You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast. With the Shannan Christiansen. Episode number 145! 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. Hello! So happy to be here with you today.

We have a special guest co-host today with me, Transform Boss Weight Loss, coach Jen Taylor. I love her. And I’m so excited that she’s with me today. We have a good topic today. I mean, they’re all good. They are, but this one I really love. So if you are a woman, you want to listen to this for sure,

because we’re going to talk all the things about how we carry so much shame and guilt for showing up for ourselves for having dreams, for having goals. So I cannot wait episode 145. You know, we’re five episodes from 150. I can’t believe it. We’re going to do a little something special at episode 150. We also, we have so much fun stuff going on and transform boss,

weight loss. We have our Transform Boss seven day challenge. So if you are not in it, you want to get in it and go to bflycoaching.com/me just me register for that. It’s seven days of everyday live with me, replays daily, simple challenges, daily videos. I really teach the basics of how to start your journey to losing weight for the last time.

And so the challenges are fun, supportive. I think ladies just, they start to find that they can do this so good. So you want to do that. And then of course, mark your calendars, July 12th, we open July 12th through the 16th. Transform Boss, weight loss will be open. We’re open for five days. So if you want to come and join us in our membership community and just basically transform your life and weight,

you want to eat. You want to go to jointransformboss.com. That’s where you want to go. July 12th through 16th. So let’s get into today’s episode. Jen has joined me and we are going to really get into this challenge that I believe that women have. I think it comes from many different things. The way that we were brought up, what we witnessed,

the examples that we have in our lives, the women that came before us, our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, even teachers, we have learned in a nutshell that we need to put everyone before ourselves as a mother, sister, wife, daughter, friend, that all the folks come before us. And what happens is that we translate that into not showing up for ourselves and not taking care of ourselves,

not having dreams, not having goals. And then when we start to show up for ourselves, right, because we get little sparks of hope that we’re going to do something for ourselves. We start to have a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, whether you are a mother or you’re not, you have some role in your life, whether it’s,

again, friend, aunt, daughter, sister, employee, even our bosses, right. Have more of a role in our lives than we do. And so today we just want to kind of talk about it and then leave you with a couple of tips of how to start to dream and how to start to show up for yourself before I go any further,

I of course want to bring on Jay. She is kind of a podcast pro. Now she’s been on here a few times and she’s amazing, but Jen, for all of our new ladies, give a little intro to yourself and a little bit about your journey and where you’re at now. Good morning, ladies. My name is Jen Taylor and I live in Utah.

I am a wife and a mom to two boys. So we’re into baseball, all the things right now, a little bit about my journey is, you know, I actually, I mean, I struggled with my weight loss probably started my college years, but then I had lost my weight and I had a pretty significant life event happen. And I just allowed it to,

you know, I kind of lost my footing. I didn’t have this work. I didn’t know how to manage my mindset. And it just sent me down this spiral and I really used, you know, food probably to help buffer through that, to help me get through that, that event as I was working through it. And thankfully I came into this work in 2020,

believe it or not, I, that always blows my mind to think about the timing of that. This work is just incredible to be able to be aware. And of course it’s always a work in progress, but just managing your mindset, having that awareness has been everything for me. Yeah. I, you know, I love it, Jen and Jen is a senior weight loss coach was transformed by us and she helps and serves ladies.

Right? And I think that this is a common theme. Jen is the one who wanted to do this podcast. She recommended it to me because you know, with our clients and with our students, as we’re working with them, they have this difficult time even thinking about a dream. Like what do I even dream? You know, when we’re kids,

right. I think of my grandbabies. They dream all the time. As we go through high school, we start to have goals and we want to achieve this, get married or not get married, have children or not have a career or not. Right. We have all of these things that we are thinking about. And then I think what happens throughout this is that once we kind of settle into whatever our path is in this life,

in our twenties and early thirties, we just think, okay, this is it. And then we start putting our dreams and goals kind of to the side. And it happens slowly. Especially we get busy with our daily lives and having these thoughts like, Hey, I’m just trying to survive. Right. I’m just trying to like do the things and survive in this world and have a career or support my family or you know,

all the different things that we do as women. And so we stopped dreaming. We teach a lot about dreaming and having goals and transform boss and women always. I mean, I would say for the most part really struggle with, well, what do I want? And what do I like? And you know, what makes me happy? What brings me joy?

