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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. And as always, I’m really glad you’re here with me today.
Courtney Townley 0:36
I want to give you a reminder that The Consistency Code Crash Course starts on May 22. So if this is something you’ve been considering joining me for, do not delay in getting yourself registered, you can sign up by going to graceandgrit.com/crashcourse.
Courtney Townley 0:53
And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, The Consistency Code Crash Course is the basis of everything I teach to my private clients and to my my membership community. In fact, it’s the recommended starting place for everyone that I work with. So in just five days, again, May 22, through May 26, I will be teaching participants a very repeatable framework that you can use for the rest of your life to stay consistent with your own self care. And I know that’s a really big promise. But it really is precisely what this framework does. So there’s still time to join, you’ll have access to an online classroom where all the content is housed. Plus, you’ll have ample opportunity to be coached by me throughout the event.
Courtney Townley 1:41
So if you love the Grace & Grit Podcast, if you would like a very sort of low investment opportunity to work with me on a deeper level, this is a really great opportunity. So once again, you can find out more details and get yourself registered by heading over to graceandgrit.com/crashcourse.
Courtney Townley 2:06
Now on this episode of The Grace & Grit Podcast today, I would like to explore something that a lot of humans seem to have an aversion to when it comes to behavior change. What is it? Simplicity.
Courtney Townley 2:22
So before we get into it, I first want to tell you a story. Two years ago, I bought a new car, it’s if you want to know what kind of car it is, it’s a Ford Explorer S T. And it is truly one of my favorite possessions. Like I’m not a very materialistic person. But I really do love my car. And I love driving it. I mean, I love even just sitting in it, I just like being in my car. But if I’m being honest, the first few months that I owned it, I was really intimidated by it. Because it’s basically a mobile computer with more features than I could possibly need to get myself from point A to point B. So there’s a whole lot of bells and whistles on this car that I just don’t use.
Courtney Townley 3:11
Now, when I first bought the car, the story that I was telling myself was that I was going to have to read the manual to find out about all the features that this car afforded me. But as I started to read, I just got overwhelmed. I wasn’t being inspired to use these features. I was actually like, who needs this stuff. So I did a little self coaching, and reminded myself that I was I didn’t need to utilize every feature that this car had. In fact, I coached myself right in to driving the car to the dealer where I bought it, to have them help me turn off all the pings and dings that were alerting me to things that I really didn’t need to know in order to drive my car safely. Here’s why I’m telling you this.
Courtney Townley 4:03
The number one issue that I coach women on day in and day out, is overwhelm. My clients have so much information coming at them from the outside world, a lot of pinging and dinging if you will, so much so that they feel paralyzed to really get themselves anywhere. And I have said this countless times on this show, and I will say it 1000s of times more. If you are feeling stuck along the path to change.
Courtney Townley 4:38
You do not have an information problem. You have an application problem. And you can keep telling yourself that you need to read another book or listen to another Podcast. But that’s really just a hiding habit. And in case you missed the episode that I did all about hiding habits. I think it’s one of our most listened to Episode So it’s of all time. And I can’t remember which one it was, but it was maybe 10 episodes ago. So hiding habit essentially is something that you do to avoid the actual work of putting rubber to the road. And a lot of people are in a habit of endlessly consuming information. So they don’t actually get to the application part.
Courtney Townley 5:28
And it kind of makes me think of, you know, in my industry, I have seen a lot of brand new coaches, move into the coaching space, and be really successful right out of the gate. And for a long time, it really annoyed me, because I thought, you know, they have no knowledge, they have no experience. But the longer I kind of sat back and watched, the more I really realized what was going on. These new coaches didn’t have the experience, or all the stories or all the complicated methodologies that paralyze them from making progress. So they charged into the space without overthinking without overcomplicating. And they took simple actions, and produced amazing results. And this is what I like to think that I help women do in the space of elevating the health and well being of their life. I give them tools to help them stop overthinking, I give them tools to help them simplify their process. I give them tools for organizing themselves. And I give them most importantly, a pathway for repeating those things over and over again. So they can be consistent. And guess what it works.
Courtney Townley 7:03
Consistency with simple measures really works to produce amazing results. In fact, every time a client of mine is wrestling with something, I always come back to the framework that I am literally teaching on May 22, in case you missed that The Consistency Code Crash Course, I come back to some piece of that framework to help them get unstuck. And I have to tell you, that simplicity is a far more pleasurable experience than the Hail Mary approaches. Because let’s face it, the Hail Mary approaches really kind of feel glamorous and novel when you first sign up for them. But they ultimately feel really hard. And like you have to sacrifice a lot to engage with them, which is why you can’t sustain them. They are quite literally unsustainable.
Courtney Townley 8:05
What I keep finding time and time again, in my coaching career, is that so often people are reaching for complex measures, because they’re in a hurry. So they have a reunion, or summer, or some party that they’re getting ready for. And they want to look a certain way. Or they’re desperate, they have been neglecting themselves for so long, that they have hit a brick wall in a very big way. And now they are literally willing to do anything to change, or so they think. Because really, this is when we all sign up for the Hail Mary approaches. And six weeks later, we’re not doing any of the things because they’re just too much.
