The podcast that gives high performing women the nutrition, mindset and goal setting strategies that actually work. I'm your host Jenna Hosteller, Registered dietitian, certified neurocoach and your go to guide to break free from burnout, cut through the health noise and reclaim control of your health, your habits and your life. Each week you will get practical science backed strategies to support you in crushing your goals. So you can stop second guessing yourself, sharpen your focus and finally feel like the woman who leads her life, not just survives it. Hey there. Welcome back to Goal Getter. I have two questions for you. Do you find that some habits are harder to create than others? Do you find that some habits feel extra hard to break? If so, here's why your habits aren't sticking because you've not attached them to your identity. Last episode I revealed my top three takeaways from reading Atomic Habits and I said I needed to do a part two related to identity. So here it is. Identity is a continuous theme throughout the book. James Clear even dedicates an entire chapter to identity that's titled how your habits shape your identity and vice versa. And I have to say it was really exciting for me to read this book because of how much James Clear talks about principles I've covered here on this podcast. And it's one thing to know that what I teach is valid and effective, but it's a whole other thing to have a best selling author reiterate the things I teach. So if you've ever wondered if all of this mindset talk is legit, trust me, it is. So today we're going to dive into some of the identity principles discussed in Atomic Habits and see how you can immediately apply them to your life. Early on in the book, James Clear introduces three layers of behavior, outcome, process, and identity. The first layer is changing your outcome, the result that you're aiming for. It's why you're setting your goal in the first place. The second layer is the process, what I call action based goals instead of outcome based goals. The third layer, the deepest and most important, is the identity layer. The identity layer ties to your beliefs which directly affects your actions and therefore the results you get if you don't change the beliefs you hold about yourself, the world, what you're capable of, and who you can be. Your habits will never change and your life will look the same in 10 years as it does today. Your identity is what you think, how you speak and what you do, what you think about yourself, others, the world, the environment you live in, the opportunities you have, what you're capable of, how you speak about yourself, others, the world you, the environment you live in, the opportunities you have and what you're capable of, what you do. Regardless of what you say you want or say you believe. If you think you were born into an unfair world and the deck is stacked against you and you just can't have the life that others do, that is your choice. And those are the results that you're going to get. Not because it's true, but because it's what you believe. I can all but guarantee there is someone out there who grew up or experienced very similar circumstances as you and has accomplished what you want. The difference is the person who changed her life and got her results. She changed her thinking to see opportunity instead of oppression. She speaks as if everything she says is going to happen and she takes action that shows who she wants to be and the life she wants. Your identity is directly tied to how you speak about yourself. I'm going to read a small part of the book that demonstrates this really well. Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered to smoke, the first person says, no thanks, I'm trying to quit. It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs. The second person declines by saying no thanks, I'm not a smoker. It's a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes. Now, which of those people do you think is going to see a higher rate of success in not smoking? The person who's no longer a smoker. But why? How often do you think a non smoker will casually say yes when offered a cigarette? Almost never. How often do you think somebody trying to quit will say yes when offered a cigarette? Way more frequently. Why? Because a temptation isn't a temptation unless it's a temptation. A non smoker is going to say no because it's not tempting. It's not even appealing. A smoker who's trying to quit will be very tempted because they've not shed that part of their identity. Someone who doesn't eat sugar is not tempted by dessert. At a family fourth of July Cookout. Someone who doesn't drink is not tempted to get a drink when they're out with their friends. Someone who doesn't eat fast food is not tempted to drive through McDonald's when they're starving on their way home from work. This is that principle of be, do have. When you want to do something differently, you have to change your identity first and be that person so you can do what they would do and have what they have, which is ultimately what you want. Be a non smoker, resist the cigarette. Have a life free from cigarettes. So what is something you're wanting in your life? But instead of changing your identity to match what you want, you're hoping your behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs that have you stuck where you are. If I could give a visual for this, it'd be like wearing a Patriots jersey everywhere you go and being annoyed that people treat you like a Patriots fan instead of a Steelers fan. James Clear also feels the same way I do about motivation. We cannot rely on it. I focus more on being disciplined and consistent, and he focuses more on your environment. When when you're creating new habits, especially if they challenge who you've always been, you must set your environment up for success. It's like the phrase if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. If your identity is fluid, you're