39: Don’t Quit, Modify: The Power of Small Wins & Building Strong Habits

Discussed in today's episode:

🌱 Why building strong habits requires consistency through modification > rigidity

🌱 The satisfaction of living up to your potential

🌱 How to keep promises to yourself and stay consistent

🌱 Redefining what “showing up for yourself every day” actually looks like

🌱 Creating realistic standards for yourself based on your energetic capacity/seasons of life

🌱 Deconditioning from the belief that having strong habits = all or nothing perfection (aka being rigid instead of modifying to be consistent)

🌱 Learning about & honoring your natural energy fluctuations - especially as a WOMAN!!!!!

& more!

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YouTube: @Oreaganic (https://youtube.com/@oreaganic?si=-G95qvftDopdbCWv)

Xoxo, Reagan🤍🌱

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the organic podcast. I'm your host, Reagan, and today's episode I'm talking about the power of small wins. Small daily wins, small habits. Not something that's new. This is not a new invention of an idea by any means. I'm sure if you do not live under a rock like Patrick Starr, you would know that books like Atomic Habits and probably a bajillion accounts on Instagram, on YouTube will talk to you about the power of making small changes and building strong habits and blah blah blah blah blah. We've heard this talk a million times. But sometimes I feel like in this whole wave of information overload, sometimes we just need to hear something like in a different way or from a different perspective, or from someone who just puts it in the perspective of, like, yeah, I know everyone says this, but like seriously though, it actually works. And today I'm gonna attempt to put this concept into a way for you to understand, in a sense of like, it's not just some mystical, like magical, oh, that would be nice if you could just make small changes and then change your whole life. Like, no, this shit actually works. This has come up for me a couple times this week. So without further ado, let's get into the episode. Welcome to the organic podcast. I'm your host, Reagan, mechanical engineer, lifelong athlete, and recovered overachiever, here to empower you to pursue your highest potential and live freely as your happiest, most organic self. Every week we'll dive into topics ranging from personal growth, mindset hacks, psychology, and a blend of science and spirituality to give you all the tools you need to stop living on the money pilot and start creating a life of freedom, meaning, and filling it as your most organic. If you're ready to become ready to do something, so I have come up with a new rule for myself. It's not actually that new, but I've come up with a rule for myself that as soon as I think about something that I really don't want to do, I really don't wanna study for this exam, I really don't wanna, I don't know, you know, put the dishes away or whatever, whatever it may be, if there's something I think of that I don't feel like doing, I have really tried to implement this habit of immediately doing that thing. Like not thinking about it, not pushing it off, not questioning it. Literally just immediately I think to myself, oh, I really don't feel like doing that, but I get up and I go do it. Or I start doing it. I start taking the action, making the move, cleaning the dishes, opening my laptop, whatever it may be. And I feel like this has been really, really, really helpful for me when it comes to not procrastinating things and obviously not avoiding things that otherwise I'd probably just push off and push off and push off until the last minute, or until I just feel so bothered by something that I just have to handle it. As we know, the more we push something off, the more stress out we feel. And if you just constantly avoid something and you're constantly just pushing things off, it doesn't go anywhere. Your problems do not go away when you ignore them. And the things that you still need to do or the habits that you want to implement, they don't just vanish if you just stop thinking about them. If anything, they just add another tab into your mental load that does not go away until you actually handle it. And why I've implemented this kind of rule for myself is because I feel like it actually helps me have an efficient way to clear tabs for my mind and to keep myself in good standings with just feeling good about myself and not feeling stressed out, not feeling weighed down by even these tiny little thoughts of, oh, I still need to do the dishes, or oh, I need to water my plants, or oh, I need to, I really need to study tonight, or I really need to do this, I really need to do that, whatever. When I'm not weighed down by all of these tiny decisions that seem meaningless, that seem really menial, I notice that there's so much more space for me to feel motivated and honestly really good about myself and proud of myself and and feel happy about the fact that I actually tackled doing the thing that I didn't feel like doing because now I feel so much better after doing it. And this concept can be applied to, you know, so many different areas of life. Exercising, implementing a habit, whatever that may look like for you. It a lot of areas of life can apply to this fact of the small changes and the small