Pillars of Progress: How Consumption, Environment and Emotion Affect Progress

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a conversation that truly made me pause and reflect — the three core pillars that determine whether we’re actually making progress… or unknowingly holding ourselves back.

What started as a lesson inside a nutrition accountability group (shoutout to a concept I learned from a registered dietitian I’ve followed for years) quickly became something so much bigger. While the framework was originally shared in the context of weight loss, I couldn’t stop thinking about how powerfully it applies to every area of our lives — our relationships, careers, confidence, mindset, and overall personal growth.

In this episode, I break down:

• Consumption — What are you taking in daily (food, media, conversations, thoughts)? Is it fueling the version of you that you want to become… or quietly pulling you away from her?
• Environment — Are your surroundings and the people in your life energizing you or draining you? What subtle cues in your space are shaping your habits?
• Emotion — What feelings are actually driving your reactions, procrastination, or self-sabotage? And what happens when you finally name them?

This is a very real, coffee-shop-style chat about awareness — because we can’t improve what we’re not aware of. If you’ve been feeling stuck in your health, your marriage, your friendships, your career, or even just in your own mindset, this episode will help you audit what’s really going on beneath the surface.

My hope is that you walk away with tangible questions to ask yourself and a clearer understanding of what might be influencing your progress.

If this resonates, share it with a friend who needs a little mindset shift today — and as always, thank you for being here. 💛

