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In this coaching session you’re gonna meet a woman named Kim. Kim was very clear why she wanted my help. She’s struggling with the fear of failure and she is so tired of her own negative self talk.

My name is Kim. I am 43 years old. I live just north of Los Angeles. I need some help in getting over my fear so that I can do things for myself. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of being laughed at. Just fighting myself and fighting my own mind and trying to get past that and the negative self talk and the self-doubt and, yeah it’s it’s definitely all comes from inside of me. Don’t let her serious tone of voice fool you. Kim is one of the most hilarious people you will ever meet. It’s about to get real. OK, good. Raw, naked, exposed. This is gonna get ugly. Are you ready? Oh, yeah. I can’t be the only person who does this, because I think in my head, I am fucking crazy.

You’re listening to live coaching sessions with real people. Hi, Mel. I’m Aisha Hamid from Pakistan. Love you Mel. Hi Mel. I wanna be coached by you. Pick me, Mel. Hi, Mel. My name is Lisa. I’m from Brazil. 54321, come on Mel Robbins, please pick me.

Facing real problems. Anxiety of what other people think. Self-acceptance is my biggest thing. Procrastination is causing me to just build a wall. The fear of losing weight. That should stit this fuck.

And experiencing real change. That’s powerful. That was the real talking. Oh, shit. Now I really know what to do and I feel empowered. That is nuts, Mel. You blew my shit away. This is Kick Ass with Mel Robbins.

Hey, Kim. Oh, my God. I totally was not nervous and now I’m nervous. What are you nervous about? I don’t know. What’s gonna happen? Tell me a little bit about what brought you here and I know it’s fear, but can you talk a little bit more and explain a little bit more for me in detail about the fears that are holding you back and how they hold back. I don’t even start something because I’m so afraid that I’ll have to actually do something about it. You know in my life I have done what I’m supposed to do. You know I raise my daughter. I go to work. I pay my bills but I don’t have anything that I’m super proud of for me so I don’t have any sort of sense of pride. I have no hobbies that I like to dig into. I don’t have anything for myself because I’m too afraid to start anything. There’s a lot of stuff that I wanna do, you know, I want to do things like, like working with wood, maybe creating furniture or maybe making something but I don’t know how to do it. So I don’t even start because I’m so afraid that it’s going to the couple of things that I have created, I think that they’re totally stupid and someone’s gonna laugh and…

So what have you created? God, you know, my boyfriend and I built our little garden and now it’s gone to shit because we don’t take care of it. Gotcha. Yeah. So when did this type of fear begin? I feel like I’ve had it my whole life. Can you remember the first time where you really wanted to do something, and this fear was there? Yeah. So when I was in fourth grade, I was a bit haunt toiler and… Of course you were. Yes. So I’ve always been big, right? I’m 5 foot 10. I’m tall. I’m a big person. I have big hair and big features and I’m just big. So… Were you big in fourth grade, too? Oh, yeah. Of course I thought I was fat, but come on, what 10 year-olds, you know, whatever. So I was, I was pretty good and I was the leader of my little you know troop and, and then I was taking private lessons with my teacher and I couldn’t do what’s called the tooth bin. You throw up your tongue in the air, you twirl around two times and then catch. Okay. And I was having a really hard time trying to get that. We were going to have to do a performance in, for the Junior Olympics, which would’ve been in front of the whole school. Okay. And at that time, I was just mortified. I was like I can’t do it. I was telling myself I can’t do this. I can’t get up in front of my, my friends and, and perform in my stupid leotard with my big thighs and my butt hanging out, how embarrassing and so I quit. Wait, before you went? Yeah, I told my parents, I told my parents I can’t get my tooth bin. I don’t want to do this anymore. I quit. But I didn’t quit because I couldn’t get the tooth bin, I quit because I didn’t want to perform in front of everybody and have them laugh at me.