decisions that you make every day are absolutely the most important ones. And I wanted to make this a podcast episode because even though I talked about it in the intro, this is not a new, a new concept that small changes, you know, really are the thing that actually shift your life. But I think we can hear that from other people. We hear it online, we hear it in books, we do whatever, we read it. And it's really easy to say, like, oh yeah, yeah, that's true, that makes sense. But until you've actually experienced it, or maybe until you you hear more experiences of other people who are telling you firsthand, like, no, guys, it actually is that simple, like it really is that important. Sometimes it just doesn't sink in as much until you hear those things, and until you actually see for yourself through your own experience how essential it is. And I have learned this week and really felt that kind of experience where it is that essential and it has made that much of an impact on my day-to-day life, on just how I feel about myself in general, that I am compelled to share it on the podcast and to put it into the immortal standing of being on this podcast on whatever listening platform until the end of time. As someone who is I'm notoriously really hard on myself. Like I I grew up, I went through high school, college, like all of schooling being very high achieving, very much on the grind, very much so basing my worth off of how well I did things, how much I did, the you know, the quality of my work, the quality, how good my grades were, how well I played in sports, all the things. And I've grown out of that a lot, like the sense of basing all of my worth off of productivity, but I can still feel the sense of being hard on myself or being kind of hardwired to be productive all the time. And something that's helped kind of neutralize this, that's that's helped me be a little bit more self-motivated from a place of genuinely wanting to take care of myself and do the best for myself, just out of self-love, not out of a place of shame, is to think of you know, doing things that I want to avoid or implementing stronger habits as small wins. That's why I said it like that in the intro. Small daily wins. Because when you think of something, like I just I feel like the word win just carries such such a good positive fun energy to it when it comes, like, yeah, this is such a win for me today. Like, you know what? I may have gotten my 10,000 steps and hit my workout goal at like 9 45 p.m. last night. But you know what? That's still a win for me. Like, is it a win for winding down for bed with plenty of time and not getting myself super active, blah blah blah? Like, maybe not. Maybe it's not a win in that way, but it's a win for me because I chose to still stay committed to myself and show up for myself and hit my little stupid aura ring activity goal and get my 10,000 steps because I genuinely want to take care of myself. I want to do it from a place of self-love and self-care. And I feel like the the term self-love and self-care, those those two terms are very, I also feel like they're very overused or they've just become so oversaturated almost, particularly online, where it feels like when you're saying, I'm doing this out of self-love, either some people kind of just roll their eyes, or it kind of just feels like a word or phrase that doesn't really have much oomph to it, you know? Because it's just like, yeah, okay, self-love, that's great. But when you think about it, self-love is really just a reflection of the standards that you keep for yourself. And I think we all know, I'm sure all of us have experienced to some degree that it feels really good when you're actually in a rhythm following good routines, good structures, good habits, when like you know what it feels like to be taking care of yourself and to be living up to standards that you would like to live by that feel supportive for you. Not in this way of like all this pressure or I have to do this, I have to be fit, or else I'm like not worthy, or I don't deserve to be treated well by other people. Like, not what I'm saying here. We all feel good when we have strong habits, when we have strong routines, and when we actually live up to what we're saying we're gonna what we say we're gonna do. We all feel this sense of dissonance inside of us, this lack of coherence internally, which then reflects to how we feel and how we project ourselves externally onto others or onto the world when we know that we are not actually living up to our potential and that we have more that we can be giving. We have more that we can be doing for ourselves, we could be showing up better, but there's a very thin line between self-shame here and doing this from a place of self-love and caring for yourself and wanting to treat yourself well solely because you know that you deserve it and you know that you want to live up to the fullest potential that you have. Like, I don't think any of us feel good to feel like we could be doing more, or there's a way we could be showing up better, or like, oh, really, it doesn't feel great that I was just on my phone for this long when like I know I probably shouldn't have done that, and it probably would have been better if I went for a walk, or doesn't feel great if you don't hit a goal for the day. But it's such a