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Transcript

0:40

hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I always wanna say good morning, even though you might not be listening to this in the morning time. And honestly, I'm not even always recording in the morning time. I'm not today, but I always wanna say good morning.'cause I feel like whenever I come on here, I think of these as chats that we're having at a cute little coffee shop. If you live in the Kansas City area, I love this. Coffee shop called Scout, and I feel like people are always meeting and talking and just chatting about fun life things and I always love to imagine I'm bringing up something in these episodes each week that are things that I would like bring to the table with a girlfriend or we would get to talking and be like, oh my God, I can't, you know, this is such a good conversation. It's so enlightening, like deep topics. And so I always feel like it's the morning, like we're drinking a. Dirty chi latte or whatever you like to drink for coffee in the morning, but regardless, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whenever you're watching or listening to this, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to, hello, and I'm so glad you're here today. I wanted to bring this up because I, this was something that I recently heard whenever I was. Partaking in a nutrition accountability group. I guess it was like a weight loss health journey nutrition accountability group. I thought of it more as nutrition focused, so that's why I call it in Nutrition Accountability Group. But the person that was running it is a registered dietician that I've loved for the last seven-ish years. Her name's Alana Olstein and her. Big program that she released and that I used whenever I first started. My health journey is to be mindset, and I still follow it pretty regularly. I find it's a very non restrictive way to go about whatever health goals that you have. And yeah, I just love it, but I'm not here to, I'm not here to promote that or anything like that. I just was on a call with her and she was talking about. When you are making progress in your, she was talking about weight loss. So we all know that EV health is not all about weight loss, but in this specific accountability group, it was about weight loss. So she was talking about weight loss and talking about when you are seeing progress in your weight loss or you are not seeing progress in your weight loss. So when you're losing weight or you're gaining weight. And that there are kind of three core pillars that fall into why that's happening. And as I was listening to it, I was thinking, these are great tips for weight loss and a health journey, and specifically for honing in your nutrition, but you actually could apply them to a lot of different parts of life. And so I was sitting there thinking about them and thinking about how I would love. To, I could see myself going to hang out with a girlfriend at a coffee shop or at a happy hour or whatever, and talking to them about like, yeah, I heard this thing. I thought it was really insightful and us getting to talk about that. So that's why I wanted to bring it on here.'cause I always think of it like I'm talking to you guys about this most recent thing that I learned and that is improving my life So all that to say, I'm really excited for this episode. I hope that it's really helpful for you and very tangible. I dunno why, but the number three has been really consistent lately. Like my last episode, I did three small habits that I have acquired over time. That have helped make me a more positive person, and I shared about those. And today I am kind of talking about the three pillars of why you're making progress or why you're not, and I don't know why. I guess maybe three is just a really easy bite-size, tangible thing that you can apply in your life. But hopefully listening to this episode, some of these things resonate with you and you can start to kind of audit the progress or the area of. Where you wanna be making progress and you're not, you can start to audit what things are affecting you the most in that area, and then maybe start to make some progress on them. Because being intentional and making progress in the things that we wanna make progress with, whether that's your relationships or your, it could be your family or it could be your finances, or it could be your career, it could be your health and wellness or whatever it is for you, we have to be aware of what we're already doing and what is already affecting us before we can correct it. You know, like you have to, you can't improve on something when you don't know what is keeping you from improving or helping you improve. So that's the basis of this episode. So the first one that she. Pointed out was nutrition and I kind of, because this is applying to all spheres of life and not just. Health and weight loss. I want to reframe that to consumption because she ultimately was talking about like, if you're not losing weight, there's three thing, three pillars of a reason why. And the first one is nutrition, and specifically the things that you're consuming, right? So if you don't really have a good grasp on what you're consuming when you're trying to lose weight, like if you're not tracking that in any sort of way, it's gonna be really hard for you to improve it. Because sometimes you can get to the end of the day and you don't even realize that, oh, I had this little snack here. And oh, when I went to the break room at work, I had a cookie there and dah, dah, dah. And your main meals can be really healthy. And then you can get to the end of the day, and then the next day you step on the scale and you haven't lost weight. You're like, what the heck? And you're feeling bloated and whatever, and you just don't even really, like, you don't even register all of the things that you're consuming these little. Bites while you're cooking dinner or you're snacking on chips in between meetings because you're just trying to get yourself through and maybe your core meals are kind of healthy or you don't feel like you ate that much that day. But then when you start to look at it and see the things that you actually are consuming, you're like, oh, actually I did have a cookie there. Or even like, I feel like wine gets really tricky because a serving of wine is five ounces, but at home nobody pours himself five ounces of wine. At least me and Jared don't because it always says the bottle holds five glasses. And Jared and are like, how does this only serve us both twice because it's supposed to be five glasses, so we really should have one more glass love, but nobody serves themselves five ounces wine. So. Knowing the difference between five ounces of wine and eight ounces of wine. All that to say is just that tracking what you're consuming is so helpful in anything that you're making progress on. Because like in the weight loss case, if you don't really know what you're consuming, then you're not gonna be able to improve on that or be like, oh, maybe I could do a five ounce glass of wine instead of an a heavy pour. Or I don't even know how much. But this applies to other things too, because when you think about consumption. All of the things that you are consuming are directly affecting the progress that you're making in a certain area. So for instance, with the weight loss thing, like even like social media and what we see on social media, if you're really working on your confidence, let's say, and your self-esteem and self love or self care or something like that, but then you