Episode 164: Practicing Self-Loyalty in the New Year - Part 1
In this episode, I’m chatting with my producer, Sean McMullin about change, resolutions, and plans for the new year.
For years, the month of December was my month of debauchery. My BFF (the voice of false self-compassion) ran the show. After months of being told what I “should” do by my Monger in December, I could throw all the rules out the window.
December was the one month out of the year that I gave myself permission to not listen to the shaming voice of the Monger: I gave myself the free pass of December because I knew come January, my Monger would drop the hammer and criticize me into submission.
I believed, on January 1st (well, 2nd really because on the 1st, I was still recovering from all the December merriment), I would magically become a new person. Someone who loved vegetables and hated sugar, desired to work out every day, easily abstained from drinking, and uber-productive.
I am sure you could guess how that went. Long story short, come mid-January, my Monger had a field day with all the ways I was failing. This all-or-nothing thinking ran my life for years---decades really.
But something changed, thanks to the practice of self-loyalty.
December isn’t a magical month of no consequences anymore. Instead, I have days where I overeat sugar and drink too much caffeine and days where I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. And my worthiness isn’t linked to any of it. Whether I eat five sugar cookies or five carrots, I am still me: broken, imperfect, smart, funny, overly-sensitive, loyal Nancy Jane Smith.
But the idea of change and resolutions still intrigues me. So on this episode, I am bringing back my podcast producer Sean McMullin. You might remember him from episode 155 and episode 161 where we discussed meditation and mindfulness.
This is part one of this conversation and I’m so excited for you to hear it. Here is part two!
Listen to the full episode to find out:
The definition of Self-Loyalty
How self-loyalty works with the idea of change and resolutions
Sean’s plans for the new year--combining a word of the year with quarterly themes
How to hold your resolutions loosely AND actually make change
Resources mentioned:
This Naked Mind by Annie Grace
The Real Point of Meditating by Mike Sturm on Medium
The Science of Mindfulness | Dr. Ron Siegel | Talks at Google
+ Read the Transcript
Nancy: And self loyalty was oh, I can be this person that procrastinates, I can be the person that has anxiety and I could still be okay with myself. I can still be like, oh, here we go. This is a hard time. And when I can say, how can I have my own back in this situation? It's a reminder of, oh, how do I show up for myself four years?
The month of December was my month at . The voice of false self-compassion ran the show after months of being told what I should do by my monger in December, I could throw all the rules out the window. December was the worst one month out of the year that I gave myself permission to not listen to the shaming voice of the monger.
I gave myself the free pass of December because I knew come January. My monger would drop the hammer and criticize me into something. I believed on January 1st. January 2nd, really? Because the first I was still recovering from all the December Marymount, I would magically become a new person.
Someone who loved vegetables, hated sugar, had the desire to work out every day and could abstained from drinking and be Uber productive. I'm sure you could guess how that went. Long story short come mid January. My monger had a field day with all the ways I was. This all or nothing thinking ran my life for years, decades.
Really. You're listening to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the new to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. I'm your host, Nancy Jane. Today, I would say thanks to the practice of self loyalty December. Isn't a magical month of no consequences anymore.
Instead I have days where I overeat sugar and drink too much caffeine and days where I eat lots of fruits and vegetable. And my worthiness isn't linked to any of it. Whether I eat five sugar cookies or five carrots, I'm still my broken, imperfect, smart, funny, overly sensitive, loyal Nancy, but the idea of change and resolutions still intriguing.
So on today's podcast, I'm bringing back my podcast, producer, Sean McMullin. You might remember him from when he was on the show, talking me through my meditation experiment this past fall, right after the first of the year, Sean and I met to talk about the show and through our conversation, we started talking about change resolutions and plans for the new year.
