Habits and Identities A Journey to Becoming Your Best Self

Melissa Amos: 00:00:00

Good morning. Good morning, Mel. How you doing?

Melissa Amos: 00:00:04

Did you get up at 06:00 a.m. i didn't.

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:08

I woke, I didn't set my alarm. I woke up at 650.

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:12

And then I just contemplated till about 07:30

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:16

and then I got up. I was just like, sat. My daughter's. She's

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:20

gone for a costume fitting for all creatures great and small this morning, so

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:23

she needed to be up and out, and she's never up and out. Like, she's

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:26

a, she's 19. She, like, she likes a bed. So I was just,

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:30

like, concentrating on getting her ready this morning, even though she should technically be

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:33

able to get herself ready. But no, I didn't get up. I didn't get up

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:36

at 06:00 but I woke up. This

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:39

is the time my body wanted to wake up. 650. So we'll try again tomorrow.

Melissa Amos: 00:00:44

It's not eleven, is it? It's not eleven. Yeah, it was, like, a

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:48

reasonable time, but, yeah, I failed at the first hurdle, so I'm going to

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:52

keep persevering with that one and see what I'm learning about myself on that

Beth Hewitt: 00:00:55

journey. I have zero commitment to getting

Melissa Amos: 00:00:59

off. Just for the record,

Melissa Amos: 00:01:02

this is not my dream. Yeah, it's a funny one if I want to do

Beth Hewitt: 00:01:05

it, but also, like, when I wake up, I'm like, no, I'm

Beth Hewitt: 00:01:09

quite happy. Just, like, thinking about my day,

Beth Hewitt: 00:01:13

doing it this way. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. I do think

Melissa Amos: 00:01:17

part of it, just as you said that I do think part of it is

Melissa Amos: 00:01:20

I resented so much when I was working, having to

Melissa Amos: 00:01:24

get up and be at work at 830, that was when

Melissa Amos: 00:01:28

I started, and I resented it. I was like, oh,

Melissa Amos: 00:01:31

and if I was there at 831, I, they slammed the

Melissa Amos: 00:01:35

door in my face and nice. And I think

Melissa Amos: 00:01:39

maybe there's an echo. Maybe I'm just like, for so long,

Melissa Amos: 00:01:43

I'm like, you make me get up and I don't want to, because as a

Melissa Amos: 00:01:45

teenager as well. Yeah. They say that your brain,

Melissa Amos: 00:01:50

your sleep cycles get later. Yeah. I don't know if that's true or

Melissa Amos: 00:01:53

nothing. So maybe, maybe that's it.

Melissa Amos: 00:01:57

But last week, we were talking about

Melissa Amos: 00:02:01

identity. Yeah. Creating habits.

Beth Hewitt: 00:02:04

Yeah. Don't you love how synchronicities happen?

Melissa Amos: 00:02:08

Because I was talking about the breath work, and I'd been doing this

Melissa Amos: 00:02:12

breath work, and then that morning, I'd done the session. I was all very proud

Melissa Amos: 00:02:15

of myself that I'd done the session, and I messaged the

Melissa Amos: 00:02:19

group and said, I did practice. And then

Melissa Amos: 00:02:23

Dylan, who was running the thing last

Melissa Amos: 00:02:27

week, by the way. Follow Dylan. He's incredible. Dylan.

Melissa Amos: 00:02:30

Dinesha. We'll put his link in the bottom, maybe.

Melissa Amos: 00:02:34

And he. So I put this thing, and he basically explained to me,

Melissa Amos: 00:02:37

without me asking, what happens to your

Melissa Amos: 00:02:41

brain when you create habits? It's like, message

Melissa Amos: 00:02:44

back. I was like, Dylan, we were just talking about that on the

Melissa Amos: 00:02:48

podcast. So now I have the information phrase

Melissa Amos: 00:02:52

terribly, but how cool is that? Yeah, I love that.

Beth Hewitt: 00:02:56

I love synchronicities. Okay, I'm all ears. I'm ready to discuss.

Melissa Amos: 00:03:00

So what he said, and again, I'm not talking

Melissa Amos: 00:03:04

from a scientist's point of view, and this is secondhand.

Melissa Amos: 00:03:07

24 hours later. Yeah, let's just get this. The habit

Melissa Amos: 00:03:11

has not gone yet. But what he was saying was that what happened in the

Melissa Amos: 00:03:15

weekend is we started to create these new neural pathways in the brain.

Melissa Amos: 00:03:19

And we were telling the brain and the

Melissa Amos: 00:03:22

mind, this is something that's good, right? When we

Melissa Amos: 00:03:26

don't use it, those pathways just start to

Melissa Amos: 00:03:29

disintegrate. Yeah, yeah. So we

Melissa Amos: 00:03:33

fire them, and then if we don't use them, they just disappear. And we call

Melissa Amos: 00:03:37

it, I think, it's neural pruning, which is great, because

Melissa Amos: 00:03:42

sometimes we don't need to keep everything in our heads, but when we start a

Melissa Amos: 00:03:45

habit and then we actually reinforce it and we do it again,

Melissa Amos: 00:03:49

it starts to strengthen the neural pathways in the brain.

