You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 104. Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, fortune 100 executive, and certified life coach, Shannan Christiansen.

So happy to back with you. So we are right now in the middle of a 2.0 series where I’m going a little deeper on some topics that I’ve taught here in the podcast before. Today, I’m going to teach about the fear of judgment. I first introduced the concept of how fear shows up in episode five. You can go back and catch that one if you’ve not, it’s at bflycoaching.com/5.

But before we get into today’s show, I want to give a listener shout out, and this is to Lori Fox. This podcast has changed my life because it led me to the Transform Weight Loss group. Even though I’m in Transform and indulge in all the goodness too, I still come to these podcasts for daily guidance. I listen to them while working around the house, driving, or mowing the lawn. I love it. It’s become my time to myself and for myself. Listening to these really helps me focus on me and my goals and really touches every single aspect of life, not just weight loss. I have lost weight, but there’s so much more to it than that. Before learning from Shannan, I thought weight was my “main fault,” but now I truly love my body, which I didn’t think was possible until I reached my goal. I have better relationships and better overall thoughts, all while not settling and continuing to improve myself. Everything about the podcast, Transform and Shannan, I feel was really meant to be. I’m still a work in progress and looking forward to my future and my goals with no more shame from my past. Thank you Shannan.

And her title of her review is this is more than weight loss. Oh Lori, Lori. You know, Lori is a young mom and you know, I’ve watched Lori and her journey and I’m just so proud of her. You know, she’s a busy wife, mother, you know, she works. She has, you know, lots of interests and she’s doing lots of things and she still showing up for herself. And I love me some Lori. And I’m so proud of you, Lori.

If you find what you learn here valuable listening to the show, you can help other women find this show by leaving a review and rating of the show. You can also subscribe. You can do that by hitting the follow button or clicking on the plus sign if you’re in Apple, or hitting the subscribe button wherever you’re listening. This way, every Wednesday I’m in your library.

My love, can you even believe it is almost October. Time is flying so fast. When this podcast is launched, it will be when Transform Weight Loss program is open and we’re opening on September 21st and closing on September 27th for the remainder of the year. And honestly, I can’t believe we’re here.

We’re in the middle of a challenge. We have so many things going on and we’re getting ready to close Transform for all of 2021. I like to spend the last three months of the year really digging in with my Transform bosses, helping them through the holidays and finishing the year strong. I don’t power down at the end of the year. I just like to spend it with all my ladies in Transform. Of course, every week I’ll still be here on the podcast. Now, if you want to learn more about Transform, go to bflycoaching.com/join, J O I N, to learn more.

Winter is coming my love. I love thinking about that. And I’m so excited. If you’ve ever watched Game of Thrones you know that saying, I know many of you listening, grieve a little as you think about winter coming, you are going to miss summer. But it is the opposite for me. I opened my door this morning and it was only 72 out. I felt a little breeze. It gets me excited for fall and winter. I love hiking with Paul and getting outdoors. I just cannot wait.

So let’s get into today’s show. The idea for today’s episode actually came from Jenn Taylor, one of my Transform Weight Loss coaches. She was thinking about the judgment of others and how we’re so afraid of it. So let’s talk about judgment for a moment. You know my love, we think others are always judging us. We do. We have these what I like to call puddle thoughts, right?

We think we know what others are thinking, because maybe we’ve judged others. But judgment, it really truly comes from how we think of ourselves. What we think of ourselves is often what we judge in others. So if there’s something about ourselves that we don’t like, or we think should be different, then we judge others. And this all comes from this, you know, inner work of really not loving ourselves. And I say this because this work of starting to love ourselves and really starting to not judge ourselves, it does really help us in this whole, you know, concept of judgment.

And I have to say this my love because judgment and this fear of judgment, what it really does is it keeps us from showing up for ourselves. It keeps us from taking risks, from trying new things, from doing different things. What happens is when we’re afraid of what others might think, we live a very dull life. We don’t take chances. We don’t live our best lives. I think about this when it comes to when I was losing my weight. I used to have this really huge fear of loose skin and looking older than I was.

And again, this comes from socialization to be honest, right? We don’t, we don’t celebrate the beauty of women and all shapes and sizes and ages. And so I would have this fear that what if I had loose skin? And so it was the craziest thing because I had this thought that I’d rather live in a body that was uncomfortable, where I didn’t have energy, where my joints hurt and my knees hurt and my back hurt and my shoulders hurt. I’d rather live that then have a little extra loose skin. I say this because love, this was a true fear of mine. I thought, well, what if I lose this weight and then people know that at this one time I weighed 315 pounds.

I mean, it was really like when I think about it, it was kind of a crazy thought. But again, this is how our brain is my love, and there’s no judgment. I don’t have judgment for me back then, nor for any of you, because our brains have these illogical thoughts, these fears that come up, and we just have to like be aware of them, really understand them. See my love, I have loose skin, I have wrinkles, and I would not trade the way that my body feels today for putting on another, you know, hundred and so pounds. Right. I just wouldn’t. Oh my goodness. I wouldn’t trade it for any of that. I would not live in that body that I used to live in compared to the way that I feel today.