get on social media and you're constantly seeing people. That make you feel bad about yourself or you're seeing really sarcastic memes. I love these, so I don't wanna hate on you too much, but sometimes it's not good for our brain to see these things, but like sarcastic memes I see. I feel like I see them a lot where it's like, oh me in the more me at the beginning of the year versus me in February 1st or something. And it's like showing that you've already given up on your goals or things like that, like that stuff is not helpful. I mean, it is. Funny. It is funny. I agree with it, but it's not helpful. And so limiting your consumption of what you're seeing on social media or even like in TV shows. I noticed this for a while. I was having some trouble, just some like body image issues for a while and I hadn't had those in a long time, but I just think as women, I mean probably as anybody, but. As women especially, I think that body image can be really hard and I realized everybody was watching Love Island and I really wanted to watch Love Island and within like minutes of them doing their introduction and the girls like shaking in their bikinis and dah dah and whatever, I realized this is not gonna be good for me. I need to turn this off. And sure, I watch all sorts of. Other things that are probably not good for me, but I could immediately sense myself comparing my body to theirs, and that is not helpful. So I know this is very body focused right now, but this could apply to relationships. So if you're really wanting to work on your relationship with your husband and you're constantly seeing things that are kind of putting husbands down, you know what I mean? They're funny. I, I know you guys, I know they're funny, but you're constantly seeing things that are like, oh, my husband, when I ask him to do something and they're making fun of the husband. I don't know, just. You know, the husband shaming videos, like that's probably not that helpful. Maybe it would be more helpful to start looking up things that are like great conversation starters to deepen your connection with your husband. Something like that. I just think so much of this goes into our brains and we don't even realize it, and we don't realize that we're consuming it. And it's the same thing with the food I was talking about earlier. If you don't realize that all day you're getting these little nuggets of information into your brain, your brain is gonna start acting accordingly, and you are, you kind of embody those things. Like you are not going to make progress in your relationship if you're constantly seeing husband shaming things because they're making you think all of the shaming things about your husband. Or if you're really wanting to work on becoming a more positive person in general, first of all, go listen to last week's episode. But if you are engaging in a lot of conversations that include a lot of complaining. That is something that you're consuming when you start going off on somebody, or not going off on somebody when you and someone else start going off on someone else and talking shit on them and just really complaining about everything. It could be at work or it could be. Your husband, like I said, or about your kids or whatever, and you're trying to become a more positive person that's not really helping you get there. So in this first pillar of consumption, I want you to audit it, like spend a day or two, you could even write it down, spend a day or two and ask yourself, is this moving me more toward the person that I wanna be? Or is it kind of taking away from the person that I would like to be? The second pillar, or second category I'm bringing up is your environment. So what you are constantly surrounded with. With the health example, it's really easy. Alana actually has a bunch of little phrases that she uses and one of them is out of sight, out of mind, and then it goes into insight and stomach. But it's like the idea that when you walk into your kitchen and the first thing you see is a jar of cookies, that is so much more. Accessible and convenient to just open the jar and eat a cookie because you're seeing it right there. It's right on the counter. It's so easy. Versus if you walk into the counter and you've got a thing of bananas on the counter, you might eat a banana instead. It's just accessibility. But I think that this is also the case when it comes to our environment with whatever else we're working on. So for instance, in your relationship, this is something that Jared and I started doing. My mom got us, it was really cute in our stocking. My mom got us this book that's like 365 questions a day to, to talk about with your partner and. I have it on our kitchen table because whenever Jared makes dinner, a lot of the time I go in there. Jared always makes dinner. I'm very lucky that I have a husband that likes to cook, but he always makes dinner, but I like to go in and keep him company. I'll have like a. Sugar-free soda or something while I'm sitting there with him, and we do one of the questions at that time, but because it's right there on our kitchen table, it's like a prompt for me versus coming in and having my phone on me and just kind of like scrolling while he's making dinner. You know what I mean? Like it. It's more accessible. I leave my phone in the other room and then I go in and even though I might not want to do a question that day, I do. And honestly, we miss it all the time. Like we have to do two or three questions a day just to catch up.'cause we don't do this every single night. There are nights that we have other things that we have to do in the evening. We don't eat, we don't eat in the kitchen or whatever, but if there's something that you wanna start doing consistently, then you need to have it in your environment where you're gonna see it and where it's very convenient and accessible. Your environment also includes the people that are surrounding you, right? So guys, I feel this way all the time. We need to audit the people that we are surrounding ourselves with. So. If there are people in your life, like if you're trying to become a PO more positive person, there are people in your life that every time that you guys hang out, you get into a complaint fest that is probably not helping you get closer to that goal. Or say that you have, maybe you have a career goal or an education goal or something like that, but the people that are in your life right now, like your main circle of friends, they're not really working toward anything in their career. They're pretty happy with where they're at in their career. It's not really gonna help you to be around them because their goals are not the same as yours. Find some people that make you excited about it and it, it doesn't necessarily have to be people that are also have the exact same career goals as you, But what I want you to do is think about when you leave a group of people or one person even, do you feel more lit up? Or more drained, just in general, assess where your energy's at and then specifically when it comes to the values that you are thinking about in your life right now. Like for me, I really wanna have healthy relationships. Do I leave someone or do I leave? A certain person and somehow we got into a spiral of shitting on our husbands the whole time. Or do I leave a person and somehow we got into a gossip fest and I'm talking behind people's backs that I love and care about. Like that is not, that's not someone that I really want to be increasing the amount of time that I'm around. You don't have to cut them outta your lives, but you can