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Well, hey there, welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about how to climb the hill towards our goals or simply overcoming something that is hard for us in the moment, a trial, something that's challenging. And today's topic was actually born because of a conversation I had with a coworker and she was telling me about this study. She read about a hill and the people in the study, their perception of the hill. And as we talked about it, I thought, man, this is going to be such a great podcast topic because I think it is very relatable to all of us.
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And it was really interesting to point out how these students and adults saw the slant of the hill based on not only the actual physical factors of the hill, but also based on their surrounding perception and other things going on in the situation, based on how they would say the hill was steeper or not. As I talk to you about these studies and what they learned, I want to relate it to you and I to our everyday situations. If we're trying to reach a goal in our life, any goal, fitness, financial relationships, whatever, it is, a talent, I want you to think about your abilities and how you are looking at that goal to kind of get you climbing and over to the top of that goal and to the other side. We want to listen to Miley Cyrus's song, The Climb. It's the climb.
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Okay, I'm not going to sing for you, but we want to get there. We want to get up. There's always going to be a battle, there's always going to be something and we want to go up to the top little cheesy, but we're going with it. We are going with it. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, how to climb that hill, towards your goals.
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And before we get started, I do want to give a little shout out to Hannah, my new favorite binge. Listen, I've always been active throughout my life, but I've struggled with disordered eating and a poor relationship with exercise. I have learned so much since listening to this podcast and it truly has transformed my perception and the way I view health and fitness. Andrea is relatable and a wealth of knowledge and she makes women's health simple. There truly is such overwhelming information out there concerning women's health.
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And if you are feeling overwhelmed or burnout, look no further than this podcast. Thank you, Hannah, so much for the review. It makes such a difference for the podcast. It helps keep me motivated and it helps really just the podcast grow and us continue to get amazing guests. So if you find this podcast helpful, let me hear from you.
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Even if you don't find it helpful, let me hear from you. I love hearing from you, so leave a review and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen. So the episodes each week are downloaded directly to your phone so you don't miss anything. And before we start talking about our own climbs for our goals, a really, really simple thing you can do to just make that climb easier with good nutrients is adding AG One into your routine. I've mentioned I added it.
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Now we're going at almost eight months, I think because I started in January and I've noticed a huge difference in my gut health, in my energy. I drink AG One right when I wake up in the morning, just first thing. And it makes it easier for me as a busy mom to know that I'm getting some good vitamins and minerals and probiotics and so many things just in one drink that I don't have to think about it the rest of the day. Something easy I can do that's not complicated. And I am all about not making things complicated.
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It easily replaces your multivitamin and your probiotic in one simple drink. And for me, I wasn't consistent really with either of those, so why not combine it into one simple item? The podcast is about making things simple. So if you're looking for a simple way to take ownership of your health, AG One is a great way to make your health routine more effective. Try AG One and get free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs.
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With your first purchase, just go to Drinkag One. Simple again, that's drinkagone.com simple. And I will also add that in the show notes. I promise you're not going to regret making your life a little bit more nutritious with that AG One drink for more vitamins and minerals. All right, let's get into today's topic and talk about how to climb the hill towards your goals and be successful with it.
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My name is Andrea Allen , and I am a mother of four girls under seven, a wifey to a mountain man, a personal trainer and a nutrition coach. I love all things women's health and fitness, but let's face it, the fitness industry is complicated and it's not built for the everyday mom. There's so much conflicting information and you're busy and you don't have time to figure it out. I hate feeling confused and overwhelmed. So I have made it my mission to simplify health and fitness while creating a welcoming, realistic and empowering home for like minded women.
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I'm happy you're here and I hope you stay a while.
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You know, I'm all about studies. Every time I'm going to give you anything informational, I like to back it up with a study. So this episode will be a little bit different because it's actually fully about these two studies that I read together, as I mentioned with my coworker, Heather. And we kind of went around about this and just thought it was really interesting how much the person in the study, their perception was adjusted based on some external factors not actual features of the actual hill they were looking at. So that's what I want to talk about.
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I'm going to talk about two studies. I'm going to link them both in the show notes so you can read them if you're interested in reading them. But I'm going to make it really super clear for you to kind of see what I'm talking about. And I want you to think about your own goals or something you're struggling with, something that's challenging. So in the study, they took some young adults and they put them in front of a hill.
