Focus on what you do right to reach your goals faster

Many people, especially women, tend to be experts at recognizing what they’re doing wrong  - but they rarely acknowledge their successes.

In this podcast episode of Midlife Spotlight, we discuss the importance of focusing on what you do right in order to make positive changes in your life. Celebrating progress and achievements not only feels better but also accelerates the journey towards your goals.

Overall, we’d like to encourage you to shift your perspective. And remember, "what you do right" is subjective and personal - you get to decide!

• Talk about coaching with Kate
• Visit Kate Campion Coaching

Disclaimer: This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Sara Garska and Kate Campion, and that of our guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for medical questions.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion -

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska -

Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.

This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.

Kate: Hello and welcome to Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I'm Kate Campion - 

Sara:  and I'm Sara Garska.

Kate: And in today's episode, we'll be exploring the idea that focusing on what you do right is the best, most effective way of changing your life.

Sara: We are because one of the things that I've noticed over the years is every single client that I've ever worked with is an expert at knowing what they are doing wrong.

They just, they can tell you everything they've ever done wrong. But the secret to getting the results that you want in life is you have to focus on what you're doing right to change your life.

So I hear it all the time, how someone has messed up, but it really is rare to hear a woman talk about how she's nailed it, how well she did, how proud she is of herself.

But I believe learning to focus on the progress you've made, where you've been successful and what you've done right, not only feels better, it's going to get you to your goals faster.

So when I was thinking about this topic, I was thinking about you because you've had a long career in education.

And when you were teaching, did this come to play at all? 

Kate: Definitely. Okay. as soon as you mentioned that, I had this flashback to, because one of the things, when I was a teacher, I was the Head of an English department.

So, and part of my job was to actually create like the overview of the courses of what students would be doing in a year.

And I used to really like teaching the kids that were struggling a lot. So the ones that traditionally wouldn't be able to achieve.

This one particular year, what we actually did was we had identified from the previous year children that we did not think would be successful in this year, which was the first year that we did any kind of formal assessment.

Just to put it into context, you have five years at secondary school in New Zealand, and in the third year they do what's called NCEA Level One.

And that is the first kind of nationwide qualification that they get. So these kids that I was teaching, they were identified as children that were unlikely to be able to achieve the basic literacy requirements and numeracy requirements that had been set in order to get this. So I was teaching them and I designed this particular course around this idea called the spiral of success.

So it was very much in what could the first thing we do, what would be the first assessment I could do that would absolutely guarantee them success.

Because then they would feel like they were capable of doing it. And then so what I did very carefully was - it sounds ridiculous. It was an assessment on filling out a form. It wasn't connected to the English curriculum. was actually about filling out a form, but it was such an important life skill.

How to fill out forms. So we actually like practiced with different forms and they all were able to achieve this particular standard, which then gave them what we call credits towards their first qualification. Then the second one that we did was again, a little bit harder, but not super hard. They got that as well.

So what happened was then early experiences were about success. And so that made them more motivated and more positive about going forward. So definitely focusing on, you know, what you've done well and what you've done right is way more motivating and all areas then focusing on what you haven't done right.

Sara: But I love that story. I only saw the brief, like, the name of it, but I just love that. can't wait to hear kind of the follow-up to it.

But yeah, so this has come about, like, when I work with women, like I said, women are the experts at what they do wrong.

And it is such a foreign notion for somebody to give themselves praise, to celebrate what they've done. Like, even for me, you know, it can feel awkward or uncomfortable say, yeah, I really did good.

And at first, and when you were describing your students and some easy things, because sometimes when I'm working with somebody and I work a lot with eating and, you know, kind of resolving bad eating habits or compulsive eating, and I look for wins everywhere and sometimes women will be like, that's stupid.

That's nothing. And I'll be like, no, it's something. And that's where we're going to start.

So, do any of these phrases sound familiar to you?

I messed up. I can't get anything right. This is never going to work. I can't do this. I need to get my act together. I screwed up. This is too hard. 

These are so common. And I hear them way too much of the time.

