing. We start to expect that when we have the trigger or we have the urge that we are going to succumb to it, even though we said we wouldn't. So the more we say we aren't going to do something and we do it anyway, the lower our confidence goes in ourselves. So if we start to see that we have an urge jar, or we have actually tracked our urges for whatever the thing is, and we are successfully getting through the craving, the urge, the want, the desire for that, whatever that thing is, that's a negative addiction. The more we see ourselves successfully follow through with that, the more the greater our confidence is. And that's exactly why right now, despite being jet lagged, despite being on a red eye last night, having zero sleep, despite having massive cravings for sugar because of fatigue and jet lag, my confidence is way up because I've done this in the last couple years at least two or three times. So my confidence is there because I've already overcome some of those urges. And now if you flash back two years ago and I hadn't done a 30 day challenge, or I hadn't been through certain other urges and overcome them, then my confidence was way lower. I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the 30 days. This is the kind of thing when I tell somebody I'm doing a challenge like this and they say I could never do that. I could never give up caffeine or I could never give up sugar for 30 days. And my reply is, of course you can. You just haven't decided that you're going to, or you don't know that you can yet, you don't know how yet. The answer is of course you can. You just don't know that yet, or you've taught yourself that you can't because you've tried something for a day or two and you haven't succeeded. And it doesn't matter if you succumb to an urge a time or two, if you start to do these steps and follow through, you're going to be more likely to, to be able to be with the urge and not succumb to the urge and actually follow through and go through that a number of times and your confidence in yourself will grow and grow and grow. So those are your four steps. Be brave. Go through it. Sit with the urge. Feel free to go back and listen to this recording again. Write down those steps. What do I do to overcome these urges? And then use them. You use them to turn a negative addiction or a negative habit into something that's positive and turn that level of confidence in that topic right up that confidence through the roof for yourself. How you view your ability to do something, how you view yourself, and your integrity in following through with your word. So I hope that lands with you. If you enjoyed this, pop me a thumbs up so I know you're out there. I'm so glad that we're about to head into a new season tomorrow called the fall season or school season, however you want to look at it. But I hope that brings new things for you and you look at it as a new season as to how you can look at your own confidence, your own urges, what you want to accomplish. So hopefully you've got some back to school things, you've got some fall things planned. Whatever it is, I hope that really, really inspires you to step into a new time of year. So happy Labor Day weekend. Have a fantastic day, guys. Lots of love to you and I will see you next time.