168 How to Leap Instead of Incremental Change

If you know what to do but not doing it or you’re making progress but it feels like a slog there’s an opportunity to reframe the mundanity of working out and eating healthy. When it becomes more about who you want to be and claiming that as an identity you won’t just have incremental progress, you’ll experience a leap. 

You’ll learn:

• A reframe and specifically what to focus on to make healthy choices less mundane and more compelling
• What I’m doing and what I’m not doing to get into great shape this year
• Details about my new program Shape Shift

• 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. My name is Paula Parker. I have a little bit of a cold today, so if you hear that in my voice, my apologies, but we are powering through. I'm the last, it's my turn to get it because my kids both had it, my husband had it. It's been pretty mild. Not a big deal. But that's what's going on. And so I really wanted to record today regardless of my voice, because I am super excited about what we are talking about today.

I think that personal change, especially when it comes to weight loss, is mundane, and we know this because nobody wants to watch. Somebody releasing weight, like there's no TV reality shows about it, except there is, and it's all focused on fitness, right? Like we're not seeing people just like in their day-to-day life, eating the salad and then going about their day like that is so boring and it's boring for us to experience.

It's not like we are living in a, you. Instagram reel of the before and after where an entire year is condensed into seven seconds and it's like exciting. You know how interesting is lifting weights over and over and over again or eating scrambled eggs and raw veggies.

That's what I had for lunch today, right When there's leftover pizza in the fridge, it's pretty boring. It's pretty tedious. If you are planning your food, you are tracking water, anything like that, but maybe if that's your experience. That's only because we are being a bit lazy with it. What if it's actually a sacred act of aligned transformation that we are undertaking when we wanna release that last 15 5 50 pounds?

What if instead of having a vague sense that maybe you're broken in some way because your history is preoccupied with food and weight more than you would really like to admit, right? That it may just speak to. A personal mission that you were born with not to struggle with your weight and food for decades.

If that's all it is, like a personal failing, if that's what we think, we won't be able to see any deeper purpose in it. So maybe it's not about being in the best shape of your life or releasing 50 pounds, like reaching your desired weight, but rather it's about your specific and unique path to accessing your determination, resilience, presence, and personal power, all of which I think are required to feel fully alive. So if you can relate, if you're thinking, yeah, this is mundane, or you know what to do, but you are in resistance. Or you tend to do great for a little while and then you fall off track or you are making progress, but it just feels like a slog.

It's just like that, uh, feeling. Then I wanna offer, there's an opportunity to shift that. So let's talk about how to do that. First is, I really want to emphasize the importance on focusing on the internal state. So what I, what do I mean by that? I want you to put 80% of your emphasis, your attention on.

Your state, how you are thinking and feeling and your actions. So everything that is going on internally in addition to your actions and. Really, truly vehemently ignore external reality. Just ignore it. So you're weigh yourself, you note it, you instantly forget it. That's old news that's past you. Okay, so how will you show up today?

That's what you wanna be focused on. You are so deliberate in how you are thinking, how you were feeling, and the actions that you were gonna be taking that day, regardless of the number on the scale, because that is what you are a commitment to. You are a commitment to that future self becoming more resilient, becoming not even more like I always think of it as you're almost.

Accessing that part of you already. So you are already in so many ways, determined, committed resilience. You can cultivate presence, you're very powerful. And if you look at many other aspects of your life, , you are able to recognize that and you're able to access it. And now we just wanna access it when it comes to your goal around your body.

So I have told you already that my big goal for this year is to get into. Really great shape. And to be honest, it's, it is a bit scary to share publicly because if you're going after something physical, like external, other people are gonna see, right? And especially if you are in my line of work, then I can be, putting myself out there.

I can be judged. If I don't really do it now, only I will truly know if I've done it or not. Because what does that even mean? It's not like there are specific. Metrics. I've defined it for myself and, and that I will keep private, but of course I'll be sharing my journey along the way. And I think that's useful for anyone.

It doesn't really matter so much what it might mean for other people. It really matters what it means for you, and you really get to define what being in the best shape of your life is. Or maybe it's, this is how I wanna be showing up. So maybe it's less about the result and more about how you are showing up and your dedication to the process.