And what I want to say is we focus on what we're doing wrong. We focus on, you know, we think that if we focus on the areas we want to improve by focusing on what we do wrong that we're going to improve.

But what actually happens is we just continue messing up because we're just reinforcing that. And it's counterintuitive to most people that we actually need to do it different.

We try to mean talk ourselves into doing better, but it really never works for the long term. Here's the thing.

The more we repeat this process, the more it becomes ingrained in our minds. And instead of appreciating what we've done, we focus on where we’ve fallen short.

And then we beat ourselves up about it. And this keeps us always feeling like we are failing instead of progressing.

Even if we're progressing and doing things in the direction of our goals, if we're always saying, well, yeah, but I didn't do this, we will always feel like we're failing.

And so when we feel like we want to do something, and so I'm going to go back to eating, like a simple one, like we want to eat a healthy lunch every day.

We're going to plan for it. We're going to fix something, take it to work, make sure we have the ingredients in our hands.

And so we have these plans. We spent the weekend getting ready for healthy lunches all week. And then on Monday, we have our lunch planned and ready. Then we don't feel like eating it. So we eat something else. Maybe someone brought pizza into the office or into the lunchroom you know, and you know, it's there.

It's like, oh, that sounds so much better. And so we have it. And we think in our minds, we're going to do our healthy lunch tomorrow.

We eat the pizza. We kind of feel yucky. And then we tell ourselves, we messed up. And no matter what else we do, that's what's going to be in our mind.

Messed up, ate the pizza, you know, whatever.

Kate: The day's ruined.

Sara: Yeah. Day’s ruined, week’s ruined. But let's say it gets to be Wednesday, Wednesday. And then we stick to our plan, whatever it was.

Maybe, you know, we've prepared, we brought our leftovers in. We've got our, you know, our protein, our veggies, the nice dressing, some salad.

We have a lunch like we're proud of. We're happy. And then we get on with our week. But instead of celebrating the Wednesday when we followed our plan, I can guarantee you 99.9% of the women will be like, no, no, my week was a failure. I messed up. And they don't give themselves credit for what they did on Wednesday.

And so, you know, and this is like one of the things I have to kind of convince women, like it really matters to pay attention to the thing you did right.

Because the thing you did on Wednesday, when you followed your plan, that's a different mindset than the person that ate pizza on Monday.

And so we don't forget Monday happened, but we want to know what we're doing with our brain that allowed us to stick with our plan on Wednesday.

So it's really important to celebrate when we did, and when I say right , I don't mean it's like right to eat salad on Wednesday and not right to eat pizza on Monday.

I'm just talking about like, if you have a plan, we're trying to reach a goal, that's what I mean when I say right.

It's like when we kind of followed our plan, what was our mindset?

And so there's really a lot of power in looking at what you did right and looking at that thing that you wanted to happen. You made it happen. And so it's a real skill to start looking at when you do the things you want to do, like the ones you plan for, the ones that are going to move you towards your goal.

And so that's what I mean when I'm talking about doing what's right. So have you ever stopped to think about it? And Kate, have you ever stopped to think about it?

Why on one day you can do the thing you plan to do and then on another day? Totally not do it. And then beat yourself up about it.

Kate: Yeah, like, so when you were reading out those beliefs that people often have about themselves, the one that really struck with me is get your act together. Get your act together. That's my voice. I'm like, just get it. Get it sorted. it sorted. Funnily enough this week, I thought, you know, I have done, I have dabbled in these various things.

I'm a real exercise dabbler. I know exercise is really important. It's not something that comes naturally to me. I do have this belief that everyone else finds it really easy and I'm the only one struggling.

But I do value it, so I'm like, I've got to get my act together, I've got to do it.

And when you said about when does it go right and when does it not go right and what you can learn from that is absolutely crucial.

For me, it's about friction. And what I mean by friction is the little things that will get in your way that will cause an obstacle that will slow down the path.

So for example, going for a run, if I do, I don't run with headphones anymore, because one time, it was raining really badly and my phone actually got so badly damaged from the rain, it died and then I took ages to replace it and then I learnt to run without it. That was a lot more mindful. 

