Who Do You Want To Be? And Are You Spending Time With Her?

In this episode, I’m talking about something I don’t hear enough women thinking about intentionally: their future self.

This idea came to me during a quiet moment — and the more I sat with it, the more I realized how much clarity it brings to everything we’re trying to change. Our habits. Our relationship with food. Our health. Our confidence. And the way we show up in our lives. 

So often, women come to me knowing exactly what they don’t want anymore.

 They don’t want to feel out of control around food. They don’t want to keep starting over. They don’t want to be uncomfortable in their bodies or disappointed in themselves.

But knowing what you don’t want isn’t enough.

In this episode, I walk you through why getting clear on who you’re becoming is one of the most important (and overlooked) parts of sustainable change — especially when it comes to weight loss, follow-through, and feeling truly in control.

P.S. If you love it, it would mean so much if you subscribed, rated, and reviewed!

Enjoy~ Courtney

I currently work with women privately to achieve their health, mindset, and body goals.  I would love to offer you a consultation HERE to discuss the changes you want to make to create more joy, health, and peace in your body and life.

Transcript

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Bob, welcome to modern body, modern life. The podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast episode 119 Who do you want to be and are you spending time with her? I know this sounds a little woo, woo. It sounds a little out there, but I am so excited to deliver this podcast to you today. So I was having a hard time last night falling asleep, which is very rare for me. I'm a very good sleeper. I'm usually, like, not even two pages into whatever book I'm reading, and I'm fast asleep, which is I'm, if you don't sleep, well, you probably want to throat punch me right now. I'm sorry, but I'm a very good sleeper. And so last night, I was just laying there, like, well, this is frustrating. And then I just had a thought. I said, I think I'm going to spend some time with my future self. And that's why I was like, Oh, I'm going to do a podcast on this. It's such a great podcast. So what that means to me is I am always growing. I am always working at becoming stronger in my body, in my mindset, in the way I think of things, with my relationships, all the things I'm always looking to go to my own next level. I keep thinking that by the time I'm 80 years old, I am going to be amazing. I mean, I think I'm amazing now, but I love the thought that I'm always growing. I feel like that. For me, that is the point of being alive. That is the point of having the gift of being in this body, especially, having the gift of having the luxury of being alive at this time, right there's, there's so many times when I look back on previous moments in history and I think, Oh, I'm kind of glad I'm not alive. Then I'm glad I'm alive in 2026 we have this game we play. It's this like question cube game that we'll play like on holidays. And one of the questions that come out is, if you had to live during another time in history, when would you want to live? And it's so funny, because my mom, my sister and I every time that question comes up, probably once a year, we'll get that question. We sit there and we're like shit. I don't know. Man, when, when else would we want to be alive? I mean, I would love to, like be an observer of other times in history, but, man, I don't know. So I'm excited to be alive right now, and I'm excited to be always bettering myself, always really looking towards going to my own next level. So I was laying there last night and really decided to spend time with my future self and make sure that I have a very crystal clear image in my mind of where I am going, especially if you are doing this work and you feel like you're getting better at I don't know. I'm going to give a bunch of examples, not people pleasing. If you feel like you're getting stronger, if you feel like you're eating better, maybe you're getting creating better habits, really learning to think intentionally. If you're actually doing this work and you see your own development, which I hope you do. I hope you are, but you need to make sure that you're creating new new, new future selves for yourself, right? We need to keep looking into going, Okay, what's next? Okay, what's next? Not from a deficiency place, but from a place of like, this is so exciting. What's next. And so as I laid there last night, I was thinking, okay, where else do I want to go? Where? How, where? What else do I want in my life to focus on? Of course, always starting with me, because that's where we have the most amount of control. So your future self. Do you feel like you know her? Do you know where you're headed? Do you know where you want to go if we want to make progress, if we want to go to our own next level, we need to know where we're headed, so we might not know exactly how we're going to get there. You might say, Okay, I really want to feel more in control around food, or I want to feel more in control of my body. I want to follow through. I want to when I make a plan, I want to be able to stick to it beautiful. So we don't know all the exact strategies that are going to get you there, but we need to know that that's where you want to go. You need to know what that looks like. You need to be able to have a vision of you going about your day feeling in. Control. We need to have a vision of you saying, Okay, this is what I'm going to work out. And then that time coming and you saying, I kind of don't want to do this, but this is what we do, and doing it, and then how good that will feel, and what is your body going to look like when you are living