But I'll tell you what I won't be doing in terms of this process is I won't be counting calories to hit a calorie deficit. I won't be counting macros to avoid going over a macro budget. I've done that before. I've done all of this before. I won't even be setting weekly goals. For releasing weight or measuring or weighing my food, I won't be using any kind of sugar substitutes and I won't be following a fasting protocol.

I know I've talked about fasting protocols on this podcast before. I won't be following a meal plan of any kind. Not that there is anything wrong with any of those things. But here's what I will be doing. I'm gonna be following my own mindful shape method, and that is three steps. Eating only when I'm physically hungry, stopping at enough, and choosing foods that serve me.

If you ever notice your brain wanting to cling to any kind of diet mentality stuff, and maybe it's a method, maybe it's a strategy, maybe that for you is calorie counting or a fasting protocol. And it feels graspy. So you're doing it from a place of panic, from a sense of urgency almost because you feel like you are between a rock and a hard place, whatever it is,

because it might be something that does serve you, maybe counting calories so that you know, and you feel centered and grounded that you are in a deficit that might serve you. I'm not here to judge. So it's not what you're doing, it's your reasons for doing it, and whether you are clear on them and you love them and they feel good to you.

But first, I want you just to check in with yourself. Why might it be so hard to believe that you could reach your desired body by following? Those steps. Eating only when you're physically hungry, stopping in enough and choosing foods that serve you. That might be all that's required. And if so, what might that mean for you?

Does that mean more aliveness or less? Does that mean more freedom or less? Is that scary to you? Why? I really encourage you to question that. Yeah, because I've seen so many women do exactly that over and over again. Now, this is a process I'm gonna be following, but also to get to where I wanna go. And maybe this is the same for you to get to where you wanna go,

It's going to require much more precision and refinement of those three steps.

So change is required. For example, how I've been working out, how I've been eating, it's gotten me here. Okay, great. So if I want something different, if I want a different result, I will have to do something different. And if I wanna do something different, and it hasn't happened by accident, right? I will have to think.

And feel differently. I will have to see myself in a different way to facilitate those thoughts and feelings because I really think that identity, how I see myself and my personal standards is truly like the lower part of the iceberg. It's the foundation, and then everything above is the more of the thoughts, the feelings, the actions, the strategy, the tactics, all of that.

And here's what I think is the most interesting way of doing that, and that is reprogramming your subconscious. It's really creating a new identity for yourself, both in conscious mind and in your subconscious mind. Why? Because. That new identity, she doesn't have the same mental and emotional capacity limitations that your current identity has.

So let me share with you a little bit about how I got here. Over the last year, I've been exploring the more, what do I think of as like psychospiritual side of personal change. I've done courses in neuroscience. I've done courses in coaching somatics, so somatic awareness trainings, and you know, I've spent a small fortune on all of these trainings and certifications, and recently I've been studying shadow work and hermetic philosophy.

So a big part of why I love my job, and I love mindful shape, is that I essentially get to teach myself. I get to spend all of this time on. Personal development stuff and all of these topics that I find so fascinating, and then I get to incorporate them into my work and help other people. So that's why I love doing this, and I will continue to be exploring like new realms and figuring things out along the way and bringing all of you along with me.

Right now I am really figuring out how to make this esoteric wisdom practical in my life on a day-to-day basis. Why? Because otherwise, really it is mundane and. It doesn't mean it's all going to be so exciting. I'm sick right now. I don't feel great. Like every minute of the day. You know what I'm doing, exercise when I'm doing all the things I need to be doing.

It's not like, oh, I'm so exhilarated all of the time. It's not about that. There are for sure days when I don't feel like it. I get tired, it feels dull, but overall, I have new practices. I have a completely new framework. With how to deal with that. Also without this deeper interchange. I think it's just slower than it could be.

So that's my suspicion. And the reason I suspect that is because there's two types of change. There's incremental change, and then there are leaps. If you look around, you'll quickly recognize this happens in society, it happens in evolution as well. My personal experience with this is when I started this company, when I started Mindful Shape.