But before then, if I was getting ready to go for a run and I couldn't find my headphones, that would be an example of what I call friction, because it would kind of be like, oh, this is like a sign from the universe, I'm not meant to go for a run because I can't find my headphones, so I can't go.

And then so another example might be not having my running gear organized. Like just the other day, I like thought to myself as I went up to bed, my running gear is downstairs. I need to actually get it and put it in the bedroom because if I create that friction for myself where I have to get out of bed, go downstairs, get the gear, come back upstairs, get dressed. It's just going to again create that kind of obstacle that's going to get in the  way. 

And another example too was the other day my husband and I were coming home, so normally when we work in town a couple of days a week and we can take the ferry home, which is really beautiful, but unfortunately in bad weather, it gets canceled.

So I just decided that I'm nearing 50, I need to do weights. I just decided that was going to be the day that I started doing weights I had at all planned.

And we took the ferry to work and it was canceled on the way back. So we had to take the bus.

And what that meant was instead of a 25 minute ferry ride, it was a 30 minute wait for the bus and then it was an hour plus bus ride home.

And so by the time I got home again that little voice, you can't, you know, it's too late. You can't do it now. You may as well quit. And I was like, no, I've got to do it. But so, identifying for myself, these are the things that get rid of the friction and also identifying that this is something that's come up, but I'm not going to let this stop me because I can actually still get this done. You know, that is, that is really crucial. 

Sara: So, so I'm going to pull this back to eating because I think I do coach on a lot, but I also think it's something that's so relatable to most most people because we all eat and all of us are grappling with how to eat in this time of where there's so much abundance or so much easy food.

There's so much convenience food. We're all grappling with how easy to gain weight. How hard it is to lose weight.

And so that's, that's why I go back to this. A lot of women, no matter how successful they are in their life. so most of the women, well, I'm going to say all the women I work with are pretty successful, some, you know, with their jobs, with whatever they do in life. They're like really organized. They do well. They've got good jobs. You know, they have good partners. Like everything in their life is going right except for food.

And so, but even with all they're doing, a lot of times they don't feel like they're doing enough. There's always this idea that no matter how much they do, they just don't feel like they're doing enough.

And so where I see it really affecting them is they don't take care of themselves. And for many women, like when they come to see me, it's when they've gained more weight than they're comfortable with, that they finally realize that they need to make a change.

And what usually surprises people that work with me is that my focus is always, you know, more on what we do well and how to build on that.

Because this little analogy came from a book I read called The Gap and the Gain. People tend to focus, so if you have a goal, and I am not sports-like at all, but when I think of a goal, I just imagine an American football post, which is different than I think every other country in the world. So I'm talking about the football.

Kate: I've seen it. I've seen it. I've watched the Super Bowl.

Sara: Yeah, so you know what I'm talking about. All right, so there's a goal post. And we're always measuring ourselves about, so if we're, you know, we make it five yards, we don't give ourselves credit for that five yards.

We look at the 95 yards we haven't made. But I think what's even worse is for women, we might make that whole 100 yards and get to that goal post.

And we just pick that goal post up and move it another 100 yards. It's never, ever good enough to get to the goal post. And so even if youve reached your goal it’s likely you’re not going to give yourself credit for it. I think it's so important that you always give yourself credit with what you've done.

So that's what usually surprises the people that work with me, is that my focus is always more on what is going well and how to build on that.

I think people hear coach, coach, and it's like, oh my god, I'm going to get in trouble, I'm accountable, she's going to get mad at me if I haven't done anything.

And it really surprises them when I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. Let's look at what you did do well this week.

Because I think that's the most important mindset we can ever really look at is, you know, what did we do well?

And also acknowledging the goalpost we have, like let's quit moving it, let's just keep it there. Anyway, right. Now I'm going to talk about,when we get to bed.

I don't know about You, but I have spent most of my life going to bed disappointed in myself. I mean, it's always seemed like the feeling of having done enough or been enough was always of reach.

I still have that happen. I mean, I can do it doesn't seem to matter. Sometimes whatever I do, like I can lay down and I'll just be like, I didn't do enough.

