Ep #150: Beating Yourself Up While Learning

Hi! How are you? I’m excited because I’m doing a free training for you next week!

I’m teaching the 3 Essential Steps to Stop Binge Eating.

As you can see, this is the 150^th episode of this podcast that I’ve recorded and sent out into the world which means, I’ve spoken on 150 different topics, many interrelated, that can contribute to your binge eating habits.

That’s a lot of episodes and a lot of topics and you may feel a little overwhelmed by that.

So in this training, I’m giving you the three most important ones. Not everyone deals with everything I’ve ever talked about on this podcast, although I’ve heard from many of you that tell me you relate to everything but, these 3 things in next week’s training will be the 3 that contribute to everyone’s binge eating.

So you’re gonna get clear on what your next steps are.

And not only will I tell you about those 3 steps but, I’ll also make sure you’re not doing some of the most common mistakes that people make. There’s a few things you may think you need to be doing that are actually not helping you and I want to make sure you know what they are.

So join me next Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 12pm ET. Register at coachkir.com/training, you can also find the link on the show notes page, and even if you’re not able to make it live, still register anyway so you can access the replay. It will be available for a limited time after the training and I’ll email you as soon as it’s ready to watch.

Alright, I really hope to see you there.

Now onto today’s topic, which is actually going to be something I hope you consider when you work on implementing what you learn in the training, and what you’ve learned throughout this podcast.

It’s about how you handle not being good at something right away.

You are learning to stop binge eating. You may also be learning to stop overeating.

It would be so nice if you learned what to do and were able to stop immediately.

I think that’s what a lot of you expect sometimes.

You think you’re going to be perfect and consistent right away.

And maybe that’s because there are many times in your life that that’s been the case.

You learn how to do something and you’re good at it your first time trying.

But that’s not always the case.

And when it’s not, too many of you are beating yourself up about it.

You’re calling yourself a failure or jumping into believing that you’re never going to get it….simply because you weren’t able to the first time you tried.

The first time!

Or maybe it’s the second, or 17^th, or 29^th but, so what?

Maybe for you it’s going go take 30 tries and when you start beating yourself up at attempt 29 and you give up on yourself then you may not get to the 30^th try.

And even if you do keep going, what did you accomplish with the beat up?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. You just spent your time feeling bad about yourself. That’s it.

Stopping binge eating and stopping overeating are processes.

For most people, it’s not something that changes overnight.

There’s mindset shifts that need to happen and although sometimes that can be an instantaneous click, it isn’t always.

Now, you may have just heard me say “for most people” and you may think that’s not going to be you. You’re not going to be most people. You’re going to be one of the other people who does have that overnight change, who it does click for quickly.

But what if that’s not you?

I can’t tell you which you’ll be, if you’ll be a quick changer or if it will take longer for you. You can’t know that for yourself either.

We’ll only know by diving into the work and seeing what obstacles come up for you.

Maybe there will be none but, maybe there will be some.

Maybe they’ll be easy for you to overcome and maybe they will take some time.

But just know that beating yourself up for being someone who takes longer to get to the end result, isn’t useful at all.

Calling yourself a failure at any point in the process isn’t useful at all, no matter how many times you fail.

And remember that that’s what this is – a process.

When you’re transitioning from a person who binge eats to a person who does not, there’s internal changes going on and how many changes there are differs from person to person.

There’s your thoughts about food, about your emotions, and about yourself that need to change.

Some of those thoughts you have you’ve held on to for a long time. You don’t see any other option for how you can think about them.

So working through them may take some time, and that’s okay.

And there may be obstacles that you aren’t seeing that are stopping you.

Sometimes that happens with my group members.

They think they’re doing everything they need to be doing but, they’re not, and they don’t see that until I point it out.

They need to make a tweak that they didn’t realize or they’re missing an important part of the process because they were so focused on doing another part and weren’t aware of it.

Let me give you two examples.

One of my group members recently was very focused on overcoming her excuses. She was recognizing them and calling them out as excuses and thinking intentionally about why she doesn’t want to binge eat.

But then she’d still decide to give in in binge.

She could have just gotten frustrated and upset with herself for not being able to not binge using this thought work but, instead she came to me to find out what was missing.

And I pointed it out to her. She wasn’t allowing herself to feel her urge to binge.

She was so focused on her thoughts and she wasn’t putting any focus on her urges.

Another one was doing well for awhile using some of the tools she’s acquired and then started to slip.

She began calling herself a failure because she was slipping. Her belief in herself was beginning to decrease.

When we talked about it, what we realized was that she was expecting it to be easy. It was easy at first but then it started to get challenging for whatever reason.

When it stopped being easy, she started beating herself up.

What that did was make it harder for her. Trying to do something that’s not easy while beating yourself up is going to make it harder.

This is a mental game, just like so many other things in life.

If you’re going to become a professional athlete, how you’re thinking while you train is a huge component of your progress.

You’re heard people say when someone isn’t doing well, “Their head’s just not in the game.”

Where your head is at matters. What you’re thinking about your process, your progress, what you’re doing, and yourself matters.

You’re learning to become a person who doesn’t binge eat.

You’re learning.

You’re growing, transitioning, and transforming into that person.

You may have growth spurts and that’s great but, you may also have growth interruptions that are actually part of the process of growth.

It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong, it doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of continuing to grow.

It just means there’s something in the way of you growing and you’re going to find out what it is.

Allow yourself to figure it out rather than just calling yourself a failure.

As you’re in your process of stopping binge eating, you’re going to be acquiring new skills and using tools you’ve never used before.

You’re doing new things. Allow yourself to not be perfect right away.

And with that, allow yourself to not be perfect in general.

So much of this can be tired to perfectionist tendencies and to stop binge eating you don’t have to be perfect.

You have to be willing to make mistakes and be okay with yourself if you do.

So if you’re not perfect at not giving in to urges after trying to use a new tool the first time, or several times, don’t beat yourself. Don’t make it mean anything negative about you or your capabilities.

That’s going to take your head out of the game and hinder your future progress.

Instead, look for what’s not working.

Be a problem solver and ask for help if you need it and be open to help!

I remember going snowboarding with friends and it was all our first time.

One friend of mine is just like I described in this episode. They were used to being able to catch on quickly and do things easily, especially physical things.

But they were struggling.

So I offered a tip.

I had done some research before we went and I was doing pretty well, staying up on my feet for awhile down the hill so I could see what I was doing that they weren’t and I thought my advice would be helpful.

But they were so frustrated with themselves that they weren’t open to my advice. So they kept doing what they were doing and kept falling.

Sometimes we think we know the right way but we’re missing something. We’re not able to see what we’re doing incorrectly or what we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing.

And if we can accept that there’s more options besides the ones we’ve been choosing and we can accept that we haven’t grown into the person we want to be yet and there’s still more to learn, then we can be open to the learning we need to do in order to get there.

Accept where ever you are on your path in your process.

Let go of your expectations for how you think it should be and accept where you are.

You will get there and you will get there sooner if you don’t pause to take beat up breaks.

Skip those and get yourself into problem solving mode.

And if you want some insight into some things you might be doing that aren’t working for you and what you need to be doing, make sure you register for my training next week, Tuesday June 22^nd at 12pm ET and remember there will be a limited time replay available afterward. Go to coachkir.com/training to register.

I’ll see you there.

Bye bye.