Are you in this place of “it should be working, I should be seeing some momentum here,” but feeling like your life is exactly the same?
You’ve been working hard at setting up new habits, getting your kids trained to start helping you out, decluttering the house, putting in workouts every day – but it seems like you ought to be able to notice a shift starting.
You’ve spent a dozen hours or more already on this stuff – so why isn’t your schedule, your kids’ attitudes, your house, or your body proving you right?
If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place – because this is completely normal, and I’m going to explain why.
You see, when you’re going through a big life change, a big life push in something, you’re effectively retraining your *mind*, not just your body.
Take that workout habit, for example. You’re not just training your body to do more reps longer; you’re also training your mind that every day at X time is healthy movement time; that your day isn’t complete till you feel that surge of “I just exercised” energy; that exercise is a *good* thing and you want to do it; and so on and so forth.
It’s way beyond what weights you’re currently using or how long you can go on cardio. It’s that mentality of “I’m an exercise, I want to do this, and I’m not missing.”
And that’s something you have to build up to along the way! You’re not going to start off perfectly in all those 3 areas, then keep going in them, right off the bat. (Remember everyone’s New Year’s resolutions and mid-February?)
I don’t care if you spend 2 weeks telling yourself that you’re a runner now and just trotting around the block, then another 2 weeks cementing the thought that you actually *like* running now (again, at those ultra-short distances), and another 2 weeks reminding your brain that you like the endorphin surge you get after speeding up your heart rate (so you start actively looking for ways to use that energy feeling to combat your mid-afternoon slump).
Then maybe you spend another 2 weeks getting used to holding all 3 thoughts – plus the actions that go with them – together. And maybe, just maybe, you spend the 2 weeks after that increasing your teensy sprinting distance slightly – just enough that you feel you *are* progressing in your running ability.
Do you know how long you’ve spent now, total, to get to this baby stage? To your very first increase in distance (which really isn’t all that much)? 10 weeks!
2 and a half months! But that’s the kind of slow-burning foundation you’re going to need whenever you want to set up a radical change in the way you’re doing life.
So let’s apply this to our client story for today.
When this client came to me, she was eager to learn all the principles of how to unbusy her life – but because she had so much stuff going on, she didn’t have the time for more than a little bit here and a little bit there each day.
After a few weeks of this, she started expressing frustration to me that she wasn’t seeing the kind of dramatic, immediate results she wanted – so we kept going. Reminding her that a little every day was better than a lot at first and then skipping. Working on one main thing to change each week in our coaching sessions.
And do you know what? 8 weeks later – 8 weeks after we first started our coaching together – all those little tweaks paid off. All those tiny changes added up.
She started seeing the cumulative results of all those unbusy brain shifts, the schedule changes, the to-do list clearing outs – everything we’d been working on to date.
It was all starting to sink in. She was beginning to get a handle on how to think this way. How to do life the slowed-down, match-your-energy way.
But it took her 8 weeks to get there. 8 weeks of feeling like the needle hadn’t moved at all.
And then all at once, it had.
So if you’re stuck in this place, I want to encourage you, too: just because you can’t see the progress you’re making now doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Sometimes the avalanche needs to build up some more snow before it all comes crashing down.
You’re just around the corner from seeing those identity-level changes in your #momlife.
Keep going. You’re going to make it.
