Episode 62: 3 Ways to Lead Yourself (Instead of Push Yourself!)

Tired of pushing yourself to get things done — only to feel drained and frustrated? In this episode, I share three ways to lead yourself instead of push yourself, so you can create motivation that feels joyful, sustainable, and actually works. You’ll learn how to connect with a meaningful vision, invite and encourage yourself, and cultivate the emotions that make progress feel easier.

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 62. Three ways to lead yourself instead of push yourself.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hello, my friend. How's it going? You know, coaching can help you achieve any goal you have. And one goal that I have is to be gentle with myself, to be kind to myself. I love helping moms stop being mean to themselves, because I see the way that that blesses their entire family and everything about their life.

One of the ways we're mean to ourselves is when we push ourselves to be better in a way where we're criticizing, beating ourselves up, telling ourselves how awful we are. And we do this in the name of improving. Now, I love improving and growing, but what I have found is that I actually don't need to be mean to myself to do it.

In fact, what I've discovered is that leading myself, which is kind and gentle, actually produces more growth and feels better along the way. So in this episode, I want to share three ways you can lead yourself instead of push yourself. If your ultimate goal is to grow and change.

So the first way you can lead instead of push is you're going to want to connect with a meaningful vision of why you want this change. Like the deep purpose that makes this something that's inspiring and motivating. Okay.

So for example, let's say that you're wanting to clean out your garage or some area of your home where things have kind of piled up. If you were to push yourself to do that, like imagine that you are whacking yourself with a stick and you're prodding yourself saying, come on, look at what a mess this is. This has gotten out of hand.

It needs to be cleaned up. So let's go do it, clean it. And that's going to work to some extent, right? You're going to be able to get some motivation.

It's probably not going to be sustained motivation over a really long period of time. If this project takes a while and also it's going to feel terrible while you're doing it because you're pushing yourself, right? Whereas if you were leading yourself, then you would explain the higher purpose. You would cast a vision of, Hey, the reason this is so important.

If we clean up, we're going to be able to find things better. It's going to feel so good in here. If we put forth this effort, we're not going to be tripping over things.

We're going to feel excited when we drive our car in here and things are clean and clear. We're going to be able to be more creative because we have more clear space in our mind and in our home. We're not going to be weighed down by so much clutter.

That's a different energy, right? Leading is saying, Hey, there is a higher reason. Like, yes, this is going to be work and it may not be super fun all the time that we're doing it, but there's a higher purpose. That's really, really inspiring and meaningful.

And that feels different. It also is more sustainable. It creates energy that will sustain you to work for a longer period of time.

So both pushing yourself and leading yourself, you're going to use to try to motivate yourself to do the thing, but they feel really different. So whatever you're working on, if you want to lead yourself, you connect with a really meaningful vision of why you want this change. In fact, I would recommend that you take a few minutes or maybe even an hour, if it's a really big project and you write down what that vision is and what that purpose is.

And that way you can come back to it when your motivation wanes, and you can continue to lead yourself and remind yourself, Hey, this is why this is important. This is why we're doing this, even though it's challenging. Okay.

So that's the first one. The second way that you can lead yourself instead of pushing is invite and encourage rather than demand and criticize. So let's say for an example that you wanted to eat healthier, maybe try to shed some pounds.

So if you push yourself to do this, then you're going to force and criticize. So you might tell yourself things like you have no self-control. That's why you got overweight in the first place.

You got to pull it together. So no more cookies for you. No more treats.

Eat this salad, not the treat. Even though you don't even like that salad, like you have to do this. Do you feel the energy? Like it's strict.

It feels like a punishment. And so you're pushing yourself to try to make yourself do something that you don't really want to do. But if you lead yourself, instead of the forcing and the criticizing, you find ways to invite and also encourage.

So you might say like, you know what? You don't have to do this, but here's why it could be a great idea because we're going to have more energy in the long run. If we do it this way, because we are going to feel good in our body. When we do it this way, we are going to be able to sleep better.

We're not going to have so many cravings or whatever it is like there's again, it's this long-term vision, but you're inviting it. You're saying, you know what? You don't have to, but you could, you could choose to, and there would be a long-term benefit. So then you would encourage yourself instead of like no treats.

It's like, Ooh, let's drink a lot of water. Cause that's so good for us. Let's see if we can get full on foods that come from plants.

And then maybe we could have a treat a little bit later, but we're going to get full on some of these more whole foods. Let's move our body more. Wouldn't that be fun? Let's see if we could go on a walk today.

Let's see if we could maybe do something outside with friends, if that's what we enjoy. So the energy is we're inviting, we're encouraging, we're making it much more fun sounding as we invite. And also giving yourself the option, like, yeah, you don't have to, but here's why it's going to be awesome.

Also with encouragement, instead of you have to do this, it's like, you know what? I wonder maybe we could find some vegetables that you like, and we could add in a few more each week. Do you feel how that just creates a really different energy, the pushing, the forcing, the criticizing, calling yourself names, being really strict with yourself is a really different energy than inviting and encouraging and not trying to force. Okay.

