199. Success Intolerance

Does this happen to you where you have something really good happen to you, but immediately you point out all the things that aren’t perfect. Like you have this beautiful quilt that you’ve in, you spent so much time working on, and then there’s three places maybe in the whole thing that’s not exactly perfect, and that’s where you’re gonna point it out.

If that is you, welcome to this podcast. My name is Dara Tomasson. This is episode 199 Success Intolerance, the Quilters Coach Podcast. 

All right, so if you can’t allow yourself to feel the good and allow all the good. Then I’m so glad you’re here and you only focus on the negative because guess what happens? You actually aren’t able to live a well balanced life, and when you don’t live a well balanced life, you do crazy things like; overeat, over shop, over scroll, and then you feel bad about yourself. So then you just overeat more  and over scroll more and overspend more, and that cycle just continues. So my podcast episode is dedicated to helping you get outta that cycle so that you can quilt more and enjoy more, and laugh more and play more, and save money and finish more.

Okay. So if you’re game, if you are in on that, then you need to stay at this episode because what I’m gonna be sharing with you is gonna be life changing. I’m a life coach. I help you change your life, okay? 

But before we do that, I wanted to share a success with one of the members in my membership. And it actually goes along with the theme of today’s podcast.

So this is a client inside my membership who has lost 80 pounds and then she gains some weight back, I think 20. And it’s fascinating to watch. Because it’s only, when you lose 80 pounds and then you just gain 20, that’s still pretty good. 

And so yesterday I was able to coach her and it was fascinating for her to realize, I am creating some of those old habits. I’m bringing them back. and it’s been fun to watch how she’s not like finding excuses anymore. And she is actually saying, yeah, you’re right, I am bringing back some old habits.

I am doing some things that aren’t helpful and, watching her from a place of curiosity and also a place of, okay, let me look at what I’ve done in the past to create success and here are some ideas. And so it’s gonna be fun to watch as she implements those new tools. 

But this is the thing that I, one of the reasons why I love sharing this win and why I love having this conversation is that so many of us think that once we’ve lost weight, it’s supposed to just be one and done.

It’s like toast. When you put bread in a toaster, there’s a setting that you put on the toaster that says. Like how much you like it toasted. If you keep pressing that button, it’s gonna burn, right? It’s not gonna be good. 

So we think that weight loss is like toast, but really weight loss is like brushing our teeth or doing laundry.

We always have to brush our teeth. Like we can’t brush our teeth for one year. Like we can’t say I’m gonna brush my teeth for five hours or 10 hours, and then I don’t have to brush my teeth for 364 days. Same thing with laundry, unless you decide to go buy new clothes all the time.

I don’t. Probably not. But so that’s why the work that I do is so beneficial because when you understand how the brain works and you understand how growth works, and you understand how our nervous system works, like always scanning for danger. Those things are going against having success.

And so when you can learn how all the balls are working and how it all goes together, then you can create success for yourself. And that is what, that’s what we’re gonna talk about in today’s episode. 

Okay. So let’s look at this question. Why is it so hard to change and keep that new level of success?

Now, I’m curious about your answer. Why do you think it’s human nature? When we do something really well, that, first of all, we have a hard time accepting the compliment, accepting the change, and then we point out the different difficulties. There’s actually lots of reasons, but today I wanted to just focus on one because otherwise it’ll be overwhelming.

And I want you just to focus on this one concept and commit for the next week, seven days on, how is this actually going to change you? And I like the definition I learned back in University of learning. If you’ve actually learned something, it means you’ve changed behavior.

And so I want to invite you to change one thing from this episode. So we’re gonna just focus on one tool to do one thing. So inside the membership, I was coaching another client and she was saying how she’s lost 50 pounds, but in the last year she gained 10 pounds back.

And I said, okay, so why do you think? And so she’s going back and forth and she gave this example. So she takes care of her elderly father who lives in her back. He has a house, but it’s in her backyard, like you can just walk across and she has a sister who is developmentally delayed, who she is the full-time caregiver for, and she has no more kids living at home, but her husband, who’s not quite retired yet and she’s had, I think she has seven kids, so she has lots of grandkids and everything. 

But her husband and her dad will say to her what have you got what have you got going on today? And she said, oh, I don’t have to leave the house. Yet she has this whole plan in her head of all the things that she wants to get done, but they don’t know that. So then they’ll make requests or they’ll, there’ll be different expectations. So then what will happen is she will then go and do the things that they’ve asked her and then she starts to feel resentment, she starts to feel frustrated, And she ends up feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. And so they end up going out for dinner and she’ll end up ordering like french fries and like a burger and french fries because she’s so exhausted and she’s so like depleted ’cause she’s not really saying what she really wants and she’s doing what she thinks other people think that she should be doing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Because I wonder how many of us do that in different ways So my life right now, I’m in a very interesting stage of my life where I. I wake up at 6:45. I drive my kids to the church. They do an hour of scripture study, then I drive them to school, and I actually am doing my hair and my makeup in the church.