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And then they had them estimate either drawing on a piece of paper or moving their hand on this little board to say how steep they thought the hill was if they had to climb it. And then they put them in different variables to see how they changed the steepness of the hill. One of the variables was how fatigued they were, how refreshed they were. One of them was they put a heavy backpack on their back and loaded it with weights. Another variable was they checked if they had social support and that was an option.
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And the last variable was they tested their mood. And based on these four factors, they then measured if they said the hill was steeper or less steep, like basically the incline of the hill. So let's go through those factors and talk about what they learned and then how we can apply it to ourselves. So the first factor, one of the things they tested was how refreshed they were when they were looking at the hill. When the college student or the adult hadn't slept very well, they put that in a group and then the other ones were very refreshed in the morning.
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And the ones who were tired or fatigued just didn't feel fresh. They tended to say the hill was steeper. They also monitored their blood sugar, so some of them had less food and they even went over that in study. And the ones who had less blood sugar, they also said the hill was steeper. So what can we learn from that?
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Obviously, common sense. We need to try to get more sleep. That's not always feasible, especially if you're a mom of young kids. But we can still create that awareness that if we're going through something that is challenging or we're trying to reach a goal, sleep is going to help us get there because it's going to make that hill of that goal not look as steep. Second, something you can control is how we fuel our bodies.
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Because as the study mentioned, those who had a low blood sugar tended to say that the hill was steeper as well. So you need to be eating. You need to see food as fuel. I know it's hard as a busy mom or a busy adult or whatever you have going on in your life, that sometimes we put ourselves on the back burner but you're literally going to see your challenges as steeper. You're going to see the hills as steeper if your blood sugar is off, if you are fatigued, if you are not refreshed.
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And that can even mean if it's not eating well where we're only eating processed foods or only eating fast food. That can also make severe highs and lows in the dips of our blood sugar, which will also affect how we're looking at the hills and our lives and the challenges. So you need to be refreshed and you really, really need to get that sleep with solid food. It's something we can all do now, so we can make those hills not look as steep. They also tested, as I mentioned, weight in a backpack.
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So some of the people, they had a backpack and they filled it full of weights and then they had them measure the grade of the hill. And not shocking, the people who had the heavier backpacks estimated the hill as way steeper. And the people who did not have the backpacks on estimated the hill as not as steep. And I thought about that and as I talked about it with my friend, we said, it's so funny because we may not be going through our challenges with actual backpacks on with stuff, but how many expectations do we put on ourselves? And those expectations can be an expectation of weight on our back.
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It can make our journey more challenging, it can make the road harder. And those expectations can be put on by us trying to be perfect, thinking we're going to reach our goal perfectly, and it's just going to be this beautiful line all the way to the top with no problems. That can be a lot of weight and a lot of pressure and make it seem scarier because you fear messing up. And that can feel heavy on our back when we're trying to be perfect. It can be from other people's opinions.
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Maybe you have a goal that you're trying to reach and people are giving you their opinion and it's none of their business. Or maybe you're going through something challenging and it's hard to talk to people because they're always telling you their opinion and then you're putting their opinion in your backpack and making your backpack heavier as you try to climb that hill. So we've got to get rid of those expectations. You don't have to be good at everything. You don't have to care what people think.
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And you don't have to do it perfectly. And not only do you not have to, you will not, you will not go towards any challenging goal or situation. You will not go through it perfectly. You will not know that. Now, you are going to have bumps, bruises, you're going to fall climbing that hill.
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You're going to sit down, you might lay down, you might even roll slightly back down the hill sometimes, because I know I've rolled down the hill sometimes and I'm like, oh, going the wrong way, let me stand back up and keep going. So you got to realize that's going to happen. You've got to get those heavy expectations from yourself and from others off your back. You got to lighten that weight on your back because it's going to make that hill, that climb to whatever you're trying to get through or get to easier. And not only easier, but in the journey it's going to make it look not as steep once we get those heavy expectations off our backs.
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The next piece of the two studies that I read was and the funny thing about these studies is they did one and then they basically did a follow up one because they wanted to learn more, which I thought was pretty cool. But they tested how people perceived the slant of the hill if they had social support. So one group of participants had a friend with them and one group was alone. And the study went on to explain that even things like spiders, when we're alone, they seem scarier. But when we're with someone we're like, oh, there's a spider and then it's not such a big deal.