Beth Hewitt: 00:03:53

Yeah. And eventually it starts to create. I can't

Melissa Amos: 00:03:57

remember what it's called, but basically, like a sheath that goes around it. So if

Melissa Amos: 00:04:00

you imagine an electrical cable, and then it's got the rubber that

Melissa Amos: 00:04:04

goes around it, it's like that. So it's strengthening it, strengthen

Melissa Amos: 00:04:08

it and protect these neural pathways from then

Melissa Amos: 00:04:11

disintegrating. So we're telling our brain as we practice

Melissa Amos: 00:04:14

it, this is really important, and our brain is

Melissa Amos: 00:04:18

going, okay, this is really important. We need this, let's keep it.

Melissa Amos: 00:04:22

And so we do that enough times, and the neural

Melissa Amos: 00:04:26

pathways are really strong in the brain, and then it's basically

Melissa Amos: 00:04:29

saying to us, the brain, rather than us, then having to go, I need to

Melissa Amos: 00:04:33

do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. The brain is

Melissa Amos: 00:04:36

just like, to do this, and it

Melissa Amos: 00:04:40

just becomes. It's not willpower. It

Melissa Amos: 00:04:43

just becomes something that our brain is used to and our brain

Melissa Amos: 00:04:47

knows how to do. I suppose if I poured

Melissa Amos: 00:04:51

water down some paths, if there was things all sticky or if it was really

Melissa Amos: 00:04:55

tiny, only a bit would come out. If I kept on forging down

Melissa Amos: 00:04:58

it, I wouldn't have to do very much apart

Melissa Amos: 00:05:02

from open the water source for it to move.

Melissa Amos: 00:05:06

And you think it got me thinking down

Melissa Amos: 00:05:09

the rabbit hole about how

Melissa Amos: 00:05:13

difficult it can be to do that with good habits. Like

Melissa Amos: 00:05:16

you were saying yesterday, that maybe we don't enjoy as

Melissa Amos: 00:05:20

much in the first place and how easy it

Melissa Amos: 00:05:24

is to do with. To do for bad

Melissa Amos: 00:05:27

habits. Yeah. Because as you were saying that, I was thinking, is it the same

Beth Hewitt: 00:05:31

for addictions? So if we're doing something again and again,

Beth Hewitt: 00:05:35

we're programming it to be something that

Beth Hewitt: 00:05:38

happens regularly. I don't know the science around that, but it would make sense that

Beth Hewitt: 00:05:42

we create a habit, a good habit, but we're also. We can create bad habits

Beth Hewitt: 00:05:45

as well. It definitely works both ways, and

Melissa Amos: 00:05:48

this is where it becomes aware. So, like, I have a

Melissa Amos: 00:05:52

habit, and really, I suppose it's a self soothing behavior

Melissa Amos: 00:05:56

where I just pull my hair, I play with, like, you, right. And I

Melissa Amos: 00:05:59

sit there and I twiddle it. And it's been since forever. Yeah.

Melissa Amos: 00:06:03

As far as I remember, it's always been there. And I've

Melissa Amos: 00:06:07

done things. I've run interventions on it, because

Melissa Amos: 00:06:11

there's been times where I'm like, oh, my God, I'm actually putting my hair out.

Melissa Amos: 00:06:14

Not from the root, thank God, but the, like, shorter bits. Yeah,

Beth Hewitt: 00:06:18

yeah. And I've done, like,

Melissa Amos: 00:06:21

NLP with it and works for a while, and

Melissa Amos: 00:06:25

I've done hypnosis with it and it's worked for a while, or it's

Melissa Amos: 00:06:29

lessened it, at least, but then I find.

Melissa Amos: 00:06:32

So last week I had something that just brought some stuff up for me,

Melissa Amos: 00:06:36

and I noticed that I was

Melissa Amos: 00:06:40

really just, like, pulling on my hair and it was completely

Melissa Amos: 00:06:44

unconscious. And then I'd notice I was doing it and I'd be like, look at

Melissa Amos: 00:06:47

what I'm doing. And I'd still carry on because it's

Melissa Amos: 00:06:51

been there, reinforced over and over and over

Melissa Amos: 00:06:54

again that I can swipe it

Melissa Amos: 00:06:58

out through NLP hypnosis, probably even

Melissa Amos: 00:07:01

tapping. But it seems at the

Melissa Amos: 00:07:05

beginning almost like an uphill struggle. Yeah. I'm

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:08

wondering if it's because, as well, things like that. Because it is self soothing and

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:12

because there's a tangible benefit to it. Like, it feels good.

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:15

It might annoy you that you do it, but you're also doing it for

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:19

a reason, or we do these things for a reason. I'm wondering whether the benefit

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:22

element of it is the thing that when we're thinking about forming

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:26

new habits is that are we thinking about

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:31

initially, we're thinking it's almost like, a little bit like the law of attraction, we're

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:34

focused on the lack of not having something. Right. So when we're first

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:38

trying to create this new habit of getting out of bed at 06:00 a.m. in

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:40

the morning, we've also got this programming of I never get up at 06:00 a.m.