in a life where you follow through. Right now, I'm working on, I think I've kind of sneaked, kind of told you guys that I'm working on something right now, and it is all centered around night eating, because that is when, oh gosh, that is when most people struggle the hardest. I have yet to have anyone come on a call with me for a consultation and say mornings are really hard for me, and so I'm working on a free resource for you, and I'm almost finished with that. Was kind of hope. I was kind of hoping I would be done with it by today, but I'm not. So I'm almost finished with it, and it's all around night eating, night snacking, night eating, all of those things. So when you think about yourself in the future, what do you want yourself to be doing in the evenings. How do you want to be thinking and feeling and acting in the evenings? How do you want to be different? So do you have a clear vision of where you want to go? Often, women know what they don't want. They know that they don't want to be where they are. They don't like how their clothes are fitting. They don't like that. They're feeling like they need to lose 30 pounds. But what I want to sell you on in this podcast is how important it is really to go deeper, right? If you want to lose 30 pounds, we need to not just say I want to lose 30 pounds, we need to look at who you would be 30 pounds lighter, and what does that look like. How will you be eating, how will you be feeling, how will you be thinking? What will you say yes to? What will you say no to? What will you be like? What choices will you make that are different than from the choices you are making now? So I encourage you to think different than just the pain you want to get out of. I want you to think of the pleasurable life that you are wanting to get to, and what does that look like. How does it look if you've lost the weight you want to lose? How does it look if you are feeling good in your body? But what on a day to day level. Do you do differently? So often, people will say they want to lose weight, but they i They don't necessarily say they want to eat better. That's one of the questions I always ask. When I get someone on for a consult, I'll say, Okay, I hear that you want this, you want this. You want this. Do you want to eat better? Not everyone does. But for me, when I think about weight loss. When I think of sustainable weight loss, that means you are going to be living differently. You're going to be thinking, feeling and acting differently in your day to day life. So if you want to be healthier, one of those women that is killing it in terms of her health, like next time you go to the doctor, your doctor is impressed with you. How amazing would that feel? Okay, so we can think about how great that'll feel in your body, but what needs to change in order to get there? I know this sounds kind of simple and obvious, but there's a lot of people that they spend their time thinking, I want to lose weight. I really need to get my shit together. But they don't think about, wait a minute, let's first of all get excited about being there. Let's get excited about what that life will look like when we have lost the weight, when we are healthier. But what does the life look like in order to get there? What needs to change if you're going to get in your best health ever, what does that look like for you? It's going to look different for you than it is for your partner, for your kids, for your best friend. How do you live? How do you want to live there? What are your priorities? How are you living differently? And when we think about mindset, and where mindset plays into all of this, we know that it is so important to not just be positive. Mindset isn't just all about being positive, but it's so important to be the manager of our thinking. The way we think matters, the way we think creates the results in our lives. So if you're hearing this for the first time, I have a lot of new listeners lately, and I'm so happy to have you. If you have not listened to Episode 96 I talk about the thought model. The thought model is a tool that really goes in depth in breaking down how our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our actions and our behaviors, what we do and don't do, and that's what ends up creating the results in our lives. So that Podcast, episode 96 is a powerful one for you to listen to, if you're new to me, and if you haven't, haven't listened to that one yet. Because if we think about where you want to get to in all your future self and all of the ways you want to live differently, if we think about those as actions, so if we think about you saying, Okay, I want to go to bed. Earlier. I want to meditate. I want to just eat better. I want to be able to have sweets but not as much. And I want to maybe drink a little bit less, or whatever, whatever your idea of best health and it is different for everyone, there really is no right or wrong. So whatever your idea of your future self is, the way you're going to be living on a day to day basis. If we take all of that and put it in the action line, those are the actions you're going to be taking in order to get the result of being in your best health ever, we need to understand what thoughts and feelings are going to drive all those actions. So if you want to eat better in the evenings, what do you need to think that is going to make you feel a different way in order to eat better in the evenings, if you want to get better at social eating, you want to be able to go to a party or a restaurant and just eat better, maybe it's less and better. What do you need to think and feel about social events? We need to change the way you're thinking and feeling now, because the way you have been thinking and feeling is what has created your current results. So in order to change the way