certainly. Audit. The fact that that's not where you wanna be going. And start to think about who are the people in my life that as soon as I leave, I'm like just really lit up and feel really positively. Or people in my life that are really kind and really, whatever the thing is, the value is that you have. Right? If you are, if you are working on your health goal, having people in your life that also value like whole foods and exercise and drinking water and healthy habits in general, having people in your life like that versus people who every time you get together they, they wanna get McDonald's, or every time you get together, it's all about alcohol again. Listen to me. I am not shaming McDonald's or alcohol. They have their place. Right. But I am just saying, when it's a pattern and when you start to audit the people around you, you start to realize, oh, this is some of what is keeping me back. That's the second pillar. It's the environment that you're choosing to be in, and you have every ability to change the environment you are choosing to be in, and the people that you are around in that environment. So that's the second pillar. I want you to think about that honestly right now. Like if it takes PO pausing the podcast and kind of going through the, maybe the top 10 people in your life that you spend time with and being like, how do I feel when I leave this person? Or just in the next like week? Think about as soon as you get in the car after hanging out with someone, or as soon as someone walks out of your house, if you're hosting, they walk out the door. How do you feel? Do you feel worse about yourself? Do you feel better about yourself? Do you feel empowered? Do you feel drained? Do you feel, what do you feel? I, it just, it is such a good audit that we don't do because we get into this repetition with people that we're always spending time with, sometimes that can also be us getting into a rut and you might not wanna be in the same place in five years that you are now or in three months that you are now. And a lot of that has to do with the people that are surrounding us and the influence that they have on us. So. Take an audit of that. And the last thing that I want you to take an audit of, I keep saying audit and it almost feels like it's not a real word anymore. You know, when you say something so many times then it's like, wait, is this even a real word? But anyway, uh, the last thing I want you to take account of is the emotion. So the last pillar, so before I said. Nutrition or consumption, consumption environment and emotion. These are the three things that keep us from making progress or drive us to make progress. So what emotion do you feel around the thing that you are striving towards? So like if it is a career goal, if you feel disappointment about not receiving a promotion, or do you feel jealousy over someone else? Or do you feel fear of failure if you were to try to go out for. A promotion, something like that. What is the emotion that is driving behind it? Because that's gonna help you get an idea of what you need to work on. Because I know for me, sometimes I'm not even really aware of what emotion it actually is until later I think about it and I'm like, oh yeah, that was what that was. But when we get really in tune with what it is that we're feeling, we can start to work past that. So Obviously in the nutrition example, she was talking about emotional eating, like. Really hone in whenever you start sabotaging yourself, what, hone in on whatever it is that that emotion came from. So is it fear? Is it failure? Is it sadness? Is it disappointment, anger? What is it? And hone in on that so that you can be more aware of it in the future and maybe find a different coping mechanism.. So this is something that I learned really early in mine in Jared's marriage. Gosh, I'm talking so much about him on this podcast episode. I hope that he's okay with it. I know he is. But when Jared and I were first married, I realized that I kind of had this inset fear Of him not thinking that I'm smart or that I'm capable. So weird because I think it's just because he's a very smart, capable man and I've always felt like I'm also smart and independent and capable, but sometimes it can cause issues because if he like questions me doing something and he's not really questioning me, he's just asking me a question like, oh, what are you doing with that kitchen utensil in the kitchen or something? Then my immediate response is, he thinks I'm dumb. He thinks I can't do this. Why does he think he could do it better than me? Crazy. Uh, a little bit of insight into Morgan's crazy brain, but I've worked a lot on this because at some point we had a conversation very early on in our marriage where I finally was able to work through why, like that that was what I was feeling, and I, because those emotions, you don't really thi realize that you're feeling them at the forefront whenever you react, when, when you're very reactive. At least for me, like I didn't realize that was what was going through my brain that was a fear that I had or that a, a thought that I had or a belief that I had. But now that I'm aware of it, it can give me more pause for when I am feeling like, oh, I'm about to have a major reaction to a minor question. Why is that? Oh, it's because of this. It just is helpful. So it's helpful in relationships. I also think it's really helpful in the workplace because whenever you get really angry, like at an email that someone sent, like why is it that you're getting angry? Is it because you think that they're saying that you're not capable? Like I was just saying before, is it because you feel. Unappreciated, is it because you, you know, figure out what that emotion is because it's possible that you're seeking validation in the wrong place and that you could be finding other coping mechanisms or other outlets to help with that emotion. But sometimes we just do the counterintuitive thing. We feel this emotion and we do the counterintuitive thing rather than the thing that makes the most sense. Like if you're really, if you have a big fear, Like with podcasting or something like you're, you're a creator and you wanna release a new episode, but you find yourself procrastinating and you're like, why am I procrastinating? And some of it is a deep set fear, a failure in the back of your brain. And so Your actions come straight from the emotion that is holding you back. So figure out what the emotion is that is holding you back. I don't know if this is super clear. If you guys want me to talk more about this on another podcast episode, I absolutely can and like delve more into it because I feel like I'm only scraping the surface surface right now when it comes to sabotaging actions that come from an emotional STEM point, but I think this is really, really helpful When you're auditing why I'm making progress in my health journey, or why my marriage feels so strained right now, or why my relationship with my sister feels crazy right now. Like where those emotions, once you're aware of them, you can figure out like. How to respond better and be less reactive. Obviously it takes a lot of time, but we have to be aware of these things before we can fix them. So hopefully this is helpful. Those are kind of the three pillars of what can help you make progress or what can hold you back from making progress in whatever area of life it is that you are working on. And if you resonated with any of these things or any of my goofy stories that I shared, please let me know. I always love to hear from you guys and love you. Thank you.