Your Friday Five: The Hidden Cost of “Doing More” — My StepBet Journey

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another, your Friday five. Today I'm back to update you with my end results for the Step Be challenge. I had a few observations when I went through this, I'm gonna catch you up real quick in case you didn't hear a previous, your Friday five, where I talked about what app this is and what it does. So there's an app called Step Bet you join different challenges and basically the concept is you put some money on the line, there's a certain. Thing that you have to do every single week. Certain challenges, like you have to reach certain step counts, and if you don't do that, you drop out and you lose that money. But if you make it to the end of the challenge, whoever's left there gets to split the pot. So potentially you make more money at the end compared to what you put in. That's the premise of this. Now, that was not the reason I did it. I did it because it was a creator that I follow. I really like her community. I thought, let me. See the experience of going through this because is this something that I ever wanna do in the future? And I just wanted to see how it felt. And so I made a little. Pros and cons list here, but this is the conclusion that I came to is that this is a hundred percent gonna be a win or fail based on your personality. Because I was thinking about it and I was like, this is not objective at all. This is my personality. I realized the benefits of going through it was that it really fostered consistency. So it was a five week challenge. Now I'm already consistent as is, but it was like you had to do it otherwise you literally. Got kicked out. If there was more than one day that went by where you didn't do what you needed to, you get kicked out. So for example, in the week, seven days, four of the days, I had to reach 10,700 steps and three of the days it was over 13,000 steps. Those were like the power days and then there was a rest day. That was great that I had to do it no matter what. I didn't have a choice or I'd get kicked out, but that actually led for me personally, to the biggest cons, which is it. Really fostered an all or nothing mentality. And I have worked for years to get away from that. And what I realized, and this is just where I was like this is just morally wrong. One day, in the morning had gotten over 10 K steps. I thought, oh, I'm good. I just didn't look back later in the day to see where I reached, and it turned out that I was 200 steps short of it being what they considered was what I needed to do for that day. And so that day was considered a rest day. And friends, me doing 10,500 steps is not a rest day. And then that meant that the rest of the week I had to continue to push myself when normally there is one day on the weekend when I just do less, I'll maybe do three, 4K steps, just based on us going to the beach or doing different things, I just don't get as much done. And I really didn't like that. And I realized, oh, for me, I define consistency as I walk. However many days a week or whatever I've decided, but it's not that I have to get to a certain number I'll tell you the second con that was huge for me. Beyond this, all or nothing was the pressure that it put in a bad way. It was like, even if that day I every so often, I'm really tired. I'm really fatigued, like my body feels like it just wants to lay down. That's what would feel most loving at that moment and what it's really asking for. And I couldn't listen to it because I had to push through. I had to get those steps that day. And the third thing that I realized I just didn't enjoy about it. I'm not motivated by money. There was not a big sense of community for me. I thought maybe people would be doing a lot of commenting or supporting or encouraging, and I just didn't feel that it was, it felt like, you know, everyone's on their own and you're seeing people drop off right and left. And so for me personally, I realized I don't think that I will. Do another challenge, I'm glad I saw my way through. I'm gonna be honest. I, the second to last week was like, I'm gonna drop out because this is not benefiting me. There were so many, I thought more negatives than positives. And then I realized by giving myself permission to stop it, then of course I was like, oh no, I can do this. Right? I was like giving up that resistance. Made it okay again, and I just wanted to, frankly, if I said I was gonna do it one time to see my way through it. But in the future, I don't think I would do it because I realized everything for me has to be built around love and compassion for myself and how I'm doing it. It, it just is. And that's something too in my programs. I really think that li listening to yourself above all else, and I know when you hear that, if you're newer to me, you might think, oh, well then I would just be laying on the couch all the time. That's not true. Majority of the time when you start with. Small steps and you do those small, mundane things consistently. What is the, the, the, the saying I heard the other day, gosh, it was great. It was a quote with consistency. Let me see if I can find that success. It was that, that's what it was about. Success equals doing the obvious things and extraordinary amount of times when you start things and you pick little things that