Upgrade to the Premium Podcast Experience - https://rachelhollis.supercast.com Dive even Deeper in the Coaching Community - Rachel Hollis Coaching In this episode of the podcast, Rachel Hollis emphasizes that while motivation is fleeting, it's the small, consistent habits that lead to lasting change. She discusses the myth that motivation alone can sustain personal growth and highlights the necessity of creating systems and processes to maintain progress. Rachel introduces three key habits for success: deciding once to reduce decision fatigue, utilizing the minimum effective dose to stay on track even on tough days, and taking action regardless of current feelings. Get your copy of Rachel's New Book Here: Audible, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold! 01:00 Welcome to the Show: Motivation vs. Momentum 01:40 The Myth of Motivation 03:42 Building Systems for Success 05:23 Three Habits to Transform Your Life 08:22 Habit 1: Decide Once 12:48 Habit 2: Minimum Effective Dose 28:40 Join the Community: Premium Podcast and Coaching 30:41 Habit 3: Feelings vs. Actions 38:23 Conclusion: Consistency Over Motivation Sign up for Rachel’s weekly email: https://msrachelhollis.com/insider/ Call the podcast hotline and leave a voicemail! Call (737) 400-4626 Watch the podcast on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@MsRachelHollis Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MsRachelHollis To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.
Upgrade to the Premium Podcast Experience - https://rachelhollis.supercast.com
Dive even Deeper in the Coaching Community - Rachel Hollis Coaching
Check out Upcoming Live Events!!
In this episode of the podcast, Rachel Hollis emphasizes that while motivation is fleeting, it's the small, consistent habits that lead to lasting change. She discusses the myth that motivation alone can sustain personal growth and highlights the necessity of creating systems and processes to maintain progress. Rachel introduces three key habits for success: deciding once to reduce decision fatigue, utilizing the minimum effective dose to stay on track even on tough days, and taking action regardless of current feelings.
Get your copy of Rachel's New Book Here: Audible, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold!
01:00 Welcome to the Show: Motivation vs. Momentum
01:40 The Myth of Motivation
03:42 Building Systems for Success
05:23 Three Habits to Transform Your Life
08:22 Habit 1: Decide Once
12:48 Habit 2: Minimum Effective Dose
28:40 Join the Community: Premium Podcast and Coaching
30:41 Habit 3: Feelings vs. Actions
38:23 Conclusion: Consistency Over Motivation
Sign up for Rachel’s weekly email: https://msrachelhollis.com/insider/
Call the podcast hotline and leave a voicemail! Call (737) 400-4626
Watch the podcast on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@MsRachelHollis
Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MsRachelHollis
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.
So here's the thing I will tell you about all of these little habits. None of them are sexy. None of them are sexy, but all of them compound. They all come together to make something that is greater than the sum of their parts. You can be motivated as you start this year, but I am telling you the motivation will fade.
It will absolutely fade, and you need something more than what you currently have. If you are going to make change that lasts, you don't wanna just be motivated for the next week. You want to have momentum for the next year and beyond. And that starts with these small, boring habits that nobody wants to do except the people who have the results that you wanna have.
Hey guys. I am Rachel Hollis, and this is the show where we talk about life, real life around here. We cover everything from habits and motivation to relationships, parenting, and what it looks like to build a life that you love. If you're trying to grow, heal, or just feel a little bit more like yourself, you're in the right place.
Hey guys, it's r welcome to another episode of the podcast and a freaking conversation about motivation. Guys, it is the beginning of the year and motivation is the sexy word on everybody's list. It is the mindset that everybody has, and I don't wanna burst your bubble. But the motivation will not last.
We know this, we know that the motivation will not last, and yet every single time this year, we make the same choices. We do the same things, and then in a few weeks, when all the motivation wears off, when you don't feel like going to the gym, when you don't feel like eating healthy, when you don't feel like waking up early and working on that book proposal, when you don't feel like doing those things, you're gonna fall off the wagon and then you're going to feel shame because you failed against your goals.
Again. Right. Like I know I am not the only one who has done this. I did this year, after year after year, I struggled with my weight. I struggled with my health. I struggled growing my business. I struggled to achieve my dream of becoming an author. Like I kept trying and I kept thinking if. Only I could get motivated, right?
