Setting and Reaching Athletic Goals with Carrie Jo Bradley

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Setting and Reaching Athletic Goals with Carrie Jo Bradley

In this episode I’m chatting with Carrie Jo Bradley, personal trainer and health coach on shifting our focus to fitness and improving athletic performance.

As a health coach who works with mostly women, she understands that setting and achieving goals that revolve around getting faster, stronger, or simply doing more than you thought possible, can have amazing impact in all areas of our lives.

Inside the Episode

01:32 – What to do for fun when you live in the middle of nowhere
02:35 – What lit a fire in Carrie to improve as an athlete
03:45 – Setting the goal to complete her first half marathon
04:42 – She didn’t win… did she??
05:02 – What this newfound confidence meant to her
08:58 – Becoming a health coach
09:57 – The difference between leading classes and working 1:1 with clients
11:18 – “Behind every behavior is a belief”
12:40 – Carrie’s process to help clients set SMART goals
13:10 – If anything was possible, what would you want to do?
13:30 – #1: See it and create a vision
18:27 – #2 Believe it (assume the identity)
21:16 – Silencing your inner critic
22:11 – “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and GOSH DARN IT…”
22:28 – Strike a power pose!
23:26 – Where’s that negativity coming from?
24:20 – The impact of removing the negative self-talk loop
25:20 – #3: Act Like it
26:08 – Taking baby steps is still moving forward
26:43 – The mental energy of decision making
27:36 – Create a habit but keep it fresh
33:03 – The Power of Pretend
34:22 – Watch your fear-o-meter
35:15 – Uncover your Why

Episode Mentions

• Study – The Effect of Athletics on Self-Esteem
• Identity-based Habits
• The Power Pose Ted Talk
• Kimmy Schmidt’s Power Poses
• Amazon affiliate link: Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Amazon affiliate link: The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life by Todd Herman

Connect with Carrie

What if you could set goals that make you jump out of bed?

This free printable workbook will help you kickstart your year and guide you in discovering SMARTer goals that not only excite you, but that also work with your life–so you can feel and train like the strong, confident #badathmother who achieves the bucket-list goals she has dreamed about.

CLICK HERE TO GET CARRIE’S FREE SMART GOAL SETTING GUIDE

Episode Transcript 

00:32 Welcome everyone. I am here with Carrie Joe Bradley, who is an ACE certified health coach and group fitness instructor, and she helps moms manage time and training so they can reach their athletic goals.

00:45 Her journey from ordinary mom to #badath mother, love that inspires Carrie to help other women believe bigger for themselves.

00:55 She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two girls. Welcome, Carrie Jo, I am so excited to have you here today.

01:04 Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. So let’s, let’s just, we’re gonna dive right in. I want you to tell me a little bit about your background and what brought you to the place where you became a trainer and a health coach.

01:20 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Oh, it’s, I’ll try and make it short as maybe long and winding how I got here, but let’s see.

01:31 I grew up in Montana in the middle of nowhere. And so what I did for fun was run and got involved in cross country and I really actually did not want to do it, but it was peer pressure.

01:48 Some of my friends invited me to join the team, and so I did. And just experienced some amazing coaching and a coach that really helped me believe in myself, even though I felt like my talent was not great.

02:05 And I, so I just continued running through college and I was the slowest one on the team, but I just loved the, that feeling of doing something good for my body.

02:19 And I tell a story on my website that my, I had a college cross country meet and my grandpa came to watch me and I was like, probably the last, one of the last people to cross the finish line.

02:32 And when I came up to him afterwards, he said, well, that’s okay, Carrie. You’re, you’re good at other things. And to me that just like, it hurts so bad because it was like, well, you’re, you’re not good enough.

02:44 You’re not at this and you can do other things. But I, I guess that just lit a fire in me that I wanted to prove him wrong, that I could be good at this.

03:02 And, and not that I had to be the best, but I wanted to be good at being an athlete. And I continued to run throughout my life, but not so much competitively.

