167 Becoming The Version of You Who's Done It

When it comes to your health and body goals, strategy is not your problem. The problem is that change requires YOU to change. You need to become the version of you who’s done it. You want to weight 130 lbs - you need to eat like a 130 lb woman. 

You’ll learn:

• My new Identity Exercise 
• A useful reframe on discomfort
• The four steps of becoming the next version of you: Awareness, Embodiment, Aligned Action, Transformation

• Shape Shift Program LEARN MORE
• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Hi, and welcome to The Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. My work is here to offer you specialized mind and body practices to shift into the next version of you, one in which you feel in charge around food, great in your body, and connected to yourself. I recently pledged that I was going to. Spend 2026 this year on getting into really great shape.

So I feel like I'm pretty fit already, but I just really wanna get into the best shape of my life and there are so many ways to, you know, get fit, get toned, release, excess body fat. You just try something, it doesn't work. You try something else, right? Like there are a thousand other things to try. So strategy tends not to be the problem.

The problem is that change requires us to change. Like we have to become a different person. So I thought it'd be really helpful to do a podcast on becoming the version of you who's done it already.

Because that's what's required. You wanna weigh 130 pounds, you need to eat like 130 pound woman. Right? The reason I'm doing my next program shape shift around identity is exactly for this reason. It's because how you get there is not as important as who you become along the way. The transformation, the change that happens along the way, so.

I've been doing this work for the last little while, and I came up with this exercise that I've included in the workbook for my program, shapeshift, and it's really powerful. And if you're on my email list. You already got part of this exercise already, and if you're not on my list, you can sign up by signing up for my free resources@mindfulshape.com.

Or of course, the link in my bio on Instagram and the exercise is, I won't go through the whole thing, but it'll just give you an idea. It's essentially comparing what does a day in the life of your current self look like in comparison to a day in the life of your. Future self, the version of you who has already achieved what you want to achieve.

So maybe your new identities. So in the email, I just said, , write out hour by hour, or just go through all of your actions, what you do in a typical day.

And you write it all out. So maybe you make three columns on your notebook or you use three pages, and on the first page you write actions at the top, and then you start listing out every single thing that you do in the morning. Until you go to sleep. And then on the next column, you wanna write all of your thoughts.

So what are you thinking at the time of doing this? And then on the third column, you wanna write out how are you feeling? What's the emotion that you would assign to this? Now, for some of you, this is gonna be like. I don't know what I'm thinking when I do this. So you might wanna spend a day where you just kind are noticing and observing, and then the following day or later that night, you can fill it all in.

If you're lower in the self-awareness, this is gonna be really challenging. So don't worry about that. Just fill out what you can. And then if you are higher on self-awareness, this will be really easy for you to do and you can fill it out. If there's anything that you can't fill, that's fine, just leave it.

You just leave it blank. Now when you're doing your new identity exercise. This is gonna be aspirational, but still, of course, grounded in the reality of your current life. So this isn't like your ideal life. This is ideal. Maybe version of you, but in your current life. Okay? And hot tip here is you wanna answer as if you past doesn't determine your future, because we know it doesn't, right?

But we will tend to limit ourselves because we think that it does. Okay? Thought error. What I really found helpful about doing this exercise was that it helps you with clarity. You're able to identify the gaps as painful as it can be to look at, right?

We wanna remove that self-judgment. We wanna take a look at what am I doing differently at the version of me who's already achieved what I want? So oftentimes this comes up for clients for. People in general where we think, Ugh, you know, like I set this intention, I set this goal, I've been working so hard, I did all the things that I thought I should do, and I didn't achieve it.

I don't have the result that I want. So maybe you thought you were doing every possible thing that you could, you were eating in the right way, and you were working out and all the things you feel like you were working so hard. But you just didn't get there. All of that is good information. It shows you that your expectation, what you thought it would take and what it will actually take was just wrong.

