The Fed+Fit Podcast | Nurturing a Healthy Mindset for a Healthy Lifestyle
We’re back with our 56th episode of the Fed+Fit Podcast! Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes!
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Ep. 56: Set Your Limits vs. Let Your Limits Set Themselves
Today’s episode is another live Periscope recording, so please excuse some of the poor sound quality. As another live forum, we talk about the difference between defining your limits and allowing your limits to define themselves.
Cassy Joy: So today’s episode, or Scope I should say, is going to be another podcast recording. Bonjour! Did I say it right? And I’m actually dialing in from this awesome office that I have access to. It’s a standing treadmill desk is what I’m on right now, and you guys are propped up against my computer screen. So it’s a pretty sweet set up, and I’m very grateful to have access to this.
So, what I kind of want to talk about today is, this is, like I said before, another podcast recording that I wanted to do live in case you guys had some questions and we could incorporate that into the show. So in case you don’t know me, and you’re new here, hi there! My name is Cassy Joy Garcia. I am the owner and founder of FedandFit.com. I have a weekly podcast, a healthy mindset, food and fitness podcast that is published every Monday. They’re about 30-minute episodes; today’s is going to be shorter. I have the food blog and an upcoming book, which I announced just this past week. The Fed and Fit Book, you can find it on Amazon. Very exciting stuff. I’m just kind of all over the place. If you guys are long time followers, thank you so much for dialing in, I appreciate it. You guys always feel like family.
So what I want to talk about today, and feel free to hop on if you have any questions. I will try to answer as many as I can while I’m going through this work. So just to give you guys an update if you’re curious on what I’ve been working on lately. I’m still working on finishing the book, and that has been a really fun adventure. Honestly, at this point I thought I would be finished; hi from France again! I thought that I would be finished with the book by now, with the manuscript at least, and into just the editing process. But it’s a little bit of a longer process than that. Some things that I had scheduled for myself now are running into me also writing the book and meeting some of my other commitments. So it’s kind of an interesting season, a really fun one. I like being richly scheduled. This is something I really thrive in, which is something I kind of want to talk about today. I want to go into that.
So that’s what I’m doing. Monday I’m headed to go do a corporate wellness presentation at another firm out of Houston, Texas this time, so I’ll be hopping in the car and driving myself. And so; oh thank you for the hearts! And so I’m spending the weekend on this treadmill writing and just trying to get ahead of the week. There’s no better feeling than starting off a Monday feeling like you got two bonus days under your wings.
Ok, so. What; I do not speak French. I’m a Garcia, actually, and I even speak less Spanish, if you can believe it. Ok, so what I want to talk about today. Today’s episode is defining limits versus growing into them. This is something I’ve come across a lot, not just with people I’ve worked with one on one clients, but also family members, friends. This is something where, if you guys are here, whether if this resonates with you or it resonates because you interact with somebody that is this way. Hi, from San Antonio.
Ok, so defining our limits; what are we talking about? I’m a food and fitness; I’m a nutrition consultant, and I have a pretty deep wealth of experience, wide and deep experience bank of folks that I’ve worked with to help them kind of realize some of their health and wellness goals, and then help set up programs that will help them get there. And so that’s some of the experience that I’m drawing from today. Something I’ve come across a lot are people who say; well, this is where I want to be, but these are all my road blocks. These are my limits, you know? They have one big goal, maybe they want to lose 50 pounds because they need to, or they want to go off some big medications. Whatever the goal is, but then their list of all the things they cannot do at the same time to get them there is like 4 times as long, right? They cannot do strength training, they cannot afford to eat a certain way; go to the grocery store and buy certain ingredients. And the list just kind of goes on and on.
So, what those folks are doing is they are essentially setting their limits, whether it’s based on real experience or not, they are determining off the get go, these are my limits and these are the work arounds that we’re going to have set in front of us to reach the goal that I’ve set. And while there’s nothing wrong with that if those limits are based on actual experiences, more times than not we’re just afraid of testing those barriers and testing those boundaries. They’re based on essentially nothing. So, that’s defining a limit.
Growing into a limit; an experience like that would be if you have a goal, or you work really, really hard, it’s working and trying to figure out how much work is the right amount of work for you. I’m not saying you work until you burn out, and that then becomes your limit, but you work until it feels right to you to where you reach that magical balance between productivity and health and happiness. So that’s allowing the limit to be able to reveal itself to you.
We tend to define; and defining your limits can be really powerful, but it can also be extremely limiting, right? We tend to define them when we base them off of our observations of other people, right? If we see other people that are doing, let’s say somebody decided to start a business, and you see them working, working, working really hard. Maybe they have a family, and your perception of them is that they’re sacrificing family time; whether that’s true or not, that’s your perception. So you take that experience that you’ve observed, and you’re going to apply it to your own life, and you’re going to say, “I’m never going to own my own business because that’s something that I don’t want to have to deal with.”
Or maybe it’s an observation of your family. Maybe you’ve seen your parents or your grandparents struggle and suffer with major illnesses and major diseases, and you think that that’s something that you’re going to be going through yourself. So you tend to just kind of set yourself up for that kind of expectation. A limit you might set is; “well I’m never going to be somebody who is just fit. Fit and active.” We all see those people, and we think that they’re just born that way. They’re always going to be fit and thin and active and healthy, and the truth is I bet they have to work harder for it than you believe.
A lot of people say that about me. When they hear about my health story, they don’t realize that I had a transformation. And I took what I learned in that transformation, and I’ve incorporated it into a way of healthy living. And now people look at me, and they think; oh, she’s just healthy. I bet she was born that way. Well that’s not true. I let myself discover my own health limit, and that limit then set for myself.
