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BEHAVIOR 6:

STOP ALLOWING THEM TO TALK YOU OUT OF IT

Have you ever experienced a situation where you were motivated and inspired and ready to push forward toward your goal? Maybe you were devoted to your weight-loss journey and were making great strides. Maybe you decided to go back to school. Maybe you were training for that half marathon. Whatever it was, you were on it. And then . . . then someone else got in your way.

This can manifest in a lot of ways for hundreds of reasons, but often it looks something like this: You are doing great on your diet, but then you go to a family gathering and someone in your family (or maybe several someones) gives you grief about it. But it’s a special occasion! But it’s Christmas! But we always have margaritas—what, you’re just not going to drink now? And the thing is, staying on your diet during a family party or a holiday is really, really tough. So, when they give you a hard time (at best) or tease you mercilessly (at worst), you allow the emotions they evoke in you to talk you into breaking your diet.

Or maybe you’re training for your first race or you’ve decided to go back to school to get your master’s degree, and at first the people in your life are supportive. Going back to school is a good thing. Working out and getting in shape are great. Everyone around you agrees. But then you start to schedule time in your calendar to work on these things, and as the race ramps up, you’ve got to spend more and more hours training.

Or maybe it’s studying or writing a report for class. The free time you used to have is now devoted to your new goal. And the people in your life feel left out or left behind or, more typically, inconvenienced. These choices you’re making for yourself feel more and more selfish, and someone in your life speaks into that.

“You know, it’s really hard to handle the kids all by myself on Thursdays while you’re at class.” Or, “We used to always hang out, and I feel like I never see you anymore!” You were already feeling guilty about your choices and it is getting harder by the day, so you bow to whatever would make everyone else happy. God forbid they might be upset with you! It’s so much better to give up on your thing, your goal, because if anyone else is inconvenienced, then your goal must be wrong.

Can we talk about that for a quick second? Can we talk about someone else being inconvenienced by you pursuing your best self? I want to bring it up because it’s a question I get a lot.

How can I get my mom to be more supportive?

How do I convince my husband to watch the kids so I can work out?

How can I get my boyfriend to eat healthy with me so it’s easier for me to stay on track?

How can I get my dad to support my decision to change majors?

The best advice I know of in this situation is, if you want to change someone else, change yourself. People change because they’re inspired by someone else’s example, not because they were coerced into doing it. People change because they see in someone else what’s probable, not because someone harasses them over and over about what’s possible. You will never change someone else unless you find the courage and the will and the resolve to change yourself, and you will never do any of those things if you aren’t willing to let people be inconvenienced by your journey.

Being inconvenienced is part of any relationship. I will watch all four kids by myself for a couple of hours on Saturday so that Dave can go to the gym. He will watch all four kids by himself on Sunday so that I can go on a long run. Is it an inconvenience to solo parent that many beasties? Of course, but we both genuinely want the best for each other, and that means we’re willing to do things that are hard on us so our partner can flourish.

How many people work extra hours for years while their partner gets their degree? How many times have you done the grocery shopping? How many times has your partner taken the trash out or done the laundry or gotten up with the baby to make it easier on you? Being occasionally inconvenienced is a part of life, and if you’re willing to do it for them, then you better be willing to demand that they do it for you.

Sometimes all it takes is having a firm adult conversation. But sometimes the pushback is hard to stand strong against. It’s inevitable that the people in your life will feel the discomfort that arises when you start restructuring your life to pursue new things. There are so many reasons why your friends or family members might not be supportive: insecurity, fear, self-preservation, complacency, and so on.

But this book isn’t about their reasons; it’s about you having a revelation. So listen up. Mediocre will always try and drag you back down to mediocre. Lazy will always try and drag you back down to lazy.

For whatever reason, these people in your life aren’t at the same place as you in their personal-growth journey, and that’s fine. We’re all on our own paths, and it’s not your job to try and pull them up with you. It’s your job to show up for your own life and fight for your own dreams. To quote my friend Elizabeth, “You need less wishbone and more backbone.” That means you’re going to have to make the decision that other people don’t get to weigh in here.

That means you will stand up for yourself and understand that someone who’s sitting in the cheap seats doesn’t get to tell you how to fight in the ring. If you’re not out here on the field, if you’re not fighting for more, if you’re not running these miles with me or writing these words with me or making new habits with me or eating this kale with me—if you’re not in the game with me, then you don’t get to call any plays, and you darn sure don’t get to offer negative comments about the work I’m putting in!