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:44

in the morning. It's a chore. I don't want to do it. And so that's

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:48

what's going on in our heads. And I think, actually, if we

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:51

focus, what is the benefit? What is the real, tangible benefit, or what are we

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:55

expecting to gain from this? Then we start to maybe look at it with a

Beth Hewitt: 00:07:59

different perspective, and then once we do that, we've got some real, tangible

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:03

examples of how getting up at 06:00 a.m. has actually

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:06

created this benefit. And these are the examples that prove that,

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:10

and that starts to reinforce the habits. I'm wondering

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:14

whether identifying benefits

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:17

is maybe part of the puzzle. I'm going to add that into

Beth Hewitt: 00:08:21

my experimentation this week as I get up. At 06:00

Melissa Amos: 00:08:25

a.m. that makes sense, Beth, because we've

Melissa Amos: 00:08:28

got. How I'm seeing it now

Melissa Amos: 00:08:32

is, let's say the choice is

Melissa Amos: 00:08:35

that the 06:00 a.m. this is the habit, and the

Melissa Amos: 00:08:39

07:30 a.m. is the enforced habit.

Melissa Amos: 00:08:43

Right. And so when you just try the 06:00 a.m. thing,

Melissa Amos: 00:08:47

the half 07:00 a.m. thing is still there. Like, you've

Melissa Amos: 00:08:50

not. So when I'm, like, with the hair thing, actually, there's

Melissa Amos: 00:08:54

nothing I've done to replace it, and so there's almost.

Melissa Amos: 00:08:59

There's nowhere else for that water to be channeled down. Yes.

Beth Hewitt: 00:09:02

Right. And the more you get up

Melissa Amos: 00:09:06

at 06:00 a.m. then this 730

Melissa Amos: 00:09:10

that you've been doing for your whole adult life, for example,

Melissa Amos: 00:09:13

is so protected by those. Those

Melissa Amos: 00:09:16

sheaths, but it takes quite a while for that to break

Melissa Amos: 00:09:20

down. Yeah. And so we have a choice. Do we break down that one? Do

Melissa Amos: 00:09:23

we focus on breaking down that one? Which, in some ways, might be

Melissa Amos: 00:09:27

reinforcing it. Yeah. Don't have sugar. Don't have sugar. Don't have sugar. Like

Melissa Amos: 00:09:31

we're thinking about sugar. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Amos: 00:09:34

So, the new plan, I

Melissa Amos: 00:09:38

suppose the way this psychologically works is having the new plan

Melissa Amos: 00:09:42

will then mean that the old plan doesn't get triggered, and then eventually, new or

Melissa Amos: 00:09:46

pruning will just. It will just disintegrate and it will go away.

Beth Hewitt: 00:09:50

Yeah. So maybe we have to work on both. Maybe it's form

Melissa Amos: 00:09:53

a new habit and let's disintegrate,

Melissa Amos: 00:09:57

which we can do through visualization, which we can do through healing, which we

Melissa Amos: 00:10:01

can do through soothing, like whatever feels good for you. I think we're being. I

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:05

think when we're trying to form habits, we're maybe being a bit hard

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:09

on ourselves because it's. If it's something that we've done a certain way for

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:12

a while, it's not just neurological, it's biological as

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:16

well. Like your body is probably thinking, I'm used to getting up at 730 in

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:19

the morning and now all of a sudden we're enforcing this new regime

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:23

without actually thinking about. It's not as simple as just getting up in the

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:27

morning. We've got all of these psychological, neurological,

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:30

biological, the cycles of the month. Everything.

Melissa Amos: 00:10:34

Everything. Yeah, everything going on. And I think sometimes we're probably. We're being a bit

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:37

too hard on ourselves by just thinking, okay, just

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:41

eat the frog or just do the thing. Yeah. So

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:45

I'm liking this as a bit of an experiment right now. Yeah. I've got awareness

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:49

of it as well. Like I'm being more aware of. This is

Beth Hewitt: 00:10:53

a habit that I want to create. Starts, I think, because when it's

Melissa Amos: 00:10:56

unconscious, it's that. It's just that. And then it's just going to take

Melissa Amos: 00:11:00

the path of least resistance, whereas our conscious mind is

Melissa Amos: 00:11:04

pretty strong. But when we then become aware of it, there's so many

Melissa Amos: 00:11:07

tools out there that we can use to help rewire the

Melissa Amos: 00:11:11

brain. There's EmdR or there's hypnosis

Melissa Amos: 00:11:15

or there's so tapping. Like there's so many things that we

Melissa Amos: 00:11:18

can do to rewire the physiological aspects, the biological

Melissa Amos: 00:11:22

aspects even. And awareness comes first. It always

Melissa Amos: 00:11:26

has to. Yeah. So it's deciding to do the

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:30

thing and having the awareness of what's going on. I think as you're

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:33

going through that process of changing the habit and creating a new habit,

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:37

they also say, joke that actually attaching a habit to an

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:41

existing something that you already do regularly

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:45

is also a really great way to bring those together. So

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:49

maybe if you can think of something that you already do habitually and adding that