you wanna do, and you do them super consistently and you keep building on them. Majority of the days, you're gonna do the things because you're in the habit of doing the things you like, doing the things. You're only leaning into things that you like, right? I'm not sitting there doing running. I always injure myself, even despite doing little walk run intervals. For me, walking is extraordinarily amazing right now, and maybe that will change in the future, but the point is that. I lean into that because it's great. I've built a lot of things around it. Talking to my friends on Marco Polo, listening to audio books, listening to podcasts, music, you name it. It's just incredible all the things that I'm doing during my walk. And if I really have a bad day where it's like I'm in extraordinarily fatigued for some reason, I will sit that day out. And so I don't like things that divorce me of that relationship because I've worked so hard to foster that. I think for me personally, it wasn't a great experience and it also really showed me why I think that when I do a challenge or things like that in 30 30, I tend to set the bar very differently and it's, you do anything. Let's say that. It's a day where you're really not feeling like doing the movement. You doing One minute can count, and for some of you might hear that as a cop out, but it does teach you. Okay. Even if I don't feel great, I'm gonna do literally one lap back and forth, two steps in each direction, just so that. If I were to get into it, if, if the real hurdle were just that I were getting my shoes on or kind of getting in the groove of it, that would already motivate me enough to get over it. But if not, I'm just gonna go ahead and cut it short and stop, because I do have this every so often with the walking track where I'm like, Ooh, I'm, I'm just not feeling, it's like I'm just gassed out. I just have nothing left. And then I leave the track early and it's not happening often, but I like to be able to listen to myself. And I noticed those five weeks I couldn't do it, and I did not. Like that. So my experience overall was that I won't be doing it again. That's me personally. That being said, I could see for some of you out there listening that this might be an opportunity where you get some consistency, it motivates you, it fires you up. You might have a different brain than me, and this might be just. The thing that is incredible for you, right? I'm just different. I know in December we're gonna do a momentum challenge. That's a 21 day thing. And again, it's just defined very differently how I do things because I just find that these, having to get to these certain numbers or else the days of fail, I don't. I don't think that's true. I just don't, and I get that that's the whole premise of Step Bed. So for me personally, I won't be doing it again, but it was a really good learning opportunity. I think I really realized what my values are through doing it, and I'm really curious to know from all of you, if you've participated in one of these, what you thought, what you. Felt. I know. I really feel like the people that do them do tend to consistently then reengage in them. What I thought was interesting, there was about a 25% drop off, one outta four people dropped out, oh, last thing, the other reason I won't be doing it is that you would think, oh, all this consistency and motivation and that you're walking more than ever normal. Honestly, my weight never did worse. My weight, how I felt, all of it. And it's so funny because you always think it's doing more and more and more, and for me it's the opposite. Again, it was just a really good. A reminder that more does not equal better. Listening to yourself is so powerful and it really helped give me clarity. But I do think that we need to try different things to see what we like and it, this is not a failure at all. I saw my way through it. I learned a bunch of stuff, and then I'm able to seek out much more in the future communities that really serve me. And I have to tell you, it is like a needle in a haystack when you find. A community that really fits you. Right. I think like that's something that when people come into 30 30, they're often like, oh my gosh, I found my people, because it's so hard to find a community. Where people maybe think the same way as you or foster a version of thinking in your mind that's actually helpful for you and not a task master that's running. Anyway, just keep going until you find that community, because for you this might be step at where you're like, yes, people that set challenges and there's other things to pick from and I can join different things. That's amazing for you. For me, it's gonna look different and it gives me one more data point to know exactly what it is that I'm going for. I'm gonna leave you with this today. I hope that you have an amazing weekend. Let me reiterate this saying here, success doing the obvious things an extraordinary amount of time. This weekend, do some of those ordinary things. Do it again and again and again. Get your water in. Figure out if there's a protein. Even if you're gonna go to a pancake breakfast place, can you have one scrambled egg before? What's the one thing you can do that still moves you in the direction that you wanna go? You can do this. You are doing it, and have an amazing weekend. We'll talk soon.