Jeanne: [00:00:06] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Naturally High. I'm your host, Jeanne Foot, and today I'm going to talk about something that really intrigues me. And that is human behaviour. I'm always ruminating about why do people do what they do or why don't they do what they do? And today we're going to unpack why we're not short on information, but we're rather short when it comes to implementing what we need to do and why. And it's a threat I see common between all personal growth and development professionals, whether you're a coach or a therapist or any behavioural health specialist, or you're in recovery, or maybe you're part of a healing community. And that is we often find ourselves stuck at some point in our challenge or change journey. And that's a normal part of growth is to become stuck. What's not normal is to stay there and just spend decades there and not move beyond it, which is where some people may fall. This stuckness can show up in rumination about something, a lack of acceptance of a situation, or just simply how do we move beyond the logic of knowing something and close the knowing-doing gap? So I feel like people can read the books, they can attend the meetings, they can understand their triggers, and they intellectualize what they know they should be doing, but they still feel stuck. And today we're going to really unpack where the gap is between insight and transformation.

Jeanne: [00:01:42] Think about it. What is the benefit of knowing something and having knowledge about something without the rewards of the implementation or the change mechanism? I don't think anything. Personally, I say nothing. And the honest answer is that knowledge has potential. But Implementation is what creates change. We have more knowledge than any time in history, especially with the onslaught of AI. Yet our results are not proportional to our knowledge. You can know why you drink. You can know exactly what your triggers are, why you're dysregulated from a nervous system perspective, from difficult conversations, trying to get boundaries established or feel like you're codependent or, you know, really not feeling confident standing on your own two feet. You can listen to every podcast you can take every course you can hire every coach. Yet you become a consumer rather than a creator. And no better person to know all this than myself. Everything I teach is something I've transformed and transcended myself, which is one of the reasons why I believe it's truly accessible to everybody. It's just we need to use this manual for ourselves. And when we do, we know exactly how we operate and work. We don't fall down the same rabbit hole over and over again. But if that knowledge never becomes a choice, a practice, a conversation, a boundary, or a new response in a difficult moment, then it remains information. Just simple information, not transformation. Knowledge used to be power, which is important, but knowing how to mobilize knowledge into action is what truly, truly matters.

Jeanne: [00:03:27] So knowledge gives us language for what we are experiencing, and it helps us recognize our patterns. It can reduce shame because we can understand, oh, it's not me. My body is doing what it's supposed to do. My brain is working in a habitual way and it's trying to protect me. And this is not a personal failure, but knowing the path and walking the path, two entirely different things. So when we enter into any recovery or new journey or a change, whether it's from illness or grief or whatever. There's a learning process and we become incredibly informed about our own struggles. They can explain our grief, our childhood adversity. We can identify relationship patterns. We can describe the science of addiction and name every reason why we need to change, but we can't mobilize it into change. And then something happens. A typical off day, maybe a stressful day. Someone misses a flight, loneliness hits. The weather doesn't cooperate. Shame appears. A story in our head unfolds. An old fear gets activated. And in that moment, the body goes to the fastest route to feel comfortable. And that's called our default programing. That's why implementation is so important. Implementation, which is another word for change, creates new neural pathways in our brain, create a new experiences for us to make meaning from. So what do I mean for that? Let's just take sobriety as a simple example. The first time you socialize sober it's going to feel very mechanical, very challenging, very difficult because it's not something you're used to.

Jeanne: [00:05:17] It feels like you're more vulnerable. You may not know what to say. You may be overthinking. You don't feel as calm or relaxed. But once you've done it even once, let's just start with the first time. You now have new evidence that you can actually do something differently, and then you build confidence from the new evidence. And then once you do it a few more times, it becomes much easier. And then this pathway becomes more prominent as you use it more and more like a muscle, you're flexing more and more and more. And then the old way, which is socializing with alcohol starts to die off. So this is why it's so important for us to create new experiences when we're trying to make change, because we really do want to have new experiences. Think about it. It's one thing to know that a walk can regulate your nervous system. It's another thing to notice you're spiraling out of control. Put your shoes on, leave the house and take the walk before sending the text, having the drink, making an impulsive decision or purchase or starting an argument. It's one thing to know you need boundaries. It's another thing to say, I can't do that tonight. Even when guilt arises in your body. When we have these new responses, we're trading our short-term pain for long-term gain. So when we're in our addiction, we live...