fine line, such a fine line between wanting to live up to these standards and also wanting to do so from a positive place and not from a place of shame. Those are two very different things, and they're definitely a lesson that I have learned in the past two years more so than ever before. And honestly, it's it just feels really nice to completely shift that perspective from like, oh my god, I have to go work out, I have to follow my habits, I have to go to bed early, I have to do this, or if I fail, then I'm a piece of shit. It feels terrible to think that way. What feels really good is to say, wow, I am so blessed that I get to work out. Do you know how good I'm gonna feel after I finish this workout? Even if I go walk outside for five minutes today, I'm gonna feel so good about the fact that I still stayed consistent, that I still showed up for myself today. Even if it did not look like a full 45-minute workout or I didn't study for two hours straight, but I studied for 20 minutes, that's still consistency. That's still showing up for yourself. And this is really the point that I want to drive home. Something I have had to learn over time is the fact that being consistent and living up to your standards for yourself does not have to look like you are doing a 45-minute workout every single day. You are sleeping for eight hours every single day. Like it doesn't have to look like such definitive rigidity and such clear black and white, all in or all out. Like there is no if you want to actually stay consistent and you want to live up to the standards for yourself and your potential, you need to work with the fact that you're not gonna have the same exact energy levels every day, especially if you're a woman. Especially if you're a woman. Women operate on completely different hormonal cycles than men that very deeply impact your energy levels and just like literally so many things. The lack of education around the four different phases of the menstrual cycle compared to men having a like 24-hour cycle of their hormones, it's actually wild. Like, if you are a woman listening to this and you do not know what the four cycle phases are, please, for the love of God, I say this is from a place of like this has helped me so much. Like, find an Instagram account that speaks to these speaks to these cycle phases that speaks to the changes that naturally happen throughout the cycle. Anyways, that side note is back to the point of the fact that you have different capacities every day. You have different capacities in every season. You could be going through a season of life where you're super busy, where you're really focused on this one priority, and it means that you can't pour as much into other areas of your life. Instead of thinking to yourself, wow, I'm such a piece of shit, because yeah, I'm focused a lot on this one thing right now, but I'm not working out as much, or I'm not getting as much sleep, or I'm not doing this perfectly, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead of doing that, what's actually going to help you a lot more is to honor the fact that you are in a season of life that requires you to allocate more of your energy to one thing than the other areas of your life. And when you actually allow yourself to go with that flow and to honor that and respect it, you give yourself so much more freedom and clarity to understand that you can work with the energy that you are currently living in. You can work with the season, and it allows you to have so much more freedom and peace and expansiveness and feel a lot less friction while you're going through such a season of life. And I think that lack of acknowledgement or respect for the fact that you have different capacities comes from this conditioned belief that we always have to give the same exact amount of output all the time, every day, 24-7, in order for us to earn the respect or the ability to say that we've been consistent with something and that we've lived up to our standards and that we're actually fulfilling like the promises that we made to ourselves. What really actually allows you to fulfill the promises to yourself is to allow yourself to have a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to what showing up for yourself looks like every single day. So, with the example of working out, like I mentioned before, if you're someone who says, I am committed, I'm the kind of person who works out every day and moves my body and I show up with self-respect in that way. That is not always gonna look like doing a 45-minute full lift session or running eight miles a day. It's not always gonna look like full workout. You're gonna have crazy days where you have barely any time to yourself, or there's something going on, or you're traveling, or whatever, and you're not gonna be able to fit in the exact same kind of workout that you would always have. But you have no way, or there's no benefit of you shaming yourself for that. You have no way to actually access this level of consistency if you're expecting yourself to fulfill these one set black and white based on expectation of the only way that I can be showing up for myself is if I do this one exact thing. When realistically you're not gonna be able to do that every single day, no matter what. There's gonna be ex extenuating extenuating, extenuating, hello, whatever, extenuating