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:52

new positive habit onto that, then that might also help

Beth Hewitt: 00:11:56

depending on what it is you're trying to do. So I take the

Melissa Amos: 00:12:00

kids to school and most of the time we walk. And I

Melissa Amos: 00:12:04

wanted to get more walking in my day. So instead

Melissa Amos: 00:12:08

of going, then going, I'm gonna go out. 02:00

Melissa Amos: 00:12:11

I go straight from. So I drop then

Melissa Amos: 00:12:14

school and then I walk longer because I'm already there. I'm

Melissa Amos: 00:12:18

already doing it. I'm just adding on to adding

Melissa Amos: 00:12:22

on to this. And it's things like when you want to do

Melissa Amos: 00:12:26

some mantra affirmations and do

Melissa Amos: 00:12:30

it when you're brushing your teeth. And I was speaking to a kinesiologist and she

Melissa Amos: 00:12:33

was talking about tapping Orlando, your thymus. So

Melissa Amos: 00:12:37

just gentle, you can maybe hear it in my voice. Just gentle tapping on your

Melissa Amos: 00:12:40

chest. And she used to tell my clients to do it on the toilet. She

Melissa Amos: 00:12:44

said, you're not doing anything else, just tap on the thing. And it's, it's a

Melissa Amos: 00:12:48

good idea. And you just drank some water. And I'm like, that's what I do.

Melissa Amos: 00:12:51

I wake up and then brush my teeth and I come

Melissa Amos: 00:12:54

downstairs and then I drink a whole thing of

Melissa Amos: 00:12:58

water. Because I'm like, I know that if the day just happens,

Melissa Amos: 00:13:02

the water will get forgotten about because you get busy with all the other

Melissa Amos: 00:13:05

things. It's definitely not easy

Melissa Amos: 00:13:10

necessarily, but we can

Melissa Amos: 00:13:14

do things to hack the brain and help it

Melissa Amos: 00:13:18

through. Okay, that's what I want to say. It's very hard to do these things

Melissa Amos: 00:13:21

by willpower alone. Yeah. Which is what I've

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:25

experienced today. I think it's good. I

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:28

think maybe this is another jigsaw piece to do a bit of a

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:32

stock take and identify what are your current dominant

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:36

habits throughout the day. Because there will be good habits and there will be not

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:40

so good habits. And I think having an awareness of what is going

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:44

on and it might be different. Your Monday habits might be different to your Wednesday

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:47

habits. But I think unless we actually allow ourselves to look at

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:50

that, then we can start to see maybe the pockets of where we can add

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:54

things in or take things out or rearrange our day.

Beth Hewitt: 00:13:58

But I think unless, I don't think it's just enough to say I'm aware that

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:01

I want to change it and I'm recognising them, having these living

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:05

thoughts around it. I think actually

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:08

doing a bit of a plan of this is what happens. And it can even

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:12

go further cultural, like things that we do at Christmas time, for example, that

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:15

actually I don't want to be drinking all of this alcohol at

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:19

christmastime. So. Do you know what I mean? I think we need to sometimes look

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:22

out and think what are all of these different things that we're currently

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:25

doing and where can we intersperse or add or remove

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:30

these new elements? That's a big piece of work. But I'm just

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:34

thinking, actually I need to look at my day to

Beth Hewitt: 00:14:37

see. It'S a really good exercise to just

Melissa Amos: 00:14:40

notice where your thoughts are, what you're thinking

Melissa Amos: 00:14:44

at certain times, what's going on when you're not conscious, like

Melissa Amos: 00:14:48

when you're not focused and aware when you find yourself. So if I'm

Melissa Amos: 00:14:52

looking at this from a therapeutic point of view, if I have

Melissa Amos: 00:14:56

somebody come to me and they want to

Melissa Amos: 00:15:00

stop eating biscuits, and there's, again, there's a number of

Melissa Amos: 00:15:04

interventions that you can do, but if we boil down what we're doing

Melissa Amos: 00:15:08

is we're understanding when it is, so that it's 02:00 in

Melissa Amos: 00:15:11

the afternoon. Okay? So now I've identified there's something, there's a pattern there,

Melissa Amos: 00:15:15

there's a habit. We then start to understand what happens before

Melissa Amos: 00:15:19

it happens. Is it because a

Melissa Amos: 00:15:22

biological get a sugar slump and it's because eaten bread in the

Melissa Amos: 00:15:26

afternoon? Is it because that's when the kids

Melissa Amos: 00:15:29

come home and I find it stressful? Is it because that's when

Melissa Amos: 00:15:33

I've just done my hardest piece of work and then I'm using it as a

Melissa Amos: 00:15:36

treat for myself? Right, so we find out what's the

Melissa Amos: 00:15:39

trigger. Yeah. Or is it that it's not a time of day,

Melissa Amos: 00:15:43

but it's whenever the kids go nuts that you find yourself going for that

Melissa Amos: 00:15:47

or whatever? So we find the trigger, but why do we

Melissa Amos: 00:15:51

do that? Is because the pathway that's going on, the

Melissa Amos: 00:15:54

energetic that's happening in the body is going, oh, okay, this.