03:15 And then after giving birth, you know, I wanted to, after having kids, I got into that, even though I was working, I was working part-time as a massage therapist, I felt like I really needed something to do for myself just outside of changing diapers and getting groceries and cooking and I wanted to work toward a goal.

03:47 So I decided to run a half marathon and just accomplishing that goal gave me so much confidence in myself that, that I didn’t have before.

04:00 And I was involved in a stroller strides group moms that got together and exercised with their strollers. And a fellow mom said, let’s, I, let’s run up, let’s do a half marathon up this mountain that’s in our city at 14,000 foot mountain.

04:19 And I was like, that’s crazy. I’m not doing that. And, but I thought about it. The more I thought about it, I was like, well, I’ll give it a try.

04:27 I’ll train for it with her and it’ll be a social thing. And and so we did this race and we got to the, it took like five hours or something pure hell.

04:41 But when I finished my, my daughter, she was four at the time. She said, mom, did you win? And I, I could confidently say I won because I finished the race.

04:55 And at this point, unlike when I was running cross country, it was more about just the finishing the, the completion of a goal.

05:05 That increased my confidence and it applied to so many other parts of my life that I knew that if I could do that, then I could apply for a job that I didn’t know if I would get, or I could stand up to somebody who I had conflict with.

05:23 Or just a myriad of n different things like that. There is so much research that backs up what you just said, that athletic achievement is such a confidence booster.

05:38 I’ll have to like dig and maybe I’ll put it in a show notes here. Like, so a couple of studies that have been done, I have a good friend who’s a licensed social worker, and her master’s thesis was on building confidence through sports.

05:51 So girls who do sports growing up have higher confidence and they’ve done all these studies. So yes, that totally backs up.

05:58 And you’re, you’re confirming like you had the same experience in that these athletic achievements and no, you didn’t, you didn’t come in first, but you did the thing that you set out to do even though you had originally, you know, you had some doubts about it, you were intimidated by it, but you did it anyway, right?

06:16 Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and just crossing that finish line. And I, and I’ll, I’ll throw in my own experience at you know, my first running, my first running race, I think I was in my thirties and it was pure hell.

06:27 It was like a three mile race. <laugh>, I hadn’t trained for it, but crossing that finish line was, was the f the, the greatest feeling of my entire life.

06:36 And I could not put into words how excited I was to have accomplished this thing that I thought was gonna kill me.

06:42 Literally, I thought I was gonna die, but, and it was ridiculous, but I was like, oh my gosh, that was so great.

06:48 When can I do this again? Literally before I had crossed the finish line, I was like, who signed me up for this?

06:53 I am never doing this again. And something magically happens when you cross that finish line that it is transformative. Absolutely.

07:01 Absolutely. Yes. I, I am, I’m a big proponent of, of signing up for races. Cause it, it gives you a finish line of like a set point that you can train toward and it really motivates me.

07:15 But just in the last year with COVID and not being able to go to the gym anymore, when I was ye when my kids were younger, I would take them to the gym with me cuz there was daycare and that’s where I would get my workouts.

07:30 But with Covid and no more gym, I’ve been working out on my own with the Peloton app and finally doing consistent strength training at home.

07:41 And while that’s not a finish line just that seeing the benefits of that consistent effort and like seeing the results just like of getting stronger is also contributed to an increasing confidence.

08:00 Let me ask you this. So this brings you into your you know, after you’ve, you’ve had kids and now you’re running half marathons.

08:09 How, where did you go from there? How did you become you know, a, a group fitness instructor and a health coach?

08:16 What was the path from to that point? I was when I, my kids were little, I was working as a massage therapist and in Colorado and then in 

2018 we moved to Canada to be close to my husband’s parents and helped take care of them and their aging years.

08:37 And I think a lot of people longer, Sorry, I think a lot of people wanted to move to Canada in 2018.

08:43 Just gonna go ahead and throw that out there, but, okay. Sorry. Side note. Yep. That, that was a factor. And so I couldn’t practice massage anymore.

08:53 And with the pandemic I just had to reevaluate my life and what I wanted to do with my career. And I’ve coached like class country teams before and I’ve always been interested in health and fitness.