So, did your instructor say anything when you quit? She’s… Yeah, she asked me why are you quitting? You’re doing good. You just have to keep practicing, this stuff doesn’t, you don’t get the stuff overnight. It’s, it’s hard work. And I don’t like putting in hard work. Because I, so that’s how my history has gone. I stop before I even start because I’m, I already known I’m gonna fail. It’s not gonna work. Well, you know what’s interesting about the story is that by quitting you actually, like you developed a strategy that really works for you. Oh, yeah, it’s really working. Well, not now. But it really works for you when you are in a situation where you feel uncomfortable or you feel exposed, or you feel uncertain, then quitting or just saying I’m not doing that; it’s your way to protect yourself and to keep yourself safe. Absolutely. And the irony is that you keep doing it in the areas of your life that could bring you joy. And you know the other thing that’s really sad is that you know when you when you end up doing that to yourself, you end up having nothing but feelings of failure.

So you’re like this is the irony of that strategy. And we’re gonna call it a strategy because you do it deliberately. Yes. And you continued to do it deliberately so it became a habit. You start to feel exposed. You start to feel the unknown. You immediately respond by doing the same thing which is saying no or quitting or disappearing or hiding or whatever it may be. And you do it to avoid failure? But the only thing you feel is failure. So the strategy doesn’t work and infact the strategy gives you the damn thing you’re avoiding. Right. Where else have you done this? With everything. Take me through your day. So what’s it, what’s, how does fear in your day dictate how you act from the moment that you wake up? Let’s go through like a day in the life of Kim and take me through the wacky doodle shitt that’s going on in your head. Oh man, it’s about to get real. Okay, good. Raw, naked, exposed. It’s gonna get ugly. Are you ready? I can’t be the only person who does this, because I think in my head, I am fucking crazy. We all are. But I can’t be the only one that does this and I think maybe that’s part of why I’m here because I’m not extraordinary. I don’t have this fantastical life story. Like I’m just trying to get through life like everybody else. So I am a smoker. I’ve been a smoker for 28 funking years. How disgusting is that? I don’t know. You must love it. It’s totally great, love-hate, total love-hate.

You know my theory about smoking? No. So, my theory about smoking is that smoking is a fuck you to life. Pretty much. That every time you light up, it’s the rebel in you. Yeah. You know that you can that you will probably die from it. You know that you could die from it. You know that it’s bad for you. You know that that the cigarette companies have tricked you into an addiction that makes them tons of money and keeps you struggling financially. You know that it’s stupid. You hate standing outside, but every time you light it up, you put that sucker to your mouth and you’re like, watch me Fuckers, I’m doing it anyway. Yeah, pretty much. And that’s how I’ve lived my whole life, and it does not serve me at all. Being a rebel is the worst thing that you can do to yourself. Why? I’m so rebellious. Look at me. Really? Because you just held your self back from everything that you could’ve done because you think that you’re so fucking awesome being a rebel. Yeah, no. No, not at all.

So here’s my day. So let me walk you through… Yes, cause I want to know. I wanna know if it’s not your desire. If you were to put a speaker on people’s heads and broadcast that garbage, there’d be nobody on the sidewalk cause we’d all be locked up. The stuff that we say to ourselves, yeah, not so. So let’s see if you’re more nuts than me. Probably not. It is crazy like the shit I say to myself, I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy. I would never talk to somebody like that. So okay. The alarm goes off. I wake up at five and I have to get up. I don’t snooze if I snooze I’m out for hours. So I get up. I make my 1st cup of coffee. I sit on the computer like literally on Facebook, YouTube and look, shopping for like an hour. I smoked four cigarettes by this time, snuggling my cat. Now it’s been an hour and I’ve done nothing. I have this three-bedroom house where we have two bedrooms downstairs that aren’t really used but I call one of them my yoga room because I’m such a yogi.