So often I think that this is one of the reasons that contributes to carrying extra weight. Because when you are not dreaming, you don’t have these goals for yourself. You’re not doing things for yourself. You’re not showing up for yourself. There’s something inside of you that you’re not okay with that. And I always call it the little girl inside of us.

She’s like, Hey, I have these dreams, I have these things. And so what we do is we push her down with food, with cupcakes and chips and pizza and all the things, because we have this fear, shame, guilt around having dreams. I know I struggled with this a lot. You know, I think about when I was a single mom,

I struggled with thinking about myself. You know, I was just trying to provide for my son and raise my son. And the last thing I could even think about was me. And when I did things for myself, I remember even just like having a weekend where he’d go camping with my parents and I would have guilt thinking, well, I should be there.

I should be there with him. I’m going to miss out on something. I’m not going to be the mom that I need to be. So anytime that I would try to do something for myself, I would just have so much shame around it. So Jen, I’d love to hear from you. When you think about, you know, your mom,

wife, daughter, sister, friend, you have a career, all of the things. Tell us a little bit about how shame and guilt have shown up in your dreams. Has there been a time where you stopped dreaming and having goals and how did you kind of like kick start that back again? Yeah. As you were during your experience, I was like,

yes, yes, yes. I have a husband who travels for work. And so a lot of times the responsibility is on me during the week to get things done. And I found myself for a long time where, you know, I would feel exhausted from just doing the daily tasks and I would go take some time for a massage or even just doing nothing.

Right. Just carving out time. Like you said, the kids are off at a friend’s or a family members. And then I would, I would just feel so much guilt and shame that I should be with them right now. I’m missing out. They’re going to remember this forever and think I’m a horrible mom and that I don’t care about them. I felt exhausted.

I would take the time. But then guilt and shame would just creep in. I listened to a lot of different influences. You being one of them, Shannon. And you know, you hear all of different inputs from ladies who have begin to dream again, who have begun to show up for themselves. And it’s like, okay. Yes, I do deserve that too.

And that little girl that you talk about inside of you, like, I love that visual because that is what it is. Right. I giggled a little, as you said, my grandbabies have all these dreams because my boys are the same way. They throw out the craziest, this is what I want to do when I grow up. And somewhere along the way,

we just lose that. We think that we have to fall into a certain role and feel certain shoes and that we no longer get to keep discovering and rediscovering ourselves. And I think that’s where we get stuck. You know, I found that when I stopped dreaming, that’s when I was just going through the motions of life. It just felt like that hamster wheel.

All right, let’s just make it through tonight so I can wake up tomorrow and do it again for me when I started slowly like dreaming for myself again, or showing up for myself, it just ignites something inside of me. And I start to think, you know, what if, like, what if I did this? What is possible? I love that.

Jen. Where do you think you learned that from? Like, when you think about like, go back to that time and space where, you know, you weren’t dreaming, everything was about family, kids, you know, all of the things, maybe you weren’t taking care of yourself in the way that you wanted to. Why do you think that happened?

I think there are many influences. I think that a lot of it stems from just women in my life. I’ve seen them put others before themselves, not to say that they haven’t shown up for themselves, but they’ve put themselves last on the list because to them, they also learned that if you can make others happy, if you can say yes all the time and do all the things that is how it’s supposed to be.

And almost a sense of, I found myself tying my, my worth and my value to that prove that I can do this. Then that creates my worth and my value. Ah, Jan, I think that’s so powerful. Right. You know, when you say that it’s right, we tie our worth and value to this being perfection, right. Being the perfect mom,

being the perfect wife, the perfect daughter. And we find ourselves in this competition. Right. And I think this shows up even more now. I think even then when I was a young mother, I think of, you know, social media and all of the things. And I think it builds up to this pressure. I remember feeling this, you know,

when I was a young mother, you know, I was a single mother and I didn’t want my son to not have things that other kids had who had both parents. And so I even put more pressure on myself to do all the things. And I remember doing extraordinary parties or making sure he had a school project that it was over the top, just putting this pressure on myself for things that at the end of the day,

really had nothing to do with my worth or value. I was always worthy. I was always doing the best that I could. And you know, I think that this competition comes into play as women. I think, you know, there’s some societal pressures and things that play in there that kind of pit us against each other. It’s one of the things that I love about transformed boss,

weight loss, right? Is this really supportive community of women where no one’s competing and no one trying to outdo the other. But when I think of my life, I have done that. I have competed even sometimes unknowingly where, you know, I see someone and I want to be like them and it doesn’t even have to be a negative thing. But what it does is puts this extraordinary pressure on us as women to be perfect.

