00:00 

Hi there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 124, "The Curse of the White Knuckles." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Well, hello there, and welcome to the podcast today. If you are brand new, a very special welcome. Hope that you find things here that will make your lives better, and give you great content that you can apply and have a better mental and emotional life for yourself, and in your relationships. All the good things. If you have been with me for a while, thanks for coming back, and thank you so much for sharing this podcast. I'm loving where we're going with this, and what's happening, and it's just exciting to me to get to share this much amazing good content in the world, and to see it blessing the lives of so many. So thank you everyone for being here. 

01:05 

Today we are going to be talking about "The Curse of the White Knuckles." Okay, so this title sounds a bit like one of the Nancy Drew books that I read when I was in middle school. But what we're going to talk about today is not fiction, but instead it's the real thing. You'll often hear me refer to "white knuckling." So let's define that. "White knuckling" literally is when we are holding onto something so tight that our knuckles start to turn white, right? They start to lose the blood. So think about if you're hanging from a rope, and you're a thousand feet off the ground. You are holding onto that rope literally for dear life, right? You're not letting go for anything. Figuratively then, white knuckling refers to when we are trying to change something, right? Like make a change, and we're grasping on, and we're exerting so much effort to create the change, to go against our natural behaviors. The problem with white knuckling is that we can only hold on for so long before we lose our strength. And then we're either going to fall to our death, in the literal example, or we're going to lose our grip on what we're seeking to change in the figurative example and revert back to previous behaviors. 

02:22 

I think the literal example of white knuckling the rope is pretty easy to grasp and understand. We can see that in our heads. But let's look at an example of the figurative white knuckling. So let's say you decide that you want to lose 30 pounds. So you get online, you find a diet protocol that tells you exactly what to eat, exactly how much of it to eat, and exactly when to eat it. And it all sounds pretty easy and you're excited and you think, "I'm going to do this." So the first week or so it can be pretty easy because we're high in motivation, we're high in energy, we're really wanting to accomplish our goal. We say "no" to all of the things that are outside of our program, and we're excited to be moving forward, right? The problem starts for most people when about, we get about a week, maybe 10 days in, the food starts getting monotonous. We're tired of constantly having to fight off urges to eat something that's not in our program. And we start to think more and more about what we really wish we were eating. And then we decide, "oh, I'm just gonna have a cheat treat." And then a few days later, we decide to have a cheat meal. And then a week later, we have a cheat day. And before we're really consciously aware of it, we've given up on the program altogether. Or you might even follow a different pattern. Maybe you've never really have the urges to quit and you can just muscle your way through all of your urges and your temptations, and you lose the 30 pounds, and then within the next six months, you slowly gain it all back, right? 

03:53 

So here's the problem with white knuckling: we can only do it for so long before we get exhausted and then don't do what we want to do anymore. Just as we literally physically get exhausted hanging from the rope, emotionally and mentally we get exhausted when we are working so hard to change our behaviors. It's just not sustainable long-term. But the thing that's just so fascinating about this is that the vast majority of self-help books teach us to do just this, just change behaviors. Do you want more time in your life? Here's what you do: get this planner, set these goals, do these things, and voila, instant extra time. Do you want a better relationship with your spouse? Here's what to do: find out what their favorite things are. Provide those favorite things. Do the things they want to do. Listen and say the right things, and kaboom! Your relationship is better, right? Do you want to love your job more? Here's what you do: get your resume updated, put it on three job finder sites, start working with everyone you know, prepare for your interviews in this particular way, get a new job that you will love more, bam! Problem solved, right? This all sounds lovely and we've all engaged in it at some point because this is what we've been taught our whole lives. 

05:15 

But here's the problem: when we just focus on changing behaviors, it never works for long or very well. Or if it does, we are mentally and emotionally exhausted and we dread everything about it. Here's why: studies have shown that we have a limited supply of willpower in our lives. So let's give it an imaginary number. Let's say we have 50 units of willpower every day. Depending on what's going on in your life, you can start running short by mid-afternoon, which is pretty common if you're trying to change a behavior. To get up extra early in the morning takes five units of willpower. Exercising takes 10 units. Making and eating a healthy breakfast instead of just hitting the drive-through on the way to work takes another five units. Saying "no" to the donut in the break room takes about 10 units. Saying something unkind to that obnoxious coworker, or saying something kind, I should say, to that obnoxious coworker takes another five units. Getting started on that project that's due in two weeks takes another five units. Ordering a healthy lunch option rather than what really sounds good and comforting after a tiring morning takes another 10 units. And, oh, guess what? There's your 50 units for the day of willpower all used up by one o 'clock. 