circumstances that might prevent you from that. What has helped me in this whole conundrum here, because especially as a former athlete, like if you're a former athlete, you freaking know. I'd still say I'm an athlete. I play, I play a freaking Cowwood Adult League, I play a Sunday league, get out of here. I'm still an athlete once a week. But anywho, if you're an athlete or if you're someone who is trained especially for some intense kind of sports events, marathon, whatever it may be, you probably have the same kind of conditioning that I had, which was like, oh my god, a workout can't just be like a 20-minute walk. Like, are you fucking kidding me? I'm not some soft little bitch. Like, a full workout is gonna be like me getting a proper sweat in, or like me running like a mile at full speed out of absolutely nowhere, or a full lift session, or doing a bunch of like soccer conditioning drills. Like, that's a full workout. A full workout is not just a measly little walk or three minutes of jumping jacks or three sets of 10 push-ups. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's not a workout. That's the conditioning that I had, and that's honestly how I still kind of feel sometimes. But it takes genuine thought and intentional thought to get myself out of this pattern and back into the pattern of like, okay, working out every day, moving my body, showing up for myself. Yes, ideally, what I'm used to, what I like to do is workouts that feel like a quote unquote legit workout to me, but I'm not gonna hold myself to the standard of the only way that I can say that I have honored myself and lived up to my expectations is to do a full out, like perfect quote unquote workout every single day. Like now I've come to terms with the fact that moving my body and working out can look like taking a walk. It can look like doing fucking rasputine on just dance, like or where have you been, or just doing something it like in my home, or something smaller that doesn't have to be like a full session because it's like you know, an adjusted size of a workout, but it's still me showing up for myself. Do you get what I'm trying to say? I feel like I'm saying this in a very long-winded way, but the whole point I'm trying to make here is that in order to have these wins for yourself every day, in order to build strong habits, in order to show up consistently and to live up to your potential and live up to the standards that you want to have for yourself, you need to have some kind of clear baseline understanding of what that looks like for you every single day, like eating healthy, working out, whatever that may be. And with this clear baseline, you need to have flexibility in order to actually expect yourself to maintain a sense of consistency, particularly if you are someone who has highly varying energy levels. Even me saying that, part of me is like, yeah, but are you just being soft? Like, what do you mean varying energy levels? If you want to do it, if you want to lock in so bad, you should be able to just do it. And I think this is also past conditioning just screaming through me right now. But I'm just gonna say, if what I just said, the thought of like, you know, am I being soft or am I not doing enough, if that came up for you, I just encourage you to get curious about where that comes from and why you think that it is less good or not as good to have some sort of modified workout. When I was in high school, I did this summer strength and conditioning program every single year. It was lifting, it was running, it was ab workouts, it was agility, it was all the good things to get me, you know, nice and in shape for soccer season every summer. And there was one coach in particular who would always say the exact same phrase, particularly with like the ab workouts, because I feel like some people could really be suffering during those. I don't know if you guys have ever had to hold like a whack ass ab workout, but like you you will just be going through the trenches, especially in those circumstances, I feel. But this instructor, this coach always had the phrase, don't quit modified. And that was something that like I kind of made jokes about. Not not like it was actually funny, but I don't know, I just it just like really stuck with me in a good way, where I was like, I would say it to like my friends, I would like say it to like my friends, that's where the joke comes in. But don't quit modify is the perfect summary to everything I am trying to say when it comes to habits, when it comes to finding small wins for yourself. You can find the wins just in the fact that you are not quitting and you are still showing up for yourself every day. Whether you have to modify how that looks for you, as long as you are showing up consistently every single day, I promise you, you would feel like you are getting far, far, far, far, far closer to your goals and living up to your potential, which will help you feel more of a coherence within you and feel more satisfied with your life by doing so. A tangible takeaway from this that you could reflect on listening to this episode, journal on it, whatever you want to do. But just think about the current habits that you have, like your current day-to-day life. Like, what do you actually do? What do you actually spend your time on? And what