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Hello and welcome to the Own Your Health podcast, I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to help you step into your health power. Today, we're going to talk about rewards. Who doesn't love a reward? We talked about, last week we talked about revisiting your goals, seeing if you were on track for the year, if you needed to make adjustments.
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But I wanted to take time in an individual podcast here to talk a little bit about rewards. It's always good to have a reward waiting for you when you start something new. We plan for it in the same way that we plan the process and the steps of something new.
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A new goal we want to take on. We should plan the reward as well. How do I know that I've made it? And how am I going to celebrate meeting that goal? And there's as many different rewards as there is for individual goals.
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There's the typical ones that you hear. If you have been consistent with a workout, get some great new workout clothes that you really like. If you're consistent with your meal planning, treat yourself to new kitchen tool.
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If you're consistent with what you've wanted to eat with your actual food that's going in your body, reward yourself with a new outfit, reward yourself with a new book.
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Reward yourself with all of these things. And you've heard these messages over and over, but I want to talk about a couple of them. I want to talk about some of the differences that I've seen and that I've heard that you may want to think about as well.
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So one of the first pieces of advice that I ever heard about rewarding yourself for sticking to your food plan was that it can be anything but food. And I'm going to question that a little bit.
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I have found that having the reward be very relevant to the goal is super helpful. So if your focus is on food, if your focus is on nutrition and eating really, really well, why can't your reward be about food?
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Why can't your reward be about some really great dark chocolate or some fruit that's exotic and out of season that you wouldn't typically get for yourself, or some special ingredients that you wouldn't necessarily buy because maybe they're a little stretch on the budget and you usually can't justify them, but some great toppers for salads, for example, that still meet your nutritional needs, but they're a little bit of a treat.
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Those kind of rewards are relevant and they continue to build on that practice. Maybe it's a trip to the spice store for some great seasoning for the chicken you've been eating. That adds to the variety, it adds to your cooking repertoire.
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And yes, it is food acting as a reward for your food plan. But remember, your food plan shouldn't be a restriction. It shouldn't be something that's holding you back. So having the reward be food related makes sense.
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Now I think what this advice typically was going to address that if you stuck to your meal plan all week, that going out for a 5 scoop ice cream sundae on the weekend probably isn't the best reward. And that's absolutely true. But we shouldn't rule out elevating and experimenting and maybe allocating a little more of our food budget to a reward for something related to food.
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The other thing that I see often is that the very common advice that I mentioned earlier, if you've managed to get out there every day, if you've gone to the gym twice a week like you've promised yourself, if you're walking, treat yourself or reward yourself with better workout clothes, better workout shoes, a new piece of equipment for your home gym maybe.
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And while that reward can be really motivating for some, for others, it's actually moving in that direction ahead of time. Getting the outfit, getting, getting the shoes that sets their mind in a place to actually keep their commitments to themselves.
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Now I will say that if you're going to start walking or running program, having decent shoes to start out with is important because if you injure yourself, if your feet are sore, if you get blisters, you're not going to continue. So there's the practical aspect of that, but there's very much the mindset aspect about that too.
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So that starting with what you might consider a reward may be what it takes to put you in that headspace, to actually make you show up, to be able to have you exercise comfortably. I know at times that I've put on weight and I don't have workout clothes, especially yoga clothes that are form fitting.
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I'm less inclined to, to jumpstart my home yoga practice with going to a class because those clothes don't fit or they look really bad. Does that mean I couldn't go in them? No. Does that mean I should judge that?
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Not necessarily. But the practical aspect is I'm not going to go if I don't feel good. And even if I'm in my home studio doing yoga here with something streaming, a class, if my yoga pants roll down when I bend over, I'm going to be distracted.
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I'm not going, I'm not going to be inclined to continue that practice. So if you need motivation, if you need a little bit of outside push to get you started, then maybe switch your rewards around a little bit.
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Now, the last kind of reward that I'm going to talk about is when the actual practice, when the habit that you've wanted to start, when the goal becomes the reward in itself. And that's ideally what we want.
