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BEHAVIOR 5:

BUILD FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS

I spent years talking to women about how to reach for growth without realizing that many of them didn’t have a strong foundation to keep up with their goals even if they were motivated. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re motivated to achieve a goal if your day-to-day life is going to sabotage you before you get very far. This lack of foundation wasn’t even something I put a name to until I started to dig into the reasons women would list for why they were having so much trouble.

The things we need in place before we can pursue our dreams are not what we often think of in relation to success. Typically, we just think of them as parts of life. But if we don’t have these foundational elements squared away on the front end, reaching for anything else can feel like too much of a long shot.

We have to do the necessary initial work if we’re going to move forward in other ways. We need to set ourselves up to win.

Think about it this way. You’re like a vase. I heard this one time, and I thought this was the greatest analogy ever. Imagine that you are a glass vase and you’re standing up tall, and someone is pouring water into you. That water is everything you could possibly need to survive. So you, as the glass vase, are filled with life and energy and nutrients and love and joy—all the good things.

But we women often don’t think about ourselves as much as we worry about everyone else, so we try and lean over. We tip our vases forward and backward and side to side so that the good things we’re receiving will spill out to those around us.

We give some to our children, or our coworkers, or our parents, or our friends. We keep tipping ourselves over. We tip it a little bit here, we spill a little bit there, and eventually . . . the vase falls over and breaks into a thousand pieces. We spend so much effort trying to take care of others that we destroy ourselves in the process.

But here’s the incredible thing. If you’re a vase and you just stand up tall and proud on a firm foundation, if you just take in all the things that are being poured into you, what will eventually happen to the water in the vase? It will overflow and spill out to everyone around you.

I know this is one of those things we hear all the time, and you’re like, “Yeah, I got it.”

I’m here to tell you, no, you don’t got it. You don’t! I’m challenging you right now. If you are uncomfortable, if you are aching, if you are tired, if you are anxious, if you are depressed, if you are suffering in any way, you’re not standing firmly on a strong foundation and letting your vase overflow. You’re not setting yourself up for success. But you can. And here are some tangible steps you can take to do just that.

GET HEALTHY

I can’t think of anything that’s as important to ensure success as feeling great both physically and emotionally. It’s certainly possible to achieve a goal even when you’re not operating at the highest level, but it’s way harder than it needs to be. You can drive with a flat tire, but when the car is fine-tuned and the gas tank is full, you can fly.

Over the last decade I’ve worked so hard to get physically and emotionally healthy, and while the road from there to here was filled with personal awareness and hard work (and gobs of therapy), there are a handful of practical things I’ve identified as game changers for health that you, too, can implement. These are the five things I changed in my life over the years that made me feel physically capable of taking on all my big dreams. These are the “Five to Thrive” elements I mentioned earlier.

1. Hydration

Drink half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. Let’s do easy math. Let’s say you weigh a hundred pounds. You’re going to divide that in half—that’s fifty. So you should drink fifty ounces of water every single day to stay hydrated. At this point I always get asked the same question: Doesn’t that mean you have to pee all day? Yes, that’s the point. It flushes all the bad stuff out of your body.

Hydration is important for so many reasons, but it’s especially important for those of you who are struggling with weight loss. Being dehydrated feels a lot like being hungry. Chances are you’re not hungry; you’re thirsty. But your brain doesn’t know the difference, which is why you’re struggling so much with portion control. Try drinking a bottle of water and then seeing if you still need food.

Or, you might be like, “I want this goal. I want this plan. I want to have a better life. I want to get promoted. I want to do this.” But you don’t have the energy, and you keep giving up on your dreams, and nothing seems to be working. You don’t understand why, but you also haven’t had water since last Tuesday—and that was only because some got in your mouth when you were brushing your teeth.

Hydration is one of those foundational elements for success, so whenever someone wants to start a new plan, whatever it may be, I always recommend they begin with this little step. Just drink your water, and once you tackle that and make it a habit, you’ll feel ready to move on to tougher things.

1. Wake Up Earlier

The second thing that you’re going to do as you establish a healthier physical environment is get up an hour earlier and use that time for yourself. I think this is especially powerful for those of you who are moms. I know I shouldn’t make sweeping generalizations about other people’s families, but I’m going to stand firm in this idea.

If your kid wakes you up in the morning, you’re screwed. You are. You’re already behind the eight ball. If the baby is crying or a toddler woke you up asking for Cheerios, you’re starting your day on the defensive instead of on the offensive. That extra hour in the morning before your family gets up is key; it’s everything.

