Archways' Threads

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Archways' Threads, a show focusing on the threads of family and recovery support services that help make up the tapestry of life in recovery. Join us as we share stories from peers and participants in the field and practice of peer recovery support and family support and strengthening. And now your host, Archways CEO Michelle Lennon.

Michelle Lennon 00:28
Hi, this is Michelle Lennon, host of the Archways' Threads podcast, and we are continuing our conversation with Cara LaPlante today about identity-based goal setting. And we are glad you're here with us, and we hope you enjoy this podcast.

Michelle Lennon 00:45
All right, so we can change our beliefs, upgrade our identity based on the experiences we create. So, at some point, I felt like, "Oh, I am a fit and healthy leader," because I was running every day. I was watching my diet, duplicating that. I have fallen backwards, right, because again, consequence-based goals not in front of me. I haven't been working with a coach for some time, and I recognize it, so my awareness is such that I just engaged another coach, just joined a local gym, you know, recognizing that I need that accountability still, that some of these things have not become so ingrained in me that I'm a fit and healthy leader. I'm still working at it, you know, but it's a journey. And I think that's a big thing that we sometimes forget, that we make progress all the time. I mean, I definitely made progress, you know, as far as getting protein and drinking more water, exercising more than I ever have, getting my steps in, those things. I've made progress. I'm just not where I want to be yet. And I think most of us, that's the journey of life, is you're always trying to grow in some area, but I think about this because with new experiences we create a body of evidence for ourselves, so it's like every choice we make is that vote for who we want to become. You know, James Clear talks about that in his book Atomic Habits, and a repetition reinforces and strengthens that new belief, so it's like, okay, so if I'm not doing the things that reinforce that belief of being a fit and healthy leader, if I'm eating the Pop Tarts, right, if I'm not making it to the gym, if I start eating, you know, a gallon of ice cream at night again, yeah, like I know that I'm slipping from who I want to be from the identity that I want to cling to, at this point, or what I'm working towards. So, Carol S. Dweck, so she's the author of that book, Mindset. She talks about four beliefs that hold people back, and do you want to talk about those a little bit?

Cara LaPlante 03:02
Totally, yeah. Our mindset, I think, aligns with our beliefs, because our mindset in different situations, in different scenarios, I think, is also a part of what is going to reinforce our beliefs. So for beliefs that hold us back, if we're talking about limiting identities, how do we look at, or how will we respond to, failures and setbacks? Right. We talked a little bit about this just a minute ago, but are we looking at it as, you know, a catastrophe and a fatal disruption, or are we looking at it as a challenge to learn from? How do we look at setbacks and failures? Because I think failure, too, like, doesn't have to have a negative connotation, but we automatically assume that it's poor. And I think that's an interesting, like, societal mindset, maybe, but--and when we look at failures and setbacks, a setback and a failure is only negative if we don't choose to learn from it. And when we do experience a failure and a setback, we can, kind of, take a step back and say, like, "What can I learn from this? What led me to this point? And what can I do differently next time to get a better outcome?" Another mindset is how we respond to feedback. We're getting feedback all the time from just our peers, strangers on the road or on the sidewalk, in work, from our friends. And when we're receiving feedback, are we looking at it as condemnation, are we looking at it as a personal attack to our character, or are we taking it as something that can be helpful for our growth? I think this is important, because when we have our beliefs about ourselves and someone on the outside maybe challenging that or bringing awareness to something that maybe we weren't aware of yet, and that's not a bad thing. It's just an opportunity to reflect on how we're showing up in the world and how we can show up in a way that more aligns with who we really are.

Michelle Lennon 05:23
I always think it depends on who is challenging me, you know, how my emotions get wrapped up in that. And I know some people are very reactive to everything, every little bit of criticism that comes their way. For me, some people I just let it roll off my back. If I think it's got validity, I want to learn. I think having that growth mindset is about learning from different people, different things. Like, right now, I'm going through another coaching program for--I love coaching programs, by the way. I just feel like, you know, when we can latch on to people who have done the things that you want to do and have gone the route that you want to go, like, you can learn from them. Actually, working with a team from somebody who scales a business to a billion-dollar business, basically, and got into this coaching program for CEOs, and just already have been like mind-boggled by the stuff that they're showing me that I didn't recognize. I think going through that capacity-building cohort broke the glass ceiling for me. It really taught me that if I want to go to the next level, I just need to find those people that are willing to mentor me to get there, and I can learn anything if I put my mind to it. Can't do anything, I'll say. You know, I'm never gonna be a gymnast, you know.

Cara LaPlante 06:44
There's reality.