Jeanne: [00:06:46] I'm using addiction as an example, but when we're in our comfort or in our discomfort, we go for short-term gain, which inevitably causes us long-term pain. But when we decide to do something differently and confront our challenges, we're creating short-term pain, so short-term discomfort for long-term gain, which is benefit. And small actions repeated consistently, is how we build self-trust. And it's one thing to understand that our feelings are temporary. It's another thing to sit with discomfort for ten minutes without trying to numb it, fix it, or control it. And this is where this change mechanism really takes place. If you think about it, like we want to be comfortable, all of us do. We're not wired that way to really sit with discomfort or sit with pain. And depending on how we're brought up, we may have even our caretakers may have robbed us of every opportunity to learn and be in discomfort. It's the way we're wired. So one thing I really want you guys to think about is the habits that we create today. And this doesn't apply to me anymore because I'm much older than most people who are probably listening to this. But what I'm trying to say is our habits that we create today in our daily lives will dictate our health 20 to 30 years from now. Actually, it does apply to me. That's one of the reasons why I live a very clean lifestyle, is simply because I want to age well.

Jeanne: [00:08:15] I do not want to infirm. So when we're young, we feel that we have a lifetime ahead of us because we're strong and have youth on our side and may even feel invincible about our health. So take a 20 year old, a 30 year old, a 40 year old, and maybe even a 50 year old, and they think, oh God, that, you know, you feel bulletproof, you feel invincible. But even abuse has a threshold, whether it's a substance related one, an emotional one, or even physically, it will take its toll. And one day, very quietly, in an ordinary moment, what you thought you could get away with has hit a new threshold of what your new standard will be. And you often hear this in people who say, you know what? I used to be able to tolerate the stress or the noise or alcohol doesn't work for me anymore. So there's many different ways this can show up, or it could be even a sudden health change that could be enough to make you reevaluate everything in your life. So here's a question I encourage you to ask yourself. What do I already know that I'm not yet practicing? I'm going to say it again. Ask yourself, what do I already know that I'm not yet practicing? I don't want you to think of this in a shaming way, or berate yourself or as evidence that you're failing.

Jeanne: [00:09:34] But be curious. Like, what do I kind of do that I need to make the change? But somehow, yet I haven't made it across that threshold. Maybe, you know, you feel better when you sleep enough. Maybe you know that certain people zap your energy or even destabilize you. Maybe you know that isolation increases your cravings. Maybe you know you need to eat before you become really emotionally reactive. Also known as hangry. Simply put, we want to build up our reserves in our health and our recovery for a rainy day when we may need a contingency plan or we've depleted ourselves too much. And this is known as recovery in health capital. So what do I mean by that? So for example, if we are traveling, that's a perfect example. And we deplete ourselves. Or it's summer holidays and we're on vacation and we party too much, or we have too many late nights. And when our sleep goes down, then it doesn't take much for our immune to become compromised or our mood to become compromised because we're now down so much sleep or whatever it means. So this is what I mean by building up reserves in our health capital. It's the same with our recovery capital. The more we're consistent with our daily practices, the more we stay steady. And that's something I notice with my own that when I don't do what I know I should do, and I mean what I say should I mean some sort of daily practice where it's a self-inquiry? I'm tuning in.

Jeanne: [00:11:07] It could be a meditation, it could be yoga, it could be a daily reading. I don't find I'm as resilient as on the days that I am. And I give the analogy, which is really kind of like when someone cuts you off and you've done what you need to do, you're more steady. It's like, oh, well. And when someone cuts you off in traffic, I'm talking about, it's like, oh, well, but if you're highly reactive because you're not feeling steady, you're burning on your reserves. It's like you want to give the person a finger. So we could be two different people in two different situations depending or in the same situation, depending on where we are, which is one of the reasons why it's so important to build up some reserves. And there are factors that are both protective and vulnerable that can steer our trajectory until we start the self-inquiry process. So like, what I mean by that is we all have vulnerabilities that we come with from our family of origin, from our adversities, from our life experiences, or we can have protective factors where we really invest in our health and we have clean nutrition. And, you know, I can't emphasize these fundamentals enough because they are the difference between night and day in terms of our energy, our vitality, our mood, our brain chemistry. And this is not talked about enough in sobriety or recovery circles of how nutrition can exponentially create an elevated recovery for people.

