sometimes it takes just a single inspirational thought to massively impact your life and today I wanted to share several of these life lessons and small little mindset changes that have helped me so much ever since I first learned them and I hope it might do the same for you I also briefly want to thank our friends over at headspace for sponsoring today's video headspace is my favorite meditation app but we're going to chat more about them a little bit later for now grab a drink get cozy and let's get started when I first met my
partner Robin he was telling me a story about how when he was a little boy he was taking Taekwondo lessons and sometimes he just couldn't kick high enough or he couldn't break the wooden planks and so frustrated he'd say I can't do it and his teacher would reply no I can't do it yet and 5 years later that little boy got his black belt and what I love so much about the story is that from a young age this teacher was essentially instilling in him a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset cuz somebody with
a fixed mindset believes that skills and talents are innate something that they're born with whereas somebody with a growth mindset believes that hard work rather than Talent alone is important in success and it's one of the most powerful mindsets that you can have because it essentially makes time your ally eventually everything is possible so anytime you catch yourself thinking I can't do it switch it to I can't do it yet in social situations I'm hyper aware Ware of whether what I'm saying or doing is coming across as awkward or if I'm at the gym for
example I'm nervous that people are watching my every move and silently critiquing my form and what I've come to learn is that this anxiety in Psychology has a name it's called the spotlight effect it's when you feel like all eyes are on you but in reality most people are too wrapped up in their own concerns to pay much attention to anyone else as Elanor Roosevelt once famously said you wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do most people simply don't care and I have found that thought
so liberating cuz it's helped me feel more comfortable just being [Music] myself when we want to make a diet change when we want to eat more healthfully it can be really tempting to want to eliminate foods that we think are harmful like cutting out chocolate and chips for example the problem with restrictions though is it can really mess up our relationship with food and I'd like to think that all food has a place at the table and it's more just about finding balance rather than strict elimination so what if we shifted our Focus from exclusion
to inclusion so instead of saying something like I want to stop eating Donuts we would say I want to eat more fruits and veggies instead of saying I want to stop eating out we'd say I want to make food at home more often it's more forgiving and more motivating because we're not focusing on what we want to eliminate we're emphasizing what we want to add creating a diet based on abundance I wish somebody had told me this sooner that it is okay to change when I was in university and I had to change my major
or later in life when I completely changed career paths I was consumed with this fear that I was just throwing away all of this time and effort that I had invested and I was so embarrassed to admit to other people that I had changed my mind again and it just felt like everybody else had their path figured out and my uncertainty just felt like a personal failure and the same fear even gripped me when I decided to go plant-based I was hesitant to share the news with other people cuz I didn't know what they were
going to think but what I've come to learn is that change is not something to be ashamed of it's actually incredibly inspiring because it's a sign that you're listening to your inner voice and you're evolving into the person you're meant to become but most importantly be patient with yourself when you're journeying to a place you've never been [Music] before my sister once told me how you brush your teeth is how you do everything and literally the night before I was thinking to myself oh my gosh I'm so Restless when I'm brushing my teeth I just
want it to be over with as quickly as possible so I can move on to the next thing and this kind of restlessness also spills over to other areas of my life like I am always rushing when I'm walking or rushing when I'm doing the dishes and I think that's exactly what my sister was trying to tell me that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything if we're always feeling like we're in a hurry if we're always feeling like we need to do more our entire life starts to feel frazzled
overwhelming and anxiety inducing and so the only antidote I think is to learn to slow down but it's not just as easy as wanting to slow down right because it takes practice especially if we're used to rushing through life all the time and this is where headspace has made the biggest difference in my life so headspace is a mindfulness app that helps you find calm and Clarity and if we're talking just a few life lessons in this video consider headspace to have hundreds of life lessons packed into it it has helped me learn to slow
down it's helped me learn to let go of things I can't control and just just Embrace whatever situation I'm in I'm just going to come back to that feeling being present being balanced in both body and mind So within the app you're going to find everything from mindfulness walks to becoming a more mindful eater to meditations that are specifically designed to help you unwind and enjoy a better night's sleep and headp space has been gracious enough to offer to our audience an exclusive 40% discount on their subscription so if you want to snatch it up