09:10 So becoming a health coach just seemed like a natural fit. And when I went to massage school, I, part of the training was personal.

09:20 I became a personal trainer just to help my clients who were experiencing pain, help them learn strength moves to prevent them from injuring themselves.

09:33 So that personal training certification. Then when we moved to Canada, I decided to add on group fitness and was teaching yoga and teaching indoor cycling.

09:49 I enjoyed that, but I also wanted to work with clients one-on-one and really impact their lives on a personal level.

09:57 So then you move into working one-on-one with clients. What was the difference for you between leading classes and working one-on-one with a client?

10:09 Like what, what the outcomes and, and the experiences, how would those different for you? As, as the instructor or the trainer, Probably when I’m leading classes, I’m, I’m saying things, but I don’t know how they’re being received.

10:27 And when I’m working with a client, I’m asking them what they’re thinking and feeling and how that’s affecting their behavior.

10:35 So I’m not just seeing behavior, I’m, I’m, I’m looking at the belief behind the behavior. So you’re getting that immediate feedback not just, you know, mechanical and not just, you know, the movements, but the mindset and kind of the beliefs and, and, and things that are behind working out and doing exercise.

10:59 So, okay. Now you’re working with, with clients on fitness and kind of more muscular and you know, mechanical things. What led you to go the health coach route?

11:11 I think I’m just really drawn to the mindset aspect. Like I said, behind every behavior is a belief. And I just realized that I think my purpose of being here on earth is to help other women believe bigger for themselves.

11:31 Like to just to step out and, and do something for themselves. Being a health coach, I can go further into their, their limiting, limiting beliefs, like what’s holding them back Now, what would you say you hear the most?

11:46 I know for me, when I would work as a personal trainer and a health coach and I would hear a lot of, oh, I could never do that.

11:54 Do you, do you hear clients will tell you, like when you talk about setting goals and I never, I never ran a marathon.

12:01 I’ve run half marathons. And what if I, if I would mention, you know, running or things like this, oh, I could never be a runner.

12:06 Oh, I could never do this. I could never, I could never run 13 miles. So as a health coach, your job is to kind of get to the root of what makes you say, what makes you believe that you could never do this?

12:19 What evidence do you have? What, what experience do you have to back this up, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So can you walk us through a little bit of the process that you would go through with a client who, who maybe has this, who says this to you?

12:33 You know, if you’re talking about some kind of athletic goal and they say, oh, I could never do this, then, you know, what do you do?

12:40 I do have a bit of a three part framework that I help people through. It starts with just helping people discover what they want and, and just imagining if, if, what do you want?

12:57 If you believed that you could do anything, it’s true that so many people say, oh, I could never do that.

13:04 And they have that limiting belief. So just take off that filter and suppose that anything was possible. What would you want to do?

13:14 And start with the end in mind. If you had a year to live, what would you wanna do in that year?

13:22 Or maybe you, you’re looking at your life, you’re pretending you’re an old person, looking back at your life, what would you want it to have accomplished?

13:32 The first step is to see it and create a compelling vision of who you want to be. And then you have that big picture vision and then you have to break it down into smaller pieces.

13:45 Writing down those, that, those goals and desires and keeping them visible as part of the see it. And I’m also a big believer in vision boards and I create one for every year and just putting images of what I want to be or accomplished.

14:04 That power of visualization, I think a lot of times we set goals because we think that they are going to give us a certain feeling, will feel accomplished or feel confident when we reach that goal.

14:19 But we can start feeling those things right now. If you’re just visualize how you would feel when you reach that goal and what other 

accomplishments have, how did you feel when you reached those other accomplishments?

14:33 We can start to feel that and that will inspire further action. I just wanted to, to add in, you can’t see it cause it’s behind my monitor, but I have a vision board it, and I, I also make one every year because I believe in the power of seeing yourself in the future having done the things that you wanna do because this, your brain doesn’t know the difference between things that have happened and things that haven’t happened.

15:00 And if you tell it often enough, look, this is our life where, and I do have, I won’t show you, but I do have a runner, I have a, I have like a professional runner cuz my goal is to run a marathon.