And I say this my loves, because just starting to be aware of how this judgment and it, you know, shows up and what we do when we start to fear what others might think. I think about this too, just even with this business. So I’ve always worked for a company. I’ve had a very successful career and here I am, you know, starting this business and helping women lose weight and live their very best lives. And I tell you my loves, I am sure that there are people who judge me. I’m sure there are people who are like, what is she doing? Who does she think she can be? You know, all the things.

But one, I don’t know that that’s the truth. I have no idea. Two, I don’t care what other people think. Because at the end of the day, my why, the why I want to start this business, why I want to serve and help women, that is what guides me, and ultimately what I think and believe about myself. See loves, this fear of judgment of others is because we fear feeling shame, and shame is a very powerful emotion.

And we fear that we might feel shame and we’ve all felt some shame before, and it doesn’t feel that good. And so we start to create this fear and we start to create this fear that it actually paralyzes us. It keeps us from starting things. It keeps us from moving forward. I see this with ladies all of the time. So see my loves, we basically fear what might happen if we fail, whether we lose weight or not. So it’s kind of like this double-edged sword. We have these thoughts about if I lose weight, I fear the judgment of others. I might have loose skin. My role in my family. People might not like me. People might not love me. Okay? So we have those fears, right? All of those fears. And then if we don’t lose weight, we have all of these fears of, oh my gosh, I’m living in this body. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I’m failing. I’m not doing enough. Right? So either way, it’s almost like either way we’re just in this mind drama.

And so I tell you this, because we have this fear of judgment, we have this fear of failure, and it just really keeps us paralyzed. It keeps us stuck. We tell ourselves all of these excuses. I mean, we do. We tell ourselves we don’t have time to lose weight. We don’t have time to show up for ourselves. We can’t afford it. We tell ourselves that, you know, our family needs us, that all these other things are more important than us. But love, these are just excuses that we tell ourselves and it’s all rooted, all of it is just rooted in this fear that we might feel shame because we might be judged. We might fail. And this is such an, a powerful emotion.

It drives so much of our actions. And I just want you to be aware. When Jenn was, you know, we were slacking about this, I really started to think about how this has shown up for me so many times in my life, where I didn’t move forward, I didn’t even begin. I didn’t even start something, because I was so afraid of other’s judgment or, and their judgment because what if I failed? And I just want you to really think about how is this showing up in your life, and how can you just start to become aware of this? See if we fail, we could feel shame, but I just want to offer you a different thought. What if you don’t fail?

What if you feel amazing losing your weight, living your best life, having some loose skin. I promise you that it feels a hundred times better than where you are right now. So I just one, want you to get honest about where your fear of failure is. What are the thoughts that you are thinking right now about your weight loss journey and losing weight for the last time? How is this fear of judgment, fear of failure showing up? And two, decide on purpose what you want to think. I will go back to this over and over again. You are in control my love. You are an adult woman. You are a boss. You get to decide what you want to think and believe. No one can tell you what to think. No one can tell you what to believe.

It is the one power that we have. It’s our super power. We get to decide what we want to think and believe. So, decide on purpose, what you want to believe about your weight loss journey. And then three, decide that you can feel shame, that it will be okay. No feeling has ever killed you. I think about the worst moments of my life, where I was feeling shame or grief or loss, and I still got up. And my love, so have you. And number four, decide to get past the fear of judgment. Because my love, the only opinion that matters is yours. See, we always have these thoughts that others are judging us, and what if they’re saying this or what if they’re, you know, thinking this?

But we don’t know what they’re thinking. I just like to think everybody loves me. It really does help me in my life because we live in a delusion. So I might as well live in the delusion that everyone thinks I’m amazing. It’s way better than thinking all of these other thoughts about their judgment or that,  you know, they’re not liking what I, what I’m doing. You know, all the things. And honestly, your opinion about yourself really is the only one that matters. When you love yourself love, nothing else matters. You start to find that your capacity to love others, your capacity grows to accept love from others. And so really this work on learning to love yourself, learning to let go of the fear of judgment, oh my love, it is everything.

So today’s transformational questions and actions are one, get honest about your fear of failure and ask yourself this question – What are the thoughts you are thinking about losing weight for the last time? Two, decide on purpose what you want to think and believe about your weight loss journey. Three, decide you can feel shame it will be okay. No feeling has killed you. Four, decide to get past the fear of judgment, because the only opinion that ever has mattered is the opinion that you have of yourself.

And if you’re ready to take this work deeper and let go of the fear of judgment and want my help, then join my membership Transform Weight Loss program. You can learn more at bflycoaching.com/join. So good my love. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come on over to bfly.coaching.com. See you next week.