06:35 

So you head back to the office, and about two o 'clock you end up eating one of those donuts in the break room. You get frustrated with your coworker and you go to gossip and vent with another coworker for 15 minutes. You end up getting on social media for a bit in the afternoon because you're just tired of thinking about work the whole time. You spend 20 minutes organizing your desk supplies even though that project still has a lot of work to do on it. You get home after work, and even though you make a healthier dinner, you grumble about it the whole time because it's just white knuckling, right? It's just painful rather than just stopping and grabbing something. You're snappy with the people that you live with, and you immerse yourself in TV or social media for way too long, and you end up getting to bed two hours later than you like because you were just too exhausted to get off the sofa and get ready for bed. 

07:26 

Okay, anyone else? I know that it's not just me that recognizes these patterns of behavior, because when we work off of sheer willpower alone, we will run out of energy. Willpower takes a lot of energy, especially when it's something requiring big changes in behavior, like eating. Eating requires big changes in behavior, and if we're doing it by willpower alone, we get exhausted very quickly. This is the Curse of the White Knuckles. We have been taught our whole lives through various sources that we should just be able to change our behavior for a certain amount of time and eventually we will create a new habit. You know that that whole "do something for 21 days in a row and then you'll have a new habit," right? Those ideas have been ingrained in us because that's how it's presented in almost everything we encounter. But they don't work long term, or if they do, we're miserable and unhappy and feel as though we are stuck in constant struggle. I don't know about you, but I would do things for 21 days and I would never change that behavior, right? So it's not about willpower and white knuckling, and if it's not about that, then what is the key here? 

08:51 

Okay, I'm always going to take you back to the thought model because the thought model explains so well. So let's see what happens. Now, if you're new to the podcast and not familiar with the thought model yet, I want you to go back and check out podcast number 6, 96, and 97. Okay, they're going to give you a pretty good overview of what the thought model is and how it works for us. So, alright, let's talk about willpower. Where would that go in the model? We have circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results, those five elements. I'm going to put "willpower" in the feeling line because it creates actions such as eating what you had planned, doing what was on your schedule, getting up on time, going to bed on time. 

09:34 

So, if those are actions and willpower is our feeling, then what thought is creating the feeling of willpower? Okay, when I look at this pattern in my life, I recognize thoughts such as "I have to do this," or "I will accomplish this no matter what," or "things will fall apart if this doesn't get done." Maybe "I'll get fired if that happens one more time," or "even I'll never fit in that dress for the wedding if I eat this," right? Thoughts like that are happening all over the place to drive us to the feeling of willpower, which will then drive us to accomplish the tasks we want to accomplish. 

10:14 

But what did you notice about all of those thoughts? They're all coming from a place of fear, right? A place of scarcity, and they feel very heavy. When our thoughts are based in fear or scarcity, then the feelings and the behaviors that they produce  are energy draining. It takes constantly engaging with our denial, our desires, our constantly fighting against our primitive brain just doing what it's programmed to do, which is to want to avoid pain, wanting to increase pleasure, and wanting to conserve energy. And this constant struggle against our primitive brain, the constant struggle against our desires and urges is exhausting, and that uses up precious energy we need to keep on task with our goals. And this is the Curse of the White Knuckles. We can force ourselves to engage in certain behaviors for only so long before we are exhausted with the constant denial of our urges and desires, with constantly having to tell ourselves no or yes, depending on the situation. The curse is is that this is what we've been told our whole lives to do: "Do the thing you don't want to do. Fake it till you make it. Embrace the suck. Just keep swimming," right? All of these lovely phrases that tell us to just do it. Just get it done regardless. Does it work? It can for a bit, or maybe even for a long time. But the energy suck is real when we're just white-knuckling it. We end up miserable and ornery. 

11:55 

Okay, so what's the fix? How do we stop white-knuckling it and get to a place of doing what we need to do without it draining all of our energy and creating resentment toward our life, our jobs, our relationships, our bodies? We have to get out of the action line, the "just doing," and go to the cause behind all of it. We have to go to our thoughts. So this is the kind of coaching that I have been trained and certified in. It's called causal coaching. So rather than just pushing ourselves to change behaviors, we start creating thoughts that then naturally create the behaviors that we want to engage in. The key is to look at our thoughts in the thought model. So rather than creating thoughts from a place of fear or scarcity, it makes all the difference when we create a thought from a place of love and abundance. 