If only I had enough willpower, then my dreams would finally come true. Then I would start acting like the person I wanted to be. I did not understand this fundamental truth, and I want you to hear me say it right now. Motivation is not a strategy. It is not a plan. I. Motivation is amazing, but motivation doesn't stick around.
It's fleeting. And if something is fleeting, it's never going to serve you day in, day out, which is what you actually need in order to make positive change in your life. So if you are the victim of believing that motivation is all you really need, please hear me. I'm, oh, I wanna like shake your shoulders.
I wanna, I want you in this with me. You don't need motivation. You need some better habits. You need a process. In business, we call it a system. A system is something that you create so that even a person who has never done a job before, think of it like, um, working at a fast food restaurant, working at McDonald's.
There is an exact way they make those burgers. There is an exact way they make those fries. There's a checklist that's existed for decades upon decades, on decades, which makes it so if you are a high school student, you could go get a job at McDonald's right now, and within a couple of hours you would know exactly how to do the tasks in front of you because there's a system.
Do you know why McDonald's has that in place? Do you know why most fast food places have that in place? They create those systems so that they can get people who are untrained to help them run the business effectively. Because if you get people that are untrained, they don't cost as much money. Right. So if you get someone who's in high school, they're a lot less expensive than someone who's 35 years old, went to college and has done all the things.
So why am I talking about systems in business? Because they are foolproof to ensure that McDonald's gets its cheeseburgers made correctly, and you need a system in your life. Probably many systems to ensure that no matter how you are feeling today, you are still achieving the habits you need to achieve to get the results you wanna get.
If you need to lose weight this year, because you need to take better care of your health, you need some habits. If you wanna grow your business this year, if you wanna get to a new revenue number, if you wanna attract more clients, bigger clients, better clients, you're gonna need a system. You're gonna need some habits in place.
So today I wanna talk to you about three habits, just three. These three things will get you further than motivation ever will. Because the thing about motivation is that it's about intensity. So think of like. The beginning of a new year when everybody signs up for the gym membership and everyone buys the protein powder and everyone gets really into working on their health.
It's like kind of comical at this point. How many of us know that the New Year's resolution game does not work, but we still fall for that idea, right? Motivation is a feeling. Right. It is about an intense feeling that propels you forward and makes you want to do something. And usually the motivation is external.
It's something outside yourself like a new year or a big birthday, or you just went through a breakup and you wanna prove him wrong. Like you go through these experiences and they motivate you for a minute. But the thing you're trying to do, it requires more than an instant of intensity. The thing you are trying to accomplish is going to require consistency.
And look, habits are boring. It's freaking boring to do the same thing every day. I wake up every morning, I roll downstairs. It is still dark outside. There is snow on the ground, and before I even have a sip of coffee, I am shaking up my protein shake and getting that protein in within 30 minutes of waking up every single day.
That is boring. I never want to do it. I'm never happy that I'm having the protein, but it's getting the job done. It was something that I found that worked. To lose weight inside a perimenopause, and so I've been doing it since this summer. I have hundreds of daily little choices and habits that have been in my life for so long that I don't have to think about them anymore.
They're great choices that I made years ago and that I practiced over and over and over again. So now they're a part of my life, but they're boring. Motivation. Oh, she is so sexy. Motivation is why you went and bought a cute little matching set from Lulu, and you're in the Pilates class on Tuesday. That's motivation, but what will actually change your life are the habits.
So let's talk about three now. If three are overwhelming, sister, do one. Just pick something that you can start to implement into your life right now that you do over and over and over. You don't think about it. You don't question it. You do it every single day for a month. And then let's see if anything in your life improved.
Okay. The first habit that is going to change your life is this. Decide once. Decide once, so there is something called decision fatigue, which is when you have too many options in front of you and it makes your brain sort of short circuit. That can happen to anybody, but for some of us, myself included, making small, little, itty bitty decisions.
You guys, it is my, it is my nightmare. It it, I cannot explain. It is my personality type. I don't know if it's being an Enneagram. I don't know if it's, I am a big picture kind of girl. I hate the details and I will do the details because being a mama. You're gonna have to do some details. You know, running a business, you're gonna have to do some details.