Michelle Lennon 06:45
But there's reality too. But growing is something we can all do.

Cara LaPlante 06:49
And I think that's such a prime example of why talking about this as peer-support workers is so important, because what you're just describing is accessing peer support.

Michelle Lennon 06:59
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 06:59
Just for a different realm, a different objective, but as peer-support workers and recovery coaches, and CRSWs, we are that mentor. We are examples of changing lifestyles and behaviors.

Michelle Lennon 07:15
Yeah. And I think in our field--the recovery community organizations, the family resource centers--we are really good at that. You know, as far as the leaders. I know I've got my go-to people, and--Erin Pettengill, who's now a bigwig at Lakes Region Community Services now. She's not the director of a family resource center anymore, but she is somebody that would be, like, a go-to person for me; Brenda Guggisberg out of the Upper Room. There are people that have done the work that I do that I can learn from, because we're all--we all bring different gifts and talents to the table. And I think that's another place where people sometimes get caught up is how they respond to other people's success.

Cara LaPlante 07:56
Oof.

Michelle Lennon 07:56
You know, that sometimes it's a limiting belief that they get jealous or they look at themselves and compare, and it's, like, getting angry at somebody for where you're falling short. You know, you can see other people's success as something to aspire to, something to be excited about, you know, that--celebrate with them their wins, but other people's success, like, it can really serve as evidence of what is possible for us when we grow, and I think that's one of the reasons why I love the coaching programs, because I do look at people and say, "Well, you've got what I want. How do I get there? Teach me!" But--and you can ask those questions, like, "What are they doing different than what I've done? What beliefs might they have that are different from my own that help them to get where they are?" And then learn from them, rather than being jealous or spiteful or resentful that somebody's doing better than you.

Cara LaPlante 08:58
Absolutely.

Michelle Lennon 08:59
So I think that's another common limiting belief we sometimes see. Yeah, and sometimes we see it even within families when people are affected by substance use, because, you know, somebody suddenly enters recovery, and it's not like a magic wand is waved to fix everything that got broken during active use sometimes in relationships, so we sometimes see it that way also. And then, you know, there's all this kind of specific beliefs that people struggle with, you know, about things like self-worth, that they're not worth the investment. They may not recognize that that's what they're telling themselves, but when they don't want to pay for health insurance. They don't want to pay the money to go to marriage counseling with their partner, because it's $95 an hour, or something. Or time, you know, I used to--I think, with the limiting beliefs, I struggled with in getting fit, it was like I don't have time to go to the gym.

Cara LaPlante 10:04
Mm hm.

Michelle Lennon 10:04
I saw a personal trainer for a while. I felt like I was wasting my money, because I was missing appointments all the time. Didn't even think it was a factor of scheduling during the work day, you know, or at the--right at the end of the work day, when sometimes work goes late. Didn't even dawn on me, you know, that that time--my belief around time was like, "I didn't have time, I didn't have time." It was, like, what I kept poisoning my mind with, I guess, and I would think about money. "I don't have the money for that. I don't have the money to go to the gym. I don't have money for a coach. I don't have money for a trainer right now." But really it's about priorities.

Cara LaPlante 10:44
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 10:44
About priorities, but whatever it is, if someone has mastered the thing that you've struggled with, you can learn from them, right, and I always think about, where are you and where do you want to go and what do you need in the gap, because usually it's knowledge, education, resources.

Cara LaPlante 11:02
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 11:03
You know, investing someplace. And I know for me, this gym that I just signed up, one of the limiting beliefs I struggled with is I would tell myself all the time, "I am not a morning person." All the time I would say this. Now, one of the things that the fitness project challenged me with was thinking about, "Is this even true?" Because I got my kids up for school for 20-something years, you know, and I didn't just get them up to school. I drove them in, I made them lunch, I got their stuff together, and did it happily, and I even would drop them off at the high school and meet my friend for breakfast at the local diner. So, there was a time where I had no problem getting up, so it was kind of like, "Where did this belief come from?"

Cara LaPlante 11:50
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 11:51
And it was kind of like, yeah, repeated behaviors reinforce the belief. Well you know, the longer I would stay in bed and roll out at the last minute, the more frantic my mornings would become. So then, yeah, I don't look like a morning person, because my mornings were a mess, because I was staying in bed too late, you know.