So I was making incremental progress, and what I noticed is that when I started having more clients and I was putting myself in a position of authority when it came to knowing. What to eat, knowing how to follow through, knowing how to move my body in a certain way, knowing how to deal with any kind of emotional eating and coming up with tactics for that, and really paying attention to that and knowing what it feels like in my body to feel satiated and not eating more than that now, it's been, you know, a long journey,

 but I noticed that in the early stages of having mindful shape, having this company, there was a huge leap. Why? Because I started thinking of myself differently. There was an identity shift. I started seeing myself not as an expert, but somebody who knew something about this, maybe a little bit more than some other people.

I was a little bit further along the path than some other people, and that I felt that. Like I really felt that in my body and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I started showing up like that and then things moved so much faster. And generally it was just more easier for me to show up like that.

'cause I just started thinking of myself. I was like, oh, this is not a problem for me. So if you were thinking, yeah, that sounds great, but that's all easier said than done. I really encourage you to let me be your guide as you take this leap as well.

It's the reason that I have created this new program called shapeshift because if you don't yet have a relationship with that new identity, you can think of it as your future self who has already achieved your goal. If you have an inkling that your deeper sense of self is still holding on, still clinging to a past version of you, then this is the work that's required for that leap because you've likely done so much incremental change already, you.

Have many unfair advantages. You know, nutrition, you are probably very active. You regularly take care of yourself, like self-care is just a part of your life and you know how to carve out time for yourself. You already know yourself pretty well because you have been doing, if you're listening to this podcast, this is not your first personal development podcast, right?

Like you've been doing the work, you've read the books, and. People. In my world, knowledge is not the issue. Yeah, there might be some tweaks, there might be some new like tactics that you can learn to speed things up, but often people in my world, they know more than me the issue is identity.

That's the foundation, that's the core and.

What does this mean? Are you someone who can integrate all of that knowledge that you have into your life? How well do you know your own body? Are you paying attention? Are you discerning? What causes you to feel the way you feel like have those sugar cravings? What causes you to do well on vacation? And then when you get back, that's when you spiral, which is so counterintuitive, right?

Can you tell when you've eaten just enough? What does that feel like in your body? Do you follow through more often than not? And how do you talk to yourself when you're not seeing that number go down when you're not seeing external progress? You've made a lot of progress when it comes to knowing what to do, but like me, you might be up for a leap in your self-concept. If so, this is for you. I literally made the program that I would be. Ecstatic about signing up for that. I wanted to do myself as a client, as a student because I also want to embody my future self, the version of me who's living my, you know, my best life, my dreams.

So what we're gonna be doing in this program is weekly calls. These calls are gonna be centered on coaching, so really working with you and your situation and coaching your brain. They're gonna be anywhere from like an hour to 90 minutes. I really want us to have space and have time, and for people to be able to come in and out of the calls if you need to.

Of course we will record them and I'll send you the recording. So if you can't make it to every single call, which of course stuff happens, and you might not necessarily be able to make every call live, it's totally fine. I can send you the recordings and then you can watch, you can see other people, and what you'll notice is, oh wow, I can see my problem.

In what they are talking about. And I see it in a new way because I can see how they might be able to overcome it and then it's so cool. Right? 'cause I'm in a lot of these coaching programs and I, and I am not always coached and I get to see, oh. It's so helpful to see somebody else is dealing with this, oh, how can I use their coaching and apply it to my life?

You'll also get access to the shapeshift video training video series that's gonna be lifetime access, so you'll always have access to those video, you can come back to them at any time. You're gonna have a workbook. I'm gonna include some very practical tools.

'cause you know, I love the esoteric and I love the conceptual, but we wanna make this practical. We wanna make this not overwhelming. I'm not gonna give you every tool in the book, but some really specific practices, tools, and concepts so that you can put this in practice, you can accelerate your learning and really make a tangible.

Identity shift because I love teaching and I want to encourage learning and activating that spark. I'm gonna be offering 90 minute monthly guided workshops. In these workshops, we are going to engage in the material by doing some somatic embodiment visualizations and exercises together. This is where, again, we make that esoteric, practical.

This is really great also for anyone who, if you were somebody who tends to put those exercises off, like you have the workbook, but you never get around doing it, and you want a sacred spot on the calendar to actually get it done, this is great for you. Or you're somebody who just has more fun. Doing it in a community, doing it with others rather than being solo.