15:12 Didn’t, it’s not gonna happen this year, but, you know, it’s on the, it’s on the board, it’ll happen at some point.

15:17 But visualizing yourself as the person that you wanna be helps trigger those things in your brain to say, okay, this is where we’re going.

15:25 How do we start acting like that person? What does that person do? How does believing that we can’t accomplish this shape our behaviors on a, on a regular basis.

15:37 Exactly. But there is so much science behind the, the vis the, the, the tactic of, you know, the strategy of visualization and kind of tricking your brain into believing, oh yeah, this, this is happening.

15:51 Get on board mm-hmm. <affirmative>, get on the bus because we’re, you know, next stop, you know, achieving this goal. Do you ever feel like when you ask clients to do this, you get pushback?

16:03 Are they like, Hmm, sounds a little ridiculous. I’m not doing that. Yeah, yeah. I gave a client some homework to do this, and that was a few weeks ago.

16:16 She still hasn’t come back to me with it. I, I dunno why it’s so hard. I think I think it’s scary for people to set a goal.

16:27 And when you say something out loud, then I guess people are worried, what if it doesn’t happen? Then I will feel like a failure.

16:37 What if I, what if I sound stupid? What if I say this and the person I say it to knows I can’t do it?

16:45 Like they, what if, you know, it’s that doubt that mm-hmm. <affirmative> that fear that, you know, if I say it out loud, everyone’s gonna, I’m gonna hear how ridiculous it is if I say it out loud so it’s safer and it’s easier to just stay in this place of, that’s out of the question for me.

17:03 It’s not, it’s not possible. Instead of kind of taking that risk. Right? And so I think it is important to share those big dreams and goals and those scary things with a select group of people.

17:19 People that you trust and maybe you don’t advertise it to the world <laugh>, but just having a space to hold hope, I think is really important.

17:31 And that’s, that’s the role of a health coach, right? That’s something that a health coach can do because they are there to help you see potential help you like, kind of guide that path to where you wanna go, right?

17:44 So a lot of people may come to you and have a goal and say, okay, I know I wanna do this, or I’m thinking about doing this, but they have no idea how to get there, right?

17:50 So you kind of provide that gps and you’re like, okay, step one would be this, step two will be this, right?

17:56 So that you kind of are, are there like a Sherpa, if you will, you know, to, to the goal. You’re like a goal Sherpa.

18:02 Mm-hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>. And a lot of times it is easier to believe in somebody else and share that belief than it is for us to believe in in ourselves.

18:12 Absolutely. And so sometimes it just takes another person to give us a little nudge. <laugh>. Okay, so that’s step one.

18:20 So visualization and kind of like starting with the end in mind and working backwards. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So step two would be to believe it.

18:30 So if you’ve seen it now you, you’re starting to believe it. I’m a proponent of women calling themselves athletes, and I also get a lot of pushback with that.

18:44 People who run, they say, I run sometimes. But how you, how you call yourself is going to influence your behavior.

18:55 For example, in business, if I, if I say I’m the ceo, I’m gonna behave a lot differently than if I say, I just kind of have this little side business.

19:04 I just work here. <laugh>. Right? So, so identity based decisions, is that what you’re referring to? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> or identity based behavior?

19:15 Yeah. So as you’re, and as your behavior starts to change, it then bolsters that belief and it’s a upward spiral.

19:23 So it’s kind of like a, a self-propelling machine at that point, right? You believe it and you do it, you believe it, you know, it kind of, kind of helps propel you further mm-hmm.

19:33 <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I don’t believe you have to compete to be an athlete. You don’t have to have a certain level of skill to be an athlete.

19:42 But if you say you’re an athlete, you’re gonna start to act like it, you’re going to fuel a certain way, you are going to get enough sleep, you’re going to treat your body differently than if you sometimes do athletic things.

20:01 That makes a lot of sense, right? So you’re starting to act like an athlete. So if you think about like Michael Phelps, like how, what does Michael Phelps do on a daily basis, right?