So you had a guess. You had an estimation and you were off, and that's okay. Maybe it takes longer. Maybe it requires more effort. Maybe it requires you to relax a little bit more, but now we have more info so that you can update your plan accordingly. So maybe it's like, I thought I could do it in three months.

It took five. I thought I could have. Two exceptions or exceptions twice a week. And I think of exceptions in my program as something that's gonna really spike your blood sugar. So like sugar, flour, alcohol, deep fried foods, I also think of things like aspart and stevia, things like that as exceptions.

It's just not something that you wanna be having all the time, right? 'cause they can stimulate sugar cravings. So let's just say you thought you could have exceptions. Twice a week and six weeks goes by and there's no movement on the scale, then that's good information. We know that for your body at this moment in time for this activity level, that's just too much.

It keeps you at maintenance. Very good information. Now the old you, how you might be thinking about that right, might lead you to fall into the self pity trap where you're feeling a lot of self pity. It's not fair that I have to work even harder and listen, I hear you. It is not fair. It is not fair. But do you want it?

Do you wanna have it? Because if you really want it, then this is what's required and you could just let it go. Truly like for me, do I really need to get into amazing shape? No, I don't like, I'm pretty fit right now, but I want to, I want to be really strong. I wanna be toned and more than ever. I am getting so in tune, attuned to following the aliveness of things.

I pay attention to what I want. Do I recognize, yes, that we are living in a really toxic society of patriarchy and these constructs that, you know, forever move the needle on these impossible beauty standards for women when it comes to how we look? Yes, I am very aware of that, and I don't pretend that I'm not influenced by it.

And I continue to check in on my reasons for wanting this change. I always think of it like this, like how do you know if you're caught up in that? What I think of as like a dieting slash body image, industrial complex. How do you know? Well, your worthiness, your sense of worth, your value, how much respect you have for yourself is attached to the size of your body or how you look.

Now, I'm saying this with zero blame because as a woman in 2026, we cannot be blamed for bad body image, period. So as with everything, think of it as a continuum. You. Or somewhere on that continuum of my body size, how I look determines my worth a hundred percent on the other end, 0%.

And so am I, I'm, I'm right there with you. Right. And I think our work is to recognize that and actively move ourselves towards zero. Okay. That was a bit of a side rant, but there you go. So let's go back to why am I going for this goal again, when I'll be, you know, working out harder than before.

I'm gonna be lifting heavier weights. I'm going to work out essentially more often, pushing myself a little bit more, being more precise with my eating, sweating up a storm all day while I'm working, walking on my desk treadmill. So why would I do all of this? Because I recognize that there's going to be discomfort either way.

A client reminded me of this today. She said it was the pivotal moment in when she decided to summon the courage and reach out to me for help. It's this, you can be uncomfortable chasing your dreams or uncomfortable knowing you have them, but you're not pursuing them.

And doesn't that ring true? Like there are some dreams I have, which I see myself. Not pursuing, actively not pursuing them, and there is pain and discomfort in that, but there's the sharp acute pain in the moment of taking action, doing the thing, or not eating the thing or doing the workout or whatever.

Or there's the dull chronic pain of not going for what you really want. Getting in shape, getting really fit or releasing the weight is going to require you to choose your discomfort to choose that sharp acute pain more often. This is how you will become the version of you who's done it.

You will choose the acute discomfort of having a tea instead of a glass of wine to relax at the end of a hard day rather than choosing, well, there is some acute discomfort the next day, right? The grogginess, but there's also the chronic discomfort of not feeling as good as you want in your body.

The version of you who's done it, she's not putting up with that grogginess, right? She wants to feel her best and she's going for what she wants. She's willing to do it, it's worth it for her. So what are the steps to becoming the next version of you? There are four general steps that I'll speak to here.

The first one, as you know, the first step to anything is always gonna be the same. It's always gonna be awareness. We want to get clear on what you truly want and learn how to infuse that goal with desire so it doesn't feel like another. Should in your life, but it fills you with that sense of aliveness.