Like you're gonna have to get into the nitty gritty sometimes. But I'm telling you right now, I literally have to force myself to go into that mode. I, I went to the grocery store with my husband this morning because we're having friends over this weekend and we had to get a bunch of stuff, but we weren't totally sure exactly which recipes we were gonna cook.
And we walk in the store and I'm just sort of like wandering around and he. Comes in front of me. He like literally stops me in my track. He looks me in my eyes and he says, babe, I need you to lock in because he knows me. He knows that I am not going to pay attention, and then I'll get back home and realize I am missing 15 ingredients that I needed.
But I bought root beer in a bottle for no reason at all, except it sounded delicious. And also because he knows that I can very easily get overwhelmed by the details. So this idea of decision fatigue, it affects all of us at some point, but some of us in really intense ways. So do yourself a favor. Decide one time what you are doing and don't go back on your word.
Most people are not failing because they lack discipline. They're failing because they are negotiating and renegotiating with themselves over and over and over all day long. So let's make it as easy as possible. Decide right now what time you wake up every single day. Decide right now what you eat for breakfast and lunch this week.
Decide what your workout days are right now. Decide the window of time that you're gonna work on the goal. Decide once and stick to the plan. I did an episode a couple of months ago, which was all about this idea of your feelings don't matter right now. Now, I know that sounds harsh, like how can you say that?
Of course, our feelings matter. We need to listen to them and our intuition. Yes, you're totally right. I'm not talking in the big picture of life. I am talking about you create a plan for your work and then you work. Your plan, and it doesn't matter if when you get to the moment that you said you were gonna go on a walk to get some movement in that you kind of don't feel like it anymore.
If you allow your feelings to rule the day, you are never going to get where you wanna go. Because your feelings are always going to choose what will keep you the most comfortable. So you have to work the plan that you created and you decide one time. Now, you don't have to decide one time for the rest of your life, but decide right now for next week, what is the plan.
Then just practice sticking to the plan that you made. You will be shocked how much traction you get from just doing the things you know you should be doing. The other reason that this is really important, especially for those of us who have kids, who have busy jobs, who have hormones, hello, who have stuff going on, is that you start the day with the most willpower you are going to have all day long.
Truly, there's science behind this. So as the day goes on, as your energy gets more and more depleted, you are less likely to hold steady with the willpower you started the day with. So the less decisions you can give yourself because you've already made them, the better off you're going to be.
Your next habit that will get you further than motivation ever will is the minimum effective dose. The minimum effective dose. So I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think that this term was coined by Tim Ferris, who's a podcaster and an author, and. The whole idea behind the minimum effective dose is what is the bare minimum that you can do today, but still do what you need to do?
So Tim uses the MED in reference to working out. So he is like some days you go into the gym and you're gonna crush it and you're gonna feel great. Other days you're gonna go out and you're gonna run all the miles you need to, and then some days you just don't have it. But on the days that you just don't have it and you really don't feel like doing the thing you need to do, what is the minimum amount that you can do that will keep you from regressing?
So if you think about muscles in your body, if you think about strength training, anyone who has ever built up muscles in their body knows that you can spend a ton of time building them up, but it actually takes very little time to lose the strength that you've built. It doesn't mean that every day you need to go to the gym and do the exact same workout, but the goal then is if I go to the gym and I don't feel like a big workout today, what is the minimum amount of working out I need to get done to just make sure that my muscles stay strong?
They might not be growing, but they're certainly not atrophying. This concept can be applied to any goal in any area of your life because you are gonna have days. Where you are super excited and you can do all the things and you're gonna have other days where you wanna do nothing. But let me just give you an analogy for this right now.
Let's think about food is where my brain goes to, honestly, because one of the biggest goals that I ever figured out in my life and this goal sort of laid the groundwork for everything that came after it was that I finally learned. Diet and nutrition and working out in my mid twenties through my mid thirties, I was 52 pounds heavier than I am right now.
And I've talked to you guys a lot about that over the years and what it looked like to lose that weight and keep it off. But my personal form of self-sabotage when it came to. Nutrition was trying to do a diet and really restricting my calories, really restricting foods that were nourishing, really restricting things because I just honestly did not understand how it worked, and so I would just do whatever the fad diet was at the time, which 100% of the time meant that I was starving.