Courtney Townley 8:54
I also see the people reaching for complex measures when they’re buying into this cultural belief that you can do it all. No, you can’t. You might be able to do it all but not all at the same time. And that goes for behavior change and life as a whole. We have to make decisions about what is most important to us. We have to make decisions about where we are going to put our focus, we have to simplify in order to show up in the areas that matter most to us. And I think another reason we reach for really complex measures is because we’re simply not being consistent with the small things. And so we end up convincing ourselves that nothing works and that I need something really big and drastic in order to change my life. So here’s some examples of that that you may be familiar with. Is not really moving your body much at all, but then signing up for a six day a week boot camp or not. really making the small consistent commitment to incorporating more vegetables and whole foods into your diet. And so you end up signing up for something like whole 30 for 30 days or going ketogenic for 30 days, which you might do, but then you completely unravel all of that work after the 30 day mark.
Courtney Townley 10:23
Or maybe you’re someone who is really trying to slow down and check in with yourself more often. So instead of like committing to a two minute check in a few times a day, you commit to 45 minutes of meditation, and then wonder why you consistently struggle to show up. To or worse yet, you try to do all these things at once you sign up for the boot camp, you overhaul your diet, and you massively commit to some big mindset shift, right or mindset practice. And shear is what complex measures are always going to get you, they’re always going to create more stress, and more overwhelm.
Courtney Townley 11:06
From what I have seen, working with a whole lot of women over the years is that no one needs more of that, especially not the midlife female population, we are already less resilient to stress, we are already presented with a tremendous amount of opportunity for overwhelm. So we don’t need more of either of those things. complex measures will also get you a whole lot of stagnation. Because when you are overly stressed, and when you are overwhelmed, you don’t move more, you move less, you don’t take more action, you take less action. And less action, of course, leads to stagnation. And then what stagnation does is it just reinforces a whole lot of self doubt that nothing works for me. And we play that tape in our head for a long time to the point that once again, we get super desperate, and we convince ourselves we need something even more complicated.
Courtney Townley 12:12
We look outside of ourselves for something more complicated. And we start the cycle all over again, inducing more stress and overwhelm more stagnation, more self doubt. And you can stay in that spin cycle your entire life. Or you could grant yourself permission to simplify to take small steps. So simplification makes the process so much easier, and so much more enjoyable. I think I’ve shared the story before that. When I was in college, I went backpacking through Europe for three months. And when I initially left on my trip, my backpack I’m pretty sure weighed more than I did. I never actually weighed it. But I had so many things I didn’t need, right I had, I’ve always joked I had the cowboy boots, because who takes cowboy boots to Europe, I do apparently, I had books, lots of books in my bag. So many things that I wasn’t going to use, I wasn’t going to wear. And until I let go of those items, which I did, I started shedding them along my trip. And my trip, everything I let go of my trip became so much more enjoyable, it was so much more easier for me to travel. Because my load was light. So how do you actually simplify behavior change? Because it doesn’t seem as simple as just taking something out of your backpack, does it? But it really is. We have to open the contents first and see kind of what’s in there.
Courtney Townley 13:52
Right? Like, what are my beliefs? What do I think I have to do to create change, because a lot of that is false. And we need to be able to see it before we’re willing to let go of it. So I need to kind of examine some thoughts about behavior change. I need to be very honest with myself about where I actually want to create change. And I always look at this through the lens of that data over drama. Right? I’m looking at the data of where the real gaps are, rather than spending time creating storylines about the data. Two very different approaches. So first, we have to expose the beliefs, the gaps, and no that’s not fun work, but it’s unnecessary work. And then we just have to pick some place to start. You know, when I was unloading my backpack from Europe, I wasn’t caught up in this story like what would be the best thing to let go of. There was no best thing to let go of I just needed to unload some weight. So I just needed to pick something to let go of. And with behavior change, you’re just going to have to pick something to start with.
Courtney Townley 15:08
There is no best place to start. Some people start with meditation, some people start with going to bed earlier, some people start with drinking more water. Some people start with having difficult conversations. All of it is in tribute to the same thing, which is unpacking stress from your life. And then once you decide on what your action is, what is the thing, the simple thing that you are going to commit to for a period of time, then you get to coach yourself through actually showing up to do that work. Because even though it’s simple, of course, it’s not easy. I wish the two were synonymous, right? I wish simple and easy, were the same thing. But they’re really not. Simple things are still going to require that you master self coaching, that you parent your brain, and you manage your emotions in a way that you keep the commitment to yourself. And then we have to master rebounding. What do I mean by that? I always say life is gonna throw you a lot of curveballs. Some of them you will see coming and some of them will come way out of left field. But curveballs are coming life is not going to roll the the way you expect it to all the time.
Courtney Townley 16:29
If you use those curveballs as reasons to not keep showing up for your commitment, well, you could spend your whole life in a state of misalignment. And so when we get destabilized, how do we rebound quickly? There’s a lot of skill sets baked into that. All of which I am going to be teaching you inside the consistency Crash Course. So I would love you to join me. You of course certainly don’t have to. It’s just an invitation. But what do you have to lose? Right? If you are stuck in a spin cycle of complexity, and overwhelm, and frustration and ultimately, a whole lot of self doubt. It’s probably worth the 29 bucks to learn how to get out of that spin cycle. So once again, graceandgrit.com/crashcourse. I would love to see you there. And I hope if nothing else from this show today, you just take away the idea that simplicity is your friend. What can you do today to make the work easier on yourself easier on your brain easier to show up for once again tomorrow? You do that work and you will move mountains over time. Alright my friends have a great day and I hope to see you inside the Crash Course. Take care.
Courtney Townley 18:04
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible
