Put down your instruction manual

Hello ladies, welcome to episode 35. So today I'm going to be talking to you about instruction manuals that we have for other people and for ourselves and how that relates to weight loss. And this is a concept that has drastically changed my whole life. So I wanted to share it with you, but before we get started, as usual, I am going to let you know about my week and everything that's been going on for me.

So as you know, I am batching these episodes in advance because I, at the time of recording, I'm going to be traveling to America for my coach's mastermind. So being in a room of other amazing coaches from across the world, joining together to really work on how we can serve our clients better, how we can start managing our own minds better so that our client's benefit. How we can explain things clearer, make things simpler for our clients and provide even more value to them. That is the reason why I am going to work on my brain so I can help all of you even better. So I'm really excited about that. I started packing. I am going to finish packing over the weekend and I've got all of my things in process. So, for the U S I've got to do a COVID test before I go, and it's all set. I have done all the paperwork and things like that. There were times where I was like, oh my gosh, this is so long. I don't want to do all of this. But then I thought about the end result, I thought about going and spending time with this amazing group of people being in this energy where I would thrive, where my mind would come up with all these concepts and ideas that I can talk about with you and teach you. I just thought I have to be able to make this happen.

I was having mixed emotions because this is the first time that I'm going to be away from my children and my husband for so long. So it's going to be a whole week away from them. And then being four and nearly six I had this kind of thought that they're quite young. They're going to miss me. They keep telling me they're going to miss me. And there was a little bit of mommy guilt there as well. But then I thought about how I find it so important for my boys to see that it's important for mommy to work and daddy to work. It is important for mommy to do things in the house and daddy to do things in the house. And so them seeing me and my husband partnering with each other has been so useful in their development so that they start realizing that it isn't just a woman who does this and a man who does that. But actually everyone is capable of doing everything.

And I really love having that foundation for them. So. If you are listening to this when this airs, then this is the last week to join the group coaching program. I am doing consults all this week and I have slots available to speak to you. So if there's anything in this podcast that you resonate with, if you're thinking, do you know, what she's talking about - these things that I know are an issue, but I haven't worked on, then this is the time to take action. I am waiting to help you. I am going to be there to hold your hands. Every step of the way. And when I say, hold your hand every step of the way, I mean, I'll have your back. I'll be able to coach you hard throughout all of this.

And sometimes coaching is quite difficult to take on because as your coach, I show you your mind, right? I show you what your brain is offering, that you may not have even been aware of. And so sometimes I have to tell you the hard thing quite often, actually. And so I say it with the utmost love for you and utmost belief in you, because I know that when you are able to overcome these thought barriers, then the world is truly your oyster, that you can achieve anything that you put your mind to.

And as you know, the group coaching program is that place where you can finally lose the weight. Where you don't have to keep worrying about your weight. Well, you don't have to go to a restaurant and think, oh gosh, I'm going to put on so much weight. Well, you don't have to dread going to a family wedding where you can actually have one size of clothes in your closet and all of them fit amazinglu. This is what is possible for you.

So if that is for you, then please go to www.amruticoaching.com and schedule a free consult. I would be honored to help you. Okay. Let's get started with this week's episode.

So I'm going to be talking to you about manuals today and manuals are when you have something like an instruction manual for someone else.

So it's when you expect someone to do X, Y, or Z for you to feel a certain way. So this is a concept derived by Brooke Castillo, one of my mentors, and it has changed my whole life. So I wanted to share it with you and come from the angle of how it relates to weight loss and what I've seen in my clients and how I can help you overcome your manuals for other people and for yourself.

So when you have a manual for someone, if you think about someone you may struggle to get on with or someone that you may think of as a problem person, I want you to keep them in mind during this episode. And when talk about it, I want you to try and put into context and start using some of the tools that I'm going to teach you on this episode.

So when you are expecting that person to do something for you to feel better or feel a certain way, it's often an unsaid thing. So it's often that we don't even tell the other person. And what's also really important is that we don't often realize that we actually have this instruction manual. So when we end up doing this, when we end up expecting that person to act in a certain way, for us to feel better, we end up giving our power away to the other person, because in this instance, the other person needs to change for us to feel better.

Right. So I'm going to give you an example. This is something that used to come up for me quite often. And that is the instruction manual that I had for my husband. Now, this took a few months to unravel, but it's something that I worked on when I first started coaching, I was being coached for weight loss, and this is what we worked on.