So, the whole hour I’m sitting there, go, I should really go downstairs. Yeah. Yeah I should really go downstairs. I should really go stretch. I should really go meditate. And I’ve made it all cute, you know, like lovely and warm and inviting and I have pillows and coaches and you know whatever. It’s so cold down there. It’s like, like 65 down there. I’ll be freezing. I need another cup of coffee. Well, I don’t want to smoke down there, so I just keep smoking. So then I make my 2nd cup of coffee and now it’s been an hour and a half and I’ve done nothing. I’ve done shit. Like I guess I better get ready for work. So then I get in the shower and I stand there for 20 minutes going so warm in the shower and then I get out and I get ready to do my makeup and then I go to the kitchen and I make my protein smoothie, so healthy. And then I can’t drink my smoothie while I’m doing my hair because you know that’s kinda weird. So now I have to sit there and I also live on the water too so I want to look at the ocean while the sun is rising, and you know that’s like my that that truly is like my meditation time when I’m looking out at the ocean, but you know.. Sounds awesome. I have to drink my smoothie, which means I have 20 minutes to kill. So I might as well smoke four more cigarettes. How many packs do you smoke a day? Like a pack and a half. Holy shit. Yeah, holy shit is right.

So by this time it’s been two and a half hours. Okay? Two and a half hours of doing nothing. I could have, I could get ready in 45 minutes and drink 2 cups coffee and my freaking smoothie and snuggle my cat. So then I go to work and I do my eight hours at work and then I come home and I do a whole lot more of what I did in the morning. Do you wanna quit smoking? Yes and I’m actually, I have the patch on right now. I’ve been trying for about a week, a week and a half. I have quit before many times in my life so I know that it’s not hard and the patch like, does miracles for you for the physical body, which, when you don’t have the physical craving keeps it kinda keeps it out of your head, it’s like any addiction, you just… It’s so fucking hard. Well you know I I smoked in college. I was a pack and a half a day smoker in college and then I got a wicked case of bronchitis, my senior year and I’ll tell you I was out there in the snow, trying to… trying desperately to smoke through the flame and the congested lungs. Right. And I was so sick that for two weeks I actually didn’t have enough lung capacity to inhale and when I was done with the bronchitis I thought okay this is an opening. Let me just keep going, but it’s now, it’s hard for me to do the math, 1990 where we now 2000 what 27 years. If the right Bruce Springsteen song comes on, my God, I want to smoke. They’re friends of mine from college that if I’m around them, I want to smoke. I’ll tell you why. There’s some science behind this.

They, the experts that research addiction and habits, they basically call addiction a habit dysfunction and habits are automated behaviors that get triggered by other people, that get triggered by time of the day, that get triggered by the environment that you’re in. They get triggered by sound. They get triggered by a situation that you might be in. So for example of really, a really kind of neutral habit might be that when you’re in a meeting at work, that’s a situational trigger. If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t talk you might have a habit of just taking notes and that sitting in the meeting will trigger you without even thinking to just start notetaking because that’s what you always do. With cigarettes, it’s really difficult because there’s the trigger of, the alarm goes off, I need to smoke. There is, I’ve just brushed my teeth, I need a smoke. There’s I just poured a cup of coffee and the smell of the coffee, the time of day, the sound of it hitting the cup that all triggers the part of your brain that goes into automatic.

And so, when you start to understand that that’s really what you’re dealing with because the chemical dependency and the chemicals in your body from cigarettes leave in three days. And so when you have a little bit of compassion for yourself that you’re literally in a situation where everything in your house is going to remind you of a cigarette and the only way to deal with it is to redirect yourself, the moment you feel the craving. So I’m asking you if you actually want to quit because I think your entire struggle in life is going to come down to your story up until now. How old are you? 43. You look fantastic. Thank you, even for being a horrible smoker. The first 43 years of your life, your story is the rebel. Yes. And there’s part of the rebel, Kim the rebel, that really works. Right? But in order for the next chapter to begin, we gotta figure out who you are in this next chapter. And then you will be able to figure out when the rebel has stuck in and when it’s time for you to pivot and actually be the Kim that’s in this next chapter. And so I ask you with all sincerity, if you actually want to quit. I do, I a hundred percent do. Why? I take what my boyfriend loves to say cigarette breaks. So I’m at home and I need to you know clean house or something. Okay let me just smoke one more cigarette and then I’ll get up and do it. And then I’m fucking around the computer and 20 minutes later, oh, let me just have one more cigarette.