12:45 

So let's look at those past thoughts we identified and look at them from a place of love and abundance. "I have to do this," would turn into thoughts such as, you know, I have to do this as a fear-based thought. Okay, love-based thoughts would be, "I really want to do this. I'm glad I get to do this. It feels so good to do this." The fear-based thought, "I will accomplish this no matter what," turns into, "it feels so good when I accomplish something hard. I'm just going to keep pushing forward because it feels so good to make progress." Fear-based thought, "things will all fall apart if this doesn't get done," becomes an abundance or love-based thought that says, "I love it when I see a project through to completion. I love getting things done several days before schedule." "I'll get fired if that happens one more time," very fear-based, right? Instead we could think, "what can I do to over deliver on this? I know my boss will be happy if I take these extra steps." So another fear-based thought: "I'll never fit in that dress for the wedding if I eat this." Love-based focuses instead on, "I always feel better when I eat this instead of this. I'm so grateful for my body. And when I eat that, I just don't feel so good. I want to treat my body well." I think the thing that we want to focus on is not just creating different thoughts. We actually want to tap into thoughts that we believe that also come from a place of love and abundance rather than from fear and scarcity. 

14:19 

So let me share with you two examples from my own life in just the last little bit. I have always felt a strong pull to help other people and feeling as well that I had this great potential to do so, which is part of my life coaching business. So this last week while working with my life coach, we talked a lot about how I was approaching this concept of tapping into my potential, wanting to help other people, from a place of fear. And my coach helped me to see how I was doing that rather than tapping into love. And hence I was white knuckling some of my behaviors, which was exhausting me. I don't white knuckle my business all the time, for sure, but there are times where I find myself just like moving into this place because my fear-based thoughts were something like this. "I just have to accomplish this. I'll never be happy until I tap into this potential. I won't be fulfilling my destiny unless I figure this out," right? So wow. When I discovered this working with my coach, I was floored and I thought these are all pretty heavy fear-based thoughts and they created pressure and stress, both of which have a tendency to drain my energy and shut me down, rather than keep me moving, right? 

15:39 

So if I want to approach this my business and and my moving into this place of being able to serve from a place of love, my thoughts need to move in that direction as well, rather than being fear-based. When I thought about it, other thoughts that I also have that I believe are thoughts like "how amazing is it that I get to help people? I love that I'm on my path to discovering my true potential. My journey of self-discovery is so exciting for me." And these love-based thoughts create a lightness. They create an excitement and a drive that produces energy and propels me forward. And the great thing is, I believe the second set of thoughts actually more than I believe the first set. But my primitive brain has been using the first set of fear-based thoughts for so long that they pop into my brain first. It's like the race of the thoughts, right? My fear-based scarcity thoughts have so much more practice that when the gun goes off, they run super fast out of the gate and they're  the first ones to cross the finish line. They're the first ones to come into my consciousness. 

16:48 

And up until this point, I've always just looked at those first thoughts and said, "well, that's it then," and called it good, right? And decided that that's what it was. But I'm realizing now that I get to choose. I don't have to choose those thoughts. So now my focus is to start intentionally redirecting my thoughts to the second set of love-based thoughts that I believe. Now, because they're not so practiced, they leave the gate a little later and they don't cross the finish line as soon, but they're still there. And I actually believe them with more power and strength than the fear-based scarcity thoughts. 

17:25 

So now, whenever I notice myself thinking the fear-based thoughts, I remind myself to believe my love-based thoughts instead, and I redirect my thinking. Creating these new neural pathways in my brain takes some intentional work, for sure, but it is definitely work worth doing. The work of creating love-based thoughts will help me create the results I truly desire in my life, an ability to help people at a level that I feel called to do. It helps me step out of the white knuckling and into a place where the behaviors I want to engage in come more naturally and from a place of love, creating more energy rather than draining my energy. Okay, so that was the first experience just in the last that's been about a week and a half ago. That just makes me stand back and go, "wow. I see the white knuckling that I've been doing." And not with everything, for sure. There's so many aspects of my business that I really really love. But I see parts where I find myself white knuckling. 