of those things that you spend your time on, what actually gives you more energy? What makes you feel good about yourself? And what are some things that you're just like, oh, like I don't really like that I do this, but I feel like I do it because I don't know what else to do. I first thing that comes to mind for me is like my phone or scrolling, whatever. I feel like that's a common one for a lot of people. But once you've differentiated and reflected on those parts of your life, if you okay, good, it's data, it's information, now we can learn from it. But moving on beyond that, how would you feel, like, what would actually make you feel good about yourself every day? Like, how does showing up for yourself actually look for you? Does it look like a workout? Does it look like food? Does it look like getting enough sleep? Like, what are the basics of taking care of yourself that you know will make you feel like wow, I'm actually like really proud of myself for living up to the potential of what I want to do today and like keeping my promises to myself. Kind of just brainstorm a few of those things for yourself, and then once you have those things, I want you to think about the like almost like three different tier levels for how this can look for you every day. So, for example, a workout every single day. If you're gonna say to yourself, I want to work out every single day, that can either look like you know, tier three, we'll say that's the top tier, being I want to say tier one is top tier. Whatever, tier three the lowest, we'll make tier three the lowest. Tier three, the lowest one, would be like minimum some like something that feels so small, it's ridiculous. But you need to honor the fact that it still counts, such as three sets of ten push ups, doing jumping jacks, like literally doing some like qi gong, like something very small, or just. Stretching some form of movement for your body that part of you might feel like is a little bit ridiculous or doesn't really count, but still counts towards your movement. Like make that tier three, tier two can be some intermediate, tier one, the top one can be, you know, your full 45-minute lift session, going for a run, playing a sport, doing whatever it may be. And once you have the structure of like the tier levels for how you show up for yourself in the different areas of your life that you want to prioritize, you have a much more reliable blueprint when it comes to showing up for yourself every day and taking the steps that you need to have these small daily wins that will allow you to feel so much better about yourself and actually bring you closer to the person that you know you want to be, that you know fulfills your highest potential, and someone that you are like proud of. Proud of in the sense of you know that you're taking care of yourself and you're actually showing up for yourself in that way. This kind of system I have genuinely used for workouts, as I've talked about workouts this whole time, but I've used it for workouts, I've used it for even studying for my exam. Like I used to tell myself the only way that I'm, you know, do good enough with studying is if I study for a full hour and a half and I finish a whole video or I do whatever. But now I'm like, no, studying for me, I'm happy with myself and I'm happy and feel like I have a win if I have even studied for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, because something is better than nothing. Something is better than nothing. So find the ways that you can modify for yourself and then actually live up to honor and respect the fact that you showing up for yourself every single day can look like something that does not feel like you're doing that much, that does not feel like you're giving quote unquote enough, or you're doing it in a legitimate way, or that it's actually that substantial to make a difference. But it is where you have these small wins, these small, seemingly, you know, insignificant choices that you make every day, building up those decisions consistently is what allows you to build momentum, to continue creating more change in your life, and it gives you the kind of positive dopamine hit that then creates a positive upward spiral for bringing you to a place that is better and greater and more fulfilling of your full maximum potential, and therefore leading you to a place that allows you to be more fully yourself and live up to everything that you came here to do in this life and the person that you came here to be. So I hope this episode helped you feel a little bit more empowered when it comes to making daily decisions and understanding how important it is to not quit when it comes to building habits, but just modify. Don't quit, modify. Like my high school summer strength and conditioning coach always said, please listen to her, listen to me. I hope that it's helped you, and I hope that you guys have a great time building your habits and continuing to show up as the best possible version of yourselves because I believe in you, I have faith in you, and I promise you that you are capable of doing so much more than you give yourself credit for. You truthfully, honestly, as cliche as it sounds, just need to believe it. So I hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Go be your most organic selves, and I will see you in the next one.