Corinne:
Hi, I’m Corinne, after a lifetime of obesity, being bullied for being the fattest kid in the class, and losing and gaining weight like it was my job, I finally got my shit together and I lost 100 pounds. Each week, I’ll teach you No Bullshit weight loss advice, you can use to overcome your battle with weight. I keep it simple. You’ll learn how to quit eating and thinking like an asshole. You stop that, and weight loss becomes easy. My goal is to help you lose weight, the way you want to live your life. If You’re ready to figure out weight loss, then Lets go.
Hello, everybody, welcome back. So, today I have a special podcast. I love this topic so, I think this is going to be for anyone who sits like… I want you to think about this. How often are you sitting around wondering if you should do something? Or wishing you would? Or you are afraid to do something? Today what I want to talk about, is a way for you to figure out how to basically shit or get off the pot, on doing some things. And this can be a lot of stuff. So let me break this down. We’re going to talk about risk versus reward. And before you’re like, “I don’t know how this applies to weight loss.” I’m going to tell you exactly how it applies to weight loss first. This is what I see my No BS women do all the time. “I wonder if I should start making that 24-hour-plan I see everybody do?”
Like, “I’m seeing the people lose the weight.” And they just sit back and they just notice people are losing weight in the Facebook group but they keep wondering if they should. And the reason why they’re wondering, is because in their brain, there is a lot of thoughts about like, “Yeah, but what if you don’t follow it?” Or “What if it doesn’t work?” Or “What if you plan some food and for fuck’s sake a free donut gets brought into the office and then you can’t have it?” So we do a lot of sitting around wondering about stuff and not doing. Wondering about something, almost always feels gross. Like if you’re sitting around wondering what it would be like to go to Hawaii and it’s going to drive you closer to scheduling a vacation, wonder all fucking day.
But most of us what we do, is we sit around wondering about things that we’re scared of. And when you’re wondering about things that you’re scared of, it feels a little gross on the inside. It doesn’t feel good. So I wanted to talk about that today because, this little four step framework that I’m going to give you… actually, it’s only three steps. I cut one of them out because I was like, “You don’t have to do that part.” So I’ve even made it simpler. Three steps that I’m going to give you, helps you really figure out things that you have been wondering about. And it’s not even just wondering, it’s a lot of your worries too.
A lot of us sit around, and we worry about things. We worry, “Should I leave him or her?” “Should I leave this job?” “Should I get a new job?” “Should I retire?” I want you to think about, “This will work for a lot of your major life decisions, and it will always work for even the small ones.” And so this is what I want to talk about today, because it frustrates the shit out of me, to watch people sit back, and spend their life contemplating if they should do things, and never doing anything about it. Why are you laughing? Kathy Hartman is on the video. I’m watching her, she is just like, [inaudible 00:03:55] I’m like spill it. Spill it [crosstalk 00:03:55].
Kathy:
I’m just sitting here thinking, “Is this Kathy’s coaching podcast again?”
Corinne:
Hello everybody, today we’re coaching Kathy on her shitty ass attitude about doing something new.
Kathy:
On worrying, wondering… how often do I say, “I’ll ponder that.” And you [inaudible 00:04:14] “No, just do it.”
Corinne:
For all of you who don’t know, Kathy’s not just the cohost, but Kathy… she has a prominent role in the no BS team. There’s 20 of us, but Kathy is like the person… she does a lot of our project management, she is our team performance coach, she’s the one that’s like… she makes sure that all of us are performing at high levels and stuff, but we are polar fucking opposite, when it comes to attacking a problem. If there’s a problem or there’s something, I’m like, “Let’s do this.” And that I’m immediate and “Let’s just try it, we’ll see what happens.” Kathy on the other hand is like, “Here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to meditate on this for a little bit…” She’s going to go hop into the [Suvi 00:05:05] at a low [inaudible 00:05:05] for a while and figure this out.
Kathy:
I’m going to come up with… my kids are like this too. We’re going to come up with all the things that could happen, everything that could go wrong… I have to tell a story about Greg.
Corinne:
Okay.
Kathy:
Now, a lot of times I get [crosstalk 00:05:20].