Then I drop them off at school, and then I start my workday about 8:35. And then I will then work all day. And then I finish up and then I’m driving them to their multiple basketball practices. So then I’m not really finished working or my, like my mom responsibilities till around 9, 9:30. So I    don’t really have a lot of time to myself.

And then of course I do the laundry and the groceries and all the things, and it’s been interesting. To watch my own brain and how I’m telling that story and also managing my brain on what. How am I using my time at work? And I like to go on walks with nature. So I did organize for another mom to take turns.

So sometimes I do get to go for my walk, but sometimes like last minute she’ll cancel. And so I don’t always get to go on my walk, 

I was thinking, okay. I can see how we can get caught up in all these different expectations and responsibilities and things that we want, like we want, I want to be that mom and I want to be that business owner, and I don’t really have a choice, like my husband is actually not able to drive with his work and his responsibilities.

It’s just not in the, it’s not on the table. And my daughter’s coming home today as I’m recording this, and she’ll be able to do some help, but she’s gonna get a job and I don’t know how much she’s gonna be able to help me, and that’s okay. 

So this is where the tool comes in. This is the tool. So what I’ve been really thinking about is, so she’s lost. 50 pounds and then she gained 40 pounds and then she gained 10 pounds or 50, I can’t remember. I can’t even remember what I was saying, but I think it’s, she lost 50 pounds and now she’s, she gained the 10 pounds back, but she has kept that 40 pounds off for over a year.

Now there is this, we have this internal thermometer. And Dr. Gay Hendricks talks about it. We actually talk in our society about the glass ceiling and how we can reach this this maximum. So there’s lots of different ways of talking about it, but we’ve set up in our body are and it actually started as young girls, young people of what is our internal thermometer. What is our setting of acceptability? 

So even my dad, it’s so funny, my dad will say things to me like when I say, yeah, I’m traveling this week. He’s what are you gonna, what? How are the boys? What are they gonna do with the boys? Like, how are they going to eat and everything? I said, oh, it’s okay, dad.They know how to make stuff. 

But he’s still like my, and he has dementia now, and, but he’s, he doesn’t understand it’s okay for a mom to leave her grown like they’re 12 and 15. My 12-year-old is six feet tall. He’s very capable. he actually can make a lot of good food. And it’s okay for them to have some, like a few days away with their mom not being there all the time.

And we have this internal thermometer that was subconsciously created at a young age, and then we have just subconsciously built on it. And so we don’t even realize the underpinning of it all happening. 

And so this client of mine, she only is focusing on the negative. Of gaining that 10 pounds back, whereas in the beginning, I shared a win of the client who’s, lost 80 pounds but put 20 pounds back on. She’s in a place now of like curiosity of, and she’s able to go in and really start diving into what, what is actually happening? And there’s no self-judgment. There’s no shame. There’s no blame. It’s just oh, this is a human fast, this is fascinating. Human behavior is really fascinating. 

Okay, so the tool. We know all of the different components. And I’m gonna call it the number scale. So remember, I don’t know if this was when you were a kid and you had your desk in grade, I don’t know, grade two, grade three. I’m not sure what grade they started this.

But they introduced that there are negative numbers and there are positive numbers. And so zero is neutral. When we think about the, thermometer outside the temperature Looking at the thermometer the cold, the warm, the hot the cold.

So if we can’t get to neutral and we only are being mean to ourselves, we’re criticizing ourselves, we are only focusing on that negative. We are not being balanced. 

Now today in the coaching I gave to the group, I talked about the negative scale of “I’m not good enough.” So we have like self depreciation, we have apathy, we have frustration, discouragement.

So if we have a lot of thoughts like, I’m not good enough. I’m terrible, what’s the point? If we’re spending a lot of that, our brain juice and our thinking there we are just feeding that internal thermometer that says, “this feels normal, this feels good.” I call it the wet blanket.

If something happens that’s feeling good, so we’re on the other side of that number scale, and we’re like, oh my goodness, I’m so accomplished. I can’t believe how productive I am. I’m really good at all of this. I can handle all sorts of things. I’m really good at managing my time and my effort. if we’re not comfortable being over there because of this internal setting, then we will throw a wet blanket on ourselves to bring us back to the negative side.