I don't know. Like, and I know from my work that that's common. It's sort of sad, but. Yeah, what about you, Kate?

Kate: Yeah. Well, first of all, I was thinking about what you were saying about shifting the goal post because I - So a lot of how I operate and also what I teach people to do is this might sound bit weird.Is very much an intuitively guided productivity. I've got to say that this has actually changed my life because essentially I have an idea about what it is I want to achieve. I have a timeframe that I want to achieve that is usually a week. I mean, I'm a planner, so I've got year plans and everything.

I'll have a plan of what I want to achieve in the week. then what I'll do is I will actually just tune in to how I feel at the beginning of the day when I'm working on my own business.

And I will select from all the things I want to do what feels best. A bit of a meditation goes into it.

It's actually pretty cool. My productivity has skyrocketed since I started doing this because rather than focusing on what it is that I think I need to achieve that day, I know that if I choose to do what it is that is inspiring me at that point in time, that I will do it with so much more ease and speed than something I'm forcing myself to do.

The reason I'm sharing this though is because now I find myself in this weird situation that I've never really been in in my life  because I've always shoved in more things where I'll get to the end of the day and I have actually done everything on my to do list. And what will often happen is I'll think to myself, oh, well, I've still got an hour before I go to bed.

I'll just do something else.

Sara: Yeah. Yep.

Kate: So that's, yeah, that is a thing that I need to actually say what I have done is enough and celebrate, celebrate that you've just nailed this. Feel good about it.

Kate: Yeah.

Sara: You, you got the, like, like I was going to throw in. got the home run, that's a different sport. Yeah. You got the point. I don't know. But yeah, I love that. That was a perfect example.

You know, maybe make a note because I think that would make a great episode to talk about that process in the morning that you said was life changing. Like, yeah, I'm like, I want to hear more. So we will definitely come back to that. 

So what happens is we never feel like we've done enough or that we've done it right.

And what happens is like what you described is we think we need to do more and more. But here's what happens.

We only have, you know, 24 hours in a day. And what I see happening over and over is that women sacrifice their health, their physical health, their mental health, their emotional health for a race that can never be won.

Oh, yeah, throw in another sport. Just throw them all in. But what happens is, you know, after decades of not disappointing other people, women are left with the results of continually disappointing themselves.

I mean, it's like they've given and given. Like, if you're looking in the mirror and despite your best efforts, see a tired, disappointed, tight face.

You probably know what I'm talking about, like, pretty much everyone I work with, that's what they come to me with. Like, they're tired. it's just palpable.

Like, they're so tired. And it's because you're never going to be done. I mean, that's a common thing I hear. Like, if I can just do a little bit more, if I can just do a little bit more, if I can just do a little bit more.

And I think that's the voice and women's head in the evening. Because I think it's almost epidemic. It's just this inability to relax in the evenings. Like, you've gotten up, taking care of your house and your family, your pets, things in the morning. You go off, do a full day of work. You know, even if you don't have a formal job, most women are doing a lot of things during the day. Then there's the whole dinner after dinner. And it's just this thought, like, I need to do more. need to do more. It wasn't enough. And it just keeps women, you know, they can't relax. You know, and it comes into play, like, with food and wine.

I think I see especially in the evenings because there's a part of a woman that they're like, I need to relax. I need to spend some time with my partner and they can't do it without like some sugar or some wine a lot of times.

Kate: So true.

Sara: I know. And so that's, so it's working against them because not only are they doing, they're not resting, but they're also eating more, drinking more, and it's showing in their bodies and they just don't feel good.

So like they get that like they're like, yeah, I feel like I've run myself ragged. But then no one knows what to do about it.

And so that's where we're going now. What do you do about it when you've got yourself into this place where you just can never do enough and what you're trying to do always seems further and further away.

All right, so number one, you got to acknowledge what you're doing right. I know it sounds simple, it probably sounds Pollyanna, but you have to acknowledge what you've done.

You've got to give your credit, yourself credit for things. So one of the things I start every session with, like, what went well this week?

Kate: Hmm same.

Sara: Like let's go through it. And at first it's like kind of a rusty wheel that's like, I don't know.