Those of you who say you don’t have any time for yourself, this is the time! If you want to work out, if you want to read a book, if you want to pray, if you want to write your first novel, if you want to have the time to pursue your goals, get up an hour earlier.

Now, inevitably, when I talk about waking up earlier I always get a few notes from women saying something along the lines of, “I have a six-week-old baby and I’m struggling to wake up an hour earlier because I only got two hours of sleep last night.” What are you talking about right now? What in the holy world?! If you have a baby under nine months of age, this number on the list is not meant for you! Just wait until they’re older and then try.

Be gracious with yourself. I love that you’re trying to push yourself into something new, but these are not adjustments you can make if you are currently going through a massive life change. So if you’ve got a new baby, this one is not for you.

Maybe what you’re thinking instead is, I’m a doctor, and I get up at 3:00 a.m. already. Well, gosh, I definitely don’t want you to be up at 2:00 a.m. But maybe for you this step looks like finding some time for yourself later in the day. Come on, friend. We’re just looking to carve out an hour of time somewhere to pursue what’s on your heart. That’s all I want you to do.

If you don’t have an hour to spare, you don’t have a life.

I piss people off when I say that. They’re like, “You don’t know me! You don’t know my schedule!” You’re right. I don’t know you. But what I do know is that if you can’t find a single hour for yourself in a twenty-four-hour period, you need to look at your priorities. You need to ask yourself what you are doing with your time.

1. Give Up One Category of Food for Thirty Days

So, we’re going to drink water, we’re going to get up an hour earlier, and then we’re going to focus on nutrition with this easy elimination. I want you to give up food. One category of crappy food, for thirty days. Have you ever heard that saying that if you can give up something for a month, it becomes a habit? Well, I want you to make a habit of not eating garbage. Garbage in this instance is fast food or processed food or anything Krispy Kreme makes! And the thing is, I don’t even want you to give up everything or figure out a new diet, because that can be overwhelming, particularly if you’re also trying to chase down a goal. I just want you to choose one tiny baby category . . . and then avoid it like a biblical plague.

If you can give something up—like truly give it up, no “cheating”—it becomes a habit. I hate to say the word cheat, but if you break this promise to yourself, it’s done. It won’t stick. For most things in life, if you mess up, I’m likely to simply say, “Get back up, get back up, get back up.” But if you can’t stick on this number, you’ve got to start again at the beginning of your thirty days.

The challenge to you is, Can you keep a promise to yourself for a month? I don’t even care if you replace it with something else. I don’t care if you’re like, “Well, I can’t have Diet Coke, so I’m going to have lemonade—which is full of sugar, but whatever, at least it’s not full of chemicals!” This isn’t about what you’re giving up; this is about proving to yourself that you can keep your word. And proving to your stomach that it can in fact survive without Chick-fil-A sauce for an extended period of time.

1. Move Your Body Every Day!

So you’re going to drink water, you’re going to wake up an hour earlier, you’re going to give up a category of food for thirty days, and you are going to move your body. No, you don’t have to do CrossFit or sign up for a boot camp where they scream at you for an hour. I mean, unless that’s your thing. But you do need to move your body for thirty minutes every single day. And let me say this right now, if you cannot find the time and the energy and the willpower to move your body for thirty minutes a day, seven days a week, we have a problem. We have a really big problem. I’m not asking you to run a marathon; I’m asking you to move.

I know that there are a hundred million distractions that encourage you to lie around and watch television or scroll through your phone, but if that’s the only thing you do in your downtime, you’re depleting yourself of energy. You don’t have to be a certain size or a certain weight, but you do have to have energy. You are a freaking animal. An animal, like a cheetah or an antelope or a wolverine. There are no overweight animals in nature; it’s not a thing. The only overweight animals that exist are the ones that live in our houses with us. Animals are not overweight; pets are overweight. You are not a pet. You are a powerful, beautiful, bold woman, and you will treat yourself as such.

Studies have been done on the highest performers, the people who are the greatest athletes, the greatest businesswomen, the greatest in the world. Out of the highest-performing people, it’s something like 97 percent—I swear, you can look this up—who work out at least five days a week. It’s not because those people were given some special workout genes that you don’t have. It’s because those people know that energy begets energy. You want to achieve your goal? Get moving for those thirty minutes every day, and make sure your body is ready to act on the vision you have for your life.