Okay. And so when you think about the world right now, we have the worst mental health we’ve ever had, the highest levels of depression and anxiety because we are not allowing the negative just to be there and we’re not allowing ourselves to observe that from a different perspective. 

So yesterday I was talking to a friend who is becoming a therapist. And we were talking about actually kids and eating. Her son was recently diagnosed with oppositional defiance and ADHD and how she’s having a really hard time with controlling his sugar. and, so one of the things that I said to her was, one of the principles I teach as a life coach is in order to have a healthy, balanced life, half of your life is negative and half is positive.

But knowing that there’s always gonna be the negative, it’s like the old fashioned scales. It’s oh, there’s the negative for the day and, but that’s just normal. It’s normal to have negative. 

So my husband just called. We had some concerns about our car. So I, to be the responsible car owner, I thought we gotta pay the guys to do like a checkup and stuff and see what if this is really a problem or if the other people were just wanting our money because we got an oil change. And the oil change, people were like, oh, you gotta do two grand, two or $3,000 worth of stuff on this car. So we took it to the other guy and so when I heard the negative, I was like, yeah. That sounds, that’s negative. I didn’t really want to be spending $3,000 on car repairs. 

It’s normal when you have a car that’s 2020, any car doesn’t matter at what age, there’s always gonna be, you use it, so you gotta repair it. So there’s no point in fighting it or resisting it. 

So as I’m sharing this podcast, And you think of the title “Success Intolerance.” I really want you to think about how does this cycle look like in your life?

Now, I’m gonna use another example. So a lot of us, I know what era the most of the people who listen to this podcast. 

So we were taught there’s experts out there. You shouldn’t trust your own body, you shouldn’t trust your own instincts. You should just listen to these experts. And then you should use a lot of self willpower and self-control. And you should probably talk to yourself really negatively and not own any of it, and just follow the list, and then you’re gonna lose the weight. And then you can be happy. That’s all wrong, right? 

So the problem is. Is that we know how to lose weight because we use those really terrible strategies. What I’m saying to you is you need to change the way you think about it now. And so it’s gonna take some time to rewire your approach to weight loss. But how you lose weight is how you’re gonna keep it off. you gotta love yourself.

You gotta have compassion, you gotta have understanding, you gotta roll with the punches. You gotta feel the feelings, not eat them. And if you do go and eat or you binge for a while, we gotta be objective and we gotta just say, Hey, what’s going on? Let’s be curious. Let’s not beat ourselves up.

So my challenge to you after listening to this podcast and after the things that I’ve taught you is if you were to go and investigate what contributed to your level of happiness in like your internal thermometer. So maybe it was if you were like, when I was in grade six, I was the star. I don’t know how this happened, but I was the star in the three plays.

There was three grade six classes and apparently I don’t know, I guess I was, I don’t know. It just happened. I was the star in all three of the plays. Not sure why, but I was. And I remember just like being so excited about it and I was thrilled. And on the way, on the drive home, my mom said you, “when you did that one line, you should have said like this.” And when you were doing the other one, I think you would’ve been better if you would’ve done that or, and this other circumstance, if you would’ve done this better. I think that would’ve been a, better impact on the play. So when I talked to her about it now, she’s oh, I don’t remember that at all.

I’m like, of course not. And she said, I didn’t want you to get a big head. she feels bad about it now. that was when I was in grade six. This is why it’s hard to forgive our moms and like we bring it, like I still, I coach women in their sixties, seventies, and they’re like, my mom did this.

It’s because when they say those things, we didn’t know how to have those internal settings. We didn’t know how to work all that out. And so then it just became our operating manual. 

So then I got the message, you can’t really be that proud of yourself. You can’t really celebrate yourself. There’s always more that you can always do, like you better not be too happy.

So success intolerance. We wired it as a young age, and so what I am hoping from this podcast, and if you join my membership, I will definitely help you to. Create a new setting of a inner peace, inner feeling of happiness and joy. And as I continue with the coaching and continue with my own self development, it’s amazing to watch how much I have, how different I have become.

And just like with brushing your teeth. You gotta keep doing it because the more I grow, the more I have to adjust this inner thermostat. So I gave a lot of tools, I gave a lot of ideas and thoughts, and I hope that as you listen, I hope that you can feel inspired, but not just inspired. I really hope that you take advantage of this free coaching call that I have and do it now before they all fill up. 

I talked to my clients today, or the membership today. I said, I don’t really want you ever using motivation other than like maybe cleaning a toilet or paying a bill. Motivation’s a very short fuse. I want you to rely more on commitment, endurance, dedication, determination. That’s what’s gonna create permanent change, and that’s where I can help you. Book that call. It literally will change your life.