You need to drop all the self-judgment. To create self-awareness 'cause that will get in your way. You won't wanna look if you're judging yourself and you also wanna uncover the patterns and constructs that you are maybe unconsciously living. So are you this like all or nothing person, are you, diet starts Monday.

Are you thinking of yourself as someone who can't follow through, someone who really needs that glass of wine or that bag of chips or that cookie to unwind and relax? Or someone who will. Go into self-loathing if you don't follow through. Meaning that's a tip that you are tying your worthiness up with this goal, right?

You're tying it up. With this goal, we really need to make these constructs known so that we can uncover what those parts of us really need, validate them, and then we can let them go, because only from there can we then connect with a really. Irresistible future, right? We need to clear all of that stuff away.

So we have almost like a clean slate. I mean, we're humans, we're complex. We're not gonna be a clean slate, but you get the idea. We need to know what we're working with. We need to clean out all of those like constructs, all those like negative thinking. And we need to, from a place of. High desire, cultivate that, generate that high desire for that irresistible future.

The next step is embodiment. So how do you need to feel to move forward when you don't feel like it, when you feel stressed, when you're overwhelmed, when you want to go into, ah, screw it, I'll start it tomorrow. I'm just gonna overeat now. What's going to prevent? This is getting really good at embodiment, so how good are you now?

At generating desire for your goal and the vision that you might have a secret desire for, like you have this vision of your life that's a little bit secret, like it's precious. You don't really wanna tell anybody. Like how often are you tapping into that? Really seeing that for yourself. We will drift from our goals.

We will become half in, half out of them. We will make half measures. We wanna just like dip our toe in the pool. We don't wanna like really commit fully. Right. And that's like, and. You know, when you go into a lake, you know when the water's cold, the best thing for you to do is just to dive right in and get used to it.

But we don't generally do that. If you're like me, you slowly wait in, right? Because if it's painful, we just wanna escape. We just wanna get out. And so when we're half in, typically at the first sign of discomfort, that's what we do. We bolt, we say, oh, screw it. I'll start again tomorrow. So we need to.

Overcorrect for that, for that inclination. If your brain is doing that, it's a healthy, normal brain. So we need to counteract that overcorrect with the skill of generating and basking in. Emotions ahead of time. Specific emotions ahead of time. Step three is aligned action. We also need to, what I think of as challenge our capacity for these negative emotions that come up like resistance and learn how to transmute negative emotion so that instead of stuffing the emotions down, avoiding them, we can handle them.

We don't say, oh, I'm feeling a bit bored, or I'm feeling dread, and we go get a snack. No, we transmute them. We, for example, maybe turn guilt about overeating or not following through into genuine curiosity, compassion, and resilience.

And then the last stage, last step is transformation. So this is not a one and done process, this is gonna be something you're cycling through over and over again as you evolve and grow. So we really need to let go of our old identity at this point, which as much as we really want to change, we really want to become somebody new.

It's difficult when we've thought of ourselves a certain way for years or decades. It's sticky. We need to be deliberate about

this new version of ourselves. If we don't, our brain will default to old patterns. Old. Behaviors, old ways of coping, simply because it's familiar. So if you are listening to this in real time and you want to partner up on this process with me, awareness, embodiment, aligned action and transformation, you wanna partner up.

On doing this with me and a small group of other amazing women who are doing this too, then be sure to check out my program shapeshift. We are taking on that sharp acute pain. We're taking it on, full on. We are leaning into it together because as my client told me, it's worth it. The first transformation.

Is transmuting that hesitancy and that doubt into courage to act to go for it. We start in April, 2026. The earlier you sign up, the more bonuses you get, so be sure to check those out on the website. The last day to sign up is March 27th. Go to Mindful Shape slash shapeshift, click the link in the podcast description, or you can find the link on my Instagram.

Okay. I hope that was helpful for today and I will talk to you again soon. Okay, bye.