20:09 And he trains, he fuels his body, he gets proper rest, all these things. If he doesn’t do these things, he doesn’t perform, right?

20:16 So we’re starting to kind of get into the mindset of what an athlete does, how an athlete behaves, and how an athlete treats themselves and cares for themselves in order to maximize their performance.

20:28 And it can be little things. Like last week or two weeks ago, I talked to Olympic athlete, Elizabeth Meyer, she’s a skeleton athlete training for the Olympics next year.

20:43 And she was saying just the, the process of making sure she’s hydrating enough and she’s monitoring her, her weight lifting and, and just seeing those small progressions of the improvement, just those little actions make has increased her confidence.

21:02 So that works for Olympic athletes, but it also works for everyday athletes, <laugh>. And so, and then another aspect of the believe it step is silencing that inner critic, but one saying, oh, you can’t do this, you’re not good enough.

21:23 So I have clients recognize those negative thoughts as they’re coming in. Cause a lot of times they’re sneaky and we don’t even know that, that they’re inhibiting us.

21:36 So maybe it’s just journaling. When you start to hear that thought, and then once you start to be able to recognize it, then you can replace it with truth.

21:47 You ask yourself, is this true? Is it helpful? And if it’s not, you replace it with a true and a helpful thought and repeat that positive thought over and over and over until it becomes a habit.

22:03 And I’m a big believer in affirmation. I know it. So it feels awkward sometimes if you are looking in the mirror saying, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough.

22:13 No, Nothing. Gosh darn people like Me, <laugh>. It’s awkward. Yes, I agree <laugh>, But there are way, there’s ways to do it that don’t feel so awkward.

22:26 And again, with science, there’s proven research that shows the TED talk by Amy Cuddy about power poses and fake it till you make it.

22:40 But just the, the act of like putting your arms over your head or putting your hands on your hips, put it pushing out your chest and lifting your head.

22:50 If you hold that for two minutes, it affects your body physiology and it pumps dopamine into your system and you’re starting to feel better.

22:59 Didn’t they do that on Kimmy Schmidt? Wasn’t that one of the episodes where they went into an office and they just, her and Titus and just, they just held power poses like over and over and they were trying to intimidate somebody?

23:10 You just reminded me of that <laugh>. I haven’t seen that, but I would like To, I will send you the link.

23:17 I will send you a clip. So, but that is, that’s a really good point. I wanted to go back to what you just said about, oh, the negative thoughts

23:26 So two things about negative thoughts, right? Do you find that your clients are surprised by when, when they identify, Hey, I have this loop of negative self-talk every time I talk about, like, every time I think about achieving this goal, there’s this, I get this string of thoughts and I didn’t even notice it before,

but now that you’ve had me kind of identify it and, and, and you’ve pointed it out, it’s so obvious to me that I’ve been kind of talking myself out of doing things.

24:00 Like, are your clients ever surprised by this? Like it’s a revelation that this is happening?  You can say no <laugh>.

24:12 Well, I think I at least some specific people I’m thinking about, they, they knew it was there. I guess they didn’t realize how much of an effect it had on them and how taking that away, how much more confident and more positive they could be without that chatter and going on.

24:41 I, I say that because I’ve, I’ve had clients say to me like, I didn’t even realize I was doing this to myself.

24:47 Like, I didn’t, it didn’t even, it was just so much of an ingrained habit to kind of talk myself out of it for whatever reason that I didn’t even know I was doing it.

24:57 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then they also didn’t know the, the impact it would have to start, you know, breaking that loop and reprogramming themselves with, with positive thoughts.

25:09 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So this is, is that, sorry, were we on the second? Was that the second step? So the second step is believe it.

25:18 And then the third is to act on it. Once you’re starting to believe in yourself as an athlete or as whatever it is that you want to be, then you’re starting to do those consistent actions.

25:38 And even those tiny habits, I, I’m a big fan of James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. The habit takes the decision making out of, and that mental fatigue out of your day.

25:57 So if you just decide, I, I’m going to work out, I’m an athlete, I’m, I’m going to exercise five days a week.