What happens is when we’re trying to be perfect at all these external things, our internal life really suffers. And I think we start living lives that we don’t even recognize. Yeah. I think that’s just it. Right. You put on the happy face, but internally you’re just like slowly dying inside. Like when you were saying about Shannon, I just remembered even Jake,

my oldest, I struggled with postpartum after I had him and I had this like crazy pressure on myself to even just keep the toys picked up because my house needed to look a certain way. And I just remember that internal feeling of, I’ve got to show up this way as a mom and I look back and how silly, like he’s a kid, of course toys will be out all day long,

you know? And that is just think the beginning for me of where that started to stem, that like expectation that I put on myself to be a certain way to feel valued by others. Yeah. You know, I think probably every woman who’s listening right. As they listen to this can have their own stories, right. Stories about how they have wanted to be the perfect,

whether it’s employee, you know, mom, wife, spouse, partner, friend, daughter, all the roles that we play and perfectionism doesn’t really exist because there’s no perfect stick, right? There’s no like a perfect meter out there. Right. It’s all interpretation. And it’s just a way that we, I think keep ourselves stuck and we sabotage our own selves and we keep ourselves really small.

You know, I think about, we had this call last night, this feelings, workshop and transform boss, weight loss, and Jen was giving this example. We either contract where we go inward and we kind of shut down or we expand. And I think about this even more than feelings, just in how we show up for ourselves. For most many,

many years, many years of my life, I was contracted. I wanted to stay small. I wanted to not make too much of a ruckus, not be an inconvenience, make everyone happy, put on the smiley face. And all that did was really keep me small. And now I think even over the last few years I have just really expanded.

I have really come out of my shell. I have been vulnerable. I share my challenges with other women. I share how I’m feeling. I share my imperfections. And I tell you, I feel so authentic having dreams and goals and showing up for myself and taking care of my mind and my body. My spirit has actually helped me. I’m a better wife,

a better mother, a better boss, a better employee, a better friend, a better daughter. I’m so much better in all of my lives because I’ve expanded, but we have this false thought that if we expand, if we go out there and we take time for ourselves that actually others in our lives, you know, they will suffer. But I just want to challenge that because I think when you show up for yourself,

when you start to take care of yourself and take care of your body and start taking care of your mind and your inner life, that actually you become more of your truer, authentic self, and you have more joy, more happiness, and you show more love to other folks. I could not agree more that when I’m dreaming that I am making and keeping commitments to myself,

I feel my most authentic. And then everybody else around me gets that. You know, I was thinking when we were talking, we say this phrase and transform a lot, but I love it because we do, we think it has to be, or it’s this way or this way. But the truth is, is that you can show up for yourself.

You can dream and you can show up for the others and you show up even better. I think that when we, I know for myself, when I choose to show up for me, whatever that looks like, maybe it’s five minutes, one day or an hour, the next right. But whatever that looks like, I think the way that we choose to show up for ourselves teaches others what to expect from us.

Right? We let them know this is what I’m available for it. This is what to expect from me. If we are just a yes person and saying yes to everything, that’s what they will expect of us. But if we can say no, and we need to, if we can say, you know, I’m going to take a half an hour for myself,

then it just becomes the new normal. And they know how we show up for ourselves. I love that Jen, because I think we consistently want others. You know, we have these thoughts that we want others to treat us really well. But we lead the example in that. I just want all of you who are listening to this, if you don’t love yourself,

if you aren’t taking care of yourself, you’re not taking care of your mind, your body, your spirit, that’s the example. You’re showing others in your life. And so when you expect them to do the work that you’re not even doing, that’s just where the rub comes in, leading and showing example, by caring for yourself, by showing up for yourself,

you’re teaching that to the other folks around you. I love that you brought up this concept and it is a concept for women. I tell you about saying no. You know, I remember when I first was dipping my toe in it. Cause I used to say yes to everything and do everything no matter whatever was asked of me. And as I kind of started to do this,

I realized that again, I can do it in a way with love. I can do it in a way with compromise, right? There’s some times where someone wants something of me and I’m like, oh, I can’t do that, but I can do this. Right. And there’s a way to think of it where you don’t have to forget yourself because when you’re doing things out of this,

I’m saying yes, but I don’t really want to do it. Energy. It’s resentful. You show up, not as your best self. Everything I do now is from yes. Energy with love. And I show up with love because I want to do it. When I say yes, I’m all in. And it feels so good to me, to this part of being women and putting ourselves last.