1. Practice Gratitude Daily

The fifth thing I want you to do is arguably the most important. Every single day I’m going to ask you to write down ten things you are grateful for. Put it in your phone, write it down in a journal, however you want to do it, but take twelve minutes and list these things out. Don’t list big things, like that you’re grateful for your partner or that you’re grateful for the ability to breathe.

Write down things that happened today. Things like how good your cup of coffee was. Or how someone let you in on the freeway when there was heavy traffic. Or that you got to see a friend, or that your five-year-old told you a terrible joke and you laughed even though it wasn’t funny. The idea is, if you know that at the end of the day you’re going to have to list out points of gratitude, you will spend your day looking for blessings. If you spend your day looking for blessings—here’s the magic—you’ll find them.

When you live your life in a state of gratitude, it changes everything. From a place of feeling immensely blessed, we see immense possibility; we believe good things are possible and maybe even likely to happen to us. When it comes to setting the foundation to succeed, it helps if you believe that your success is likely. If you don’t do anything else on this list, just do this one thing.

If you don’t feel like you can do all five things, just try that last one about gratitude and do it consistently for a month. I suggest a month because in my own life I’ve found that if I can do anything regularly for thirty days, it sticks. When you practice gratitude consistently for a month, add in the water, then maybe the workout. This is about setting yourself up for success. You can certainly pursue your goals when you’re struggling physically or emotionally, but when you’re taking care of yourself, you have the exponential energy to keep up with your vision.

GET YOUR PERSONAL SPACE IN ORDER

Being a little girl in a house that was at times utter chaos meant that I grew up often feeling unsafe. But the one thing that I could control was my bed. So I made my bed every single day. When I grew up and got my first apartment, it was in a crappy part of town. In fact, it was actually a crappy apartment in a crappy part of town, but that apartment was always clean. This was something I could control.

Your home is something you can control. Of all the things in your life it’s the one you have the easiest access to. Years ago I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she said, “Your home should rise up to meet you.” If your home feels like chaos or it’s dirty or it’s unorganized, you need to wake up. If you keep scrolling through Instagram, looking at other women’s pretty lives so you don’t have to acknowledge that yours is a mess, you need to wake up. Your home is a reflection of what’s going on inside your head and your heart. If life feels out of control, start taking control with your immediate environment.

I know there are people reading this who don’t have a home, who don’t have access to everything, who have one tiny square surrounded by a sea of chaos. To you, I’d say, take care of the spaces that are yours, be that your bed, your car, or your desk at work. Organize your life. Keep your spaces clean. Put some effort into their appearances. These things are about self-respect and about setting a certain standard for yourself, for your life, for your children. That doesn’t cost money. Self-respect doesn’t cost anything other than effort. Clean up.

The other thing to keep in mind about your personal spaces is that they not only need to be organized and clean, but they need to be filled with reminders of the vision you have for your future life. When I open up my closet doors, I have bulletin boards with pictures pinned that reflect my bigger vision for the future, because I want to remind myself every day what I’m working toward. I use images and words; my car and office and even my bathroom mirror are filled with words and quotes that inspire me. This entire chapter is about setting yourself up to reach for success by building a solid foundation. The spaces you inhabit can be the platform that you build a new life on, or they can be the anchor that keeps pulling you back under the waves.

BUILD A GREAT COMMUNITY

You are a combination of the five people you hang out with most. Think about it. Who do you see most often? Whose words are you consuming frequently? Which points of view and perceptions do you take in on the regular? Is there someone amongst those five you interact with regularly who is above you in life? Meaning, is there something about them that you want to aspire to? Do they have skills or characteristics that you’d be proud to adopt? When you hang out with those people, is there an area in your life that they’re going to pull you up toward?

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. If you’re the most focused on growth in your group of friends, if you’re the highest achiever, if you’re the most compassionate, if you’re doing the best out of everyone, you’re in the wrong room. You should want to surround yourself with people who are better than you in the areas you want to improve in. You should hope that your good stuff rubs off on them and their good stuff rubs off on you. But if everyone in your circle looks to you to motivate them, you’re outnumbered. They’re much more likely to pull you down to their level than you are to pull them up to yours.

It’s worth saying here that I’m not suggesting that you let go of the relationships that you have simply because someone isn’t as advanced as you are or as focused on growth. I am suggesting that you make sure you are regularly interacting with people who are leading the charge in an area you’d like to grow into.

I want to hang out with other women or other couples who exemplify the traits I would want to have as a mom, as a wife, as a woman in business, and as a friend. If you want to grow in your career but all your friends are still living at home with no plans to do much with their lives, how supportive are they able to be? If your friends—the ones who advise you and offer counsel—don’t believe in marriage, how much great advice are they going to offer you for yours?