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But if you're alone and you see a spider in the dark, if you know, you know you're going to jump because they're scary when you're by yourself. But when you're with other people you'll laugh. And obviously I'm over exaggerating about that. But it's kind of example that when we're alone, things can seem more challenging, more daunting, tougher. So it is good to have some social supports.
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Obviously the participants that had friends with them graded the climb, the slant of the hill as not as steep. The ones who are alone graded the hill as steeper because they had that social support. So if you're going through something challenging or trying to reach a goal, you do want some social support that can be being able to talk to a friend, having a friend do it with you, having a coach, if you're reaching towards a goal. I know for our clients we have a Facebook group where they all talk to each other privately and talk about everything they're going through. So they're not climbing that hill to their goals alone.
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And even having someone to talk to is huge. This is also why therapists can be great. Even if you're going through a challenging thing, maybe you're not reaching for a goal, but if you're going through something challenging, a therapist can be great. Or just having a friend, someone to talk out those things and verbally talk about the slant of the hill and be like, oh, we got this together, we can do this together. This is going to be okay.
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I'm not the only one climbing this hill. When you look around and feel like I have someone present with me on the hill, it doesn't seem as steep. Now the cool thing about the study is they were curious, wait, does this social support have to be someone like present directly by the participant? Or what if they are mentally thinking about social support? So I know that some of you might feel like, well, I don't have a person there with me doing it, it's okay because the second part to the study, they took people and had them simply think of a positive, neutral or negative social interaction or contact and then measure the steepness of the hill.
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And of course, the participants who thought of a positive situation measured the hill not as steep. And the participants who thought of a very negative situation measured the hill as steeper. And that is just imagining a situation or imagining someone with you or a powerful social connection that you have. So even if you don't have someone on your journey with you, actually, physically, or someone you can talk to, you need to use the power of your mind and think of someone positive in your life and a good interaction with them because that's going to affect your mood and it's going to help you get there faster and make it not seem as steep, which is going to help you keep going through that challenge or up to climb the hill toward your goal. The last thing they tested, which kind of goes along with thinking of something positive, was they tested your mood and it was kind of cool how they did it.
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They did a method where they used music that was shown to induce different moods with different pieces of it and they had everyone listen to it. And then they had them test the hill. And the people who listened to, I guess, more uplifting music tested the hill as not as steep. And the ones who had more of a negative poor mood tested the hill as much steeper. So for you as you are thinking about climbing your hill, whatever it is, think about your mood.
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If you're having a day where you're like, I can never reach this goal, I can never get through this challenge. What is your mood in that moment? What are you feeling? Were you discouraged before you said that? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
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Did you have an interaction that morning that was stressful and just made you angry? And now all of a sudden that anger is turning into like, I will never reach my goals, I will never get through this hard time. Think about your mood. I don't know if I've ever had a positive interaction with a client where they are not positively looking at their goal. I think they're always like, okay, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it.
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When they're happy, when they are not in a great place, then they do look at that slant of the hill towards their goal as bigger and they become discouraged and they think, oh, I can't make it that many steps. I can't get to the top of my hill. I can't do it. This goal is not realistic, and their mood is affecting it. So as you work towards your goals and through hard things, if you're starting to have a down day, if you're starting to have a day like you want to quit, like you're failing, stop and check your mood.
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What's going on? What happened earlier in the day? What happened the night before? Did you eat enough? Are you feeling refreshed?
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Are you worrying about other people's expectations? Are you carrying that weight on your back? Are you having positive interactions? Do you have a good person to lean on and talk about the journey with? Or can you even imagine positive interactions that can help adjust your mood?
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I think we all have hills to climb in our life. I think we all are trying to reach different goals or get through challenges or just honestly get up and make it to the top of the hill every day. Sometimes we just feel like, I got to get through this day. Either way, no matter what hill you're climbing, I just want you to be aware of these things. I want you to be aware of how refreshed you are.
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I want you to be aware of what heavy expectations you're putting on your back. And if you even need them, if you don't need them, get rid of them. They're just weighing you down. If you have some social support, making sure that we have some of that, trying to reach out to others, and if we are being positive and if we're aware of our mood in those hard times, I know if we can think about these things as we move through life and our challenges and climbing our hills. That it will become easier.
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That each one of our slants will not seem so steep. It will get lighter and it will be doable. So think about these as you work through the hills in your life and climb towards the goals in your life. You know, I mean it from the bottom of my heart, you're doing so much better than you think you are. And we'll chat next week.