you've been living, we need to change the way you're thinking and feeling. So I'm going to give you some thoughts that are probably better thoughts that will create better feelings, actions and results, something like this is totally available to me as long as I'm willing to put in the work. And when I say this is totally available to me, I'm talking about your vision of your future self. I took a moment here before I recorded this podcast. I created all my notes, and I did a deep dive, and then I took a moment, because I had so much fun last night, kind of thinking about my future self. And I took a moment, and I wrote it all down. And then I said, Okay, what do I need to think differently, Courtney, in order to get to this next level? And I thought, this is totally available to me. Everything I just put down on this piece of paper is totally available to me as long as I'm willing to put in the work. And the reason I like to say as long as I'm putting in the work is, as a society, we want everything to be easy and fast and effortless, and it's just wrong. It's just not true. And we know it in our hearts that it's not true. We know that it's going to take work. I think that work can be beautiful. I think it can be transformative. I think it can be really exciting, but it is work, and parts of it are hard, but maybe on your list that I'm going to ask you to create for homework, stay tuned. Maybe one of the things you want to get good at is you want to get good at doing hard shit. Maybe you want to be like, this is hard, but I'm doing it. If I could gift you one thing, if I could all of a sudden snap my fingers and all of a sudden change you in one way, I would change you in the way that you see hard differently, that you look at something hard, you look at the resistance to doing something that maybe you haven't done before, and you just have this new thought. This is totally This is hard, and yet, here we go. This is hard, but I'm capable. This is hard, but I'm getting stronger all the time. This is hard, but it's going to get me to where I want. If I could give you one gift, that would be what it would be. That's what I want for you. That's what I'd like to think my program does for my people, it gives them the capacity and the resiliency to be able to do something that's hard, which the beautiful thing is, in the end, it makes their life so much easier. It's so interesting. I was telling one of my clients this week, I said, most people are going throughout their whole day, every day, every 24 hours, not liking how they look, not liking how they feel, knowing they're capable of more, feeling out of control around food, shaming themselves. And it's just this cycle all day of shame, not liking uncomfortable, all that all day, but then they're getting hits of delicious food and feeling good in those moments. What I teach people to do is swap it. So in those moments, they're like, oh, I want the food, but I have the tools to not eat the food. This is hard in the moment, but then that moment passes and you lose the weight you want to lose. Dressing gets easier. You feel more in control. You're not people pleasing. You know how to manage negative emotions. You know how to get frustrated and not turn to food. So it's a it's a huge swap. It's a discomfort swap. So what I want is for you to be walking around feeling great in your genes, feeling in control your food, and having moments of, yeah, you know what? I would like another cocktail. But now I'm going to stick to my plan, and then feeling good about it. It's being able to really choose your hard here's some other thoughts that are great for you to think about when you're thinking about this future self you want to create. You want to move into, I want to become someone I'm proud of. I put this. On my list. Now, I'm already proud of myself, but I think about where I'm headed. I'm going to be even more proud. I often think about making my kids proud. I'll tell you that I was at this tournament this weekend with my son, who's a wrestler, and I was showing him, there was no one around, and we were out, like sitting on this bench, just him and I together in between matches, and no one was around, and I was telling him about this new workout that I'm doing. And one of the reasons I'm doing it is it strengthens my wrists. And so it's like I'm getting cardio, but I'm also getting strength, and it's strengthening my wrists and my muscles, everything. And so I showed him, I go, let me show you one of the moves. And so I got down on the ground, and I showed him this move, and his face lit up, and I, like, almost started crying, because I could see he was like, damn. Like, that was his energy, and it made me feel so proud that he was like, damn. And he goes, whoa, mom. He goes, you're kind of doing, like, Jujitsu, you're kind of doing yoga, or you're kind of doing, it's like a that's like a wrestling move. And I go, yeah, maybe that's why I was drawn to it, because I see what you are doing. And my son is so athletic, and I want to be athletic. I don't just want to have muscles. I don't just want to be able to go on long walks. I want to be able to move my body in a very athletic way. And so that I think all the time about making my kids proud. I think I've said this on the podcast before, is that I know someday I'm going to be doing a handstand like in the middle of the grass, and it's going to be the first time I do it, and my kids and my husband are going to sit there and go, damn, and they're going to be so impressed, and that's going to be so fun for me. Why not? So fun? So one of the thoughts that is going to get me to my future self, connect the two, is going to be, I want to be someone I'm proud of. I had a client say something the other day that was so powerful. She said, You know, I really want to be doing