And I don't mean like starving in the like, oh, my body was starving. I mean, literally I was so hungry. Have you ever done that where you go do some ridiculous diet and you're just like dying for food? Spoiler alert. If you are dying for food, if you are super hungry, you're never sticking with that diet.
If you are sticking with that diet, you're developing disordered eating, which is awful. And I definitely was trying so hard, but I would be so hungry. And then inevitably I would just give up and I would binge, I would go into my kitchen and I would. Eat everything in the pantry, and then I would feel shame because I just blew my diet.
And then I'd be like, well, I'm already here. Let's see what the fridge has to hold. And it was just this ridiculous shame spiral. I would end up so much worse off than if I hadn't tried to do a diet at all. If that resonates with you. I want you to just sit with this question for a second. If you can think of every single time.
That you tried to do a diet and that you hit that moment where you're just like, screw this. Give me the Ritz crackers. I'm gonna eat the whole box. If you can think of every single time that you had that moment, and then you binged, if you, if you have done that, like I have done that so many times, arms, imagine what it would've meant for you.
To get back every single time you binged, meaning you just didn't do it. You just didn't do it. You didn't binge, in fact, you didn't actually stay on the diet, but you just didn't have that moment of bing. You just didn't go eat everything. You just, you didn't feel the shame. You didn't spiral out, you didn't do all of that, right?
Like you just didn't do that. I know this sounds so simple. But if I could get back every single time I had done that, I think that was, I don't know, 30 pounds of shame because it was that disordered eating and that way of living and that spiral that started over and over again, that was pushing me further and further from where I wanted to be.
So what if like, I'm just using food as an analogy because I think a lot of us have experienced moments in our life where we were trying to lose weight. So I feel like this is something where many of you can identify with this concept, but you can truly use this for anything in your life if you just didn't binge.
If you could just get that time back, that's what the minimum effective dose is. That's what the bare minimum is. If I think of this in terms of dieting. What that would've looked like for me would've been, okay, you're hungry. What if you just have a sandwich? What if you just have a sandwich? What if you just have something that sounds really good, that feels nourishing, that feels like exactly what your body wants in this moment, and you just allow yourself to enjoy that?
I went to coffee this morning with Ke and it, it's a Friday. It was like so nice. The two of us went in this great little local coffee shop that has delicious pastries, and I had an oat milk cortado and a pumpkin muffin. And it was delicious. Now, a pumpkin muffin isn't typically on my nutritional plan, but I was in this amazing bakery today and I was on this little coffee date with my husband, and I wanted a pumpkin muffin, and I had it with zero shame, zero question I, I honestly didn't even think about it again until you and I are talking about it right now.
The minimum effective dose and all those years of me trying to diet would've been to just eat. What I wanted in a way that felt good to my body, in a way that was nourishing to me and to give myself what I needed instead of going to the extreme. So when it comes to you and your goals and the habits that you need to establish, what is the minimum that you could do today that keeps you in the plan?
If you are on. Diet. I'm sorry. I'm going so hard on diets. I just think it's such an easy one for most of us to grasp. If you're about to give up the diet because you really are hungry, first of all, you're on the wrong nutrition plan. 'cause if you're hungry, it's never gonna last. And you're, I did a whole episode about this, if you wanna hear it.
It's episode 8 6 1. If you scroll back, it's my perimenopausal weight loss journey. But the spoiler alert is you should never be hungry. Ever, ever, ever. You should never be hungry. There is this thing called volume eating in a calorie deficit, it means that you learn delicious foods that you really love, that you can have as much of them as you want.
Things like vegetables and just all sorts of great things. You find those things so that you're eating really nourishing food, but you're in a calorie deficit and you're losing weight. If you wanna go listen to it, episode 8, 6 1. But my point in this is. What does it look like to do the minimum thing that you need so that you do not go off plan?
You made the plan. You gotta work the plan. And working the plan means that you stay in. So if today you wanted to go to the gym and you were gonna go crush it, you were gonna do an hour of strength training. Can you go do 15 minutes? You were gonna go on a run. Can you go on a walk? You were gonna write the next chapter of your book.
Can you write a page? You were going to clear out your entire inbox and respond to everybody. Can you respond to one email? Girl, you do not need to do every single thing today. You do not need to do every single thing. In fact, if you are a girl, if you were a bleeder, right? If you are someone who has a menstrual cycle.