It's hard. But as you get into it, it becomes easier. And by doing it and knowing you're going to have to write it down, your brain starts looking for the things that you're doing right during the week.

I know there's a name for that. And we're just going to go with like this works. Like if you start noticing, and I love writing down things because then you see it.

Kate:  It's the reticular activation system, I think it’s called.

Sara: I knew it was RAS. But thank you. 

Kate: It’s an amazing thing. 

Sara: Yes, but when you start looking for it in yourself, then you start seeing it and women get excited about like, but it's so uncomfortable at first. It is because this is a little side note. It's really hard for women to give themselves praise for anything.

It's like, unless I did twice as good as I was supposed to do, it doesn't count. Like, like God forbid, we only give ourselves credit for, you know, maybe, maybe doing 25% of what we had hoped to do.

I don't care if you've done 1% more. Like, any progress is good progress. So you got to acknowledge the way you are doing things right.

And I really do suggest you write them out every day. And I just also want to point out one way that we dismiss our own efforts. We use these two words, just and only. And when you catch yourself  - I just did like running. I just did. I don't know what a good running like only I just did two miles or I only did three miles.

That's how we dismiss ourselves. 

Where, you know, someone like me would be like, I did a fourth of a mile. I can walk longer.I'd be like, damn girl, that was good. But when we used just or only we just miss what we did.

You know, and talking about staying on the exercise theme. You know, you could say, Hey, exercise. 15 minutes today, or you could say, I only. And one leaves you feeling like you've accomplished something. And when you use just are only you feel a little deflated, defeated, and I just didn't do as well as I should.

And so I also want to point out that I think one thing I see is that we believe that if we give ourselves credit for small efforts or imperfect efforts that we're just going to fall apart become lazy, not work hard on anything. I mean, when we give ourselves credit, we actually do, I want to say, not because most women don't need to do more, but there's usually, like, when we're talking about eating right and stuff or exercising, we make it a priority when we start seeing what we do right instead of dismissing it.

And giving yourself credit for 15 minutes of exercise is not going to turn you into a lazy slug. It's just not. But we think that.

Kate: So one of the things that I decided to do this week as well as running, so I've run off and on for 10 years now. So that's not something that's like completely foreign to me, even though I still struggle with it at times. But I decided I was going to do weights.

And I think I mentioned earlier because the bus was going to be the first time that I did it.

And what I told myself when I planned the week, is I  recognize that this particular routine that I was doing from YouTube.

Which is for women, I think it's like Fit Mama or something. It's like woman over 50, not quite 50. I'm going for it.

So it takes 45 minutes to do. And so in my head, I keep saying 45 minutes, 45 minutes. And when I made this plan, I thought, you already know that thinking about the 45 minutes is going to stop you because this is a particular routine I've done off and on very sporadically for years.

And then I was like, just one rep is enough.

Right. So I told myself, just one rep was enough. Because it's actually the thought of the big, the big scale of things that can actually stop you from doing them, but just focusing on just one little thing can be so helpful.

And the other thing I thought. That's might sound a bit crazy. It's a years ago on a podcast by Gretchen Rubin, I think, she did gold stars.

She used to give gold stars at the end. She and her sister would give each other gold stars for things they’d done well. So at the moment, when I'm achieving all my goals, I've got some star stickers and I'm giving myself a sticker. A star sticker and then the other thing is when I'm running, I imagine in my mind, I think this comes from this energy efficiency labels that are stuck on appliances here.

And there's like, you can have a maximum of five stars, right? And so, yeah, so if something is energy efficient, whatever it gets the rating.

And when I'm running, I imagine kind of like that sticker with the five stars and my goal is just to get to the three stars.

So the three stars will be like my minimum viable amount of my run.

And then I'll have in my mind, so let's say, for example, I ran five kilometers this morning.

Sorry, I went for a run that I knew was six and a half kilometers, but my minimum, my three star goal was 5k.

So once I hit 5 k... I imagine in my mind that I'd got to the three stars and then it was kind of like a competition with myself as I keep going.

You know, once I got to six k would be four stars and then the last half a k would be the five stars.