I remember one summer we were on a vacation in Hawaii, and it was during a really rough season in our marriage. I went into the vacation already feeling frustrated with Dave, and that much time together only brought it into sharper relief. I was so annoyed with him that it colored every part of that vacation. About halfway through the trip some of my best friends came to visit us, and I went to pick them up from the airport.

I had been waiting for days, thinking, Great, my girls are coming, and I’m going to unload on what a terrible human this man is and they’re going to be like, yes, screw him! Plus, they’re lesbians, so I figured they’d be even more into the whole “husbands are the worst!” diatribe I had going on in my head. I had a whole plan!

Then we got into the car where I started making known all my frustrations. Bless—seriously, God bless—these women, because they immediately started speaking truth into what I would want for a marriage. They reminded me what grace looks like and that we all have hard times. They reminded me that when things are the toughest, that’s when you should most be seeking out your partner. They reminded me who it is I want to be.

Now, if I had gotten into a car with best friends who were people with a totally opposite view on what it is to have a strong and beautiful marriage, we would have gotten out of that car in a totally different headspace. They would have fanned the flames of my anger. They would have made the situation worse. It would have been so easy to do.

Are your friends pulling you up or dragging you down?

You are a combination of the five people that you hang out with most. Choose wisely.

DEVELOP GREAT HABITS

In order to get from where I was to where I wanted to be, I had to learn about habits. I had to learn to change the bad habits I had been practicing, and I had to learn how to develop the good habits I needed to get ahead. So many people think that one thing, one opportunity, is going to make them a success at everything.

The reality is that success comes by doing fifty things over and over and over and over. Intensity is not as important as consistency. The thing about consistency is that you do it for a while, and it seems like nothing is happening. Nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening, and then all of a sudden you’re like, Holy crap, where did that come from?!

What habits do you have right now that are going to help you get to where you want to go? Having a good life is about developing good habits. But what exactly is a habit? A habit is a series of three things:

1.A cue

2.An action

3.A reward

A cue means that something happens. It’s a trigger for you. It signals to your brain that it’s time to start the action. Then, when you take the action (totally unconsciously, by the way), you’re given some type of reward. A cue, an activity, a reward.

For instance, I spent many years as an emotional eater. When you’re an emotional eater, every single kind of emotion is a cue to eat something. If you’re sad you eat. If you’re happy you eat. If you’re anxious you should eat. If you’re mad you should eat, and then you should have Oreos. I had learned somewhere along the way that food was the only thing I had easy access to that would make me feel better. So, when I became an adult, whenever I had anxiety or fear, I would go to the kitchen at eleven o’clock at night and binge eat everything.

My cue was feeling anxious, my activity was eating, and the reward was that I felt better. For a brief period of time, I would get a high from eating all that food, and that high made me feel happy. But the problem with most terrible habits is that, as the high from your reward starts to die off, it actually triggers the cue again.

So for me, I would eat an entire sleeve of Ritz crackers and half a tub of cream cheese, and it would make me so happy. Then twenty minutes would go by and I’d start thinking, You’re a piece of crap! You blew your diet. You’ve been working so hard, and you just threw it all away. You’re garbage. The negative self-talk would start, and then I’d think, Well, dang. We’re already here; let’s have dessert. And then I would eat dessert and feel really good again, but eventually circle back around.

I would trigger myself again and again and again, until I finally understood that the issue wasn’t stress; the issue was the activity I was unconsciously choosing once the stress had been cued. I couldn’t change that life was going to happen and that there would be times when I would feel scared or sad or anxious. What I could change, however, was the action I took in response to that cue.

Now, when I have anxiety, I go on a long run. I go work out. By the way, I used to hate people who are like, “If you feel stressed, go work out.” I’d think, Screw you, Pam! We’re not all made like that, okay?! Except neither is Pam. She’s just choosing a better activity to manage what she’s feeling. She’s taught herself a great habit.

The equation for change in any capacity is always very simple. For example, it’s so simple to lose weight. It is so simple to get in shape. It’s so simple to save money. It’s all very, very simple, but it’s not easy. It’s not quick. It’s not a reward that you’re going to get immediately. You usually have to choose a harder thing where the reward comes later. The problem with most things in life is that the activity you want to do—the bad habit—offers a quicker reward than the thing that’s better for you.