not committed to it, you're not, you're not aware of it, or you don't even know what you want to be. You will be influenced by your environment, especially the people, because you have no reason to not follow their lead. We are always either a leader or a follower, and if we don't know who we are or what we stand for, we'll be influenced by someone who's more convicted in their beliefs than we are. We become followers, and this can show up in the most basic ways. Do you go out and do things on the weekends or do you stay home and watch tv? Do you eat fresh homemade meals or are you always getting takeout? Do you get together with your friends and gossip about the people who aren't around you? Or do you have meaningful conversations? Do you get sucked into the work drama? Or are you the solution seeker? Our identity determines the habits we create, and it determines how long the new habit will last. As the book says, behavior that is incongruent with self will not last. We can force ourselves to be someone we're not for a while, but when life gets hard or stressful or we just get tired, who we really are is going to emerge and determine what we do. If our new habits are not rooted in a new identity, old habits will creep back in that match who we really are. Think of it like your identity and your actions, always striving to be in equilibrium. And if there's a mismatch, whatever has been in your life longer will overpower what's new. And this is why neuro coaching we have to literally rewire your brain when making new habits so that your old automations stop existing because they will always overpower the new ones when life gets rough. The last part of the book I'm going to address is something that coincides with what I said last time, that it's not as important how much you do, it's that you get started. In the book it reads it's not always about what happens during a workout. It's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. Let me repeat that. It's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. When I've not been good at maintaining my habits, it's because they're not part of my identity yet. Some habits, like what I eat in my morning routine, they become part of who I am and so maintaining them has become routine. It's easy. Others, like going to bed without getting distracted on YouTube or drinking 80 ounces of water daily, they're not yet who I am. And I've noticed a pattern that I go down, I start strong and I'm motivated. But eventually it gets kind of boring and becomes something to check off my list instead of part of who I am. So after a couple weeks I notice that I'm just going through the motions to get it done. I'm not emotionally connected to the goal. So I start questioning if it's that important and why I even started it. So then I start justifying not doing it. I skip a day and then I have a couple days off and then I have to recommit to it being a habit. And then the cycle restarts and this happens with every single habit I start unless I'm emotionally bought in and it becomes part of who I am. And as he says in the book, once your pride gets involved, you will fight tooth and nail to keep your habits. And here's what I realized just now. It was easy for me to become a reader this year because I wanted to be a reader. I've been keeping a list of books I wanted to read for years. I just needed accountability to get started and make it a habit. It is an expectation that every single employee reads the books that we're having our students read. There are no exceptions. Because I knew the standard, I added it to my daily routine, and because it's something I already wanted to do, I became a person who reads 10 pages daily. Even when my mandatory reading is complete, occasionally something will happen that prevents me from reading that day. But the next day I read 20 pages. If I'm going to be out of town, I will read extra so that by the time I come back, I've read the equivalent of ten pages a day. So what identity do you want? Who do you want to be? What accountability do you want to have in place that pushes you to become that person? I want to be someone who doesn't miss workouts. Now you might be thinking, jenna, you're paralyzed. You can't work out. I know, but the mind is a powerful thing and I don't need to move my muscles to strengthen them. Dr. Shannon, who I trained under to become a neuro coach, is always talking about two research projects. She was part of one where an Olympic swimmer learned a new stroke and grew small twitch muscles by imagining the stroke and never stepping into a pool. The second was a group of people who learned to play the piano by thinking about it and never touching a piano. I know my brain is powerful enough to make my pseudo workouts effective, but I've not yet adopted the identity of someone who can have that result in my life. It's something I work on every stinkin day. So what life do you want? What habits do you need to make or break to have that life? And what identity are you going to adopt? Who are you going to be to make it happen? We have to shift our identity. What we think, how we speak, and what we do regarding ourselves, others and the world if we want to create atomic habits that finally take hold and change the life we have. So if you found this helpful, use the link in the description to grab the book and then take action. Stay empowered and I'll see you next time. Okay? Now before you pop off, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the one episode that could change your life. And it would be incredibly helpful if you would leave a five star review so that more high performing women can find this podcast. If you want to check out all of the free guides, templates and resources I've given away, go to sprintnutritioncoaching.com you can grab anything you want, but only if you will do it because information without implementation is worthless. And here at Goal Getter we are action takers, not excuse makers.
