26. You Are Not Broken, You Just Lack Self-Trust

Stop chasing fixes for a problem you don’t have. You’re not broken, and the harder you try to bully your body into submission, the faster burnout arrives. We offer a grounded, evidence-based path to change that respects biology, honours boundaries and builds real confidence you can feel in daily life.

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I am happy we can share this journey of leveling up, together. Send me a text by clicking the link at the top of the description. I would love to hear from you :) See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

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This podcast is intended for general educational purposes only. The content discussed does not replace professional medical, nutritional, or fitness advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual needs and responses vary, especially with exercise and nutrition. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making significant lifestyle changes.

Transcript

You Are Not Broken

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hello, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Vita with Alita. I'm Alita, and today, before we start, I want to say something clearly, and I really want you to hear it. I'm not here to fix you, and I don't think anyone or anyone who tries to sell you the promise that they're here to fix you is, I guess, wrong. You're not broken. And I know that might sound strange coming from a wellness podcast because so much of the wellness space is built on this idea that there's something wrong with you that needs correcting. That you know you need to be more disciplined, more motivated, more optimized, more, more, more. But if you constantly feel like you're behind, and if that was actually working, it it probably would have worked by now. You probably wouldn't be here listening, you probably wouldn't be out there trying to consume more content to be better, become better, and feel better. So today I want to talk about what evidence-based wellness actually looks like in real life, and why I don't believe in changing yourself out of hate, and why learning to trust yourself is actually one of the most powerful health skills that doesn't gain enough credit. Maybe we don't really talk about it, or it's just not shared enough. So let's dive a little bit into I guess we can call it the problem with modern wellness. Let's be honest for a second. A lot of wellness advice only works if you dislike yourself a little bit. You know, if you believe that your body needs fixing, you go and work out, you believe that your habits aren't good enough, you you do something to change them, that your rest has to be earned, or that you didn't do enough, or that you're not enough, or something rooted in a little bit of dislike. And I'm saying this as somebody who it would probably be in my best interest if you listened, for whatever the motivation or reason is, right? But the problem with that approach is that people don't change, and if you do, it's temporary, and the change never actually lasts. Because shame and negative self-talk doesn't actually build sustainable habits, it builds short, short bursts of effort, and this eventually will lead to burnout. And we actually know this from behavior change research. Long-term change comes from intrinsic motivation, from feeling safe, feeling capable, feeling supported, and not from fear or punishment. You know, it's not think of it as like if you're doing it because out of hate or you're doing something because you you're not able to do something else. It feeds this vicious cycle of just like not wanting really to do it. But despite kind of knowing this and that research being out there, a lot of the advice that we're given keeps us in this constant state of like self-surveillance, needing to track, needing to optimize, constantly comparing. And that's not really wellness, that's just that's just stress disguised as self-improvement, optimization, becoming better, this, that, and the other. So I'm gonna use this episode to kind of highlight what I want to call or what I've come up with known as the Vita framework. And I've I think I've incorporated this sort of framework in other episodes, maybe not exclusively, um, like mentioning it, but you'll see that the ideas are hopefully constant themes that you'll find and things that I personally think will truly help on this like wellness journey that you're hopefully partaking out of out of self-love. So let's start with the V. The first part V is validating the body. And no, I don't mean that and like ignoring your goals and pretending everything is perfect and just sitting there validating yourself and not ever wanting to strive for anything beyond what you have in front of you. It means starting from the assumption that your body is not the enemy. You know, your body is not working against you because it hates you. Your the world is not working, like nothing is working against you. Your mind is not working against you because it hates you. You just have to learn to understand how it works and appreciate that it works in a way that's to support you. So we're starting from the assumption that our body is not the enemy. When you're tired, that doesn't mean your body is just being lazy to be lazy. When you're overwhelmed, that doesn't just mean you're being dramatic and you need to get over it. Or when you feel like you're not progressing and you're like, what's wrong? Why I'm doing all the right things. All these things are forms of communication. And when you stop fighting those signals, you actually gain more control, not less. Real wellness will actually start when you stop asking, how do I force myself to do better? And you start asking, what is my body asking for right now? Let's give a practical example here. Let's say you're always tired and you feel like you're always behind, you're so overwhelmed, but you never actually give your body the time of day to take care of it, to nurture it