August 16
Tapping into the Discomfort of Setting Goals
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Setting goals can invoke excitement and also create fear, anxiety and discomfort.
Discomfort is the currency to growth and learning how to be with the discomfort will help you reach your goal from a place of curiosity, love, and acceptance.
Recently, I set a goal to do a total body reset which I desperately needed.
It included overhauling my current nutrition and my attitude. As summer progressed this year, I found myself eating foods that didn’t agree with my body and had been nursing bicep tendinitis that didn’t seem to improve.
I’m not going to paint unicorns and rainbows about this cleanse and to be completely transparent, the goal of doing a 21 vegan reset created a lot of excitement and DREAD.
Every year, I usually do some type of reset and have written about them in my blog. I believe in giving my body time to release, heal, and reset so it is running optimally. While I typically do these in the Spring or Fall, this time I happened to do it right in the midst of summer. My friend and I did it together; supporting each other through the ugly and keeping each other accountable.
This cleanse is very restrictive; no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy, no meat, no processed foods, and no coffee.
Very simple menu of fresh organic veggies, fruit, distilled water, and tea.
As I navigated through hunger, nausea, very low energy, mood swings, and simply not giving a crap about much, I was also dealing with emergency house repairs, being without a car for almost a month, stressful situations and conversations, cramming 10 weeks of studying into two weeks and prepping for a final exam, all while trying to balance work and kids on summer break – the list actually continues – all without burying my emotions and stress in salty treats, IPAs and wine.
I am not much of an emotional eater (or drinker) until I reach my breaking point and the discomfort of July’s tribulations seem to test me like no other.
Before I started the cleanse, I really wanted to get my head in the game and wrote out my goal. It wasn’t about completing the entire protocol, it was focused on WHY I am doing it and what is it that I want to feel during and after.
As I scribbled out pages of why this is important to me, I also thought about who I need to become in order to do this without the struggle and suffering I tend to place on myself while doing something very challenging. Not being able to enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning was going to be tough! My notes revealed my commitment and looking at all of the possible situations that could arise and what do I need to believe in order to tackle each one.
This included:
- Identifying the obstacles that will arise.
- Accepting the idea of discomfort and that it will most likely exist every day.
- Committing to showing up every day by planning, prepping, and being intentional.
- Visualizing how I am feeling after it’s over.
- Tapping into the feeling of being PROUD.
That was the feeling I wanted to have every single day; PROUD.
Instead of waiting until the end of the cleanse to feel proud. I decided I wanted to be proud on day 1, day 5, all the days in between and following up to now. That required me to believe in what I am doing regardless of how much discomfort I felt in the moment.
I embodied the proud feeling as much as possible – especially when I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with a situation or energy to get through the afternoon.
Today, as I write this, I am still feeling very proud that I followed through with my word to myself.
I sat with urges and many many days of discomfort.
I didn’t give into the instant gratification of feeling better only to feel worse with guilt and regret.
There were more miserable days than happy ones, but I remained true to my word, myself and believed that..
“In order to become the next version of myself, I had to give up who I am, in order to become who I wanted to be.”
 I am not talking about giving up on myself or drastically changing who I am. This is about giving up old beliefs and outdated ways of thinking and doing in order to be this next version of myself.
These last four weeks were about building trust within self and the belief that I can be proud even though I was experiencing discomfort.
This is how you start believing in who you are, what you can accomplish, and tapping into your highest and authentic self.
If you are wanting to build this trust and start doing the things that light you up, let’s take this path to wellness together. I will walk you through how to create thoughts that support who you want to become and set goals in support of your mission and purpose.
Having support, guidance, someone to help you see past your blind spots, and work through the mental blocks will help you address the obstacles head on and prove to yourself that you can accomplish hard things even when you are feeling the discomfort.
Book your free Freedom Mindset Discovery Session today and let’s do this together.
Here’s to living on purpose,
Alexis