It was such a great conversation. And one, I think you will get a lot out of, so we decided to record it so you could listen to it. I'm excited for you to hear this conversation. It was so good. We broke it up into two parts. This episode is part one, and part two will be released next year. Keep listening to hear the definition of self loyalty, how subtlety works with the idea of change and resolutions Sean's plans for the new year, combining a word of the year with quarterly themes and how to hold your resolutions loosely and actually make change.
Hi, everyone. I'm excited today because I have brought back Sean, the producer of the happier approach here to talk with me. I'm going to have a fun conversation about self loyalty and resolutions. We have hit the new year where somebody. Everything was going to be magically different in 2021. I saw a Twitter thing that said I'm ready to turn in my seven day preview of 2021.
That just made me laugh. So welcome, Sean. How's it going? Great. I'm glad you're here. Yeah. Okay. So self loyalty and resolutions. I have a number of questions, but is there anything you want to ask? Yeah,
Sean: I wanted to lead offer. I think it's interesting when we encounter terms that we use. That we assume everyone is on the same page about, and everyone has the same understanding of what those terms mean.
And I'm a big fan of pausing and defining terms. So Nancy self loyalty. I think I understand what you mean when you say self loyalty. What do you mean when you say self loyalty so that I understand what you, what we're talking about specifically?
Nancy: The reason I love the term self loyalty is because I have a vis a visceral negative response to the terms self-compassion self-love self-acceptance and those terms, I think of.
Even self-trust I think they have been way over done. They have lost all meaning for me, like I just couldn't find any, ah, yeah, that's what I need to do in any of those terms. And then I started paying attention to a lot of my clients have loyalty is one of their values and they really know what loyalty is.
And to me, loyalty is no matter what. I'm going to have your back, no matter what happens, I will be here. I think Bernie brown talks about the Berry, the body friends. That's what I'm talking about with loyalty, my best friend, no matter what happens, I'm going to be there for her. And something terrible happened.
You would have to hold me back from. From driving to Kentucky and having her back
Sean: that it's at Dixie chicks song. It's the Earl's got to die.
Nancy: Yeah. That to me, yes. I love that song. That is the ultimate self loyalty song for me. It was recognizing I don't have that for myself. I don't have that. No matter what happens, I have your back.
It's going to be okay. Because my natural bent is to improve. Get better. Deny it or fix it. Those are the two kind of modes. So I run in and self loyalty was oh, I can be this person that procrastinates, I can be the person that has anxiety and I could still be okay with myself. I can still be like, oh, here we go.
This is a hard time. And so being able to switch. Idea another, I would say self loyalty and I say, have your own back. Those go to me simultaneously. And when I can say, how can I have my own back in this situation? It's a reminder of, oh, how do I show up for myself in a kind way?
Sean: Yeah.
Immediately makes me think. Additionally, about when you have people who have your back, the certain degree of. You can calm down a little bit. You can trust, you can relax a little bit. And it's one thing to have your attendance did on the flip of that of note having your own back. Yeah, I like that a lot.
Nancy: Yeah. For me, that was a, more of a game changer than self-compassion and then all those words, like I said, it was that idea of having that, that I can be my own soft place. That at the end of the day, I am not something that is broken or in need of repair or incomplete. I am me and I can still grow and change and quote, unquote improve.
But that doesn't mean who I am is bad.
Sean: And I think also allows for the room for when you do make mistakes. I remember I worked used to work on this construction crew and loyalty amongst them. They made, they were friends from their biker friends from way back when their kids and loyalty was everything for them.
And it was obnoxious actually, but they had this whole thing of look, you get into a fight or something and I'll have your back. You might be in the wrong. You might've made a mistake. We'll talk about that later. Yeah. But until that point, I'm there for you and that I'll be there for you because they took it into a kind of a interesting and not entirely healthy way.
But I like this idea that I think that there's also the space for acknowledging the error and the mistake and the imperfection and saying, yeah, that's there we'll address that when we'll deal with it. But first and foremost, You, I have your back self.
Nancy: Thank you for telling that story. Because if my friend murdered someone, I still would be questioning what's going on here and where are you in?