I don’t do anything because I’m too busy sitting there smoking doing nothing. So it holds me back from actually getting up and doing things, like cleaning the house, like going outside, like taking a walk, things like that. Okay. It really holds me back. It’s weird. What it’s become, is it’s become a very physical and repeated for procrastinating. Yeah. That’s what it’s become. Yeah. Whenever you don’t want to do something, it’s your way to quit over and over and over again. Oh my God, that’s crazy. Wow. Okay.

So what did you just… what just happened for you when… That was a huge realization, I am. I see I don’t even, it’s funny, I can fully acknowledge that they don’t start things because I’m gonna quit, but I didn’t associate that with, with having a cigarette. That’s your way of quitting. Holy shit, Mel. You’re a genius. The irony is with the smoking is you’re trying to quit and so that’s why you don’t see the fact that smoking is actually the way that you quit and opt out of life. And that’s why I was doubting whether or not you actually want to quit because I can see that it is like a fortress that you can put yourself in. It’s protection mechanism and it is a fuck you to life and all the things that you need to do. And that’s also really sad. Yea, it’s pathetic. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to do that anymore. There’s too much life to live. There’s too much to enjoy. There’s too much to explore. There’s too much fun to be had. And you’re a really fun person. I mean if I think about how fun you are trapped in your house doing nothing but smoking and shopping online. I can imagine what would happen if we turn you loose you. Like a crazy amount of shopping.

One of the patterns for me that was debilitating, that took me a very long time to see was that I was so hardwired to not want to disappoint people and I was so hardwired to lie. I mean I was such a fuck liar, growing up. I lied about everything, like stupid stuff, stupid stuff. For lunch if I’m talking to a vegetarian, I had a salad. If I’m talking to somebody that likes hamburgers, I had a hamburger. I mean I just was a chameleon and it wasn’t until I connected the dots and realized holy shit, the reason why I do this is because it was a strategy that I developed when I was in fourth grade. I had an incident where I was molested by an older kid on a ski vacation that our family had taken. You know one of the other families, kids had done this to me in the middle of the night, very confusing, upsetting situation. I come downstairs. My mom is right there, I’m like I gotta tell her, I gotta tell her, I gotta tell her and as I round the corner I see the kid that it sitting at the table. And she turned around and said how did you sleep? And you said great. Yeah. Oh, my God. And it was this moment just like your quitting moment with the baton twirling where it cemented a strategy that I then used until I was 27 years old. And which was assess the situation and say whatever it is that makes things okay. And until I kinda connected the dots between like the behavior as the adults and this strategy that I just, like this lying. Why the fuck was I… Why do I fucking keep doing this? Why can’t I just be myself? Until I connected the dots between kind of…

That is nuts Mel. You blew my shit away, seriously. Tell me about the negative self talk while you’re sitting there, having your coffee and you smoke. Oh, it’s awful. It’s awful. It’s like, why am I still sitting here? Why don’t I just go downstairs? It’s downstairs. It’s not far. You lazy piece of shit. Get up, get up, get up… What the fuck’s wrong with you? Get up you idiot. Yeah, with the cat. She so warm on my lap and this coffee’s so good and oh my God, I need one more cigarette. Now it’s been an hour and a half. I should probably get in the shower. God, you’re a piece of shit. You’re so fat. No wonder why you’re so fat. You dumb ass. Go downstairs. You don’t even have to go downstairs. Go downstairs, get your mind and bring it up here and then you could do some stretching. It’s real hard, searching. Idiot ass.