Corinne:
Tell everybody who Greg is, I know he’s your son, but tell them which one-
Kathy:
Right, Greg is son number two, he-
Corinne:
Who wears the shitty shorts.
Kathy:
Yes. If you’re in the membership, and you’ve done the relationships course that’s great. He and his wife Grace had a baby a month ago. Little Emma. Okay? So Emma was born in August, In May, they planned a weekend at the beach. Which is about an eight hour drive from here right? [inaudible 00:05:48] just like his mama, he calls the local hospital down at the beach and he says, “Do you take our insurance?” He packs the car seat, he covers all the bases just in case something happens with his [inaudible 00:06:02], which… God love him, he’s just taking care of his family, but this is how I am. You bring me a problem in the membership, I’m like, “Okay, we could try this, but this will happen.” “We could try this, but this will happen.” “We could try that, but that’s going to lead to these things.” It’s not super productive. And this is what I know about myself, and I’m coming to a point here, wondering, and worrying takes a lot of energy and produces nothing.
Corinne:
Exactly. And that’s the key right there. Is that, when you sit around and you wonder if you should do something, it’s like, what if you just did it and see what happens? And what I want to teach you today, is the reason why we do more wondering and worrying than we actually do, just taking some action. Now, to Kathy’s defense, I do want to say this, I am not saying that everybody from now on, that every time that you have one flight of an idea, that you should just go out and immediately implement. There is… I want you to think through things. I want you to notice though, when you are the kind of person who is overusing it.
Wondering and worrying is when you’ve moved into the realm of doing nothing about it. Like you’re just wasting mental space on things. When you could, just try some stuff and see what happens. So let’s go through the process, and I’m sure that this will make a lot more sense. So number one, so you’re going to basically be… you find that you are worrying about something or you’re wondering about something. So let’s just take in… let’s take weight loss. Let’s say… tell me something that our members very often they put off to last, because they are worried it won’t work or they’re… I would say the 24-hour plan.
Kathy:
That’s exactly what I was going to say, “I might do it wrong.”
Corinne:
Right. Like, “I’m going to do it wrong.” “It’s going to limit me.” They have all these thoughts about what the 24-hour plan is.
Kathy:
“I’ll plan the wrong foods.”
Corinne:
That are terrible. Every thought is just like, “I feel like shit when I think that.” “I feel like shit when I think that.” All right, so we’re going to walk through as an example, the 24-hour plan. First thing you want to do is, let’s just imagine the worst case scenario. If you start doing the 24-hour plan every day. So for people that tend to worry and wonder, it is a good exercise for you to write on paper, Kathy and I teach you over and over and over again, inside the membership and in this podcast, paper thinking versus ruminating. And we’re not going to roll this in our head. That’s what the worry and the wondering is. Nobody’s worrying on paper and wondering on paper. Everybody’s just like, “Well, Corinne, I’m a real busy person, I don’t have time to do the 24-hour plan.”
And yet if I put a camera in your office, there’s probably at least a good 30 minutes every day, broken up into two minute chunks where you’re sitting back in your chair, lost in… wondering if you should do something, contemplating how shitty your job is and stuff. We’re not doing it on paper, and that’s the problem. So you’re going to run through your worst case scenario. What is the worst case scenario if you write a 24-hour plan every single day? So for some people, when they think about the worst case scenario, it will be, “I won’t be able to eat the things I want when I want them.” Worst case scenario is, “I do it for 30 days, and I don’t lose any weight.” Give me something else that you think [crosstalk 00:09:42].
Kathy:
“I gain weight if I eat that.”
Corinne:
Yeah, “If I make a 24-hour plan with the foods that I want on it, I’ll gain weight by the end of the month.” So we’ll-
Kathy:
“[crosstalk 00:09:51] I’ll over eat them. I’ll over eat the foods.”
Corinne:
Or, “I’ll over eat these foods.” That kind of stuff. So there’s a lot of fear-based usually with the worst case scenario. So what you want to do, is you at least want to give your brain fresh air to think that stuff. Most of us, the reason why we sit around and feel so bad all the time, or scared, or anxious, overwhelmed, confused, the reason why we don’t just feel better and good, empowered, is because we don’t give air time to the thinking that’s actually going on in our head.