So, you know, than saying, I've got to go and do all this, kind of make a bit of a game with myself and mentally rewarding myself through this image has actually been quite useful for me.

Sara: I love that. Like, and I can imagine it in my mind as, but I have a funny story about gold stars because I think it was Christmas where I had, so for people that don't know, I have three grandchildren and two are married, the other one has a partner, there's three grandchildren.

And my youngest is my son and he works as a bartender here in Houston and then he does really well, but at Christmas, he pulled out of his pocket gold stars, which he, and he, he, he told us, he said, I give gold stars to customers, co-workers. And he said, it really gets people to behave better, do better work, because they want a gold star.

So there's my son with a pocket full of, and it's the school kind, know, just those sheets? 

I don't know, what does it cost? A couple dollars?-hmm. people will work harder to get a gold sticker. And we had fun that evening, everybody wanted gold stickers.

Even at our family, get together, we're like, how do we get gold stars?

Kate: Yeah, love it. I love that.

Sara: Yeah, so that's great. But I love like that idea that, you know, because I could just picture it like, I love like, it wasn't like, oh, I have to hit five stars.

Mm-hmm. like, yeah, I just need to hit three.

Kate: Three.

Sara: And the thing you had said was just like, you know, I just need to get started, do that first minute.

And I do that too, because after I sat at my desk computer at the end of the day, like, my body does not necessarily want to go work out.

I'm always like, so I'll put a workout in and I'll be just like, you know, if you get 15 minutes in, that's beautiful. Perfect. You'll feel so much better. And usually, as you know, once you get to that 10-minute mark or 15, your body feels so much better and a lot of times you'll do more.

But I do find it really comforting to just give myself permission to do, you know, do 15 minutes. like to set a minimum, you know, to get some of the kinks out. So good example.

All right. Okay. Let me get back to where we are. So we're talking about, you know, different ways to look at wins.

And so when I look at it, I like to look at kind of a big picture thing. So, you know, around the area of food, there's 21 roughly 21 meals in a week if you're eating three meals a day.

And what I noticed kind of early on is clients would be like, oh, totally messed up this week. And I would say, well, tell me about it.

And then you'd be like, I got out of cookie at a business meeting and be like, what was it?

But then when the real story came out, like 20 of their meals had been great, but they were not giving themselves credit for any of that.

It was just like, no, I had these cookies. And for the record, I don't think cookies are bad. There's a place for them.

But on the other hand, we can use it against ourselves. oh, yeah, I ate this food, so I failed this week.

And so I always like to bring the conversation around like, no, you did not fail. You ate 20 meals, of like really healthy, well-planned. Let's call it a big win. A huge win. It doesn't even have to be that many. the other thing, talking a little bit about drinking, it's kind of a similar thing.

If somebody's been drinking, I'm just going to make up a number, having 10 glasses of wine a week. And then they have five glasses one week. Like, it's really important to look at like, what was the mindset that created five glasses compared to 10? Instead of saying oh my god, I totally screwed up, like I meant to drink none, but there’s so much value in looking at what you did right, you cut it in half. So I really think it's so important to know to recognize even the smallest wins.

I just want to point out that in none of these examples, we need to try and get women to work harder.

That's all covered. We're just looking at trying to create breathing room. I love that word breathing. It's two words, but I love the concept of breathing room. We don't have to change everything all at once. We just need to give ourselves just a little space to appreciate what we're doing and to acknowledge it and to make ourselves feel better.

Because when you have a little bit of breathing room, that's when you can work less. Close the computer at 6 p.m. and not open it later in the day. Go to fewer meetings. Not working in the evening .A big one for is take time to eat your lunch. That's a big thing. No. Not doing other people's jobs.

Anytime you make progress on anything, give yourself credit for it. Either give yourself credit for doing less of the things that you don't want to do and give yourself credit for doing more of the things you want to do. That's going to really have a big impact on your life. 

The other thing, the second thing is don't compare your efforts to your ideal.

It's okay to have a goal out there, but if you're always comparing yourself to whatever that ideal is, you're always going to feel like you're just not measuring up.