You’re such a rebel and even rebelling against yourself. It’s awful. It’s because you’re not out in the world so you don’t have anything else to rebel against. So this whole fucking thing is turned on you. Yeah, it’s awful. I mean imagine if you directed the rebel and all that energy at a cause or at something that you actually care about changing. Yeah, imagine if all the time I sat smoking, hating myself if I took all of that energy and I tell this to myself all the time. If you took all of this and redirected it into this hard thing called stretching, you might feel better. That’s not gonna do anything for your ass. I’ve been doing it for 15 years, it’s not done anything for my ass. At our age, we gotta lift weights. Which you could do while you’re smoking by the way cause if you can’t get a downward dog with a cigarette in your mouth, you’re gonna get ashed on your mouth. You could smoke and do bicep curls, though. Can you imagine? Going to move a 24 hour fitness. Is this a smoking gym? Where’s the smoking section? I actually think there’s a business opportunity. Forget the fits on Instagram, you should create an entire social media account. Yeah. You exercising with a cigarette in your mouth and doing instructional videos about how to smoke… and jogging down the beach with… And I live next to a Navy base tooth. There’s always military dudes like running… What’s up dude? With my cigarette hanging on my mouth. Sorry, I can only go 10 steps, I’m winded. You can still lit if you’re running? I never tried to run with a cigarette. Why, no. I don’t wanna injure myself.

The rebel thing is actually, is actually pretty interesting and I’m stubborn as shit, too. Most of the time when someone is stuck, the strategies that they’ve been using need to go away completely. Yeah, you know what I’m saying? The rebel thing doesn’t serve you at all, you’re too much of a fuck you and you don’t feel anything anymore then it needs to disappear completely. Part of the rebel thing really works and it’s really great and it’s an absolutely incredible attribute new. The problem is it’s taken over every aspect of your life so you’re no longer using this power inside you called the rebel. It’s using you. When you’re in a situation where you can feel the automatic behavior kicking it. Just like when you’re in a situation where you’re triggered to want to have a smoke that you are aware of the trigger is starting to hook you and you’ve got the self-awareness and the self-mastery and the confidence to be able to be like, yeah, the rebel’s not gonna handle this. This person is gonna handle this. I can give you a couple of examples. So I a hundred percent had the rebel thing.

One of the biggest things in law school is trying to make the stupid ass thing called law review which is you know, if you have a stick up your ass and you care about whether or not the period has the right spacing behind it which I don’t. So, why I would ever even try to do this? It’s literally like a, you know, some intellectual jerk off contest and so I hate law school, but I’m gonna go for this thing because I feel like I should. I procrastinate for three weeks straight on a paper that you’re supposed to spend three weeks research, writing, site checking, everything else. I pull an all-nighter. And the thing is due at 8 o’clock in the morning. It’s 7:35. Oh, my God. I’ve finished it. It’s horrible, like.. It’s an embarrassment. The only reason why I actually turned it in, is because you didn’t put your name on it. It had to be blind graded. I realized at 7:35 that it’s only like 11 pages, it should be 28 and space the right way. I don’t have any printer paper. Oh my God. So I take my notebook and I rip out pages from this… This is how much of a rebel I was. Like fuck you, I’m still going to do it. I’m gonna do it my way. You watch it. Yeah. And I start to feed spiral-bound, with all the frayed edges, with all the frayed edges and so it goes in the first page and then the second, third and fourth started printing out a funking diagonal… So I literally cut them apart, pasted together with tape. This was like a an art/garden, like a kindergarten project. I did it and I ran across campus and slid it under the door. Of course I didn’t make it but I that was my life that that was the kind of thing that I would do constantly and that I would bitch about the rules and bitch about all the people that made it and I’m too good for that, and the truth is I was at I was basically a walking disaster around the things that required intentionality. And so I really relate to you. I have the rebel thing too and it really serves me in business.