properly, to sleep properly, whatever take care of it means. And then you're always fighting against it. You're just creating this vicious cycle for yourself and it's not going to end well. And always pushing yourself and always wanting to be better and optimize because you feel like you have to work against your body, is never going to bring you the results that you want. You have to work with your body, you have to work with your human psychology, with your nature, with your biology in order to feel safe in your body and see true progress. So remember, always ask, okay, what does my body need right now? What is it asking for right now? So, V, we're validating that your body is its entity, it's a thing that's not working against you, it has a natural rhythm, a natural way of being, and we have to see that and accept it. All right, so I want to be very clear about something for this next thing. We should be trying to change, or I should say evolve, out of a place of love and not hate. And I've talked about this a lot too. I think wanting to change does not mean that you hate yourself. But why you want to change matters more than is ever discussed. There's a huge difference between saying I need to change because I'm not good enough, and I want to change because I care about myself, because I want to see myself grow, because I know I can do better, because I believe in myself, fill in the blank, but not because you're not enough. One, the first one is rooted in like this fear, and then any other one that I mentioned, you can think of this as rooted in self-respect. And here's the thing maybe the actions might be similar, you know, like the you going to the gym or you doing a specific diet or whatever the action is that you're trying to implement. Yeah, they might be the same, but your body knows the difference. Your mind knows the difference. Energetically, it's different. And when change comes from self-hatred, it's just aggressive, it's stressful, it's not enjoyable, it's it's exhausting. But when it comes from self-trust, it becomes consistent, it becomes filled with grace and forgiveness if you're not exactly doing what you said you were gonna do. And you don't need to bully yourself into becoming better, you need to feel safe enough to grow, and that goes back to validating your body. If you're doing it out of a place of self-respect and self-trust, your body will feel safe, your body's going to respond. You know, our bodies are great, adaptable machines, and they are energetic beings, and they're going to respond to something coming out of love. Everything responds to love, but nothing ever comes out of like yelling or aggressiveness, you know, everything from relationships to like your dog to how you handle your day, like everything comes out of a place of love, and the exact same thing should apply to your body. All right. With that in mind, we're gonna move into the I. So the next sort of part of the framework, which is intentionally choose. And we talked a lot about intentionality, especially bringing that into the new year for 2026. But intentionally choosing, and this is where your boundaries live, and this is where priorities live, and boundaries could be a whole separate topic, but in a nutshell here, you don't need to do everything, you don't need to say yes to everything, and you definitely don't need to keep saying yes just because you're afraid of missing out, or you don't need to keep saying yes because you feel like it's what you ought to do, right? If everything is important and you're always making everything feel so important and always acting on urgency, like nothing actually is important, nothing actually is urgent, and your body then doesn't know the difference, you just feel depleted. Intentional living isn't about doing more, it's about actually deciding what matters most and letting the rest fall away. And I think we're where I sometimes still go wrong with boundaries or something I'm still evolving in is boundaries doesn't mean being mean, it doesn't mean saying no, like I don't care. It doesn't mean making belittling the other person or making them feel bad for whatever. Boundaries just means knowing yourself and saying, okay, that's that's not something that's not serving me right now, but you can frame it in a kind way. I appreciate the invite, I appreciate the effort, I appreciate that you see things this way, but that's not doesn't align with like what I see for myself. It's not something I enjoy doing anymore. It's not something that I want to do at the moment. I have other priorities right now that I would like to focus on. I appreciate your understanding. Thank you for understanding. I hope that we can catch up again later. I hope that we can do this again in the future. I hope that we can figure out something else that works for both of us. Whatever you figure out based on the situation, but you can you can kind of wrap the message or the boundary in kindness and love and clear communication. It doesn't have to be aggressive, but by doing that, you are intentionally choosing what you want to spend your energy on and what you don't. And that's that's showing leadership over your own life, and that goes back to building that self-trust that you want to have with yourself. And building that self-trust is only going to positively compound, it's going to continue this positive cycle of your body responding well, you responding well, you being in a better mental headspace. And I think the topic of boundaries goes really well into this idea that I've previously mentioned about parenting yourself and how parenting yourself equals confidence. And confidence is one of the most, I think, misunderstood concepts we have. We think that confidence is about the loudest person in the room, the person who's able to go up at the front of the room and talk to everyone, the one who is fearless, the one who has it all figured out. And sure, those things can come from a place of confidence and they can mean confidence, but they can also be faked. True confidence