It’s difficult to make a change because the bad choices are much easier to access than the good ones. You’ve created a habit of bad habits. They feel more natural to you. Whatever you’re reading this book for: maybe you needed to get in shape, maybe you wanted to eat better, maybe you wanted to be more intentional with your partner, maybe you wanted to be a better mom, maybe you wanted to be calmer, maybe you wanted to battle your anxiety, or your depression, or to replace your depression with gratitude and joy.

Maybe you wanted to reach for all those things. But maybe you have a year, or a decade, or a lifetime of habitually being angry, pushing people away, binge eating, abusing alcohol, ignoring your kids, being a workaholic. You have your own version; you fill in the blank. Maybe this makes you think you can’t swap out the good actions for the bad ones, but I know for a fact that if you’re breathing right now, if you’re alive, that means you can start again.

You can start again over and over and over until the feeling of moving in the right direction is more natural to you than the feeling of giving up. Whatever it is that you are facing, whatever your struggle is, whatever your hill is to climb, whatever you are trying to get through, there are ways to take ownership of that thing, and you can do it as you come back one day at a time and establish consistency.

ESTABLISH A MORNING ROUTINE

The last thing I want us to talk about to set ourselves up for success is the ever-important morning routine. I know we discussed this earlier in the chapter, but it’s such an important part of laying a solid foundation that I’d like us to spend a little more time on this and dig in deeper. It’s hard to believe that having a good morning is such a key factor to setting yourself up for success, but it really is.

I don’t think I understood this until I had children. Before I had kids, the morning was my own. I decided when I wanted to wake up. I decided what I wanted to do with that time. I never once opened my eyes and saw a toddler staring at me like a creepy extra from Children of the Corn! But then I had kids, and suddenly someone else was dictating my mornings, which I suppose would be fine if I had been one of those well-organized mothers who manage to make parenting look effortless.

But our reality was often messy and chaotic and hard and frustrating. We’d survive (barely), and I would get the kids off to school. But because the morning was chaotic and frustrating, I was starting almost every workday feeling chaotic and frustrated. It was hard to shake.

It wasn’t until I started the practice of waking up an hour before my children that I understood how powerful it is to get ahead of the day. Now, I am intentionally planning my morning routine around the kind of day I want to have, because if you own the morning, then you own the day.

If you own the day, then you own the week. It’s the ultimate routine you can set for yourself, and mine is made up of practices I’ve worked and reworked hundreds of times to get to the ultimate start to my days. I’m sharing it with you now to give you a head start on creating one for yourself.

1.I wake up at 5:00 a.m. Our kids typically wake up at 6:45, so I used to get up at 5:45 to give myself an hour of “me time.” But then I realized having only one hour of me time made me feel a little rushed. I really like the ritual of a slow cup of coffee in the morning, and I don’t want to rush through it. So now I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and go turn on the coffeepot (someday I’ll learn how to program that stupid thing). I drink a glass of water while the coffee brews, and then I start working on my current project, whatever that may be. I like working on big projects early in the morning because I’m generally not awake enough to second-guess myself, which means I make a lot more progress.

2.After I finish my morning work, I do a fifteen-minute meditation on gratitude. If you’ve never done meditation before, think of it as guided prayer. And, in my case, I use the time to focus on my blessings so I start my day aware of all the things that I have to be grateful for.

3.Next, I write in my journal. This is a really quick habit of writing down my intentions for the day, a few things I’m grateful for, and an affirmation reminding me who I want to be.

4.Once I have gotten some things accomplished, had my coffee, and mentally prepared myself to be my best, it’s time to wake up the hellions who live down the hall. The next hour of our day is all about the kids. This is when we do breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed for school, make lunches, and get everyone out the door.

5.After the kids are at school, I hurry to get ready for work and always, always, always get ready to upbeat music. I absolutely love music, and I use it constantly to pump me up and get me going. I have an Amazon Echo in my bathroom, so I can voice command it to play anything at any point. I love that I can be in the shower and be like, “Alexa, play ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift,” and two seconds later I’m jamming out to Tay Tay.

6.Once I’m ready for work, I head back to the kitchen to make my green smoothie. It is not delicious or exciting, but it’s full of a ton of stuff that’s really good for me, it keeps me full for hours, and starting my day in a healthy way sets the tone for the hours that come after.

7.The last thing I do as part of my morning routine is write down my list of ten dreams and the one goal that’s going to get me there fastest. 10, 10, 1, remember? It’s a great way to set my focus before I start on my to-do list, and I love that I have an entire notebook filled with things that remind me who it is I want to be.