How can I help you face this? Not let me condemn you and not be there for you. Yeah.
Sean: For you. What you wanted to talk about was this connection between this concept of loyalty for the self, which I'm totally digging and how that plays out in resolutions. And specifically right now, new year's resolutions.
Tell me what you're thinking along around that.
Nancy: By the time this podcast comes out, it'll be mid January. And so not that the shine of the new year didn't get taken off pretty quickly this year, but the shine of the new year will definitely be gone by the time this podcast comes out. And I think that even though we know that the new year isn't a magical time, we still want it to be a magical time.
I still want the turn of the year to be like, ah, now I'm finally going to get my stuff together and I'm going to be Organized and have my goals and know my followup stuff and be able to stop eating sugar and all those things. And so that idea of looking at how can I have my own back and be wanting to change and grow and at the same time, practicing this idea of self loyalty.
Yeah. And I think that's that's a change because resolutions in the way they have been traditionally. Talked about is in the belief that I'm broken and that I will get better once I hit these resolutions. And I think that's why they inherently fail.
Sean: The it's the making the resolutions. That is the problem.
Or is it that our approach to the resolutions? That is the problem. Do we need to scrap news resolutions or do we just need to hold them a little looser and allow for. The mistakes and the, when we drop them and how to, what we do when we drop them into. Oh, is there anything to salvage from them?
Nancy: A client who said to me recently, I just like getting a reset and I get that you're coming out of the holidays.
2020 was hard. Let's just reset and see what can happen. So I think in that sense, having that idea of this is a new time. It was for some of us like September going back to school, it gives us that, Ooh, there's a refresh. And then I think that's awesome. But I think recognizing also ha. I think one of the bigger issues is we don't recognize how hard change is making changes is freaking hard.
When I often tell the story, I had this mentor who would scream at the top of his lungs, all change is incremental. All change is incremental. All change is incremental. And I remember being so like, we'd laugh when he would do it. It's true. Like all change is so it's so small. So the idea that I'm going to do a dry January and I'm going to stop drinking in January, but there's no self-reflection on.
How hard it is to stop drinking what I miss about drinking. What's not there anymore. You know what the drinking gave me like all of that stuff. And so we white knuckle our way through January, and then it's whoa, I did dry January. Now, February 1st, here we go. And we're back at it. And, or we'll try to be like, oh, let's do a couple of drinks or we'll set new rules, but we haven't had our own back in recognizing wow, dry January is easy or dry.
January is hard and that's just. One example. I've seen people on Twitter saying that after what happened last week at the Capitol, they've given up their diet, they've given up dry January. Everything went out the window because there was all this stress. And so I'm going to eat and drink to get rid of it.
And I think that. Part of the problem with resolutions is we're not looking at the whole person. And even I know like word of the year is a popular idea. I'm going to have a theme of the year, which I think awesome. Which is my thing I want you to about that because I think that's awesome and that also can get lost pretty easily.
And so it's like, how do we keep bringing back? This theme throughout the year. And that's how incremental change happens
Sean: I was thinking about this thing of one of the things that's particularly with dry January. One of the things that's challenging in my experience is we're doing a thing that we don't actually want it to be.
Yeah. Said, and when you're doing something you're like making yourself do a difficult in a distasteful and yucky thing that you don't want to be doing. And I think the point that's one of those places where I think resolutions starts to fail. Is a hundred percent convinced that we want to be doing these things.
Like when I got Annie Grace's book this naked mind was a huge asset for me and her whole deal. And she was using the work of other people, but she was. Liminal thinking and the idea of you take everything that is confronting that is creating a roadblock for you, barrier for you, some sort of mental position, some sort of way of perceiving something.
And you actually look at it and you say is this true? And like when it's the things, the reasons that you think that you should still, you have this long list and you can apply this to anything, really, any sort of behavior that you'd like to change. And as you're going through this, you can actually start like realizing what is.