When you put it on paper, there’s a sense of relief, and when you put it on paper, you can do something about it. When you leave it in your head… a lot of us have this wrong assumption, “Well, if I don’t journal about it, then I won’t have to think about it.” That’s not true. You’re always thinking it. Now, it’s just unconscious thinking. You’re not hearing it, but you are suffering from it. So you are feeling like the day is really hard. You’re feeling at the end of the day, worn out. You’re just like, “I just don’t know why I’m so tired at the end of every day. I come home every day feeling so wore out, so stressed, so…” all these other stuff. That’s because unconsciously, all day long, you had all these worries, all these little wonders, running around in their uncheck. And every wonder and worry, has a worst case scenario.
So that each time you wonder, the worst case scenario is whispering in the background, it’s like, “Yeah, you really don’t want to do that. Because if you were to do that 30 days of that plan, you just get fat and you would just lose control over food.” That feels like, but those are the silent whispers. I was saying it yesterday, it’s at the membership. It’s like Careless Whisper from George Michael. It’s just playing in the background of your mind all the time like Careless Whisper.
Kathy:
That’s funny.
Corinne:
So you want to get them on paper, because whether you do it on paper or not, you are at the effect of the thought, no matter what. So then, after you… like, “What is my worst case scenario? If I quit this job, if I start this business, if I divorce this person, if I start dating…” Think about all the things that we worry and wonder about. “If I do this 24-hour plan…” You got to get the worst case scenario down. Then you go through each and every thing that you think is worst case scenario, and you challenge it. And this is important.
This is where your brain is going to argue why that’s not true, or “Is that even realistic that, that would happen? So if we take… “If I do the 24-hour plan, well, I won’t get to eat the foods I want when I want.” You can challenge that and say like, “Well, if that’s the worst case scenario, will I survive? If I have to miss a few things because plans changed?” Why is that so bad? Or is it like, “Oh, when I look at it on paper, and I notice that I’m thinking, ‘well, what if I go to my mama’s house, and I planned chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes, and she serves meatloaf with French fries and ice-cream on the side, what if I don’t get to eat that?’”
It’s like, Would you survive? Would that be okay? Is it worth never starting the 24-hour plan over those kinds of situations? Or is it worth doing the 24-hour plan, to figure out, “Do those things ever really happen? Are they happening with so much frequency? Is there something I need to learn from that?” When you get to the point where you can challenge some of the worst case scenario, usually what ends up happening is you see, that what your brain thinks is the worst case scenario, and what will more likely happen, is very different. It also… a lot of times when you play out your worst case scenario, you also see that you could survive. It’s not as bad as you’re making it.
I used to have a fear… My coach made me do this. I had this big fear of losing my business. Before Chris… I really wanted Chris to work inside No BS. But I also knew that the moment Chris worked for No BS, was also the moment that we had the guaranteed income gone. Now, suddenly, it’s like it’s all on me. And in my brain, the moment I started thinking, it’s all going to be on me, it would run through. Worst-case scenarios. Like a religion. So she made me write them all down, and then ask myself, “On a scale of one to 10, how likely is it that you would go homeless?” [inaudible 00:14:52] of mine was like, “Oh God, you just don’t know, we’d probably end up losing our house, we’d go homeless.” She’s like, “Seriously? You and Chris, if something happens to your business, y’all are going to choose homelessness over going and getting a job?”
And I was like, “Well, no, not really.” So then I got to make the situation look more like, “Okay, if it didn’t work out, here’s more likely what would happen and we would survive and it would be okay.” So this brings you to the next step. So we’re going to worst case scenario on paper, we’re going to challenge those things and get it to where it’s not worst case, it’s more what I think is probably more in the realm of reality case. which is not always good. It sometimes still feels like shit. Did you want to say something?
Kathy:
Yeah, I do.
Corinne:
Okay. Go ahead. Get in there.
Kathy:
You talked about your coach, I coach this morning.
Corinne:
No wonder you’re in such a good mood.
Kathy:
Hell yeah.
She’s so good. She’s just so good. So shout out to my coach, I don’t even know if she listens.
Corinne:
Would you like to say your name?
Kathy:
Her name is Molly.