And one of the things on my instruction manual for my husband was that I wanted my husband to put the rubbish out. And if he didn't I'd feel annoyed. So. When I had this instruction manual, the interesting thing is I didn't even really talk to him about it. I didn't openly say, can you put the rubbish out? I would appreciate it if you could put the rubbish out. I didn't say anything. I just expected him to do it.

And when I expected him to do it, I expected him to read my mind and I expected him to just know that he had to put the rubbish out. And if he didn't, then I would feel annoyed. And what would end up happening is I would then feel annoyed and I would be in a bit of a strop with him. And I would pick up all the reasons why he didn't respect me, or he didn't do things around the house and all of this. And these were just thoughts that I would think, because I thought he's not even putting the rubbish out. And so I would basically escalate the situation and what was really interesting is he wouldn't even know anything about it.

A lot of the time I would just be in a bit of a strop with him and he would just kind of probably think, okay, she's in a bit of a mood and that would be the end of it. And then I would forget about it afterwards, but then it would happen again the next week, and this level of frustration in any relationship really is the thing that leads to you taking actions and you feeling a certain way about the other person that they may not even be aware of. And these kinds of things, when you're doing it again and again and again, and you're not talking about, you know, openly, making it clear that can cause a lot of distance between people.

So I noticed that I was creating this distance, but I only noticed this when I got coached and I got taught this concept. Right. Because when I needed my husband to put the rubbish out so that I didn't feel annoyed, I needed him to change for me to feel better. And when he didn't do that, I'd feel annoyed.

So I was giving my power away to him. Right. And I was just thinking about where did all of this start? So I know in society, it often starts when we're children. So we often say to our children, if you do this, mommy will be sad. If you eat your food, mommy will be happy. So I often have to catch myself doing this because I know that my parents used to say, this is.

And they didn't do a bad job at all. They did an excellent job, but this is just what everyone said. Right. But what I realized now is, what my son does doesn't make me happy or sad. It's my thoughts about what he does. So he may do something and I may choose to think he's doing an excellent job or for the same thing that he does I may choose to think why is he doing this? So annoying. Right?

So it's not what he does that makes me feel a certain way. It's my thinking about what he does. And we are all responsible for our own emotional wellness. Other people don't cause that. We can't control others as adults and other people can't control us as adults.

Now, this may be a really difficult concept for all of you to grasp onto, but I want you to go back and listen to this episode again and again, just so that you can start thinking about your relationships in a slightly different way. We can still have expectations of others. And from that place, we can communicate it to them.

But that doesn't mean we handover emotional power to them on whether they take this action or not, whether they say this thing or not. So I'd often get annoyed that my husband didn't buy me birthday presents. So he used to, before we got married, often bought me birthday presents, occasionally bought me Valentine's things and I'm not really a materialistic person at all. I'm actually very simple and I'm happy with very basic things. And I got to this point, especially after we'd had children and it became an issue for me. So I remember one mother's day I had a real tantrum, it was like a toddler tantrum. And I just shouted at him and I said, I do so much for the children and you couldn't even buy me some flowers or, you know, do something nice, like make me a cup of coffee or anything from the boys on mother's day. And it wasn't about anything materialistic, but for me, I had a manual for him that if he did something special for me on mother's day, then I would feel happy.

And if he didn't, then I would make it mean that he doesn't respect me, that he doesn't appreciate me and all of this stuff. So I realized that when I did this work, that actually him buying me something or not buying me something it's completely neutral, but it is my thinking that is creating how I feel.

So if I'm feeling annoyed, it's not because of him. It's because I'm thinking he doesn't respect me. Which is very different because that's not what he was thinking at all. He was just thinking, oh, I didn't think we did presents, okay, if that's a big deal for you, I can do it if you want. So what I want you to think about is when you have expectations of another person, when you want them to do something, it's not that you can't explain it to them, but then don't give your emotional power to them. If my husband put the rubbish out - all well and good. And if he didn't do that - all well and good, that doesn't mean you have to take on everything, it doesn't mean you have to do everything. Cause when I first started explaining this concept to my clients, they're like, yeah, well, if I did it like that, then he would get away with everything.