18:25 

So here's the second experience that I've been going through with this. So weight wise, I've never been in an unhealthy space. It's just all genetics for me, but for the most of my life I've been able to eat kind of whatever I wanted and not really seen a fluctuation in my weight That being said, I've also been a fairly healthy eater most of my life. Not a lot of fast food or eating out. Most things were homemade, right? So I've got that going for me, but also genetics for sure. But the last several years my menopause years I've just felt really bloated and thick and kind of sludgy in my abdomen. Anybody else feel that? And I just I started gaining some weight with that. And the weight didn't bother me a ton because I still felt like I looked good. I felt good in my skin. But the constant bloating and thickness was an issue for me and I haven't liked that feeling. 

19:21 

So about six or seven years ago, I used an app to track my calories and I found that I've just felt so much better cutting back on the amount of food that I was eating. I also lost some weight and I just felt a little bit better overall. But the whole time I was doing that, it felt like a struggle. Logging my food into the app felt like so much work because my thoughts were always around how much I hated tracking my food. I felt as though I was white-knuckling my food intake all the time, struggling to hold onto the actions that I was engaging in, right? Like having to hold myself back from eating more food. So even though I lost weight and I felt better, it wasn't an overall positive experience because of the constant white-knuckling. And so within about two years I had gained the bloating and the thickness and the weight back. And there I sat for another five years. 

20:12 

So my own personal theory on this is just that I'm used to eating so much more food and my body just doesn't process it as quickly, right? So I always kind of have this backlog of food in my system that's just not processing as quickly. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. If you're a doctor and you know this, you can just kind of roll your eyes and go, "yeah, whatever," okay? But about two months ago I decided that I was just tired. I was tired of not feeling well. I was tired of that thick, sludgy, bloated feeling and, to be honest, I've gone through a situation with an energy worker person that I was talking with, and I was feeling just so much gratitude for my body for what it has endured through the years how it has always been so healthy for me, how it's allowed me to stand tall and strong during some pretty challenging circumstances in my life. And I really decided I wanted to help my body feel better. I actually returned to the same calorie tracker it was still on my phone that I'd used before, but there were some major differences this time around. 

21:21 

For one, I decided that the tracker is not a pain or an annoyance. It's just a neutral thing for me to do. So I decided it's like brushing my teeth every night and morning. I don't think about it, I just do it because that's what I want to do. I want to take care of my teeth. I want to have healthy teeth so I brush every morning and every night and I floss every night and I take care of my teeth. While I'm brushing I don't sit there and think "I just hate this. This is so annoying," you know? Otherwise I would be white-knuckling the cleaning my teeth. But I've moved it into a neutral space where I'm just like, "man, just gotta brush my teeth, just what I do." So I've moved into where logging all of my food has become a very neutral thing as well. I'm  not thinking negatively about it, I'm just like "man, it's what I do. I just log my food. I just keep track of how much I'm eating to make sure that I'm not eating so much because I don't want that thick, sludgy feeling anymore. 

21:46 

So probably the biggest change, though, has been my thoughts around how much I'm eating. I realized that once menopause kicked in, that my metabolism has slowed way down and I really don't need as much food as I used to need to sustain myself. So here's where my brain work has been kicking in, where the white knuckling ends and the loving thoughts begin. Okay, because I've always eaten, my brain would look at the smaller portions on my plate and think that it wasn't enough food. And so I would either dish up a larger portion or I would go back and have seconds. And I decided to start asking my stomach if it was full rather than relying on my brain to tell me whether or not I was full, because my brain was going off of amount of food on my plates. 

23:09 

So what I have found is that by starting off with the smaller portions, I would eat that and then I would check in with my stomach. And I would say, "am I full or am I still hungry?" And my stomach generally would say, "yeah, I'm feeling good. This feels really good for me." But my brain was saying, "yeah, I don't think that was enough. I think we need more food." So I just started to tell myself that it was the perfect amount of food and that I felt good and that I was full. I started to just kind of override with a true thought that that was enough food. I feel really good. I actually feel full. And now also when I feel an urge to get a snack, I'm getting much better at checking in to see am I really hungry or do I just want something to eat for another reason. And almost always I find that the urge to eat outside of my meal times really has nothing to do with my hunger. It's usually because I'm bored or I'm avoiding some other task that I don't want to do. Okay, anybody else like, "totally, oh, I get that. I see that. I do that," right? 

24:19 

So this has been a game-changer for me. Within about 10 days, the bloated, thick, sludgy feeling in my abdomen was gone and I've lost a little bit of weight on top of that, but I'm feeling really good. My energy levels are up and I'm eating less sugar because when I feel an urge I'm checking in with my stomach with my hunger and realizing that I'm not really hungry and so it's easier for me to tell my brain "yeah, I'm actually not hungry. I think I'm gonna skip this little snack. The difference for me this time and when I did this six or seven years ago is that I'm not white knuckling it. I'm not pushing and shoving my urges to the side. I'm not working to avoid them and have to be constantly engaged in willpower. I'm managing my thoughts and coming from a place of love for myself. 