There are going to be weeks in your cycle where you are gonna feel motivated and inspired and ready to crush the world, and there are going to be other weeks. This is the natural rhythm of your body where you're not gonna feel like running a thousand miles an hour. You're gonna feel like you digging your roots a little deeper.
You're gonna feel more settled, you're gonna feel more grounded. You're not gonna feel that external drive. You're gonna feel some internal work going on, and that is all as it should be. The abundant mindset understands that that energy, it, that drive, that that feeling you love so much that gets you going and gets you fired up and gets you doing the work that will come back.
But if you allow yourself to fall completely off plan, if you allow yourself to just completely give up on what you said you would do, your chances of coming back to the work quickly diminish. Buy a lot. Think of it like this. Have you ever made a plan for something that you're gonna do in life? You wanna get closer to this goal?
You're working on your health or your life or your money or whatever? All right, let's continue with this health analogy. 'cause I think this, this will speak to you guys. You're doing so well on your nutrition plan. You've been moving every day. You're doing a your own 90 day challenge. You got your five to thrive going, you're doing all the stuff you know you need to be doing, and then it's your daughter's birthday.
It's your daughter's birthday and you got the cake from your favorite bakery. That buttercream frosting, that raspberry center layer. It's so good. It's so delicious. And you've been resisting. You've been, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I, I don't wanna even have a bite. 'cause if I have a bite, it's gonna throw me off.
I've been. So well, and you do the whole party and you deal with your crazy mother-in-law and you deal with the stress of 22 kids under the age of eight, and it's loud and someone breaks your favorite vase. And, uh, a a little kid did some sharpie on your wall and you just, it was a whole stressful day.
You did so well. You ate those carrot sticks. You followed your plan. You did exactly what you need to do, and then you got to the evening, everything's cleaned up and put away. You are mom of the year. You crushed it for Chloe. You did a real good job. And that cake's still sitting there on the counter and you're exhausted because your willpower is done right?
Like you did everything that you could do and the cake's there, and you're like, screw it. And girl, you don't even get a plate, do you? We don't get a plate. No way. We just get a fork. It's just us and a fork. And then we just start doing that thing in the cake where we start making like a, a layer, like just a row of, of fork lines, and then the, that, that line's like uneven, oh, I'm just gonna even out.
And then all of a sudden you've like eaten half the cake. You know what I mean? And now you have all of these feelings about eating that cake. So what do we do? Well, screw it, right? Like, oh, well, I'm done. And not only are you done that night, but you wake up the next day and you're like, see, just like every other time, I knew I didn't have it.
That voice in the back of your mind is telling you all, yep, I knew it. I knew you didn't have it. I knew you weren't that person. I knew you couldn't do it. All that's going on in your head. And you just, you give up. You give up for the next day, and that day turns into a week and that week turns into two.
And you'll get back on it, right? We know we will. We'll try again. We'll show up again, but it takes you about five weeks to find the gumption to go again. The analogy that I love for this is like, imagine that you got a flat tire and you're driving your car and you get a flat tire and you pull over and you just want to confirm.
You go out. Yep, I got a flat tire. And you go over to the trunk. And you grab a knife and you stab the other three tires, why would you do that? And yet, every single time we hit a fork in the road, we hit a bump, we hit a speed bump, we get thrown off, we, and we just throw the baby out with the bath water.
We just, we just give it up. We just stop trying and yeah, the motivation will come back around. But what if. What if we did not hold so tightly to it being perfect? What if we're like, we're just gonna freaking show up? Hell yeah. Half the cake. It was delicious. And I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and I'm going to do the minimum effective dose to get myself to stay in this game.
What is the minimum amount that you can do today? To stay in the game,
guys, please hear me. This is not about motivation. This is about momentum. Motivation will change your day. Momentum will change your life. You gotta stay in it. You have got to stay in it. So let's review these two habits so far. The first thing that you're gonna do is decide once, make a plan for this week.
Don't go back on it. If it doesn't work, adjust it for next week, but decide one time and keep the promise you made to yourself. And if it feels overwhelming, if you make a plan for 17 things that you wanna do, what do you think your likelihood of knocking out those 17 things every single day for the next week is?