Jeanne: [00:12:36] So don't underestimate that. That's one thing I can share. As I talked about earlier, like we are really wired for comfort and we repel any discomfort in pain. And that is why it's so hard to stay the course when things feel so uncertain or, you know, it's really difficult to do that next move, which is maybe get up off that couch and go for that walk. Even though you feel like your two year old is kicking and screaming and saying, hey, I don't want to do that. Just do it. Don't debate with yourself because you're always going to lose and you want to be able to quell that in a storm. When we do not allow full expression of our emotions, we tend to minimize or convince ourselves that we're okay when we're truly not. And the work is really not to abandon yourself or your emotions. With the fastest bypass button, I call it, whether it's, you know, the food, the sex, the purchase, the, you know, substance, whatever it may be. We all have our defaults of things that work for us. For some people, food is just as detrimental as substance, and it's unique to each of us of how we act that out. But it can have the same terribly negative impact on our life. And so the work is really coming back to ourselves, is to understand ourselves is to like, understand what is our blueprint that we operate on and then really upgrade that.

Jeanne: [00:14:08] It's like the software I've spoken about before, we want to upgrade our software to be the most, newest, most effective, most efficient software possible. And self-inquiry allows us to connect our mind and our body and allow for the integration of what I call dis ease between the two. So today, we can advocate for ourselves and become our own best healer. But accepting that the response-ability response-able lies within each of us. I can do for myself what no one else can do for me. Only I can do for myself what no one else can do for me. And really, we want to look at our own self-healing as a discovery journey. Now, the real, real, real good news is that you could do this all by yourself. You can access your own healing. I'm not saying you'll take yourself all the way without any other mentors or guides or therapists or coaches or whatever. But I always say this. It's not a passive process. It's an active process. It's a do-with process, not a do-to process. And our own self-healing is this discovery journey, working with real feedback in real time. So whatever you hear me say this often, whatever is happening in your life is grist for the mill. So what do I mean by that? I mean, whatever's happening, good or bad, is either reaffirming feedback or feedback that's not optimal. And there may be lessons learned that we need to learn in order to refine our process in the way that we do things. And we can take responsibility by implementing just teeny, teeny, teeny baby steps of consistency without any judgment that we should have done this sooner. We should. Why? Don't know why we didn't do it now.

Jeanne: [00:16:08] I don't want you to come kicking and screaming to this. I just want you to accept the fact that you're moving forward. Doesn't matter. Whatever you did before this moment. But you're moving forward now, and you're taking baby steps of consistency towards something that you want. So you can create this new blueprint for rewiring your brain, recalibrating your nervous system, and creating a whole new way of being in the world. A simple reframe of what is one thing you already know and what would it look like to implement it today? So think about it a simple reframe of what is one thing you already know you need to do and what would it look like to implement it today? And I want you to even think how powerful these things could be, because who are you without your story? So if we were going to start today with a clean blank slate and not go backwards in our rear-view mirror and look forward, who are you being in this moment?

Jeanne: [00:17:11] So this is a personal discovery journey. And it's not about perfection. It's so not about perfection. It doesn't matter what your story looks like compared to your friends or your relatives or someone else. It's your story, your unique pathway with your unique lived experience. And you take it one step towards your new choice, one step at a time. Because I want you to think about that implementation or implementing any change in your life doesn't mean you have to change everything overnight. Not at all. It means creating just a small bridge between insight and action. So what is the next step that I need to take? So a simple framework may look like learn it, practice it, reflect on it, repeat. Learn, practice, reflect, repeat, learn, practice, reflect, repeat. So what does it mean? So you learn the concept. So what is the teachable moment that you need to learn or redo or action that you need to take. Then you need to practice it in real life. So what is the next step that you're actually going to do? And you've heard me talk about this before with floors and ceilings and floors are teeny, teeny, teeny micro action steps that you can take. And a ceiling is maybe an optimal. So an example of a floor may be just going for a five-minute walk where a ceiling may be a full workout, so it doesn't really matter. But you want to take a small step by learning the concept. What is the teachable moment? Practice it in real life. What is the next step I need to take? And then I want you to reflect on it without judgment on what happened and give yourself compassion for it.

Jeanne: [00:19:07] And I say judgment comes in because once we learn something we didn't know before, there's often a tendency to say, oh, darn it, I should have applied this sooner. I should have done this. Why did I wait so long? All the things, it doesn't really matter. You're doing it now and that's what counts. So just remember that. And then the more you repeat this cycle of learn, practice, reflect, it becomes our new neural default programming. And that is how information becomes wisdom. We become wiser. We're more alerted to. So it's something that you can practice. Now if you wanted to go into a more of a ritual of self-inquiry in terms of your own personal healing, and you wanted to master it, this is something you could do as a daily practice or not. I wouldn't do this every single day, mind you. You could. But I think it would be tiresome. It would become hard work. But it's something that when you experience a trigger or your experience a situation, or you had an argument or something didn't go as planned, or you're really stunned by something that is out of the ordinary. Well, you can do a what we call a self-inquiry around it, and you can do your own self healing. And that would require you to identify what is going on.