Melissa Amos: 00:15:58

Now I want this. Yeah. It's not the biscuit really, that you

Melissa Amos: 00:16:02

want. It's the endorphins or it's the

Melissa Amos: 00:16:06

rush, or it's the distraction, or it's the

Melissa Amos: 00:16:09

avoidance of the feeling that. Yeah.

Melissa Amos: 00:16:12

And then we go to interrupt, depending

Melissa Amos: 00:16:16

what intervention we do, but then we generally go to interrupt that

Melissa Amos: 00:16:20

pattern. Okay, so you think

Melissa Amos: 00:16:23

biscuit. Either you think biscuit, let's switch it to

Melissa Amos: 00:16:27

apple as an NLP technique. Yeah. And you swish it

Melissa Amos: 00:16:30

and whatever. And that can work. So the trigger. So you're not actually

Melissa Amos: 00:16:34

healing any sort of trigger, you're just changing it.

Beth Hewitt: 00:16:39

Yeah. Which is cool. It's one

Melissa Amos: 00:16:42

way. Or we can take the trigger and then we can look

Melissa Amos: 00:16:46

at healing the trigger. So it's like, what's the secondary gain?

Melissa Amos: 00:16:50

Where did it come from? Why do I feel like this isn't safe? Why does

Melissa Amos: 00:16:53

this put my body into full on overdrive, blah, blah?

Melissa Amos: 00:16:57

And then we can look at healing that either through maybe

Melissa Amos: 00:17:01

some form of regression. Where did it come from? What's its origin? Can I

Melissa Amos: 00:17:05

have a shift on why? I think that's so

Melissa Amos: 00:17:09

helpful. Again, we can do a pattern interrupt going on there. Sometimes

Melissa Amos: 00:17:13

just knowing, sometimes just, oh, look at me. Whenever

Melissa Amos: 00:17:17

I get a message from this person, I always go and reach for the

Melissa Amos: 00:17:21

biscuits. Yeah. And you just know. And you're like, that's.

Melissa Amos: 00:17:24

How is that helpful? Sometimes just that awareness can break the

Melissa Amos: 00:17:28

pattern. And I suppose there's two things going

Melissa Amos: 00:17:32

on there. One, the pattern interrupt, which is this new will pathway. This is what

Melissa Amos: 00:17:36

we do. The brain's just, oh, this has worked every time

Melissa Amos: 00:17:40

we've done that and we're still alive. Amazing. Keep doing

Melissa Amos: 00:17:43

this. And so we train the brain to do it a different way. And then,

Melissa Amos: 00:17:47

as we were saying earlier, we repeat it and repeat it, and then eventually that

Melissa Amos: 00:17:50

becomes the pathway. That water goes down and the other one's like,

Melissa Amos: 00:17:54

that's a long forgotten memory. I do wonder if when you pick it back

Melissa Amos: 00:17:57

up, if the root, if. It remembers,

Beth Hewitt: 00:18:01

possibly, yeah. Depending how long ago it was. Yeah, exactly.

Melissa Amos: 00:18:05

Which is why people say, for example, if you quit smoking, it only takes one

Melissa Amos: 00:18:08

to start again. Yeah. With sugar. When I quit sugar for 18

Melissa Amos: 00:18:12

months, and then as soon as with a

Melissa Amos: 00:18:15

vengeance, I was like, oh, I remember this. Very nice. And then there's the

Melissa Amos: 00:18:19

healing aspect of it, of reminding the body that it say

Melissa Amos: 00:18:23

and that it's okay and that we can deal with this and that we can

Melissa Amos: 00:18:26

work with this and that it has a

Melissa Amos: 00:18:29

purpose. And then maybe we then bring

Melissa Amos: 00:18:33

in, I think of it like a psychotherapeutic point of

Melissa Amos: 00:18:36

view. We'll then bring in a different aspect of

Melissa Amos: 00:18:40

ourselves or something that can give us the thing

Melissa Amos: 00:18:44

that we need so that we don't have to reach for

Melissa Amos: 00:18:48

the pulling of the hairdouse biscuit. Even go for a nap. That

Melissa Amos: 00:18:52

can be avoidance behavior. Yes. So maybe another part of the puzzle

Beth Hewitt: 00:18:55

is then identifying what is. What do I get out of this that I

Beth Hewitt: 00:18:59

can receive in a different way by

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:03

a different route. I did that and it

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:07

wasn't really conscious. It wasn't like I thought, all right, I'm going to switch this

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:10

out. But I did that with chocolate recently and biscuits, because I go to the.