means that you know that you have your own back and knowing that you can trust yourself. It's being able to say no without spiraling, it's being able to set a priority or set a goal for yourself and honoring it kindly. It's trusting yourself when someone else is disappointed. It's making a decision that you think other people may not agree with, but you know in your heart it's the right thing for you. And that's what I mean when I say parenting yourself. You become the person who protects your energy instead of constantly abandoning yourself for approval. So this nicely segues into the next part of the framework, the T. And that's tolerating discomfort. Here's the uncomfortable part, and I'm not going to sugarcoat this. When you start living intentionally, some people may not like it. And you may not like it at first because if you have these especially like people-pleasing tendencies where conflict is just a complete no-go in your books, you, the people around you, might start being confused, might be disappointed, might even give you pushback, like, oh, you've changed, you've changed, why? I don't understand, like whatever. And that discomfort doesn't mean you're wrong. It's just different. And when things are different, obviously questions are raised. And it means also that you're probably in a place where you're no longer overfunctioning just to keep the peace. And that's growth. And that's a way to show yourself that you're letting go of control, especially control over other people, over other people's feelings. And it frees up an incredible amount of energy for yourself. And that energy belongs back with you, and you can use that energy to refill your cup to be able to give better. You can use that energy to put in places in things, in relationships, in work that is meaningful to you. And none of this is going to come out of a place of being aggressive, being like, this is my boundary. And if you don't listen, this, that, and the other. That's not what this conversation is about. At the end of the day, it's all goes back to being rooted in love and respect for yourself and for those around you. And you kind of have to show the people around you like this is sort of my this is the book, the guidebook to deal with me, to be with me, to handle me, to whatever. Respect it. You respect it, great. You have a mutually respectful relationship. If not, I'm sorry, and I'm gonna move on. And there's no ifs and buts about it, and there's nothing wrong with that. So far, we've discussed V, which is validating the body and understanding that your body is not the enemy. We have I, which is intentionally choosing, being able to set priorities and boundaries, and intentionally deciding where you want to put your energy in, and also intentionally deciding where you don't want to put your energy in, and and T, tolerating the discomfort of that decision. All right, our last part of the framework, which is A, is accumulating evidence for yourself. I talk about this all the time. Journal, take pictures, write it out. But I don't know how you scrapbook it, however, you want to do it, because your brain is not, it's not like objectively seeing things the way they are, and that's it. Your brain is gonna forget how far you've come the second things get hard. Your brain is going to only look for the things that you are putting energy in. And what I mean by that is if you're looking for, I don't know, like red flags in your partner, you will spot them. If you're looking for positive things in your life, and that's why being thankful and grateful are so important. If you have like a positive outlook on life, things will just look a little more positive. And it's not a thing about being blind to the other side or being blind to or neglecting the negatives, it's just about the lens in which you see through life. And accumulating evidence is a way to remind yourself and your brain of like, look, I can do it, I can do hard things, and you know, this is why I'm such a big believer in evidence books. Logging progress through photos, journaling, training notes, reflections. It's not to obsess about them, but just to remember. Especially when times get hard, you open it and you're like, look, I can do it. I did it then, I can do it now. If anything, I can do it even better today. And confidence grows when you can look back and say, I've done hard things before, I can do this too. Oh, look, at that time I set a boundary. Wow, that's that's self-love. Okay, so you can set this even harder boundary today. You've done it in this small place before, you can do it in this bigger place today. So, a little wrap-up. This podcast isn't about fixing yourself. You're not broken, and I hope you never ever leave a wellness space thinking that you are and that you are something to be fixed. There are habits, ways of thinking, you know, like things that you can improve on and evolve and want to be better at, but never think of it as oh, I'm broken. My background, my family life, it made me, it broke me, I'm a broken thing. You're not broken, you just are becoming self-aware and realize that there are better or there could be a better life out there for you. And it's learning about how to live in your body without being at war with it. If this episode resonated with you, I just started a new Instagram where I'm sharing more of this, you know, evidence-based, but trying to ground it to real life. I'll leave the link in the description. Please send us a message. That link is also in the description. I would love to hear from you, your thoughts on the on the show and potential episodes that you'd like me to talk about. And send me a message and tell me what exactly you're navigating right now. I read every single one, I might even pin it on the podcast website. So, yeah, share with a friend. And remember, the Vita framework will try to use it through every episode to try and build you a life rooted in evidence-based wellness just for a happier version of you. All right, everyone. Take care and see you on the next one.