Jeanne: [00:20:25] So what is the trigger? What is the emotion or physical sensation that alerted you to that? Something's not right. Then you can observe and connect to the sensations and feelings within the body, whether it's your heart pounding or your skin's flushed, or you're feeling hot, or your body's gone tense, or whatever that may be. Is there something new or something you have noticed? So sometimes twitching could be something for somebody. Sometimes people start to tremble inside or feel like they're a little bit shakiness or whatever. And so you want to just identify that. And if you can recall, ask yourself, when was the first time you ever noticed this? Do you remember the age that you were at? Maybe it's a younger version of you. And it could be in school. And then I want you to observe and connect to the sensation and feeling within the body. And I just want you to notice what it's like not to push it away, just to remain curious and open to the message it may be trying to convey. Because we typically run from our feelings before they have a chance to express themselves. And so we miss the valuable teaching of them. And so we miss this rich information that could be an ally and. A friend to us. And so when you're at the peak of the emotional experience, ask yourself if my body could talk. What might it be trying to tell me? And I want you to accept the new perspective and see how that feels as you slowly embody the truth of your experience.

Jeanne: [00:22:03] How does that land? Is it feeling like it's a spiritual awakening? Is it feeling like the ego wants to reject it? Is it feeling like the narrative starts running louder in your head? Like, how does it land? And if it is a positive experience for you, you want to accept the new perspective and see how that feels in your body and slowly embody it and integrate what you've learned. So when we feel good, when you feel pure joy, when you feel pure love, you want to embody that amazing feeling. You want to anchor it in. You want to sear it into your flesh and into your brain. Anchoring the new feeling with a vision, feeling, sensation and presence. Let your mind go somewhere around the anchor. Okay. So let yourself know what you do not have to continue with outdated program to feel safe. Before you always hear me say, we trade our authenticity for attachments and we may do things that people pleasing or overgiving or not saying no when we mean to say yes around a boundary. When we feel safe and we feel secure within ourselves, we don't do these things anymore. It's okay to say no, I need some time for myself right now. I won't be joining you, even though someone else may be disappointed that you're not coming to their event, you're taking care of yourself first, and that is sometimes necessary.

Jeanne: [00:23:30] So we start to make these small changes. And I want you to know that's how we take care of ourselves. And we create new beliefs that mirror the essence of our true self. And that's what we're trying to do here. One thing I say repeatedly because it has meant so much to me is I always say, be your own science experiment. So what is the feedback that you're getting around yourself? Like you're forming this hypothesis and the real life feedback, the data, the experiences that are happening are giving you information to let you know, does this serve me or not serve me? Is there something I need to change over here, or is this something I need to do? There's no judgment. It's just simple curiosity. The beneficiary of being your own science experiment is always going to be you. It's for no other benefit than yours. And this is really important in emotional sobriety because it's not the absence of difficult feelings. It's the capacity to feel without leaving yourself, abandoning yourself, reacting impulsively, or reaching for an old coping mechanism that ultimately harms you and you build that capacity through practice. Practice, practice, practice. We are never exonerated from practice, through prosing, through reaching out, through telling the truth, through making the next healthy choice, through repairing when you get it wrong, through choosing compassion instead of shame. So if you're someone who's been feeling or someone who has been learning a lot, but feeling frustrated that your life has not yet changed, I want you to hear this.

Jeanne: [00:25:11] You do not need any more information to begin. You may need support. You may need accountability. You may need to feel safe. You may need a mentor, a guide, a therapist, someone in your recovery community, or even a plan that makes you feel action is more possible. Most people just struggle with failure to implement because they don't have a plan. Failing to implement is a design problem. It's not a human problem. If you had the right plan, you would be in the change process. So you don't have to wait until you've mastered everything. Get this perfect. You need to just choose one insight, turn it into one action, and then just practice it consistently on repeat. One insight, one action. Repeat, one insight, one action. Repeat. Because knowledge opens a door. Implementation is what allows you to walk through it. So if any of you are feeling like you don't know what to do next, it's really simple. What's one thing you already know you're ready to implement today and then just go and do it. And if you think anybody you know close to you can resonate from this, please share this episode with them, because it may be someone who may be stuck between knowing what to do and actually doing it. And it can be the change of their life. So until next time, stay naturally high.