Cara LaPlante 12:06
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 12:07
And so, like, with the new--learning this about myself, though, working with the fitness project, for a season, taught me that I just have to get up a half-hour earlier of wherever I want to start my day. So this gym that I just signed up for has a CrossFit workout every morning at 6:30 in the morning, so it doesn't interfere with my work schedule, doesn't interfere with my private life schedule. I don't know that I'll ever get to the place of saying I'm a morning person, but I have challenged that limiting belief in myself, recognizing that when I do get up a half-hour earlier, I make my water with lemon, I take my vitamins, I make usually a smoothie for breakfast, like, I get to the chiropractor for 7:30 in the morning, like, all these different things that benefit my health and wellness, which leads to being a fit and healthy leader. So it's like I'm looking for that identity to be true, and the tasks that lead to that identity just kind of follow in that.

Cara LaPlante 13:10
Absolutely, and I think about working with participants, and when they express a limiting belief of, "I'm just not--I guess I'm just not strong enough." That's one thing I've heard. "I guess I'm not just motivated. I guess I'm just not motivated enough." And you know, I think there's a couple things we can do as coaches, but I think one thing we can do is, I say, respond in a way that's like, "I hear what you're saying, but I've also heard you say that you are working three jobs to support you and your family, and you're managing your time, and you're taking care of your house." Like, "How is that not strength?"

Michelle Lennon 13:47
Mm mm.

Cara LaPlante 13:47
And how is that not determination?

Michelle Lennon 13:50
Right.

Cara LaPlante 13:50
You know, and I think that's one thing we can do as coaches is, when we really listen, we pick up a negative belief, we can show--just reshow--them the evidence that they've already shown us.

Michelle Lennon 14:01
Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, and sometimes we can do those belief audits, you know. I think that was one of the helpful things that I went through with the fitness project, was what did I really believe about things that had to do with my wellness, and--like I thought carbs were bad. Well, carbs are not bad. It's the kind of carbs that that you have. It's perfectly fine to have as much broccoli and spinach as you want. Guess what? Those are carbs. But--and I had a big gap in nutritional knowledge. Like, I did not know the difference between a whole grain and a seed. Like chia seeds? What's that? Quinoa? Huh? Farro? Never heard of it. And this guy Steven, who is a great coach, kind of walked me through a bunch of information around nutrition, and it was so important because I had been diagnosed as prediabetic, and the doctors--I tend to be in agreement that they treat symptoms, not conditions, and that's kind of, like, where my healthcare professional was going. And I worked with this coach and changed my diet and improved some of my exercise around heart health and stuff, and dropped below that line, so like, I'm no longer prediabetic.

Cara LaPlante 15:21
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 15:22
Can't eat the Pop-Tarts, though. There will be consequences, right? But just an example of the fitness audit that I had gone through, it was like, fitness is: and it's like, what is it to you? Fitness is not: what is it to you, right? Working out is, I would say, a challenge, it's hard, I don't have time, all those different things. People who are really healthy or fit, what do they look like to you? Whenever I gain weight, I immediately think, what? Or eating healthy is what, I think, boring. No Pepperidge Farm lemon cake anymore, exactly. And like I didn't--I had no idea, like, how delicious healthy food can be with spices, you know, because most spices are fine. In fact, some spices are really good for you, like cinnamon and turmeric and black pepper with the turmeric, but you find out about that stuff when you get the knowledge and the resources to fill in those gaps for where you are, where you want to go, no matter what it is, really in life, when you're talking about building those identity-based goals.

Cara LaPlante 16:34
And a peer-support worker has so much opportunity to be addressing that gap for our participants that they may have identified. And we can, by doing the belief audit and getting a better sense of what's going on inside our participants, we can start to help them shift that belief. If we are picking up on those limiting beliefs, as a coach, we can, with the right knowledge and skills, we can help them shift that into a more empowering identity.

Michelle Lennon 17:06
Yeah, and we care about the steps to shifting a belief. And when there's steps you can follow, it's easy to replicate those people, right, helping them shift a belief. So, the first thing is really coming to awareness, right. And sometimes we have to ask those good questions, use our motivational interviewing skills, and ask. And like, for me, that was the big thing for me. It was like, "What do I say to myself? What do I say to myself around my relationship with food?" That was a big one.

Cara LaPlante 17:38
Mm mm.

Michelle Lennon 17:39
And then what actions did that lead to? So cleaning my plate, it was definitely related to my thought process, and those tapes that would run in my head about, "Don't waste it," or, "Don't waste the food. Don't waste the money you spent on it."

Cara LaPlante 17:53
Mm hm.