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:14

You make your coffee, you make your tea, you have a little break, and then

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:16

you go to the cupboard and you get your biscuit out. So I stopped buying

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:19

biscuits. Don't buy any. There's no biscuits in the house. I can't eat them. But

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:23

I started buying nuts and things like that to

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:26

replace that with. And I didn't

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:30

change the habit, I didn't change the. Okay. When

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:33

I feel like I need to go eat something or when I'm in the kitchen,

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:36

I just changed what it was that I was eating. And yes, you could say,

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:39

go a little bit further and say, completely remove that. But I think switching

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:43

out is easier than like, cold turkey.

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:46

So shall we bring this back to identity work? Because I know we were talking

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:50

about that yesterday and how that did we digress.

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:55

We go all over the place and how this all fits

Beth Hewitt: 00:19:58

together with identity and

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:02

identifying who you want to become, isn't it? Because we can talk about visualization is

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:06

obviously something I do a lot of work around, but I wouldn't

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:10

necessarily say create a visualization around this new identity until

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:13

you're fully aware of who it is that you want to become. Because I think

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:16

people have got different conceptions around. They want to win the lottery or they want

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:20

to go on lots of holidays, which is great, but who is that person? What

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:24

are they feeling? What are all of their senses feeling in the

Beth Hewitt: 00:20:27

moment? And then visualize from that point?

Melissa Amos: 00:20:30

Maybe what the trick is that we get so focused,

Melissa Amos: 00:20:34

even in law retraction terms, we get so focused

Melissa Amos: 00:20:38

on the thing or the habit, so

Melissa Amos: 00:20:41

focused. I want the holidays, I want the millions, I want the even

Melissa Amos: 00:20:45

the body or the whatever it is. But we're

Melissa Amos: 00:20:48

not focusing, like I think you were alluding to. We're not focusing on the

Melissa Amos: 00:20:52

identity of the person that has this. If I want the body,

Melissa Amos: 00:20:56

I'm like, well, I want the fit, the rips and the

Melissa Amos: 00:21:00

strength and whatever. Who do I

Melissa Amos: 00:21:03

become to get that? Because what I do know is

Melissa Amos: 00:21:07

that my current identity hasn't got me there. I

Melissa Amos: 00:21:11

know that that's fact, that my current

Melissa Amos: 00:21:15

identity, which has its beliefs around life and its habits and its

Melissa Amos: 00:21:18

things, doesn't have that. So who do I need to

Melissa Amos: 00:21:22

become? This isn't rejecting who you are, but who do I need to

Melissa Amos: 00:21:25

become? What do I need to add into my identity in order to

Melissa Amos: 00:21:29

get that? Now, we sometimes think about identity and we think that

Melissa Amos: 00:21:33

you have an identity, but you don't. You have an identity as a mother, as

Melissa Amos: 00:21:37

a daughter, as a business owner, as a co worker, as

Melissa Amos: 00:21:41

someone from the gym, as customer. Like there's the

Melissa Amos: 00:21:44

taxpayer. We have identities flying out of our ears. So this

Melissa Amos: 00:21:48

isn't the case of, well, you can't have both. You can have both, as many

Melissa Amos: 00:21:51

as you want, but which one is coming in when

Melissa Amos: 00:21:54

the habits are stacking? So for me, if I think, okay, I want the

Melissa Amos: 00:21:58

body, then what's my identity? That somebody

Melissa Amos: 00:22:02

who's very health conscious, it's somebody

Melissa Amos: 00:22:05

who values moving their body and I might think of

Melissa Amos: 00:22:09

somebody and think about them and their habits. And our brains are

Melissa Amos: 00:22:13

brilliant because our brains will know. And you can even ask yourself

Melissa Amos: 00:22:17

if you know somebody is the real idea. Yeah,

Beth Hewitt: 00:22:20

yeah. And you're like, then you could just be like, what would they do?

Melissa Amos: 00:22:24

How would they feel? What would they say to themselves when they're standing in the

Melissa Amos: 00:22:28

kitchen this morning going, do I eat the toast or do I do the breath

Melissa Amos: 00:22:31

work? That was me this morning. What would they say to themselves? And your brain

Melissa Amos: 00:22:35

will give you the answers if you ask the right question. And

Melissa Amos: 00:22:38

so then we can start to try on that identity. And the other

Melissa Amos: 00:22:42

ones still going to be there, like, no, I like to just sit and

Melissa Amos: 00:22:47

watch people on TikTok doing video, doing exercise, rather

Melissa Amos: 00:22:50

than do it myself. Yeah, but it's even that. What would they watch? What would

Melissa Amos: 00:22:54

they do? Who would they talk to? How would they. And you can start to

Melissa Amos: 00:22:57

try it on. And this isn't about

Melissa Amos: 00:23:01

becoming somebody else, but it's starting to

Melissa Amos: 00:23:04

cultivate their. What is it? Their view

Melissa Amos: 00:23:08

of the world. Yeah. It's a different perspective, isn't it? In every aspect. So it

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:12

could be how they hold their self, how they would have a

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:16

conversation with somebody, how they would articulate their values

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:20

about a particular subject, what they would wear, how

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:23

they would do their hair, all of these different elements. And it could be multiple

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:27

different personalities. Right. You could admire lots of different people, and it's

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:30

about bringing that into, in alignment with your core.