Allowing someone else to talk you out of your pursuits is quite possibly one of the hardest habits to break but one of the greatest behaviors to adopt. Part of what makes it hard is that we care about what other people think; it’s ingrained in us from birth. But, as we’ve talked about before, other people’s opinions of you are none of your business.

That’s a bit harder to remember, though, when the opinions—even when they’re wrong—are connected to the people we love and care about most. The thing is, you cannot control how they’ll act or what they’ll say or whether they’ll be supportive. You can only control how you’ll respond to what they do and whether you use their feelings as a reason to quit on yourself.

Rather than alienate everyone or start a turf war with your sister or create problems in your relationships, here are some things you can do to ensure that you’re better able to control your own reactions: 1. ASK YOURSELF IF THIS PERSON SHOULD BE IN YOUR LIFE—SERIOUSLY.

Think about it for a second. If someone doesn’t want what’s best for you—even if they don’t understand it—it’s either because y’all have a problem you need to work through or they shouldn’t be in your life. You either want to do life with people (meaning interact with them happily), or you shouldn’t have them in your life.

Period I know this seems almost blasphemous to some people, but you really, truly don’t have to hang out with people who are negative or mean or make you anxious or bring out the worst in you. Even family. There are whole groups of blood relatives I haven’t interacted with since I became an adult.

As a child I didn’t have a choice, but as an adult I decided I wouldn’t ever allow people into my home and around my children who were mean or prone to creating drama or passive-aggressively bullying others.

That’s not the way we behave, and though it makes me sad because I miss the good times we had, I’m not willing to allow the bad times in order to be invited to the annual summer barbecue. Be kind or leave. That’s our motto, and if you can’t abide by it, then you’re not the type of person I want in my life.

1. PREPARE BEFORE YOU SEE THEM.

More often than not, the answer isn’t to cut someone out of your life. More often than not you can recognize that they’ve got some insecurities and decide not to let it affect you. But if you wait until you’re in front of your naysayer to decide how to respond to them, you’re screwed.

That’s like being on a diet and waiting until you’re starving to figure out what to eat. You’ve got a zero-percent chance of being the person you want to be if you’re not intentional about it. Hope is not a strategy, remember? So the next time you’re headed into a scenario where you’ll likely interact with people who aren’t supportive, ask yourself in advance how you can circumnavigate it.

Please note that I didn’t say avoid it. Heading to Thanksgiving with a plan to drink as much pinot as possible to numb yourself to their comments is not an effective strategy. Believe me, I know from personal experience. Instead, ask yourself what is likely to come up. Steel yourself for the comments and have your responses ready to go.

Know your why. Remind yourself what you’re doing this for and why it matters so much to you. Prepare yourself physically. Listen to some great pump-up music to get you in the right headspace, and decide that this experience and interaction is going to be fantastic because you won’t allow it to be anything else. If the interaction will be difficult because it has to do with diet or health or exercise, consider eating or working out or whatever you need to do before you interact. That way it’s already done.

A few years ago I became a pescetarian, and when I went to family parties there often wasn’t much I could eat. People noticed my mostly empty plate, which led to lots of comments and teasing about “going LA on us.” Many times I’d buckle and eat something I didn’t want to eat but leave the party frustrated and annoyed.

I needed to prepare myself for a more successful interaction with people who might not understand my choices. Now I just make a big salad and a great veggie side dish for every family party. This way I’ve got something to eat that’s on my diet, and my plate is full, so no one questions what is or isn’t there. Also, my salads are bomb, so everybody wins.

1. PLAN INTENTIONALLY TO MAKE IT EASIER.

I wish this section was as easy as telling you to have the people in your life get with the program and stop acting like unsupportive punks. But, dude, it’s not that easy. It wasn’t that easy in my marriage or with my family, so I know it won’t be that easy for your relationships either. Whenever I’m about to take on a new project or I’ve got a particularly busy season, I map it out in advance to make it as easy as possible on Dave. I plan for sitters, I figure out workarounds, I schedule like a maniac to make my hustle as little of an inconvenience as possible. Ultimately, though, working on your own goal typically means sacrificing in another area of your life.

It means your partner is going to have to put the kids to bed on the nights you’re at school. It means you can’t join your girlfriends for Taco Tuesday anymore because you’re committed to your health. It means time and energy focused in on the thing you’re working for, which means less of those things other people may have come to expect.

Talk to your partner and your friends and anyone whose opinion does matter to you. Tell them your why and your how, and work together to find alternatives for the must-haves that won’t be able to happen exactly as they did before. If you’ve done everything you can do to make the transition easy and fair for your loved ones, you’ll be better prepared to manage the guilt when it starts to creep up to rob you of motivation.