26:07 You can start small. You, you can have a big goal, but do small actions to get there. That’s, that’s how the Olympic athletes do it.

26:18 And that’s how we can do it. And I think people think, oh, if I, if I set a goal, that means I’m gonna have to work out for hours every day.

26:27 One client, I started out with a 32nd plan per day. It’s just about building that habit. And then once you start to see that progress, that leads to improvement and that enhances the enjoyment.

26:40 And again, the upward spiral Can talk for a second about the, the mental ex the mental energy that goes into making all the decisions that you make, right?

26:52 So when you have a habit, it stops being a decision you make, right? It’s just something you do on autopilot mm-hmm.

26:58 <affirmative>. Whereas, you know, before you’ve get, before you’ve developed that habit, you’re having to choose, okay, I need to, I need to put on my workout clothes.

27:06 Okay, now I need to go to the gym. Okay, now I need to get on, you know, the, the treadmill for 25 minutes, or I need to get on the bike, or I need to like, what do they call that ego depletion where it’s like at some point you just, you run out, you run out of that ability to make these small decisions.

27:23 So by developing that habit, you don’t even have to think about it. It just happens and it’s easy and you get to save that mental energy for other stuff.

27:33 Exactly. And I don’t know if people hear habit and they think that’s boring, but I talked earlier about the Peloton app and I’m, they don’t pay me, but I’m just a huge fan.

27:48 So I just decided I’ll do 20 minutes of strength every day. And I, that’s a habit and that’s what I do every day, but it doesn’t have to be the same strength routine every day.

28:00 So it never gets boring cuz I’m doing different things, but I’m still committed to doing that thing every day. So you’re taking the action, but it’s a different action.

28:10 You know, it’s, you’re mixing it up and keeping it fun. That’s important, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because I think a lot of people do kind of equate, you know, repetitive action with boredom, Right?

28:19 Falling off the wagon, the exercise wagon, I did the air quotes for that, falling off the exercise wagon and then, you know, having to build up the energy to start all over again.

28:29 I think a lot of people get in that cycle Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be working out at home.

28:37 It could be going, some people are more motivated to go to a gym, go to a class meet up with a friend you have to know yourself and what, what motivates you and like gets you going Mm-hmm.

28:51 <affirmative>. And is that something that you work with your clients to identify so that they know, listen, if I’m gonna be successful in doing, you know, developing this habit to exercise or move myself every day, what do I need?

29:03 What works for me? Right? I do. And it’s everybody’s different. Some people want to follow along to a video and not have to think about it.

29:13 Other people want us to do their set exercises and by themselves and not have anybody talking to them. So yeah.

29:20 It’s just working within, Yeah, sign me up for that. Yes. Leave me in the corner with my weights and nobody talk to me.

29:26 Yes, please. And thank you <laugh>. That would be great. So those are the three, basically the three phases of your program.

29:34 So my program is 12 weeks and we have basically 12 different topics. So it’s, that framework doesn’t necessarily align with my program, but it’s kind of the progression.

29:50 So you’re kind of working through, it’s not necessarily like a phase one, phase two and phase three where it’s a set time.

29:56 So with health coaching for people who don’t know, when you’re working with a health coach one-on-one, it is a client led journey, right?

30:03 So you, you work a lot with the client to, to kind of go where the client leads you in terms of what they need and what they wanna accomplish.

30:12 So working with clients for you looks different, even though you have a framework and you have the things that you touch on.

30:19 Every client program looks different, has a different outcome. I imagine that they have different goals and even though they’re all, you know, looking to achieve some kind of athletic goal, they look different.

30:34 They’re not all about running a marathon. They don’t all want to become power lifters, right? So they have different play things that they wanna achieve.

30:42 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly. I love working with clients and getting to see them just making progress and just making little breakthroughs, starting to believe in themselves and step out of their comfort zones in, in small ways.

31:03 So example is one client didn’t, doesn’t feel comfortable running without her technology. And so my assignment, I give them, give her homework every ti af every after, every session.

31:16 And so the homework to overcome that is go out for a run for an hour and doesn’t matter your speed, your pace, your heart rate, just go enjoy running.