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:34

And I think sometimes, I think identity is like changing who you

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:38

are, but actually, is it actually more so

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:41

about just peeling back the layers and getting

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:45

back to the core essence of who you always were but weren't

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:49

being because of the conditions of society and what our peers

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:53

said and our parents said and our culture and all of this. And so actually,

Beth Hewitt: 00:23:56

when we think about it that way, I think it's easier to grapple

Beth Hewitt: 00:24:00

with, actually. We're not becoming somebody else. We are becoming

Beth Hewitt: 00:24:04

who we always were, but we are more powerful in

Beth Hewitt: 00:24:08

that. And that is who we are now reflecting out into the

Beth Hewitt: 00:24:11

world, or if we've been reflected back, you know? Yeah.

Melissa Amos: 00:24:15

We're becoming more of ourselves. And this, like when you're six,

Melissa Amos: 00:24:19

seven, 8910, twelve, you change all the time.

Melissa Amos: 00:24:22

Oh, she's going phase, she's going through phase, and then

Melissa Amos: 00:24:26

even she's finding herself. And then suddenly you get some, what, age?

Melissa Amos: 00:24:29

28. And it's meh. That's who she is.

Beth Hewitt: 00:24:33

Yeah. And it's not because I know that as I reached

Melissa Amos: 00:24:36

40, I was like, oh, I know. I know myself. And that person that I

Melissa Amos: 00:24:40

was when I was 20 wasn't really me. No. And I was

Melissa Amos: 00:24:44

finding myself, and I didn't find her like, I found a version of her,

Melissa Amos: 00:24:47

and she was fine, but she wasn't me. But there's this

Melissa Amos: 00:24:51

whole, there'll be maybe some people listening to this going, oh, isn't that a

Melissa Amos: 00:24:55

bit disingenuous to take on other people's roles?

Melissa Amos: 00:24:58

But that's not really what we're saying. It's like we're trying it

Melissa Amos: 00:25:02

on. Because my theory is, if we see something outside

Melissa Amos: 00:25:06

ourselves that triggers us either in

Melissa Amos: 00:25:09

a negative way, which usually is a reflection of

Melissa Amos: 00:25:13

something that is unhealed in us, or in a

Melissa Amos: 00:25:17

positive way, as in, I admire that. Or

Melissa Amos: 00:25:21

even a jealousy. We often see this in jealousy

Melissa Amos: 00:25:24

is because there's something in you that wants that. And

Melissa Amos: 00:25:28

if we deny that, then we're not discovering and

Melissa Amos: 00:25:31

activating and evolving that part of ourselves.

Beth Hewitt: 00:25:35

Yeah. And so it's okay to do that, but rather than

Melissa Amos: 00:25:38

think, oh, I want a bit body, so therefore I need

Melissa Amos: 00:25:42

to smash it at the gym or cut out all my sugar or

Melissa Amos: 00:25:46

switch my chocolates to nuts. Right? It's,

Melissa Amos: 00:25:51

who do I need to become in order for that to

Melissa Amos: 00:25:54

become a habit? Yeah. What do I need to know about myself? What

Melissa Amos: 00:25:58

values do I need to have that

Melissa Amos: 00:26:02

are? Actually, for example, when I go to yoga,

Melissa Amos: 00:26:06

I've always had this identity that I always take the easy way out

Melissa Amos: 00:26:09

I want. I like the easy life. And if there

Melissa Amos: 00:26:13

was something at school, like a PE, whatever, I'd be like, I'll just do

Melissa Amos: 00:26:17

the easy thing. That's just what I did. Yeah. And then when I'm in yoga

Melissa Amos: 00:26:20

and my teacher says something like, we can do hard things, and

Melissa Amos: 00:26:24

I'm like, yeah, I can do hard things. And I'm bringing that, I'm

Melissa Amos: 00:26:28

internalizing that and going, yeah, I'm someone who can do hard things

Melissa Amos: 00:26:32

because look at me, sitting in this position for

Melissa Amos: 00:26:35

this long and still breathing and not

Melissa Amos: 00:26:39

want cursing the teacher, right? Like, I can do hard

Melissa Amos: 00:26:43

things. That was a big shift for

Melissa Amos: 00:26:46

me, that then in other aspects of my life, I'm like,

Melissa Amos: 00:26:50

okay, I'm someone who can do hard things. Maybe I can do this.