Corinne:
Coach Molly.
Kathy:
Did I say she’s good? Anyway, we talked about questioning thoughts this morning, and questioning challenging worst case scenarios. Because I’m full of them. I’ve got them all. I’ve got all the worst case scenarios, we’ve covered that.
Corinne:
Good lord, you didn’t even know we were doing this podcast, I created this shit out of my ass this morning. I was seriously.
Kathy:
While you were talking, I wrote down, “What are the odds this would really happen?” As a part of the question you can ask. But some of the questions she gave me, and I just thought I’d throw these out there, because they’re very simple and they’re very easy. How is that true? How is that not true? Why are you choosing to think that? I mean, seriously, you ask yourself questions like that, when you hit the worst case scenario, you’re like, “Oh, well maybe that’s not so bad.” Or [inaudible 00:16:47] “Really?” I often tell myself I could have been a novelist because I can create a worst case scenario story like the best of them.
Corinne:
I think, “Why are we choosing to think that’s a good one?” Because I always like to think about sometimes when I have a crappy ass thought about myself, I’m like, “Of all the things that I could think, this is the one we’re going to land on right now.” And that usually is enough to shake me to say, “Okay it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be.” And I just want to say to all of you, our brains are just designed to make things out, to be bad. It’s not because… you are like, “Well, I’m the worst one.” Or “If my brain didn’t work this way…” Everybody’s brain does this. My brain does it. I mean, I feel like I’m probably considered mental ninja status at this point. I got master coach certifications, I teach, I do all the things, and my brain still acts like a complete jackass about 80% of the day. So do not think something is with you, because you do this. Kathy and I are sitting around getting coached weekly on our own shitty ass. So it’s not a big deal.
Kathy:
Half the time my coaching ends up in, “You know you’re human right?”
Corinne:
“You know your normal, right?”
Kathy:
Right. And so just knowing that as you work through this process, that your brain is just not some jackass somewhere that’s broken, you’re just normal. We’re just giving you a little tool to help you. Help you understand your normalcy.
Corinne:
Right. What we want to do… so I think this is an important point that you just made. Is this is the normalcy of the brain. But one of the nice things about what we teach inside of No BS… the reason why we teach so much about emotional and mental hygiene for losing weight and stuff, is because you do have the ability to take the normalcy of the brain and override it. That’s the power. It is like… we’re getting ready for a major three-day event inside of a No BS. So if you’re a member, you get exclusive access to come to in-person and virtual events that are held once or twice a year. It’s only for members. I don’t open it up to the public. And the membership, they get tons and tons of stuff, but a couple of times a year, we like to do something extra special where it’s like three days of immersion.
So we’re getting ready to do this. And one of the things… the main point of the whole weekend, is we’re not here to magically erase our brain of all the bullshit. We’re here to learn the skill of overriding the bullshit. Because you’re always going to have it. And if you feel like a victim to it, if you feel bad because of it, if you feel less than because of it, then we have to work on that before we even get to the overriding part. So I like to always remind everyone, you’re supposed to have thoughts, your brain is supposed to catastrophize, is supposed to think worst case scenario, is supposed to do all that stuff. But our job to lead… If we want to lead a more evolved life, if you want to have your dreams, have your goals, lose your weight, create that magic laughter that you keep thinking you’re going to have when you lose weight, it requires you to learn the skill of hear bullshit, override bullshit. That’s it.
If I could boil it all down to one thing, it would be, hear bullshit, override bullshit. When you learn to override, you don’t care that you’re having shitty thoughts anymore. Because you have the skill to move on. You don’t get caught up in like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I still fake this.” So you don’t care, if you know what you’re going to do next. So this brings us to step three. Which is, so number one… so everybody take your notes, which you should be. You’re going to imagine your worst case scenario on paper, you’re going to take each one of those things, you’re going to challenge it using some of the questions Kathy gave us some of the questions that I said, then the third part is, now you’re going to imagine the best case scenario. Which is part of the overriding of the bullshit. Our brains are naturally designed to always go to the negative to always like, “Let me highlight everything that’s going to go wrong.” Kathy is a master at it. She’s always going to highlight everything that’s going to go wrong.
Kathy:
It’s my super power.