31:28 And I’ve been that client, I’ll tell you, I used to be, if I didn’t have headphones and I didn’t have my Garmin running, like my run was not happening.

31:38 If I didn’t have, if I wasn’t plugged in, there was no way it could happen until one day I went out, my Garmin died, my headphones, which are rechargeable died.

31:48 And I was already like you know, half a mile out into my out and back run. And I was like, well, now it doesn’t even count, so why bother <laugh>?

31:57 I mean, that was literally the thought I had. It was, it was kind of embarrassing looking back. And I’m like, how did I even get to the point where I was like, if it doesn’t, if I can’t count the steps or the miles or know how fast I’m going, how does, how does it not count?

32:09 Of course, it counts every, every bit counts. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I had to, I had to do a, you know, an unplugged run and I was like, wow, this is a completely different experience.

32:18 I feel so in touch with like, what’s happening around me, what’s happening in me, like the feelings and sensations of running.

32:26 Some of ’em are good, some of ’em are not that good. But, you know, it really helped me kind of tap into that, that connection to, to pace myself without the, the external input of, you know, how what I should be doing in my workout Mm-hmm.

32:40 <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So yeah, just helping people find the joy in what they’re doing is brings me great joy. All right, Carrie, we’re gonna start to wrap up here, but what I’d like to do at the end of each episode is have my guests provide three tips or actionable items for the audience.

32:57 So gimme what you got. So one, it comes from my coach that I worked with when I was training for the TER World Championships.

33:10 She won that race in 2018 where I was in Maui also. And she and her husband wrote a book called The Brave Athletes.

33:18 And they talk about a tactic called the alter ego. And if you’re having a hard time believing in yourself, you can use the power of pretending.

33:31 Kids are really good at this. But as adults, we struggle a little bit. You take a persona of somebody that you would like to emulate.

33:42 For her it’s Patty McGinty who is like a, a boxer, a Scottish fighter. For me it was a World War II hero of the movie Unbroken.

33:54 And so when I’m in a situation when I don’t, I’m not believing in myself and believing I could do it.

34:01 I pretend that I, and I, maybe this happens when you go work out, you’re not feeling it, but you put on that identity, put on whatever clothes that put you in that mentality, that alter ego.

34:14 And so that can help if you’re struggling with believing in yourself. A second thing is just to watch your pH meter, just noticing how much fear is playing a part in your life.

34:35 Give it a scale, one to 10, how much that fear is affecting your actions. And I believe courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to do it scared.

34:48 So I’d like to have my clients write out a letter to fear and to see how it’s not been serving them, and to see how they can start to do things differently.

35:06 And finally, I have so many different ones, it’s hard to narrow it down, <laugh>. So the third one I would say would be to uncover your why.

35:18 Motivation ebbs and flows, and we don’t always feel like doing what we know we’re supposed to do, but if you’re constantly knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, maybe something outside of yourself,

if you have kids and you wanna be around for them when they are older and you want to be active with your friends and family, that might be your why.

35:44 I don’t know what your why is, but I would say avoid things like guilt, shame, self-loathing, vanity, like those motivations are not gonna continue to propel you forward If you’re, y

ou’re hating yourself and you’re trying to push yourself into something out of, of that self hatred or loathing, do it because you love yourself and you want to make yourself better.

36:10 Well, Carrie, thank you so much for joining us today. I absolutely love your message and everything that you’re about. And you have shared so much valuable information with us today about setting and reaching athletic goals and building confidence.

36:24 So we thank you everybody. You can find Carrie at her website – carriejobradley.com and I’ll be linking to her freebie, which is a download.

36:39 What if you could set a goal and actually stick to it. And it’s all about setting smart goals with your health and your fitness.

36:46 So Carrie, thank you so much. Thank you. It was a blast, <laugh>, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when the next episode is live.

37:04 Check out our show notes for this episode where you can find any of the links and resources that were mentioned during the show and connect with the health and wellness provider committed to helping you ditch diets and achieve results without restriction.

37:17 Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you in the next episode.