You are right. Probably not very good. So if you need to start with one habit that you can add, that's gonna make you feel better, right? What's one habit you can decide one time and actually do? The second habit is you are going to do the minimum effective dose on most days. Girls, on most days, I want you to wake up, crush the whole world.
Do all the things, be all the things to all the people, but on those random days where you wanna burn the whole world down where you are having hot flashes and the perimenopause is coming in in a blaze of glory, and you're ready to burn down the world and murder your husband, bury him in the backyard.
Well, where no one will ever find the remains like, like a Dixie Chick song. Okay? When you're having those days. Your second habit is what is the minimum amount that I can do right now to just stay in the game? If you are into this idea of momentum and staying in the game, I gotta tell you two quick things that we have going on that are incredible, and I am obsessed with these communities and I want you to know about 'em.
The first is the Premium Podcast subscription. If you love this show for $10 a month, you never have to listen to an ad again. Woo, sexy. Mean I'm here for it. Not only that, but you get a deep dive episode that I release exclusively to the premium podcast community. Once a month, video and audio comes with a worksheet.
It comes with a community page where everyone's interacting and saying why they're there and the goals they're working on. It's so rad. The second thing that is so rad, not for everybody, but for those of you who are ready for the next level, the coaching community, this is. Almost entirely right now made up of people who have their own businesses.
So think real estate agents, people who are working on the side hustle, people who are growing something big. It's not a business community. It just has attracted a lot of entrepreneurs and I think that's because entrepreneurs understand that when they work on themselves. Their businesses grow and flourish, but the coaching community looks like two hours of live coaching with me.
Once a month has a workbook. It has a really robust community. In both of these spaces, you get first access to our live events. I will tell you right now that our first rise event in a very long time, it's gonna be a one day event. It is happening this. Spring and the people in Premium podcast and coaching community get first access to those tickets.
And it is a small, more intimate event, so I anticipate that it will sell out. But in any event, if you are here for the momentum and you want to be in a group that is accountable, that is doing the work, if you wanna surround yourself with people who are in that space, uh, check those details out in the show notes.
All right, let's come in for the landing on this third habit that is more powerful than motivation ever will be. And that is stop letting the way you feel, decide what you do. Your feelings are not facts. Your feelings are your feelings. And they're valid because you are valid. And we need to be in touch with our feelings and we need to understand.
But baby girl. Your feelings will talk you out of growth every single time. Your feelings want you to be comfortable. Your feelings want you to stay right here because this is what you know. You cannot let your feelings be the judge of your actions. That's why I started by saying, you gotta have a plan.
You gotta work the plan that you've got. And you cannot get wrapped up in this idea that like, well, today I don't feel like it. Or you can, but you're gonna be in this exact same position again next year. And by the way, like you don't have to change. You don't have to change. You don't have to do anything other than what you are doing.
You are worthy and you are enough right here today as you are. And there are seasons where we have the ability to adapt and change. And there are seasons where we are in survival mode. And if you are in survival mode, if this is a season where your roots need to be more firmly planted in the ground where you're healing, where you don't have the capacity to push, this isn't for you.
This conversation is not for you, but if you are listening to this or if you are still here with me because you believe that you are called to make your life better this year, if you believe that you want a different lifestyle, that you wanna be a different person, that you wanna show up in a different way, that you want more impact, that you want more legacy, you want more fun, you want more friends, you want more, whatever.
If you want something different. You gotta do something different. You cannot do what you did last year and the year before and the year before that, and expect 2026 to somehow be better. That is not how it works. If you want a change, you're gonna have to change, and that means that you cannot listen to whether or not you quote, feel like it today.
I like to make the plan and then I just, honestly, I'm, when my brain's like, no, but actually instead, let's do, I'm like, shut it. I literally shut it down and I just do the thing I told myself I would do, and then later I'm like. Yeah, you didn't feel like it, but look, we're fine. I sometimes will put it off.
I'll be like, you know what? You can have a good wallow about this later. You can have a good sad session with yourself in a few hours about how hard that was and how you didn't wanna do it. And I like, I will give myself a full, dramatic breakdown about how hard the thing was as a carrot that I dangle. I know this is ridiculous.