Corinne:
It is. It’s Like, “Hey if you need wonder problem maker, here I am. I’m going to figure out all the problems.”
Kathy:
But now let’s be honest, every now and then, a couple of times a month, you’ll come to me and you’ll say, all right, “I’ve got an idea, I need you to tell me what’s going to go wrong with it.”
Corinne:
Oh yeah, yeah, no, we use that skill but-
Kathy:
Yes, we do.
Corinne:
…just like every superhuman-
Kathy:
Sometimes we overuse our superhuman skills. We just need to know when the appropriate time to use the skill is.
Corinne:
Well, and I will give Kathy kudos for this. Kathy is so much better at this than she ever has been. She is getting better at learning when she is slowing down too much to think, and to marinate and ponder. And it’s really coming from a, “I don’t want to make a mistake.” There’s a difference between “I don’t want to make a mistake.” And, “I want to make sure we’re set up that we’ve looked at things, because we know we can handle everything. There’s just a different energy behind it. So anyway, so number three, what did I even read… yeah, imagine challenge, now we’re going to imagine best case scenario. This is important. Our brains, aren’t wired to think the good stuff, we have to make ourselves consider the infinite possibilities.
What is the best case scenario if I do 30 days of the 24-hour plan? Best case scenario is, “I lose weight at the end of 30 days. Best case scenario. It’s not as hard as I’m thinking it is. Best case scenario, “I figure out how to eat the foods I really like, plan for them, and get over my fear of food.” So you come up with a lot of best case scenarios. A cheat for this, is to take your worst case scenario stuff, all your things, and figure out what’s the best case like, “But what could happen if I like…” Let’s say I do go to my mama’s and it’s meatloaf day instead of chicken day and I have a plan. Best case scenario, I learn how to make the swap, come home, and learn from the experience, because I had much 24-hour plan. I can write about what was going on, why I made the swap. Do I like my reasons? Do I not like my reasons? So you can easily go through your list of worst case and turn that into… best case is I end up learning these things.
Best case is, it’s not all that stuff. So you really want to yourself the opportunity to see the best case. Because most of us, what we’re doing all through our life, is we’re wondering and worrying about something, imagining the worst case scenario, and then we’re pumping the brakes on our life. And we’re not taking basic risks. We’re not taking easy things to do. We’re making them harder than they have to be. And then sometimes we’re not even taking big risks in our life. And we want to do this work, because it teaches our brains, how to challenge the worst case scenario, inside of our head. You do it on paper long enough, guess what? Your brain automatically will start thinking worst case scenario, and then you’ll hear… all of a sudden one day you’ll be like me, where your brain will be like, “But what if this happens?” “But what about this?”
That’s where you want to end up getting to. It’s not so much that you want to see every opportunity and your brain just says, “Best case scenario.” And you just run wild into it. Because you want the part, that weighs the consequences, that weighs the challenges and stuff. But what you want to do, is you want to get to where you’re weighing things equally. You’re not just focused on worst case, or you’re not just Pollyanna all the time, running around doing things, because it sounds good and it’s shiny. Neither one of those get you traction in life. So you’re going to make sure you do that. Now you do not have to challenge the best case scenario, because we get to create anything we want. If this is the best case scenario, let’s just go after it. You don’t need to dumb that down.
And most of us, we have such an overuse on the worst case, honey, you’re never going to have so many best cases, that you’re going to get yourself in trouble. I wish that we had some of that happening. If we ever get to that point, it’ll be a good day. And so the reason why you’re going to challenge the worst, is because the brain is always dramatic. And that is the drama that keeps you stuck, if you are a procrastinator, if you are someone who overwhelms easily, if you are somebody who feels like, “I’m always confused about decisions.” This framework will help you. Because it’s that worst case that’s running in the background that you may not even know, that you need to pay attention to, that’s causing you to pump the brakes on trying things. And I will tell you, when you do this work, it will help you feel a little bit more ease.