I, I don't want to do this anymore. And when you get to that point where the changes, the change you actually want to make, as opposed to that distasteful thing that you're making yourself do, like suddenly I need to go to the gym and exercise, even though I hate exercising,
Nancy: yeah. because it's an external someone somewhere told me to do this.
It's not coming from within. Yeah. I may be someone who wants to be in shape and be able to work out an hour every day. I want that that's an external thing I want, but I don't want to do all the stuff that's required to get there. And I need to be honest about that.
Sean: Yeah. And there's where incremental change comes in is the being honest about that and being realistic about if I want to be that person who exercises every day, that might have to come in stages.
Nancy: Yeah, it reminds me of a client who she's working on. She picked the theme of all or nothing thinking, and that is something that she's working with.
Sean: Like confronting all or nothing.
Nancy: Yeah. Notice and loosen up that idea of there's a right way and a wrong way and all this stuff. And she'll notice every time she does all or nothing thinking, and she'll Vox me.
Here's a litany of all the times. And what's been amazing is oftentimes we want to fix a bunch of stuff. I want to stop my high functioning anxiety, but she just picked one place where that high functioning anxiety shows up and. Is noticing it in tons of ways. It shows up all the time in her life.
And I also hear that from clients who want to stop drinking. And they're like, I think about drinking all the time or just to notice the way it infiltrates your life and just having your back around that. And you just being like, oh, there it is. Again, there it is. Again, there it is again. And I think that's that idea of incremental change, but what has been fascinating to me is that by just seeing how much all or nothing thinking plays out in her life, She's making big changes because that one thing infiltrates a lot of things.
And so often we want to change too many things. We bite off too much of the apple instead of being like, I just want to really get to know the skin of the apple. That's what I really want to get to know and see that. And then I'll try to get all the way to the core.
Sean: Yeah. Back when I used to work at a brewery, I worked at a brewery for a long time.
Collectively we would all take, do dry dry January and. It was always so funny because everyone would show up on the, on January 1st hung over. And then they were starting as they're hung over. And then there was a bunch of us started doing anything where we would start the resolution a few days before the new.
Because per pressure on January 1st to suddenly you're doing this thing, it's so hard to do a thing where you go from never having been on a treadmill to, I'm going to put on five miles today. As of right now, this is who I am. We'd also, we lived on the Pacific coast and so we'd all go. And January 1st, we all go jump in the ocean.
That was a lot of fun. That would be fun. So to this idea, Of the word of the year or the theme of the year, which is the thing that I like to do. I've started, I've been doing that for a few years now, before I talk about that, another thing that occurred to me is another approach that I'm experimenting with this year is I'm breaking the year up into quarters.
I have. Many interests. I am a multifaceted multipotentialite Huddy like individual. I want to acknowledge that when I focus on one thing for too long, I start becoming resentful of that thing. And so this year I'm experimenting with. Laying out the year in three month increments where I stick to a specific thing for a period of.
Okay. And I've actually laid out most of the year of what reading material I intend on doing for the entire year. That's like the magically connected. So like some nonfiction that I'll be reading while I'm doing that. That's the magically connected to what I'm doing. And what I'm intentionally doing is I'm also making the themes abstract enough.
To have a little bit of wiggle room.
Nancy: So can you give like a, an example of a theme?
Sean: Movements is a theme. Place is a theme surface, and so I'm an artist. And so a lot of this has to do with my art and exploring my artistic side, my creativity. And so the abstract, I thrive in oblique connections and.
Loose definitions of where it's supposed to go, because it allows for improvisation and creativity. That's my shtick, and I get why some people would like something a little bit more solid, but that's my, and also so in a lot of ways I'm treating the next year is like a year of study of myself and my creativity.
So like at the end of every quarter, there's actually, I intended. A project, like there is a culmination of the work actually be like solidified. So there'll be a thing that like actually acknowledges the work. And I think that's something that would, I think that when you set goals to be like, okay, this is the thing that I want to obtain in this stretch of time.