it's just for a limited time this offer you can scan this QR code right here or check out the link I'll leave for you in the description box below I have been using headspace for nearly a decade now and it has changed my life so I'm really excited for you to try it out too if you're consistently falling short of meeting your goals the problem might not be you but how you're setting up the goals so let me explain if you're somebody who's always feeling like I want to get an A on my exam or
I want to win first place or I want to reach 10,000 views on my video these things can seem like great targets but they're based on outcomes outcomes you can't fully control and so if you don't hit the targets it can start to feel really discouraging so see you can instead shift your focus from end results to actions that you can control instead so for example instead of saying I want to reach 10,000 views on my video you can commit to producing two videos a week or commit to training 3 days a week or studying
a couple hours every night with these goals we're focused on inputs actionable and measurable goals that we can achieve and when we focus on what we can control the results often just take care of themselves imagine having everything you've ever wanted in your life right now but would it even be possible given that we have so many conflicting desires like we dream of traveling the world but we also crave the stability of a permanent home or maybe we dream of starting a family but at the same time we cherish our independence like I remember a
few years ago I was video chatting with my mom and I was telling her how homesick I was on the one hand I loved living in Europe and I was building this life with my partner and it was amazing but at the same time I so fiercely missed my family back home in Canada and my mom said you will have everything you've ever wanted in your life just never all at the same time and that grounded me it helped me so much it helped me realize that our dreams and our goals they often unfold in
stages and while we might wish that everything happens all at once there's a beauty in each dream materializing in its own time when I was working as a dietitian and somebody would come to me and say Hey I want to follow this specific diet or I want to try this juice cleanse or I want to eliminate this specific food what do you think my response was always can you imagine sticking to this way of eating for the next 5 years if the answer is no it's probably not the best approach and it's just a simple
question to help us rule out if what we're trying to follow is a quick fix and when it comes to quick fixes usually they only give short-term results but real change happens with consistent effort over time the daily habits as Gretchen Rubin once said what you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while so if you ever come across someone who says you should eat a certain way or you shouldn't eat a certain food before you give in just ask yourself honestly can I see myself following this advice not just
for the next week but can I see myself eating this way consistently for the next 5 years and if the answer is no it's probably a good idea to find a more balanced approach I was once talking to a therapist I was telling her about this goal I really wanted to achieve but I was so afraid of failing and she asked Are You Afraid or are you excited and I said no I'm afraid and she asked again are you sure because the physical sensations of fear and excitement are very similar we often think that fear
means we're doing something wrong but what if it's just showing us that we care about the outcome that we're invested what if we sof fear as excitement for what could happen next in the words of the author Corey Allen going from being worried about what might happen to being excited about what might happen is only a mindset shift away and so now anytime I feel fear I'll say out loud nope I'm excited it literally transforms the paralyzing effects of fear and anxiety into an openness to try new things we're stuck with ourselves every single other
people come and go but we're with ourselves forever and so it's really important that we are intentional and kind in the way that we talk to ourselves and so this is a little trick that I use it's going to sound weird but just bear with me anytime you're talking about yourself in your mind try to use the third person because I think we tend to beat ourselves up a lot and we say things like I'm so dumb or I'm so ugly but if we shift to third person instead and say sadd's so dumb she's so
ugly kind of sits weird because we're not used to talking about other people like that hopefully but we will talk about ourselves like that and so when we switch to third person I find that we tend to soften our words so we might instead say you know she felt so dumb because she didn't know what to say or she feels really ugly because she doesn't like what she's wearing it makes the whole thing feel less intense and more just like we're working through a problem instead of attacking ourselves look you can walk away from a
bully but you can't walk away from yourself so you want your mind not to be a place where you feel scared and criticized but a place where you feel safe and supported so just make sure you're building yourself up and not tearing yourself down but now for the best part I am so curious to know if there are any thoughts life lessons quotes that you've learned that have helped to improve your life if you're willing to share it I think everybody's going to love just going through the comments and absorbing all of the wisdom that's
down there I know I'm looking forward to it so I'll see you in the comments thanks so much for hanging with me today friends I really appreciate it makeup lies signing off and I'll see you in the next video