better than my parents are doing. She goes, I love my parents, but they're really they're not strong. They're not doing as well as I would like to be doing at their their age. And I said, so and so. She said, I know I have to be doing better now if I'm going to be doing better when I'm their age, and I literally put my hands up like I was raising the roof, like and I'm like, preach sister. I go, it's so true. If we want to be doing better in 10 years. We need to be doing better now. We have to start now. So here is your homework, my friend, I'm giving you homework. Here's what I did after having this great moment last night as I was going to bed thinking about my future self, and then this morning, what I did is I wrote down on a piece of paper a little journaling session for you, I wrote down, I am becoming a woman who dot, dot, dot. I am becoming a woman who dot, dot dot, and make a list and have it be fun and have it be exciting. And your primitive brain sometimes while you're making this list, might go, Oh, you've never been able to do that before. Sometimes our primitive brain can be a little bit of a bitch. That's all, right. Go, yep, that's my primitive brain. We're going to keep going making a list. I made a list of like, 20 things, so make a list. Get excited. And even though there you're like, I don't know how I'm going to get here, that's okay. You don't have to know all the strategies, right? You just have to know that that's what you want. So I'm becoming a woman who dot, dot, dot. And then when you look over this list, ask yourself a radically honest question, is the way you're living now, leading you to becoming this woman? And maybe you're going to find some things that are a Yes, and I hope you do, I hope you say yes. I want to acknowledge my progress. I have gotten better at this. I have gotten better at that. Amazing, right? We're not looking, I'm not looking at this list going, Wow, I'm not doing a pull up yet. Wow, I'm not doing a crow for five minutes yet. Wow, I'm not, I'm not doing that's not what we're doing, we're saying, okay, when I look at everything I'm going to do today, at the end of the day, when I rest my head on my pillow, did the actions I take move me closer to some things on this list, not all the things, but did it move me closer to some of these things? I hope it's a yes. Here's a few other questions for you. Are you surrounding yourself with people that are helping you with this list you've heard, I know we've all heard this, that you really are defined by the three to five people you are surrounding yourself with. It's why we are so crazy about who our kids, when they're young, choose us friends. We know this innately, even if sometimes we don't admit it to ourselves. Who we surround ourselves with matters if you are surrounding yourself with women who are eating well and moving their bodies and reading books and trying to be positive and creating goals for themselves. And who want to believe that their life is just getting started, amazing. If you're not, I want you to look for women like that or men. I think there can be men like that too. Who we surround ourselves matters. One of my new clients told me the other day, she goes Courtney. I've heard you say, who we surround ourselves with matters, and that's one of the reasons I hired you, she goes because I have a lot of great friends. She goes, but I wanted to surround myself with you. And I'm like, let's go. Let's go. It matters. Here's a few other questions. What changes do you need to make? And on a granular level, like, we can say things like, I need to eat better, but no, no, no, no, today. How do we eat better? What changes do you need to make today? What excuses do you need to stop listening to? They're going to be there. I think the podcast a few weeks ago was about all the excuses they're going to be there. You just need to stop listening. My friend, what thoughts do you need to think to become her? Here's another iteration of that question. So what thoughts do you need to think to become her? What is she thinking that's different than the way you're thinking now? So how is she thinking at a higher level? First of all, I can tell you right now, she knows this is possible for her. When you look at your list of where you want to go, your future self, she knows it's possible because she's there. It's okay that you don't necessarily 100% believe it's possible yet, because you're not there yet, but she knows it's possible. But what else does she know to be true? What do I need to learn to get here? What do I need to learn to get here? So I this is totally off the subject, but I was on Instagram a few weeks ago, and I saw this clip of Tom Cruise, and it was a long Tom Cruise from a long time ago, and they were asking him about his career, and he said from a young age, in terms of, like, from a young from a young time as an actor, he knew he wanted to be kind of like an action star actor. I don't know. I don't know if that's the words he used, but like, he wanted to be doing adventure, action type films, and so he said, I just said to myself, like, what do I need to learn to get there? So he's literally an example of how to do this work. He's like, I want to be someday in movies where I'm doing all these crazy stunts. What do I need to learn to get there and he goes? So I decided I probably needed to learn to fly a plane. I probably needed to learn to ride a motorcycle. I probably needed to learn to I needed to be really healthy and make sure I'm like fit, fit, fit. So you need to ask yourself that too, what do I need to learn in order to get here, and I think the biggest one probably for all of us, and I know in my heart the biggest one for you. I'm going to give you two big things that I know you need to learn right now, to do hard things so it to increase