I've been somebody who considered myself, somebody a bit of a lone wolf, like doing things on my own, pretty self-directed. And I have recently began programs where we are doing this kind of work together and I am loving it, like I get. So much more out of it, which actually surprises me. So we turn the camera off and we do the work together.

I give you lots of time, and so you're making sure that you are actually doing it. That's what we wanna do. That's what the support system is, is for, so that you are really getting inspired on a regular basis. You're supporting your nervous system, and it will really help you stay in momentum and stay on track.

Again, these are gonna be recorded, so if you do miss them, if you can't be there, then you can. Go back to them. Watch the recording at your own convenience. You can even pause them. You can, set aside some time to do the exercises. If you need more time, you can speed them up. You can listen to me like a chipmunk at 1.5 speed or whatever it takes so that you get the most out of it.

And this program is gonna be 90 days. Now, the reason I wanna do that is because I want to. Make it long enough where it's at least something where you have a foundation so that if that's all you need, you like get the shift that you want, you're off and running. Now. My intention right now is to continue the program on so you'll have an opportunity to continue on if you wanna take this work deeper, you wanna continue to do a maybe another identity shift, then you'll have the opportunity to do that in another 90 days.

I also have a ton of bonuses, so make sure that you go to the website and check out all of the bonuses, because I'm also gonna be offering you the course that I use. That's a foundational course in terms of how do you. Release weight without deprivation. How do you eat only when you're physically hungry?

How do you befriend hunger and stop at enough and hit what I think of as like a golden zone in terms of you feel amazing when you finish your meal and you don't need it or want anymore. And then how do you choose foods that serve you? How do you actually do that? I wanna offer you this course as a bonus because it's the foundation.

 So when you sign up for shapeshift, you will automatically get enrolled in that course immediately so that you can start doing it now and you can get a jumpstart so that by the time shapeshift starts, you already have that foundation. You've already made some progress, and you're ready to take some of this work deeper.

All right, so go to Mindful Shape slash shapeshift. There's also a link in the podcast description that you can click on to go to the website for shapeshift. If you wanna find out more information and you can join and sign up and all the things, you can also go to my Instagram Mindful shape, and you can check the link Bio.

It will be there as well.

And you can get more information on what is going to be in those video modules and more on the bonuses. After you complete this program, I want you to be able to say, this changed everything for me. I can't guarantee that you're gonna reach your final goal in 90 days, but what I can say is that you will have an identity shift.

You'll step into that version of you who. Maybe you haven't reached that goal, but you know in your bones that you are on your way to living in your desired body. That it's simply inevitable. And then once you learn this process, once you learn these practices and this framework, you can use it over and over again to redesign your identity again and again.

So I'm thinking of this identity work as a lifeline from the mundaneness. That is the whole weight loss journey, right? The whole gig, the whole just. The boringness of eating and working out in a healthy way.

This is the first round of it, and this is going to be a program that is just very close to my heart and something that I think is going to be a game changer. So I would be delighted if you were to join me in this program.

This is the first round, so there's lots of energy, there's lots of excitement. I'm going to be co-creating it with you. So whoever is in this first group, I really wanna get a sense of. What do you specifically need, and then I can customize it to you and what you need, what you have questions on your stumbling blocks, all of that.

That's what keeps the aliveness there for me is really, I'm not just doing this in isolation. We are creating this together. We are doing it together. That's so fun for me.

And if you really want to talk about this more, if you want to meet me first, maybe we've never met before, then I encourage you to set up a call. You can email me at paula@mindfulshape.com. This is not gonna be a, it is not gonna be a sales call. It's not. It's really gonna be an opportunity for you to ask me any questions that you want.

I'm not here to try to pressure you into buying. It really needs to be a match otherwise. It's not gonna work for either of us, so it's not a sales call, but if you do want to meet and you have some questions, then I am happy to do that. We'll just meet for like 15, 20 minutes, whatever you need so that you get more familiar with me so that you feel comfortable.

If you're a little bit on the fence, I'm more than happy to do that. And then. If not, then I can maybe guide you in the direction of what I, you know, what I might see as getting in your way or some specific podcast episodes that might be helpful for you. Alright, I will talk to you again soon. Bye.