But what's so crazy is that you never need that after you do the thing. I'm like, yeah, no, I know. I know. Yeah. Okay. In a few hours, we'll just, we'll have a good cry about how hard it was to finish this chapter, and I will get myself to move because I'm sort of putting off. The emotion that I'm feeling, but promising myself, which is I think probably a, a younger version of myself or a different version.
I'm like, yeah. Oh, I totally get it. I know this is hard. We will dig into that later together. But the truth is, when I get to the other side of the thing, I push through. I never need the wall. I never need the the dramatic breakdown because when you push through, you feel so freaking good and so proud of yourself.
You're like, oh, amazing. And the more you push through those moments, the easier it becomes to push through those moments every single time. So what I need for you to adopt as a habit is taking action before you feel like it take action before you feel confident. Take action before you're ready. Take action before you're inspired.
Confidence is a result. Confidence is a result. It is not something that you come into this world with. I think confidence is born through competence. I think you do something badly at first, little bit better over time, better and better. You do it so much that you're totally confident in that thing because you don't need to question it anymore.
Like no one could come up to me and be like, you don't know how to drive a minivan. I'm like, girl, I rolled that Toyota Sienna. And then later the Chrysler rolled them all around half of Texas and parts of California. I did that for well over a decade. I can drive a minivan with my knees. I can drive a minivan with my toes if I need to.
If someone told me I didn't know how to drive a minivan, I'd be like, you're insane. I have done it. So often now, that's a silly analogy because you're like, well, I don't wanna be confident in minivan life. I wanna be confident in running a company. I wanna be confident in giving a keynote speech. It is the same process to be confident in those arenas as it was for you to learn to drive a car, use a computer, work the cash register, talk to a guy you thought was cute.
All of it starts bumpy. And then gets better and better and better until you don't have to think about it anymore. But confidence is the result of your action because your action creates evidence, and evidence creates belief. Examples of this habit is send the email even though you're scared, right? Have the conversation anyway.
Publish the content when you think that the video is crap, but you've been analyzing it for three weeks and you need to just take the thing out of your draft folder and put it out into the world, go to the meeting. Even if you're unsure, your feelings should follow your behavior. It should never be the other way around.
If you're not sure what that would look like for you, a habit that you can adopt right now is just start saying, what would the confident version of me do in this situation? Or if that feels unreal. 'cause you're like, oh, I'm so insecure. Like I don't even know. Be like, okay, think of a character in a movie.
Like think of an actor you admire, or think of the lead singer of your favorite band. So like, I'm gonna go with Stevie Nicks. What would Stevie Nicks do if she walked in this room? I'll tell you what, Stevie does not give a crap. Right. She's gonna walk in there. She knows who she is. She is completely confident because she spent, I don't know how many decades being an icon.
She's done it so many times. She doesn't need anyone to validate her or tell her who to be or how to show up. If I needed to embody someone in this moment, even though I don't know her personally, I could imagine how she might go into a room and you can do the same thing with someone you admire. How would a confident person act in this situation?
And then just pretend to be that. So here's the thing I will tell you about all of these little habits, none of them are sexy. None of them are sexy, but all of them compound. They all come together to make something that is greater than the sum of their parts. You can be motivated as you start this year, but I am telling you the motivation will fade.
It will absolutely fade, and you need something more than what you currently have. If you are going to make change that lasts, you don't wanna just be motivated for the next week. You want to have momentum for the next year and beyond, and that starts with these small, boring habits that nobody wants to do except the people who have the results that you wanna have.
The people who have the results you wanna have. They're already doing these things. You. You are out here and you're looking for more ideas. You're looking for more resources, and I need the book, and I need to do the Hot Pilates class, and I need to go to the, you know what to do. You know what to do. You already have all of the information that you need.
You just need to start doing it, and you need to do it consistently. If you need a community for that, I've already told you about our two incredible options. At the very least, keep hanging out with us. We got two episodes every single week. You can come back here, get some ideas from me, get some info, and hopefully take these and utilize them in your life starting today so that you can start becoming the woman of your dreams.
So happy that you guys are here in this world with us doing this work. We will be back soon with more conversation. Until then, as always, I love you and I'm rooting for you.
The Rachel Hollis podcast is produced by me, Rachel Hollis. It's edited by Andrew Weller and Jack Noble.