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We want to choose rewards that feel good just for doing them. Sorry. Choose goals. Yeah. Choose rewards, too, that feel good, but choose goals that feel good just for. For doing them just because you know you're doing something good for yourself. This typically happens after time, after you've seen the positive results.
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So we use kind of external reward system to keep us going in the beginning until we see the actual results from our actions. And that is reason in and of itself. That's enough to continue. But I have a cautionary tale that came up in the office this past week, and that was with one of my clients who had started a yoga program.
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She had resisted it for years, maybe even decades. We worked with her in the office. So she felt comfortable with the terminology, with the poses, with some of the movements, and also some of the modifications that she could also make in any class that she went to.
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And she started going to classes regularly. Now, I'm a yoga teacher. I don't teach classes, or if I do, it's a very rare sub situation. But I do work with individuals who are either rehabbing or want to get comfortable, want to look for ways that they can do yoga safely so that they feel comfortable to move into a class.
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It's the same with Pilates. So I asked her, I had seen her for months. I could see when we were doing our, muscle activation techniques that she was moving much better, that her ranges of motion were not only better, but she was strong through range of motion.
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And I said, hey, how is yoga going? And she said, oh, I didn't get there this week. And I said, oh, no, what happened? Because I know she was really dedicated to it for months. And she says, oh, she says, you know, I enjoy it a lot and it's kind of a treat, but I should probably do, I should probably work on something else.
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And, I heard it right there. The goals that she had worked so hard, that she had put off for years, worked so hard to do, had become enjoyable. She was enjoying the process. It had become its own reward.
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And she shifted in her mind to thinking that was kind of a treat. And that she should probably do some kind of other exercise that was work again and not reward herself so much. And, we stopped immediately right there, and we sat down and we talked through this.
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And I said, this means you've accomplished your goal. You've integrated it, which is the basis of all of the work that I do. You have integrated it. You have become a woman who does yoga, who moves her body, and who reaps those rewards regularly without even a lot of thought, why would you stop?
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And it was because of old stories. It was the stories of having to do the work before we can have the reward. And the yoga was no longer work. So she didn't think that she deserved the reward of going, the reward of paying for classes.
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It shifted in her mindset. So we backed that thought train up. We took a look at some other activities. If this has become. If she has become the woman who goes to yoga automatically, what other, say, strength training, can we add to that?
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But we don't want to stop doing what's working because it's become integrated, because it's become natural, and start to think of that then as the reward. So that was kind of a new twist, to have somebody actually come out and say it.
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But when I look back on it, I've seen this pattern, and I've seen the pattern myself. If it's something I enjoy doing, I make myself do the hard stuff first. Well, what happens if I don't do the hard stuff? I don't get around that thing that I enjoy.
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But here's the deal. If that thing that you enjoy is actually very healthy for you, like yoga, and I've heard the same thing, people say, oh, I don't like walking. I don't like being on the treadmill. I just like weightlifting. But I make myself do the treadmill first.
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You know what? Do the weightlifting first. If that's what you enjoy, build on that momentum, and then get on the treadmill. Now, this isn't a license to go and play and not accomplish your goals, but it is a reminder that as we integrate behaviors, as we change who we are and who we're becoming, not to discount what we've done and not to claim it then as the reward and be done with the behavior.
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So take a look into your life. Are there any areas where you do this, where you're actually skipping things that are really part of your good health plan and putting them off until you do the other thing and then kind of look and see if you're not getting the other thing done?
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Do you miss your good behavior that you had as part of your routine? Kind of convoluted, but food for thought. Think about where we do this in life. Now, if you want help with any of this, as always, I am available.
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If you find that this really resonated, go ahead and pass it along to a friend. Hit the like button and share this. Because I think it's a fairly common message and I think we'll all find times in our life where when we've done this, I'd be happy to chat with you.
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Click the link below, get a time on my calendar. Until next week, let's go out and own it.