Other ways that we tend to define our limits would be fuzzy memories of our own experiences. Right? We have fuzzy memories sometimes. Maybe you think back on college, and you think; well, that time that I stayed up late, or; oh goodness, who knows. That time I stayed up late one time, I had a bad weekend afterwards. I didn’t have any energy that weekend, and I wasn’t able to perform at a race I signed up for, or something like that. So then we tell ourselves that we’re not ever going to stay up late to work. I’m not encouraging you to do that, but we kind of give ourselves these fuzzy memories of what happened, and then we set those as hard limits in our own lives. So just kind of be aware; if you’re basing your limits in life, whether it’s a health limit, a fitness limit, whether it’s a financial limit, a limit with your family, how much time you have to spend with friends, how far you’re willing to travel to see your friends and family. Whatever those limits are, are you setting them on fuzzy facts, or real ones?
And then the last thing we tend to use to define our limits are other people’s perceptions and opinions of ourselves. Right? I’ve had so many women; so, I Crossfit and I yoga, and I used to run a whole lot. And I’ve had people tell me that they wonder if my weight training, the body that I was building, was that something that I really wanted to build? Their opinion of it was that I needed to stop. I needed to stop building any more muscle. It’s interesting to me that at that time, I went through an experience where I thought maybe I do need to limit myself on how much weight I’m lifting right now. And I was tempted into setting that, based on someone else told me, not based on what I want or how I was feeling. So just be aware; if you are defining limits based on something that’s not real.
Ok, now when we define our limits based on something that is real and we allow ourselves to grow, and mature, and we kind of; we set a limit here, and then the way that they actually exist is probably up here, but we’re never going to know if we don’t go for it. Right? If we don’t just keep inching up, floating a little bit higher until we’re able to actually hit that and determine; yep, this is where I’m supposed to be. So when we base them on real things, we tend to rely upon a healthy mixture of our goals and abilities, and we also rely upon actual experience. So those two things, it’s really simple. If you are setting your boundaries in life and your limits based on your actual experiences; you stayed up 2 days in a row, and you got sick. That’s an actual experience. Maybe that’s not a great thing, and maybe that’s a hard line to draw in the future. But a healthy mixture of your goals and your abilities; that’s something that can be really powerful. If you have a goal of losing 50 pounds, and you also have the ability to get up and go to the gym 6 days a week, or start making your own food, that can be really, really powerful. So let your goals and your abilities define your limits. Don’t rely upon what other people say they should be.
So the big point of this Scope is something that I think about a lot; and I think that it’s relevant in any industry to anybody who has a goal, and it’s the perspective of, we don’t know what we don’t know. Right? We’re in such a hurry to say that we’ve got it all figured out. Right? We have, and forgive the pie chart, hand pie charting, but we’ve got in this little pie chart of all the things that we know in the world, one little bitty sliver of it are things that we know. One teeny little sliver. Another teeny little sliver are all the things that we know we don’t know. I don’t know anything about; I know very little about astronomy, I know very little about weight training; I’m not a great programmer. But the rest of that whole scope are all the things that we don’t even know we don’t know yet. So why on earth would we set or sell ourselves so short, define our limits; make them so small, and give ourselves no room to grow and to expand, and to experience all those things that we didn’t even know were possibilities for ourselves.
So the point of growing into your limits versus defining them is just, don’t jump the gun. There’s no reason to jump the gun, say that you can’t do things, say that you can’t travel to see friends, say that you can’t earn a certain amount of money, say that you’re never going to live out of a certain neighborhood district, or you’re never going to be able to own your own business, or you’re never going to be able to lose 50 pounds, or you’re never going to be able to learn how to cook or go to the gym every day and feel amazing. Those are things that you’re telling yourself; those are not actual truths.
The actual truth is that anything is possible. And I am of the belief, this is going to be very cheesy, but I am of the belief that if you are given an idea and a goal, an aspiration, then you are also given the tools to figure out how to make it happen. I don’t think the universe is that cruel. You’re not going to be given a dream and then also be told in the same breathe; well, too bad, you can’t achieve it. That’s not the way things work. If you have a goal and an idea and a dream, then you are going to be able to do something about it. You just have to be willing to go blindly. Just go and try to figure it out. You’re not going to know where the ceiling is, you’re not going to know where your limits are, and you’re probably not going to know when you’re done. But you just have to keep going. You owe it to the goal and you owe it to the dream, and you owe it to yourself. You really do.
So, that’s what I wanted to talk about. Don’t be in a rush to sell yourself short, and you know, it can be extremely scary to say; I don’t know! And to jump into something without a clear idea of where your limits are, but the more humble you are to stay and the more eager you are to learn, the better off you’ll be and the easier this will be. And you will be able to find new, awesome things for yourself. So go for it, and set your goals.
If you guys have any goals, I’d love to kind of encourage you right now. If there are some things that you’re struggling with, dreams that you have, whether it’s health and wellness goals, business goals, things like that. I really am here to tell you that it’s possible. So thank you guys so much for dialing in to today’s scope! I’m going to edit this up a little bit. Diverting to you; yes, I think I know what you were saying. It’s kind of along the same lines of you get more of what you put out into the world, the more you seek the more you’re sought. I think that’s what you’re trying to say; those are lyrics from a song {laughs}. So forgive me for that. But yeah, that’s a really, really great point. The more you pursue something the more it will become available to you.
Thank you guys so much for calling in. You’ll be able to catch the replay for 24 hours. If you missed it, or if you’d like to hear more, you can check out my podcast. There’s all kinds of good stuff, new episodes up every Monday. Thanks guys.