your capacity to do something where you're like this is hard, but also to be able to feel negative emotions, which actually is hard. Those two things, it does not matter whatever is on your list. I know this to be true. Those two things are going to help you get there, and that's managing your mind. That's being able to do hard things is managing your mind. And then the last thing that is going to be really powerful for you to possibly journal on is, what would she say to me? What would she say to me when I think of my future self and I think of being living in this body, this life, this reality, what would she say to me right now? Oftentimes she's very sweet to us. Oftentimes she speaks to us like a wonderful parent would speak to us. So take a moment say. What would she say? The last thing I want to leave with you is this is really important. Is it is not going to be perfect there. Sometimes we think we look at this list of we want to do this and do this, and be at this weight and be at this health and and be able to wear these clothes and feel this confidence. Sometimes we look at that list and we imagine it's going to be perfect there. And I'm telling you, I've been doing this work for a long time. I have gotten to my future self time and time and time again. It's very exciting when you say, this is the amount of money I want to make, this is the things I want to do in my career. This is the relationship I want to have with my kids all these and you find yourself getting there and then creating new future goals. It's so exciting, but it is not perfect there. So sometimes we think that there will be no struggle there. So back to the example of nighting. Sometimes we think that you're going to be in some like flowy gown walking through your house in the evenings, like, I don't even want the food. That's not her, that's not your future self. Your future self is sitting there and someone goes, Hey, I'm making a Sunday Do you want one? And you think, fuck yeah, I want one. And you said no. And they're like, why not? And you're like, Yeah, you know, I I just don't I've decided not to have one. Today, maybe I had one tomorrow. Maybe I'm going out to dinner. Whatever. You have a reason that you like for not having that ice cream. In that moment, not to say you can't ever have ice cream, but in that moment, you say no, and that is going to be hard. In that moment, even your future self is going to sit there and go, God, this is hard. But I'll tell you something, it's not going to be hard as living where you're at now, because that's going to be just a moment, and then you're going to get up and go to bed, wash your face, and you're going to be so glad you did that hard moment. So it's not going to be perfect where you're at. I have some clients that say so like, when you say you feel in control, what does that look like? And I tell them, well, it's not perfect. I have moments where I want more food than I then I allow myself to eat. I have moments where I think, God, Margarita would be fun. Look at everybody. They're having fun. I have moments where I'm like, Ah, I sure would like the thing. I have cravings. I have moments where sometimes I'll eat the food, even though I said I wouldn't, and I'm like, God, Courtney, you gave up on yourself in that moment. What do we think happened? And I talk to myself nicely, and then I course correct quickly. But it's not a perfect life. We don't have to be perfect. And remember, part of a lot of the problem in our society is thinking we have to be perfect in order to get where we want to be. And we think that once we're there, it's going to be perfect. I promise you, it's not. I'm getting older, I still have cellulite even though I'm where I want to be, I still see myself aging even though I'm where I want to be. So none of this is going to be perfect, but I promise you, it's going to be so great and so worth it, and you'll find that your imperfections don't hurt as much, that the times you give up on yourself are not as big a deal because you just support yourself in a better way. So I'm excited for you to really have a relationship and spend time with your future self, and when those two bodies and lives collide, when all of a sudden you start seeing yourself living into that future self. I want you to acknowledge it and go, Oh my God. I used to want to be here. I've been saying this a lot to my husband lately. We once thought, wow, how cool it be to go follow my son's wrestling career around, and now we're doing it. I remind him we're doing what we wanted to do. I think I remember there was a time when I thought, Oh, my God. How exciting to be like to build a life coaching business that I'm making enough money that I can walk away from my other business I've done that. I'm reminding myself how exciting I think to myself, Oh, how nice is it to be able to sit here and watch TV without having to have a snack and being obsessed with food. I'm there. So nice. How nice is it to be able to put my bikini on at any moment and feel like I look great. I'm not perfect. I'm aging, but man, do I look great, and I feel great. It feels so good to be here. And I look at my list of where I'm going, and I know it's going to be exactly the same. I know I'm going to be doing a pull up thinking, oh my god, this is so fun to be here, to feel this strong, all the other things in my list, it's going to be so exciting. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be so fun. So spend time connecting with your future self. If I can help you with this, please head to modern body, modern life.com. And schedule a consultation. I would love to chat with you about your future self and how to get there permanently. Have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com. To schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs you.