But I want you to think about, how do you feel when you think he will get away with it? You're probably feeling quite rubbish, right? So it's not about changing for the other person. The only reason why you want to change the way you're thinking and drop your instruction manual for them is because when they're not doing what you want, you end up feeling rubbish again and again, and again and again.

Right. So how does this manual concept relate to weight loss? So most of the clients who come to me have some sort of issue with a family member and I coach mainly south Asian women professionals. And most of them struggle with the relationship with a significant member of their family. Mostly the mother-in-law. They may have lived with the mother-in-law, they may have had arguments with the mother-in-law and they feel like the victim, there's a lot of, she did this. Did you know she did that? How dare she say this to me? She doesn't respect me. She constantly undermines me. These are things I hear from my clients.

And the thing that they don't realize is that they aren't able to lose the weight when they're having these difficult thoughts that feel awful to them because when they're having these difficult thoughts, even though they think it's about their mother-in-law - nothing to do with food - when they're having these thoughts, like she doesn't respect me. How dare she do that? You know, she does. Care about me, all of this. Then they end up feeling disappointed. They end up feeling frustrated and then the action they take is because they don't want to feel that negative emotion. They end up avoiding that negative emotion and running towards food to feel better.

And that may not show up her stuffing their faces, but it may end up as overeating a little bit at a meal. It may show up as bringing the crisps out to chill out in front of the TV. It may mean that they end up having an extra handful of nuts with each meal. Right? So it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to stuff my face with some cupcakes, but when you end up running away from your emotions, then that's why you are overeating.

So changing their food, doesn't change their thoughts about their mother-in-law. So that's why if they change their food, they're not going to lose weight permanently. What they need to do is change their thinking to create different results. So if they wanted the result of weight loss, permanent weight loss, they would need to change their thoughts about their mother-in-law to actually lose that weight, to actually let go of some of those painful thoughts that they've been having.

Another example is when my clients blame another member of their family or friend when they are following a new regime, for example. So they may say things like he bought me this food and he also knows I'm on a diet. He shouldn't have done that. Or I'd plan my food and then he insisted that we go out. And then they end up feeling resentful and annoyed and they blame their husband or their partner instead of taking responsibility for their own thinking and how they feel, because it's much easier to blame them than take responsibility for their own emotions.

What I will teach you how to do is take control of how you feel, regardless of someone else's actions. So you will learn how to accept people for who they are because you and I both know we've tried to change people. We've tried so many times, we keep trying. We keep trying, we keep trying and it just does not work.

So why not write down what your instruction manual is for that person? How do I think I'm going to feel if they do all of these? Do I want them to do these things, even if they don't want to, and see what comes up for you. Now, the most important thing is looking at how can I apply this manual concept with myself.

Most of us have a really long instruction manual for ourselves and how this shows up in weight loss a if I eat on my protocol, then I'll be happy. And if I don't, then I'll get annoyed at my. They may say, if I have one handful of blueberries, then I will feel content. And if I have two, then I will feel judgmental.

Right. When you start noticing that manual that you have for yourself, that instruction manual, that if I do X, Y, and Z, then I'll be happy if I don't do X, Y, and Z, then I'll feel annoyed when you actually drop that instruction manual of yourself, you drop that self-criticism, you drop that judgment.

Then that opens you up to allowing yourself to be yourself, allowing yourself to be owning that life is 50 50, that you're going to have things that you don't like about yourself, that you are going to experience negative emotion, 50% of the time. And that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

It is just part of the human existence. It is just a part of life.

And that's why we are blessed as being humans, because we are able to have that extra layer in our thinking that prefrontal cortex, that higher part of our thinking that allows us to become a watcher of our own thinking and allows us to be able to do something about it. So that's what I will be teaching you in coaching, learning how to become an observer of your brain, how to notice what you're thinking, notice how you're feeling, be able to feel those emotions and be able to change the way you're thinking in a way that actually serves you so that you are creating the results in your life that you actually want.

So when it comes to weight loss, when we are identifying the thoughts that are blocking you, that's when we can actually break down some of those barriers and get you losing weight for good. So this is the ideal time to join the group coaching program. I would love to coach you. And if that's something that you would like go to www.amruticoaching.com.

And go to the work with me tab and that's where you can either sign up straight away. So for all of those people who have had consults with me in the past, you can sign up straight away, or if you would like a free consult, I'm doing them in the last week of January. So I would be honored to be your coach.

All right, ladies, I will see you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.