I have turned it from something that runs my life into something that allows me to be rebellious enough to listen to my own instincts and to be rebellious enough that I can be stronger than my excuses and stronger than procrastination. Does that make sense? Yeah absolutely. I feel like I limit myself with everything, everything. I can get up and I go to work and I do my job. No problem. Yeah. There are days when I think that they’re gonna figure out that I’m a fraud, but I don’t live in that at work. At work I’m able to go to work, do my job. It’s awesome. I love it and that’s like a nonissue for me. So I don’t know why I can’t translate that sort of confidence that I have at work into my regular life. I don’t, I don’t know. When I try and think about it, it’s like I hit my head against a brick wall. Why can’t I just do the things that I want? Why can’t I just find something that gives me joy? Why can’t I just find something that is an outlet for me? Why do I not have any hobbies? Why do I not have something that’s that’s mine, but I can then share with everybody else? Why? Why? It’s like fucking brick wall. It’s weird. How do you answer the question? Why do you think it is? The only thing that I can come back to is fear. It’s fear of failure. It’s fear of making an ass out of myself.

The reason why you don’t have any of those things is you’re not funking doing anything. Yeah. I don’t believe that people figure out what brings them joy because they have an epiphany. I think that people figure out what brings them joy because they force themselves to follow their curiosity, to try, to learn. So for example you said very earlier at the piece about, I’d love to be building stuff woodworking, that right there, that intuition about wanting to build something, that is gold. That’s wisdom. And if you were to literally be a rebel about your wisdom and say fuck it. I’m gonna sign up for woodworking class on Tuesday nights at the community center and you didn’t stop for the smoking break and you didn’t stop because you were afraid and you didn’t stop to talk yourself out of it. That would start to open up your life in ways that you can’t imagine. I’m not kidding. You are a natural, an absolute natural at making people laugh. The problem is it’s become the way that you shield yourself from the pain, big time, that you feel. It’s a big time coping mechanism. Do you worry that your life is going to go by and you will have never figure this out? I think about it in terms of not am I going to be like this forever, but when when am I gonna get off my ass? What is stopping me? What is holding me back? Like I’m so focused on the why that I don’t just get up and do it. The thing that’s been missing is the how and how do you break the habits. And one of the biggest insights for you is actually this insight around quitting smoking. That’s the smoking has become the thing that you do to stop yourself from doing everything.

What do you want the next chapter of your life to look like? It looks like self-love. It looks like self-care not and being not being so busy doing things but being busy enough where I don’t have time to sit there and wallow. Where I don’t allow myself that time that is so comforting to me. That time that I’m sitting for an hour and half in front of my computer is is such a habit that it’s so comforting and so to leave that is super scary. So to be able to wake up in the morning and go to, immediately go downstairs. So to fill your time with growth, right, instead of fuck you. Right. Maybe it’s as simple and as stupid as the fact that something happened when you were in fourth grade. It’s the dumbest story on the planet about the stupid baton twirling that you quit. And in that moment of quitting it relieved all the anxiety that you had about putting yourself out there and you said to yourself and your puny little brain at the age of nine with your ass hanging out of your leotard. Oh, I don’t have to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. And when people push me, I’ll just be a rebel. And it became like a moment of clarity for you and you stuck with it. And that the issue is really very simple. And the story looking back is very simple and that is that you look back and you look at this and you think, holy fuck, I mean, how dumb is that? I did something when I was nine years old and I’ve now been repeating it as a pattern. Like an addiction, like smoking and I’ve never had control of it because I’ve never seen how I have a nine-year-old response to every single thing in my life. Nine-year-old response.

I look at my nine-year-old nephew and think, oh my God you’re just such a baby. You’re still a baby. That’s how you’re acting. Like a funking baby? Yes, you are, but you hide it by laughing and by being around. Oh, my God. That’s pretty gross man. You’re baby about how many cigarettes you have. You’re being a baby about the fricking going down and doing yoga. You’re being a baby about going out and hiking. And you call it these big words like fear and you know… A big fucking baby, that’s all that you and it’s the next chapters about growing up. That’s crazy. How’s so? What are you thinking? That I would be stuck in that sort of mentality at 43. Do you think you are? Everybody. I was stuck, I still get triggered by disappointing people. It’s a pattern that I learned in fourth grade that worked really well and then all of a sudden it didn’t but the problem is, it became a fucking habit like smoking becomes a habit. And even though you want to get rid of it. You can’t because it’s hardwired is a pattern in your brain. That’s what habit is. A habit is anything that you do without thinking. It’s a pattern that you repeat over and over and over again. When you put on your jeans this morning, do you put your right leg in your pants first or left? I don’t know. Well, think about it. I mean, you do it.. you put the same. Imagine putting on a pair of jeans. My left, yes. So that’s a habit. When you pull on a pair of pants, you don’t think about it. You see the pants, your mind is triggered. Oh, we’re gonna pull the pattern of the show as she always does. She was fixed left leg in first, you don’t even think about it.