Melissa Amos: 00:26:53

Maybe I can embark on this. So that didn't come

Melissa Amos: 00:26:57

from. Maybe it did transpire

Melissa Amos: 00:27:01

from the habit. Yeah. But it was the identity

Melissa Amos: 00:27:05

shift that then kept it going and let

Melissa Amos: 00:27:08

it spill out in other areas in my life. I think

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:12

trying on identities is a great

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:15

start because as you do that, you will

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:19

naturally add to that from your own perspective, it's like we were talking about

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:23

Reiki a few weeks ago, where you're doing

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:26

a modality or something, you're learning something, but then adding in your own take around

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:30

that. It's the same with identity. You assume or you identify

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:35

people, personalities, ways of being. Bring that into your

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:39

essence, and then how can I make that more of who I am? How can

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:42

I make my own version of that? But then I think the next step from

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:46

that is then starting to take aligned

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:49

action with that because we're becoming that person.

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:53

It's not about faking it till you make it. It's what aligned action can I

Beth Hewitt: 00:27:57

do that is in alignment with this new identity? And right in the beginning, that

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:01

might be difficult because you might be thinking, I want to be a millionaire, but

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:03

I don't physically don't have a million pounds in my bank account. But it could

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:05

be something as simple as next time you go shopping, instead of buying the

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:09

cheapest toilet paper, you buy the super quilted toilet paper. That's a silly

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:13

example, but what you're saying is that I deserve these

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:16

luxuries. And starting there, spending however much it

Beth Hewitt: 00:28:20

costs on quilted toilet paper. Right. The extra two pound. And then

Melissa Amos: 00:28:24

noticing the noticing, the self talk, oh, I

Melissa Amos: 00:28:28

could buy, and why am I. And now my bum only needs the

Melissa Amos: 00:28:31

single thing. Yeah, single down paper.

Melissa Amos: 00:28:38

Very good toilet papers for a variety of prices. But we start to

Melissa Amos: 00:28:42

notice what we do. Both the want the fit

Melissa Amos: 00:28:45

body, and then you hear ourselves going, oh, I'm just lazy. And it's, hold

Melissa Amos: 00:28:49

on a minute. If I had this new

Melissa Amos: 00:28:53

identity, would I think that if the answer is no, we can say to that,

Melissa Amos: 00:28:56

but because it's not true. It's not true that you're lazy. It's a belief that's

Melissa Amos: 00:29:00

come up. For example. Yeah. It's not true that you

Melissa Amos: 00:29:03

probably, if you can afford a three pound toilet

Melissa Amos: 00:29:07

paper, you might be able to treat yourself once in a while to a five

Melissa Amos: 00:29:10

pound toilet paper and then notice what comes up. Yeah.

Melissa Amos: 00:29:14

The guilt or the shame or whatever. And that is where the healing happens. So

Melissa Amos: 00:29:18

then we've got the pattern interrupt. Oh, well, I automatically always reach for the

Melissa Amos: 00:29:21

cheapest thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna like up level a bit here

Melissa Amos: 00:29:25

and just see what happens. Yeah. And we're bringing

Melissa Amos: 00:29:29

healing or awareness or soothing or

Melissa Amos: 00:29:33

acceptance, maybe even, I think it's awareness

Melissa Amos: 00:29:36

to the part of us that, that tells us, no, it's not

Melissa Amos: 00:29:40

good enough. This isn't you. You were like, it's okay. We're not

Melissa Amos: 00:29:44

losing you. We're trying something new. Let's just see

Melissa Amos: 00:29:48

what happens. This time next week, you might be in the 06:00 a.m. club

Melissa Amos: 00:29:52

doing the damage. I'm going to persevere. I'm going to persevere with three

Melissa Amos: 00:29:56

ply toilet paper. Maybe. So

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:00

again, another interesting conversation. I think there's probably so much more that. Well, there is.

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:03

There's so much more to talk around identity and all of these different aspects, because

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:06

I think we've talked about different areas of it, and I think you could go

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:10

in depth in each of these different areas. But I'd love to hear listeners maybe

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:13

think about their own journeys

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:16

to shift in identity awareness

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:20

and habits. I think it's a really interesting

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:24

topic. And the more we know about it, the more we know ourselves and the

Beth Hewitt: 00:30:28

more awareness we have and who we want to become in the future. So

Melissa Amos: 00:30:32

I think. So. You know what? I'd love for our listeners to

Melissa Amos: 00:30:36

do this? Write down all your identities on a piece of

Melissa Amos: 00:30:39

paper. Right? All of them. I am mother, I am child,

Melissa Amos: 00:30:43

I am sister, I am whatever. All of them.

Melissa Amos: 00:30:46

Taxpayer, customer. All the things that you could be,

Melissa Amos: 00:30:50

neighbor. All of. And then you'll see, you'll maybe

Melissa Amos: 00:30:54

start to understand why it's then okay to also bring in this

Melissa Amos: 00:30:57

identity that feels unfamiliar right now.

Melissa Amos: 00:31:01

Because it's not like you can be a mother and a

Melissa Amos: 00:31:04

child, right? You can hold two identities at the same time.

Melissa Amos: 00:31:08

Yes. Yeah. And then just look at that and go, okay, what

Melissa Amos: 00:31:12

would I now like to also bring in to this equation

Melissa Amos: 00:31:16

and then report back, let us know.