Michelle Lennon 17:53
"Don't not finish it when there are other people that don't get to eat." That's always going to be true, you know, but what impact does it have on my health? And then thinking that curiosity. Is the belief true? So, thinking about the whole, "I'm not a morning person." You know, it really wasn't true. It was more that it was behaviorally conditioned into me, because of my own decisions, based on my work schedule, that I didn't have to get up so early anymore, because I didn't have kids to get up for school. And then there were consequences, because these beliefs cost me. It made me prediabetic, not paying attention to what fuel I was putting in my body. It made my mornings frantic. It's like--every morning, it's like, "Where's my key? Where's my glasses? Where's my phone?" Going out to the car, going back into the house, because I don't have the key, and just seeing how much it cost me to have some of those limiting beliefs. And when we're working with participants, of course, we talk about addiction health, and where are the limiting beliefs around addiction health. But when we stabilize some--you know, help somebody get to that place where they're pretty stable, six months out, a year out, to move from those consequence-based kind of recovery planning sessions to really thinking about who do they want to be in this life. It can be magical for people, and then we help them build the evidence. What would life be like, either without the belief, if it's a negative one, like my morning story, right, and what would the opposite look like? What would it be in, say--for me, you know, getting rid of that, "I'm not a morning person," just changed my mornings to be much more peaceful, not starting my day a frantic mess the same way. I'm still high-strung, I think I'm always going to be a Tigger, you know, not a Winnie-the-Pooh, but just recognizing that I created some of the dramatic start to my day, just by that one limiting belief governing my behavior. Because when you roll out of bed 10 minutes before you have to be out the door, of course you're going to be frantic. And it just seems so common-sense to me now, but when you don't have awareness that these limiting beliefs are operating on you, you just don't have the awareness. So, sometimes your behavior flows from these beliefs that you're not even conscious of.

Cara LaPlante 20:28
Yeah, and also, if you don't have the awareness that you have the power to change that.

Michelle Lennon 20:33
Right.

Cara LaPlante 20:34
You don't have to be stuck in that cycle.

Michelle Lennon 20:36
Right, right. And, and then we can condition the change belief through repetition, and we reinforce it with action. It was like the running, you know. I started, like I said, just walking 15 minutes a day. I listened to this Australian guy on the free Fitbit walking app, and I would walk with him, and can hear his voice, and he would start at--power walking is what it was supposed to be, but I started running over that, so that I was to the point where every time he was doing a power walk, I was running, and then I would do a recovery walk in between when he would do his recovery walk. And yeah, I could hear his voice, you know, in the music. And yeah, that was the reinforcement with action that happened, so that suddenly my belief changed in a positive direction. "I'm a runner!"

Cara LaPlante 21:26
Absolutely.

Michelle Lennon 21:28
So, that's another way we can help our participants reach those goals by helping them with the repetition, like setting up plans for repetition, scheduling it on your Google calendar.

Cara LaPlante 21:42
Exactly.

Michelle Lennon 21:42
You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 21:44
I think that's a really good note, because we started talking about, you know, the concrete need goals being task management, and I don't think that goes away in this process.

Michelle Lennon 21:54
Right

Cara LaPlante 21:54
But I think it's a part of the process, not the whole puzzle.

Michelle Lennon 21:58
Right. Because, like, for me, the goal now is to become a fit and healthy leader. The tasks that flow out of that are, like, drinking half my body weight in water a day, and it's paying attention to the food that I put in my body, staying away from processed foods as much as possible, staying away from the Pop Tarts. That's a processed food. I don't feel guilty at all that I just ate those, right? Yeah, but you know, we can align the tasks, the smart goals with that kind of strategic direction that we're moving in, according to the identity we seek.

Cara LaPlante 22:40
Mm hm.

Michelle Lennon 22:41
And we can explore these concepts to help participants get clear on their own self-concept and upgrade their identity, because basically that's what most people are after is upgrading their identity, because true behavior change is identity change. James Clear directly says that in his book, Atomic Habits, but when we think about identity-based goals and habits, why this is so important is because they are statistically proven to be more effective in driving long-term change. And when it comes to recovery, we talk about the life in addiction, but the life in recovery can be so much longer, through the rest of somebody's life, and when you--I mean, you're in your 20s, the rest of your life in front of you, the whole thing ahead of you. And then for other people, it doesn't matter really how old you are when you find recovery, but the rest of your life would be governed by that, so what you're talking about--we're after those long-term changes, right? And so when we think about upgrading the identity, it becomes a worthy goal, because we know statistically that means the long-term change will stick.

Cara LaPlante 23:52
Absolutely.

Michelle Lennon 23:53
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 23:53
Yeah.

Narrator 23:59
Thank you for listening to Archways' Threads. If there is a topic you'd like to see us cover, email us at podcast@archwaysnh.org or call us at 603-960-2128. Visit our website at archwaysnh.org to learn more about the Archways Family of Recovery and Family Resource Centers.