The same thing is true about being a baby. You don’t even think about it. You just are one. A funny rebellious one, but you’re still a baby, got a lot of drama about the shit you need to do… But you’re just being a fucking baby. A big whiner. Totally. A big whiner in my own head. Yes. Maybe everything was so awesome in your family that the only drama was a shit that you created in your mind. I mean, I don’t know, I didn’t live your life. You did, but what I do know is that those old patterns do not serve you. And so I think maybe the language of being I’m being a funking baby that that’s enough to interrupt the bitching and make you just go downstairs and do what you need to do. As a 43-year-old woman you’re realizing you want more out of your life that you want to grow that you want to experience the world that you want to travel that you want to be seen. And while that’s scary because your ass maybe hanging out of the leotard when you try to spin, exposed, this is about you retraining how you respond to things that trigger you.

The answers are very simple. Yeah. You’re either being a fucking baby or you’re being what? What’s the next chapter? Let’s put a label on it. So I have this funny thing that I made up. Tell me. It’s my Kimpossibility list. Kimpossibility, like a superhero. I love it. Okay so you either are a fucking baby or you’re Kim possibility. I’m a God damn superhero. Yes. So everything that I think is impossible. I think that I can’t quit smoking. I think that I can’t get healthy and so I’ve created my Kimpossibility list. I love that. Things that I’m gonna take the impossible for me. The things that I thought are impossible my entire life, in a minute make them possible and it’s not that hard. You just told me that it is so simple and so stupid. This is, this is what you’re gonna walk out of here with. Your either being a fucking baby and the attributes of the baby or this, you think, you smoke, you self criticize and you quit or your Kimpossibility. Kimpossibility is an action. Kimpossibility is trying. Kimpossibility is learning. Kimpossibility is actually doing it. Those of the two distinctions. That’s it. It’s that simple. It really is that simple. That’s crazy. That’s crazy.

You will never feel like not having a smoke. You will never feel like doing yoga. You’ll never feel like exercising. You’ll never feel like looking in the mirror and being like, you know my ass is pretty nice for 43. And so when you start to understand that your feelings are gonna rise up throughout the day. You might feel overwhelmed. You might feel stressed out. You might feel afraid. You might feel frustrated. You might feel lazy. You might feel like having a smoke. Those feelings will come and go, just like the waves outside your window but you have a choice. You also have a choice about what you think. So even though feelings might rise up and they might trigger you to think I’m so lazy, I’m so stupid, you always have a choice to catch yourself and 54321, Kimpossibility steps into place. That Kimpossibility actually chooses what she makes herself to and she chooses what she thinks about and that is the difference. Does that explain it? Yeah. And so when you start to catch yourself hesitating, that’s when Kimpossibility needs to show up and just go, screw it, I’m gonna do it.

Instead of, cause when the baby shows up, you’ve got a bias toward overthinking and then quitting. When Kimpossibility shows up, you know you’re gonna do the opposite of what the baby does, which is you just gonna do it. In every moment, you’re gonna get to choose whether you pick up a cigarette and quit or whether you walk away from the smoke and you step into your life. You’re gonna get to choose whether or not you’re the asshole or the baby or the rebel or all those things that don’t work or whether your Kimpossibility. You get to choose. Yes. That’s both the biggest hurdle and the most amazing gift that we’ve all been given.