When you compare yourself to where you've come from, that's always going to feel really good. I think about that. I think sometimes our ideals are not always... I don't want to say they're not reasonable, but I think sometimes in our head they look a little different than what they're actually going to be.

And so I love that smile. I imagine, I see Instagram and stuff and you see these people doing exercises and you're like, oh yeah, if only I'd do that, I would look like that.

And the truth is, I could probably do that stuff forever and never look like someone that has different genetics in me.

So our ideals are just, I think of something. It's like something that we're kind of working towards, but it's not meant to be an exact… We have to look like that, feel like that, whatever. Does that make sense? 

Kate:  Yeah, totally.

Sara: And I just want to give our listeners one other way to think about this. How we talk to other people is often very different than how we talk to ourselves.

What I mean by that is this idea of encouraging, focusing on what we're doing right is what we do with our children. Even look at pet owners, you're not beating on your dog to teach at something. No, you're giving it some treats.

You're saying, oh, look at you. You sat down for a hot second. Here's a little dog treat. Think about it.

It's like we encourage other people. We encourage our pets. We encourage our partners. But with ourselves, we think we need to beat ourselves up.

But we never do that to someone we love. If someone's trying to work towards running, I don't know. I'm trying to think of some - we’re miles here. But I also think running is like 10k, 5k.

But if someone's training, We're not going to be like, well, you're just terrible because you couldn't run that far.

You know, we wouldn't like make people feel bad about it. We'd be like, no, look at you. You ran two miles today. You're so amazing.

And we would find it so easy to do to somebody else. But to ourselves, we don't.

So I just want to encourage anybody that's listening.Like, treat yourself the way you would treat other people. Treat yourself at least as good as you would treat your pet.

Kate: It's funny because I know you're saying that people speak to their partners and children and so on, encouragingly. But in education, that actually isn't always the case.

Sara: Really?

Kate: Definitely. And I was just thinking about when I did… So I have more degrees and things than I need.

But when I was doing my masters in educational leadership, I did some, something on positive education, funny, the word positive often comes up in my life.

And one of the things that was talking about was how praise was essentially more motivating and more linked to success than criticism. So when I finished this Masters and I went back to...

I did it full time for a year and I went back to teaching, I decided that I was going to do an experiment with a class that I had and that I was only going to speak to them positively. That is when they were doing their work, I would only comment on what they had achieved, not what they had not achieved.

And it was so fascinating. it actually changed the way I taught for the rest of my teaching career because the environment that that created in that classroom was so supportive and so different than environments I had created before. Some the kids just thought I was taking the piss, because you'd just be walking along and be like, you did three lines great and it's been half an hour. Surely they should have written more than that. But they could actually tell that I was being sincere and that increased.

I always think about that now when I think about dealing with people in any way that to actually focus on what they're not doing and what they're not achieving is not motivating and it's not encouraging and instead look at it like you've been saying this whole time, what are they doing right and to bring it back to ourselves, What are we doing right?

Sara: Yeah, so are you saying like when you did that you saw noticeable results with students?

Kate: Yeah, and not just in the academic results. Which are of course important, but like I said in the environment of the classroom was a lot more positive. The kids were a lot happier, I didn't have the same discipline issues. You know, it was just like a better space for everyone to be in and to learn.

And I mean, I think as well as I often think about positive and negative in some ways like negative emotions often cause a contraction.

Like if you even think about feeling afraid or feeling small, like it's the body almost instinctively like pulls itself in and makes itself feel like  we contract.

Like we become smaller in our thinking. But when we are more positive, you know, it's almost like we're more expansive and that gives us the ability to actually branch out more, connect more, do more because we're feeling like more in that state of being as opposed to being like all small and tight.

Sara: Oh yeah, because you know, I guess no matter how old you get, you can remember being in school and that feeling of like when the teachers thinking you're not doing enough, or even though you've worked really hard. I still, oh, I got really loud on that one, I still remember an eighth grade teacher, in a comment, he wrote, my English teacher a comment he wrote on and it was like, what is this kike 45 years later, I still remember it. And it's, you know, but it was not a positive comment. And, and you also just, yeah, took it in like, oh, I'm a terrible writer.

