#31: The Excuses We Tell Ourselves

TRANSCRIPT – edited for clarity

INTRO: Hi dear parents and moms, you did it! Welcome back to Doing Things On Purpose, the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose. This is Episode #31, and I’m your host, Suri Stahel.

Mom check-in

So, I haven’t done a mom check-in in a while, and I hope you’re all doing well, and if not, I hope you are making time to honor that and to give yourself whatever it is that you need, whether it is:

• some space in between activities for you to just sit quietly for five to ten minutes
• movement because your body’s feeling achy and tired.

I’m doing the same. If you follow me on social, you will see that I’ve subscribed to Yoga With Adriene’s latest October playlist so I can continue doing my daily yoga practice – which has been so helpful.

The excuses we tell ourselves – and believe

So today, I wanted to talk about the sticky topic of the excuses that we tell ourselves – the thing that keeps us stuck.

As moms, typical things that derail us are thoughts like..

• I just don’t have time for myself
• I don’t have time to spend with my kids
• I don’t know what I like to do in terms of self-care or exercise. It just never sticks!
• I’m not the kind of person who … (fill in the blank)

So, I’d like to share two stories with you. Some personal stories as examples.

Story #1: This isn’t right for me, so I should stop trying

I’ve been thinking of adding a HIIT workout in my morning routine – HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training – because from my perimenopause readings, it’s a strength training exercise that can support the strength of my joints and just ensure my physical integrity as I age.

I tried out some videos on YouTube because that’s my favorite source of at-home exercise. But they all seem to involve quite fast and jolted movements.

I have a little bit of a knee problem, so that felt unloving and unsupportive to my body. And the next day, I felt achy and couldn’t really do my daily exercise.

So, I was telling myself that:

I don’t think this type of (HIIT) training is useful to me.

And it just so happens that a newsletter from someone landed in my inbox, where this person spoke about how HIIT training had really helped her get the exercise she needed in her day. Because she just needed to focus for these few minutes, and move on with her day.

Questioning the belief and taking action

This made me reconsider exploring this option again. And of course, I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. But I was willing to challenge the belief that HIIT wasn’t something suitable for me.

Were there other types of HIIT training that I could try?

And so, what I ended up finding was a channel called Fabulous 50s, which had a HIIT workout for women over 50 – requiring no jumping. I’m not yet 50, but it sounded like something perfect for me, who is a person that enjoys gentle training.

I believe that gentle is best, and just slow and steady does it. I’ve seen so many positive changes in my own body, my own flexibility, by just doing small steps every day.

And what can I say? – I love it.

I’m not doing it every day, but every few days when I feel like I need a bit of cardio, a bit more strength training. And it depends on my cycle in the month. I have integrated HIIT workouts into my fitness routine. 

💎 So this is an example of me challenging something, challenging my thought that something’s not suitable for me, in this case the HIIT workout. And when I choose not to believe that and explore that a little bit further, I found a creative solution that ended up working perfectly for me.

💎 If you’re having some excuses that you keep telling yourself about why you don’t have time, space, energy, capacity, physical ability to get yourself moving, question that. See how you can come up with actions or solutions that fit the limitations that you have to consider.

Story #2: I can’t go, because I can’t afford to fix my bike

The second story I want to share with you is my excuse when my kids asked me, “Let’s go cycling.” I think it was more than a month ago.

I was giving the excuse that my bike isn’t working because I’ve been having this problem with the back wheel of my bicycle that keeps getting flat. So, I’d pump the tire up and then a day later it would flatten out. 

I sent it to the bike shop to get repaired probably half a year ago, but this problem kept repeating. So, I just assumed that I needed to change the tire. And then in my head, I was saying, okay, so I need to save some money to change the tire. 

And because I have other expenses that I had planned for, I assumed I just had to wait to get my bike fixed. 

And so I did. I waited and eventually I finally went to the bike shop. 

Belief vs. Reality

And then the next day when I came to pick it up, he said, “Oh, it was just a broken valve and that’ll cost you 10 francs, please.” 

So, that was basically what happened. 

I fixed my bike. The excuse – the whole month that I was thinking about: 

• oh, fixing my bike… it’s not going to be worth it because I use it so little
• I would rather use my saved up money to do something else… to buy something else for my business

…it gave me the excuse to not be in action. To not even check out if I actually needed to change the tire.

Because just going to the bike shop and showing my bike would have costed me $0.

So, now I have a bike that’s working and I have to face my own excuse…

• Was that really the reason that I wasn’t going cycling with the kids?
• Or was I just too lazy?
• Was I not prioritizing our family time?

I was just recalling this instance – laughing at myself. Thinking how many minutes, probably hours of me thinking about my bike story and that in reality, it ended up being such a small problem, that wasn’t really a problem.

So, what helped?

It was taking action. As with both these examples, what I’m trying to say is:

💎 When you have an excuse, challenge yourself.

💎 Ask yourself, are you just holding on to that excuse so that you don’t have to do anything?

But if you are really looking to move forward with whatever it is that you want to have in life and experience, don’t let yourself believe the excuses that you come up with.

So, I hope this has been helpful for you – to challenge your beliefs in a gentle and loving way. To start thinking about the idea that your problems can be solved by YOU. 

Most of the time, our problems are much bigger in our heads than they are in reality. 

So, just take action and see what shows up and then move on from there. 

OUTRO: I’m wishing you a great day. I hope you’re enjoying these more impromptu episodes.

💗 If you need coaching support from me, go to suristahel.com/offerings.

And if you’d like the link to the HIIT workout that I subscribed to, just go to the episode website at suristahel.com/31.

Have a wonderful day and a great weekend ahead. I hope you have something amazing planned or something relaxing planned, and I’ll see you next time!