So you don’t need to feel like “All in, committed, motivated, excited.” We’re not looking for that. When we weigh both sides, we’re now looking for the shift from being afraid, anxious, overwhelmed, and confused, to willing, a little bit of doubt. We’re looking for all of those feelings that allow you to move forward anyway. Where you don’t feel like you’re having to just make yourself do it, but you also don’t feel like you are dragging yourself along and stuff. So we want to be… like when I weigh at both out, “Now I have a little bit of clarity. Now I feel certain that it’s worth a try. I don’t know if it will work, but it’s certainly now worth a try, now that I’ve weighed both things out.” So we’re looking for some self-assuredness, a little confidence, we’re looking for some willingness, we’re looking for those things to outweigh all that stuff we’ve been stuck in. What were you going to say?
Kathy:
I was just going to say, you’re giving yourself a different perspective to consider. That’s all. You’re just allowing another perspective in, that might be possible.
Corinne:
Yeah, for sure.
Kathy:
That’s all.
Corinne:
So here’s what I want. I want you to consider, when you do this framework, when you think about the worst case scenario, you challenge it, and then you come up with your best case scenarios. I want you to think, “Now, does the risk seem like it outweighs the reward?” Most of the time when you do this, what you’re going to notice, is there’s so much benefit waiting for you, that it’s not worth stopping because of these few little things that you’re afraid of. Especially when you challenge them and you look at them. You at least give yourself the thing like, “Gosh, even if it didn’t work out, the things that I could learn, the things that could happen, it’s worth trying. It’s worth seeing if it will happen.”
And then the last thing I just want to say, if you’re a No BS woman, and you want to do this work, this is a perfect thing for your… y’all know, inside the membership, we’re not just coaching you on your weight loss. We’re coaching you on your life too. Because most of the time, like let’s say that you are in our 55 plus group, of women who are 55 and older, and you’re in that subgroup, and you’re contemplating retiring and starting a business for yourself for the first time. We have a lot of women who are at that part in their life where they want to start a second career, a second business, Kathy was one of them, where she went from working for the state and doing administrative, lawyerly type things.
Kathy:
No, accounting, even more boring.
Corinne:
But it was for lawyers too though right?
Kathy:
It was, yeah, in fact I was going to say, I remember there being some like district attorneys involved.
Corinne:
Yeah, all the things that are very much, not as sexy as life coaching. But a lot of you are contemplating those things. Do this. Do the worst case, best case challenge. Take it to us coaches. Let the coaches, coach you through these things. Because what I know, is a lot of people are sitting around eating, because they’re so worried that, “If I retire now…” That, “I won’t be able to make enough money.” Or, “What if I start that business and it fails?” Or, “What if I get pregnant and we can’t afford it?” Or… there’s so many decisions that our women are making, and when they’re sitting in worry and wonder, they also tend to snack while they do it. They tend to overeat while they do it. These are the things we want to help you clean up. This is why we do weight loss coaching, but we spend so much time helping you solve major life issues. Because when you solve those things, you are free to let go of eating as a coping mechanism. So I hope that helps. Do you have anything else you want to say?
Kathy:
I’m sitting here thinking about, worry and wonder and career change. And it took me back to when I was actually making the decision to leave my job. And I had worried and wondered about it for months. But when I finally vocalized it, which is very similar to what you’re saying, I took it through that process without knowing it was a process, vocalized it, I started seeing that there was another perspective. Another scenario that I could run. Whether it was best case or just level that case or something. So staying in worry and wonder doesn’t allow you to see what else could be possible It just keeps you stuck right there. And I think it’s so important to challenge it.
Corinne:
Because this is the neat thing about it, and this is the way that I always see. It’s like, when you do stuff like this, you don’t have to… you still don’t have to make a decision. Even if you come up with a conclusion of, “It would be better for me to do this than it would be to sit back and do nothing.” You still don’t have to do anything. It takes the pressure off, of thinking that just because something looks better wherever that you have to do it. Just at least allow your brain to consider all of it. Teaching yourself to do that is huge and important.
Kathy:
Yeah.
Corinne:
All right, everybody, we hope you enjoyed this episode, we will be back next week, talk to you then. Thank you so much for listening today, make sure you head on over to nobsfreecourse.com and sign up for my free weight loss training on what you need to know to start losing your weight right now. You’ll also find lots of notes and resources from our past podcast, to help you lose your weight without all the bullshit diet advice. I’ll see you next week.