And it's actually, because it's not, I'm going to do this for the next year. It's no, I'm going to do this for the next month. And at the end of this month, I'm going to have this goal. It becomes way more manageable. I'm going to walk around the block every day for the rest of the month.
Is way more yeah, I could do that.
Nancy: Yeah. I love that. You're not going to get bored. It changes it up. There's a focus in each time. It's like the client with the all or nothing. Thinking like you are focusing in on one thing and then holding your feet to the fire by the culminate.
Project, but I think in the spirit of all changes incremental. If the end of the year, you will have done all this different stuff. It may not change you, but you've experienced a variety of things and you've committed to it. And I think that's where a lot of people I know I get super bummed come March.
Oh, all these things I committed to, they're gone. I don't have them anymore. And that idea of shiny object syndrome and fear of missing out and, oh, I should be doing something else. The idea of having the self loyalty enough to be like, no, this is what I committed to. It's just for three months
Sean: And in theory this is something you want to do right?,
Nancy: so for me, that the patience and the drilling down, like I'll say to myself, oh, I really want to drill down. And really dive deeply into something. And I just was journaling about this the other day, but my emo, what I do on a daily basis is pop myself out of it all the time.
Yeah. I don't commit, I don't commit. And I think that's what I love about what you're doing. And then it's inspiring me.
Sean: Yeah. I hear some Monger talk going on too.
Nancy: There's some talk happening there and there is some truth. Totally, I think both are happening and it's
Sean: The Monger is not always a liar.
I don't Monger is always, most of the time there's a lot of lying going on.
Nancy: But that's where the biggest fan is going to be like, yeah, we don't like to commit, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It just means I got. Really put some parameters in place to keep bringing myself back. I think that's the idea of self loyalty is recognizing get commitments hard.
We don't need to beat ourselves up for that, but we really gotta be aware. The commitment's hard and FOMO is real. And how do I keep bringing myself back?
Sean: Yeah. A thought just occurs to me in a question for you. So do you think in some ways, this self loyalty that the. The biggest fan is a metaphor of the embodiment of that self loyalty.
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah,
because for me, figuring out the biggest fan was so powerful because it was like before the biggest fan and that idea of self loyalty came to me, it was either like I'm either beating myself up or I. Giving myself an out, those were the two modes I was operating in all the time. I'm beating myself up in the beating myself up was I thought was moving me forward.
And so then to recognize, oh, I could have this biggest fan who can move me forward, hold my feet to the fire. She's she can be pushing me, but she's kind about it. She wants what's best for me. She's not just blindly. Pushing me. She's this is what we want. This is going to be good. This is hard.
Here we go. Let's do this. You don't want to get up early. You don't want to go walk. The dog you'll feel better when you do one of my things as I've been trying to do the morning pages from the artist's way. So I'd been trying to do morning pages, and then I don't want to do them morning pages, or you just sit and write three pages.
Dump your brain. And it's like the meditation thing. They don't want to do it, but then it makes me feel so much better. It's a connection to myself that it's, that, that is a theme that I want this year for me. I haven't mapped it out the way you have with yours, which is why that's inspiring to me, but to figure out how can I keep building that connection with myself?
Because my tendency is to always go outside and morning pages is helping me do that, but it's something that I fight almost every day. And that's where the biggest fan comes in to be like, sit down button, see, do this. You'll feel better, go not your big fat loser. You promised yourself you do this. Why can't you do it?
But just let's go, let's do this. We'll feel better. Come : on.
Sean: Another question for you about this too, as one of the things that I hear you, as you're talking about this. And I had said this earlier, that as I was setting out, as I was laying out my intended plan for this year, I'm fortunate that I don't deal with.
High functioning anxiety. I have anxiety. I'm not a perfectionist. Sometimes to a flaw, I could be a little bit harder on myself. I could use a little bit more of the biggest fan saying, Hey, yo, you should do something because most of the time I'm pretty consensus content. Just sit on the couch and knit and.