We just really have to just start to say no to that. We just to start to say, you know what? I’m worthy. I deserve this. I deserve to show up. I deserve to dream. I deserve to have goals. I have this beautiful life ahead of me. And this does not matter what age you are. I think, you know,

I’m going to speak as a woman who is now in her fifties. I have dreams and goals for 50 years to come because I have a whole life. And I don’t want to stop living when you stop living like so many things suffer. But when you have dreams and when you have goals and when you are taking care of, you know, all parts of yourself,

including your inner life, including your mind, everything feels better. And when you live a life that is authentic, that feels like the life that you want to live. When you start to ask yourself, Hey, you know, what do I like to do? So I want to give a few tips. And then I’m going to ask Jen to give a few tips.

But the first one I would say my love is to look at your life and just start to ask yourself the question. What do I want? What do I like doing? What do I, when I’m doing it, time just flies by because it brings me a lot of joy. Now ask this of yourself, not what your kids like to do,

or your spouse or partner. Like, what do you like to do? What brings you joy? And if your brain is like, I don’t know, then go out the second part of this and just start trying things. I mean, there’s a million dreams out there. My loves, there’s so many things to do. You have so many talents and so many capabilities.

And when you start to see what you like to do, your mind starts to get busy. See we overeat for many reasons, but one of them is we don’t have a life that has joy. It has happiness. We’re not using our capabilities and our talents. And so we’re bored. Netflix doesn’t do it right? And so we turn to food.

But when we can turn that the other way, when we can start to think of what we want to do, when we start to be a part of a community and we have that support, my love, it is just every thing. So one, ask yourself these important questions too. And that’s keeping commitments to yourself. I know that we can be afraid to make a commitment to ourselves because we’ve broken them so many times.

But I want to offer to you that you making a commitment to yourself, that you starting to show up for yourself and keeping that commitment. You will start to feel unstoppable. You will start to feel like, whoa, I really got this. And it starts by making a small symbol commitment, baby steps, right? You want to do one step at a time.

You don’t want to do all the things. You don’t have to be perfect, but one single step forward. So Jen, what tips would you have for the ladies? You know, a couple of things that popped in my mind were start being aware of the expectations that you have for yourself or that you think others have of you really be aware of that.

And then just take note of really what the truth is, right? Who do you want to be? And how do you want to show up? Because you know, the way that you need to show up as for you, not what you think others expect of you or how you should show up and just start being aware of your yeses. Are you saying yes,

because you truly want to do something or are you saying yes, because you feel obligated and it’s leading you down that hamster wheel. There’s going to be times that you need to do things. You just don’t feel like doing that’s okay. That’s just life. But there’s a lot of things that we say yes to that we don’t necessarily need to. The second thing that I would offer is,

and I use this a lot with the ladies because I find it so powerful for myself is visualization. It’s going to feel maybe awkward for the first time. But if you can take a moment and sit back and close your eyes and just really visualize what does the best version of you look like? And then like Shannon said, just start choosing one commitment that leads you towards that.

For me, visualization really creates all of those feelings. It creates a place for me to just really dream, right? I see like certain things that my mind might sometimes not allow me to go to otherwise. So those are my two things. I think it goes back to Shannon. What you said is just starting with one commitment and following through with that,

because that is where we are reminding ourselves. We can trust ourselves and that we’re capable. So good. Jen, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing a piece of you and all of your experience and love. I love you so much. You know, ladies, this is it. And I tell you, as I get older, I just have less tolerance taking care of ourselves,

our minds, our bodies, our spirits. It has to be a priority because living in a body that feels heavy, unhealthy that aches that hurts living these lives that we don’t recognize. We must want better for ourselves. Here’s the thing. No one else. Well, you are your hero. No one’s coming for you. No, one’s gonna rescue you.

You are your hero. So what are you going to do today to be your hero? Because I tell you my love. There is just nothing better. When you start to take back your power, fall in love with yourself, show up for yourself because at the end of the day, you will have more love for you and for the others in your life.

And if you really want to go deeper on this work and do not miss the challenge, oh my gosh, it’s coming up. It starts on July 10th and you can register@theflycoaching.com forward slash 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 bflycoaching.com. That’s bflycoaching.com. See you next week.