Kate: And that kind of comment can make a huge impact on a person because the thing is that biologically we are more hardwired to respond to negative things.

I mean that's why it ‘s so easy, right? If it wasn't the easiest thing to do to think of the gap. to think of the gap rather than the gain. And if it wasn't the easiest thing to think about what you're doing wrong versus you doing right. Well, then we wouldn't do it. But it's the easier thing because we're hardwired to avoid threats. And so that's why we pay so much more.attention to criticism, including self-criticism, from, you know, that we do to the things that are good. And actually, an interesting, one of the interesting studies that they've done is about the balance of positive to negative ratios and how that works in relationships and other things like that.

And look, there's a variety of different numbers, but it would be safe to say that for every negative comment you make, you kind of need about four to counteract it. So think about that as well too. Like every time you've said, telling yourself you failed at this, you failed at this, you're actually making it even harder on yourself and you need to speak to yourself even more lovingly, more often.

Sara: I agree. And I just, that was such a good example because we do like, we, for what you said, it's, I think it's hardwired into us. We take in more the, you know, we did wrong or what's I to us, and I think it's important to note that, yeah, those comments, like my English teacher from back in the day, yeah, I still remember it. That being said, I still have the ability now as an adult to tell myself what I'm doing right.

And I also recognize like, it doesn't have to be like a eighth grade English paper. And, you know, so we have the ability now to just remind ourselves.

And so the final thing I wanted to say about like when we're thinking about giving ourselves credit for what we do right is to not put artificial timeframes on reaching a goal.

Because I think that's a big thing I see a lot like if we haven't done it in a certain amount of time, we just say we haven't done it.

And I don't know if I think it's Carol Dweck with -

Kate: growth mindset. 

Sara: Yes, thank you. Yeah. But I think she said instead of like, I haven't done it, I haven't done it yet. And hearing that, that really did change my perspective.

Because when I was like, oh, it's just not yet. we've talked about this. It's like, one of my, I call it my superpower now is like, I don't quit till I've got there. Or I've made the decision that that's not a goal I'm going for anymore. And that makes a huge difference when you take the timeframe off of it.

It's like, because you know, it used to be like, oh, you needed to do all this stuff in your career when you were young. And it's like, no, I'm going to be here till I'm 90 or so. Like I've got plenty of time.

It doesn't mean you put off everything. But it's like, no, I don't have to have done everything by the time you don't have to have done everything by the time you're 30 or 40. You have more time.

Or if you are trying to lose weight, you don't have to do it in two months, give yourself a couple of years. We're doing changes for the rest of your life, not just for this minute.

I mean, that's the way I look at it. Like anytime I'm trying to do something positive, it is for the rest of my life, not just for this period of my life. And so to me, that's really important.

Kate: Nice.

Sara: All right. So I have here in my notes that you have a what I did right journal instead of just a gratitude. I mean, we all love gratitude journals who hasn't done like tons of gratitude, but I want to hear this one.

Kate: Yeah. So sometimes I mean, sometimes about gratitude journals is they can actually feel quite forced and there is there is evidence to say that they don't always produce the results that you want them to do, particularly if you're feeling like you're forced to write things that you're grateful for.

And so a suggestion that I had was actually rather than focusing at the end of the day, what you're grateful for, why not actually focus on what you did right that day or - right is very subjective term You know, what did I do that I'm proud of?

Sara: That's right. It is subjective. But you know who gets to decide? 

Kate: You get to decide.

Sara: I think that is the most beautiful way to kind of wrap this up. Yeah. Is what you did right is only you're the only one that gets to decide.

But I think sometimes we overlay things with what we think other people will think of it. And that holds us back from giving ourselves credit because we're like, other people would look at that and be like, that's not that big of deal.

I love that idea that what I do right, only I get to decide. Yeah. I want to start that tonight. I really like that idea.

Kate: Awesome. Thanks, Sara. 

Sara: Right. You're welcome. And I'll see you next week. 

Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review on iTunes so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can't wait to see you next week.