I'm very prone to if come middle of the year, I don't want to do it anymore. I was like, that was fun. And I move on. I don't beat myself up over it. And what I hear and I've observed in with people who do, who are high functioning with their anxiety, is that the failure really gets to them. The performance anxiety for themselves.
And that one thing that. The idea of setting out a plan for what you're going to do, and then have someone tell you and then hold it loosely as it's like, what the blankety blank do you mean by holding it loose? What are you talking about? You're not going to get anything done, right? Am I
Nancy: said that earlier on, you were like, and then you just hold it loosely.
I was like what the blippity blip is holding it loosely?. I was like, okay, hold it loosely. Like I have no clue what that means. (Laughter)
Sean: even, I heard myself saying, I was just like, I'm going to pause here and come back to this because, cause I know that my wife, whenever I say, hold something loosely, thinks LOSERS hold things loosely
Nancy: (Laughter)
They're there in lies. A big challenge though, right? Because when we're talking herself being self loyal, surely there has to be somewhere in there. There is that balance as a compromise, there is that position and posture that allows for you to push yourself towards change. But also to not totally beat yourself down when your human frailty kicks in, do you have anything to say to that?
Nancy: That idea of human frailty is what makes my skin crawl more so used to then does now soldier on, suck it up. I can do anything. Just give me the right map and the fact that there is human frailty. Is really annoying to me is one thing. But whereas you were talking about that idea of failure. I was thinking about, so last Christmas I was going to get into bread, making pre COVID.
I was going to get into bread making and I got this book and all the that go with bread making. And my first couple loaves, they tasted. Okay. But they weren't great. And it drove me crazy because there was no here's how you bake bread. There was you feel it and it feels marshmallowy. And it's super talk about holding it loosely.
Like the people that teach about how to teach bread, it's loose. It's very loose. And so I gave it up because how can I win? How do I win? I just want to know how to win. That's always my Mo how do I do this? And I decided let's just make bread for the enjoyment of making bread. Let's not make bread for the sake of.
Click this off the list. I'm a bread maker, but that there's going to be winning and losing all the way around. Let's hold this process loosely. And the more I baked bread of what marshmallow we felt like and what it smelled like when I had over proofed it and that sort of thing, it became more apparent to me.
And so like last night I made bread and it was the best. It was awesome. It was beautiful. It tasted really good. And in a part of me was like, oh I've figured this out. This is over, like I've done this. And then another part of me was like, dude, you made one good luck. But, we're still holding this process loosely.
There's more to learn. There's more to do. There's another loaf of doing the same thing. And so my challenge when I was this past year, when I was making the bread was I made the same bread over and over and over and over again, I didn't up my game. I did try a new kind. I just kept making the same loaf.
And then I figured that out, like I figured out all the techniques and now I can go do something else. And I think to me that. Big aha of recognizing this isn't linear. There's a lot to this. There's a lot to temperature and ingredients and there's all these unknowns. And so bread making has become a metaphor for me on how to do life in a bigger way, because it's, you gotta hold it.
Sean: I love that metaphor because it's a very simple set of variables, right? Yes. Water, flour, yeast, and hopefully salt. Yeah. And from there, the variables and fire and the complexity and nuance within a small set of variables. Yeah, that's great. I love that metaphor.
Nancy: That's one reason I've always strayed from art is how do you know.
Yeah. And it's interesting. So I think it is hard. That's why resolutions, the way you're talking about resolutions is the loose idea. Notice all your examples of resolutions were very loose. My resolutions were stopping, drinking, stopping, eating, stopping, they're more winning and losing their all or nothing.
Yeah. Either did this or I didn't. A huge thank you to Sean, because it takes so much courage to be willing to show up here and be so vulnerable. We'll be back next week with part two, where you will hear about my plans for 2021, along with how I plan to challenge myself this year.