And then the third way to lead yourself instead of push yourself is cultivate the emotion inside of you that will drive the actions you want to take. So if you push yourself, that looks like you're trying to get yourself to do something that you don't have the emotion right now to want to do. I call it swimming upstream.

So you're going to work really hard to go against the current. You don't want to do this thing, but you're going to make yourself. You don't want to exercise, but you're going to do it anyway, because you're supposed to.

And that can feel noble and brave to work that hard. It's just, it's not sustainable. Your willpower is going to run out after a little while, and then you're going to lose steam.

But if you choose to lead, then over time, consistently, you're going to be generating the emotion. You're going to be cultivating it with your thoughts, creating the feeling that's going to flow into the actions that you want. So let's say that you have a big project and you have been having trouble getting started on this project.

If you're pushing yourself, then you're going to say things in your mind, like, come on, you are behind and you're lazy. Why haven't you even started? Like, get it done already. It's not very nice.

If you lead yourself, then you might say something like, oh, I think I've been feeling overwhelmed because this project is really big. Let's see if we could break it into super small pieces and start with something really easy. That'll get you going.

That'll get you started. And if you can keep doing that, then you lead yourself through the project and you don't have to push because every tiny little step is actually really easy. Let's say you're writing a book and you haven't really been following through on sitting down to write when you said you would.

If you push yourself, then you would be like, you need to do it anyway. You need to sit down and you need to do it. You know, you know, you're not going to get results if you don't sit down and write it.

It's pushy. It's critical. It's foresee.

Do you hear it? But if you're leading yourself, then the kind of way you would talk to yourself would sound more like, huh, I haven't been feeling motivated when it's time to sit down. I wonder why. And then you could look at it and say, how could I create a routine that would help me prepare mentally and physical for writing time? Oh, maybe if I went on a walk right before, or maybe if I listened to some music or, you know, what else in my life could I kind of arrange or design so that I can get myself in an emotional and mental state where I'm ready to sit down and write.

So whatever it is for you, if you are wanting to clean up a mess, get more exercise, finish a project, reach a goal, stick to a budget, whatever it is, I just want you to know that you can push yourself. You can also lead yourself. And I think leading feels so much better.

It's so much more joyful along the way. And I have actually found that it produces greater growth, greater results, and is much more sustainable over a long period of time. And all of these concepts apply to leading other people as well.

I've just been talking about your relationship with yourself, but as a parent or a boss or with people you lead at church or in any other setting, something to consider that I find to be so useful and really brings a lot more joy is how can I lead here rather than push? Part of leadership is like, yes, you are kind of wanting to help people make choices to do things that maybe they don't want to do. That's reality. That's what it means to lead or to parent or any of these things.

But if you can lead, that means you're going to connect them with a meaningful vision of why it really matters. You're going to invite and encourage, and you're going to help to cultivate the emotion. That's going to make those actions feel much easier.

So if you're leading yourself, if you're leading other people, I want to encourage you notice when you're not connected to a meaningful vision and how that makes what you're doing feel like drudgery. And if you find yourself there, or you find yourself getting pushy with other people, then you can go, wait a minute. Okay.

What's the bigger picture. You find that for yourself. Why are we really doing this? What's the point here? And then you see if you can connect others with that vision, notice when you are criticizing or demanding or insulting yourself or others, trying to motivate.

And if you notice that you're doing that and you want to try to lead, then you can aim instead for inviting, encouraging, focusing on strengths and using those to support the project. You can notice when you're feeling overwhelmed or frustrated or discouraged. And instead of whacking a stick at yourself and telling yourself to just do it anyway, you can actually spend a pretty small amount of energy cultivating the emotion, taking a step back and saying, okay, how can I make this feel easy and fun and simple and exciting? How can I tell myself, Hey, I don't have to, but I can see how it'll be worth it to work toward this.

One of my favorite songs, the chorus says, lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way. And I love that. Lead me, guide me, walk beside me.

And I was chuckling this morning, as I was thinking about like, what would be the opposite? So I came up with push me, kick me, criticize me, force me all the way. I was like, yeah, that's, that's not leading. That's pushing.

And I think leading is a more powerful and a more sustainable way to motivate than pushing. So if you are leading yourself or anyone else, it does take energy to create a vision and to stay connected to it. It takes energy to find creative ways to motivate and encourage.

It takes time and energy to break big projects into small pieces and to find thoughts that will create emotions that then make the work feel a lot easier and more fun and more simple. But in the end, that effort that you spend to do the things that help you lead will actually be a smaller amount than the effort it takes to push and use willpower to try to make yourself do something and to do something as you're swimming upstream, that feels really hard and overwhelming. Pushing might get you moving, but leading will keep you going.

And when you guide yourself with kindness and clarity, growth becomes not just possible, but also joyful. So see if you can find one opportunity to lead instead of push over the next few days. Thanks for joining me today.