25:09 

For example, a few Sundays ago I woke up and my first thought was "I should just make this day a day where I don't track and I get to eat whatever I want." But my very next thought, my second place thought, was "why would I want to do that? I feel so good when I'm eating this way," and that's when I knew that I wasn't white knuckling it anymore. I knew that I had moved into a place of loving myself enough to manage my food intake so that I would feel good and then respect my body enough by doing what it takes to stay there. So it's been about two months and I haven't felt deprived at all, even though I'm eating much less food. Because even though I'm doing a lot of the same actions that I did last time, it's different in that my thoughts are completely different about those actions. They are loving abundant thoughts rather than fearful scarcity thoughts. 

26:04 

So the same concept applies to our relationships. Rather than just changing behaviors and try to change the relationship, it's imperative that we work on discovering our thoughts that are creating the current unhealthy behaviors and work on creating new thoughts that come from a loving place rather than just a place of white knuckling, it hoping that things will change. Because they won't change with that. We're all familiar with the common example of "I just want him to want to do the dishes." Well, he can engage in the action of doing the dishes, but we know something is off when he doesn't want to do them, right? Feeling behind the action is just not there. If you are trying to change your relationship by just changing your behaviors, the feeling behind it is not there. And this other person in your life can tell, right? It doesn't make us feel better, and it doesn't increase our feelings of love for them if we're just white-knuckling these behaviors, right? We have to go to the cause, to the thoughts, right? 

27:15 

So when I can move into loving thoughts first, then even if it's the same behavior, it's being created by love rather than by fear. We talked about this in being motivated by love or fear a few weeks ago, right? The actions are creating energy rather  than draining energy, and we're feeling love and compassion behind our behaviors rather than anger, resentment, or frustration. So even though the world has sold us for many, many years on creating change from the action line, I'm here to let you know that long term, the A line, the action line, isn't sustainable. White knuckling your actions to create change gets exhausting. We can do it for a while, but not forever. Breaking free from the curse of the white knuckles means that we step into becoming aware of, and then managing, our thoughts around the changes we desire to make in our lives, because our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings create our actions, and then our actions create the results that we see in our lives. So if you're working on changing something in your life and feeling a lot of resistance and exhaustion surrounding it, chances are pretty good that you are just white-knuckling it, okay? 

28:36 

So I can help you move out of that space and into a greater awareness of your thoughts and learning to create thoughts that not only create the results that you want, but do so while creating energy as well. Our thoughts are the catalyst for every change we desire to make in our lives. My job as your life coach is to help you gain awareness around what's really going on in your brain and then help you create and implement the thoughts that will get you where you want to go without the white knuckles. Growing up is awesome. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am. I love the relationships with my grown kids. I love the relationship with myself that I'm moving into. I just love my life, love it all, and I think middle-age is the bomb. 

29:29 

So if you need some help, if you find that you're just white knuckling, you're coming in from the A-line all too often, let's chat, because I can help you see it. That's my job as your coach just to help you see it. It's not my job to tell you what to do. But I help you see your brain, just as my coach helps me see my brain and see things that I wasn't aware of before. Okay? It's what I do. It's what I'm good at. It's what I love. And if you would love to meet with me and discuss this and learn about coaching and how it can help you and what it takes for you to do that, then let's do it. You can get it on my website, tanyahale.com. And there's a place, a "contact me" place, where you can actually get into my schedule, into my calendar, and you can schedule a time for yourself that works for you. And you can do that on my Facebook page as well. That's Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching. You can find it there also. There's a "book now" button, I think it's called there. 

30:28 

So alright. If you're loving this podcast, please share it with people that you know will benefit from these same concepts and ideas. My goal is to help the world be better emotionally, to help us be in a healthier place, to know how to create relationships that are sustainable and behaviors that are sustainable, and to really create the life that we want, to have the experience in life that we want to have. It's my goal to help you all do that. So share it. Leave me a review if you haven't. I would love to see some more reviews on there. It would help other people to find my podcast as well. If other people just come across it, then that's just as great as you sharing it. So help me out there, if you will, and help other people find this great content. Okay. That's going to do it for us today. I wish you all the best, wonderful week, and I will talk to you next Monday. Bye. 

31:30 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.