Yeah and I want to have that feeling of like you know people that do the Boston Marathon, that cross that finish line, that just thought that there was no way in hell that they were ever going to get to that finish line. Well I think it’s every morning when you get down to that studio. Yeah, I know that the one thing that I will focus on is loving my physical body because I only got one and for 43 years I’ve destroyed it. I haven’t helped it. I haven’t loved it. This is been the biggest gift for me. It’s like I can’t go home and live with myself and keep repeating these patterns when I’ve been given such an amazing simple gift. You can. I can. The question is.. It would be really easy to. Yeap. But I can’t live my life like this until the last days of my life. Awesome. I hope you won’t. I have been given the biggest gift. I can stop trying to figure out why, why why why.. Well, it doesn’t matter why now. Now the why doesn’t matter. I could break it down for forever and still probably never find the answer. So I’m gonna give that up. And if I don’t take complete advantage of it, I’m an asshole.

Don’t you just love her? I mean first of all, Kim should be doing stand up. I’ve never met anyone who describes self torture in such a hilarious way. Now she kept calling this coaching session a gift, so let me unpack this gift for you in three specific takeaways. Takeaway number one was the topic of quitting. We all have ways of quitting when things get hard or when we just don’t feel motivated to push ourselves. Kim told you she quits all day long by grabbing a smoke. My form of quitting, I reach for a Manhattan. I’m sure you have a form of quitting too. Maybe you in front of the TV or your mainline social media. Identifying negative patterns as a form of quitting is a powerful step that’s going to help you stop these patterns because when you identify the patterns as a form of quitting, you’ve got the power to stop it.

The second take away is the topic of addiction. Now we spoke a lot about Kim struggle to quit smoking, and you probably remember that I called smoking a habit disfunction. I didn’t just make that up. People a lot smarter than me have been studying addiction and have determined that addictions are just forms of habit disfunctions. And I think it’s a really powerful explanation for addictions because here’s the problem, there’s many problems with addictions but here’s a problem with addiction that makes it difficult to stop them and that is the fact that there’s so much emotion tied up in the things that we do that are destructive. And it can become super difficult for you to change an addictive behavior because of all that emotion. But when you think about addiction as patterns of behavior, as habits, then we can use science to isolate the trigger and the behavior pattern you keep repeating. And that way you can focus on just changing the behavior and you can separate the emotion from it and work on that with a professional.

So in case you’re struggling with addiction, here’s how you can use this insight about addictions being a habit disfunction and all the science around it to make a positive change. First, all habits have a trigger and then a behavior pattern that you repeat. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to identify all of the things that trigger you throughout the day to reach for that thing you’re addicted to. Whether you’re addicted to smokes or drinking or social media or porn or anything else. Triggers can be anything like time a day, people, places, smells, it could just be stress. Then what I want you to do is I want you to sit down and make a plan for what you will be doing for every one of these triggers instead of the addiction and I need you to do it ahead of time. This strategy is called if then planning and based on research, it is proven to dramatically boost your success.

The final Takeaway it’s about childhood strategies. You’re gonna hear a lot about this topic from me. It’s the idea that we’ve all develop strategies when we were kids, in order to deal with the situations that were upsetting or abusive. Now for Kim, you’ll recall that she described a moment in her life when she quit baton twirling. Why did she quit? She didn’t want to be in a leotard in front of her entire school and guess what? Quitting worked and it became a pattern. Every one of us has a place in our lives where you’re stuck in a pattern that we invented when we were kids. And by the time you finish listening to these eight coaching sessions you will have likely identify that pattern in your life. Now the way you can start working on it right now is to stop focusing on what’s wrong with you and start asking yourself what happened to you.

And by the way, what happened to Kim? Kim’s doing dynamite. She quit smoking. She’s doing more yoga and she’s got something she wants to say to you. I would tell them that they have no idea of how much beauty and how much potential they have. And they have to weed through all their own bullshit to find for themselves. And there’s nobody that’s going to convince them of it but themselves. But they have the power and they have the potential.