Well to the Core, with Robin Long

Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well. We're here for a little self-brain surgery Saturday.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren and I'm excited to bring you today a special guest that I was reached

out to by Tyndale, a publisher that has really developed a good relationship with me and

they bring me some authors from time to time that they think will be helpful to you.

And today we have a woman named Robin Long. Robin is the founder and CEO of an online wellness community called LindyWell.

And LindyWell's website is lindywell.com, l-i-n-d-y-w-e-l-l dot com, lindywell.com.

Basically Robin Long is the founder and CEO of LindyWell and it's this online community

that provides workouts based around Pilates and wellness resources for busy women all over the world.

Certified Pilates instructor. She has 11 plus years of teaching, writing, and

guiding women and she's built this incredible community to teach people

about the idea that you can change your mind around fitness and wellness and you

can learn to choose grace over guilt. It's funny during the interview I said

guilt over grace and I got it backwards. Don't choose guilt over grace. Choose.

Grace over guilt. Robin believes in a guilt-free balanced approach to health

and fitness and she's passionate about helping women care for their bodies.

So this is an episode obviously kind of primarily aimed at women but Robin's got a book coming

out next week called Well to the Core. Well to the Core, I read the book, they sent it to me early as an advanced copy and I was

really impressed.

She's got brain science in there, she's got looking at how we think and how we can sort

of change our attitudes and long-held beliefs about fitness and wellness and all these things

that limit us in the way that we approach our journey towards being healthier, feeling

better and being happier, which all the stuff that we're talking about here on the podcast all the time.

So I was grateful for Katie Daudelet, the publicist from Tyndale to reach out and she

said, I really, she listens to my podcast and I really think Robin Long would be a good

fit for your audience. And it turned out we had a really good conversation.

It's not really so much about fitness as it is about wellness And so there are some people in some seasons of life that just we get stuck. We'd be pursued things

We set the wrong goals We we can't follow through on our plans because we have the wrong

attitudes and we basically shoot ourselves in the foot from the start and we just can't get going in a way that will produce

lasting change when we talk about

Mind change all the time and we talk about the fact that you can't listen to one podcast

You can't try to think better thoughts for one day and expect your life to change this requires,

Diligent pursuit in this idea that we will relentlessly refuse to participate in our own demise and Robins done that in this incredible new book

Well to the core comes out next week. I can't recommend it highly enough if you are.

Sort of stuck in your mindset if you feel like you might need a guide or a coach or somebody to help you move forward

In your wellness journey, and it really is important no matter what phase of life you are what you're dealing with

with Pilates, I was surprised to learn.

I thought it was similar to yoga, but Robin teaches us that Pilates is really about

a different way to approach movement and wellness and balance and strength and all these things.

It's not based on mysticism or spiritual practices at all, like yoga has some association with.

And so if you have any concerns about those sorts of things,

Pilates is named after the guy who founded it. I didn't know that either.

Mr. Pilates was the guy who came up with it, so it's somebody's name.

I always wondered where the name come from and now I know.

And so we're going to take a look today at Robin Long's book,

Well to the Core, and she's going to guide us through a mindset shift around

wellness and how to reframe your thinking around all these ideas that we're

always discussing here on the podcast,

self brain surgery of how we become healthier and feel better and be happier

and the importance really of starting today. So as always, Robin's conversation and her incredible new book,

well to the core. We'll leave us with only one question. Hey, are you ready to

change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule. You have to

change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the neuroscience

of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make

sense. Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place. Self Brain.

Surgery School. I'm Dr. Lee Warren and this is where we go deep into how we're

wired, take control of our thinking and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better and be happier. This is where we leave the past behind and transform

our minds. This is where we start today. Are you ready? This,

is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

We're back. I'm so excited to introduce you to a new friend, a writer. I've been immersed in her

work lately. Robin Long is here with us and I am very excited to introduce you today. Welcome, Robin.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. And you have written an incredible book called Well to the Core. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Yeah. So my story, how long do we have? No, I'll keep it short for the summary here. But

But I grew up as an athlete.

I grew up as a dancer. I grew up in a really supportive, wonderful home

as far as supporting my confidence,

supporting me as a little girl developing and growing up.

And yet, I still found myself, as I was getting older and older, struggling more and more

with my body image and kind of in this unhealthy place, actually, with exercise and health.

And seeing myself as always needing to be better, always needing to change my outward appearance,

always needing to look differently or lose weight, feeling a lot of pressure.

And it's interesting to me, I share in the book that I grew up in a home that was very supportive.

So it's like, where was I getting all of these messages?

And it turns out I was getting them from everywhere else. From the media, from other adults in my life,

from what I would see in magazines of just this pressure to look a certain way.

And I ended up associating that with health. And so as I got older, recognizing that, gosh, why did I exercise?

I exercised to try to change my body.

I exercised to try to burn off last night's dinner or lose weight or I had a lot of these

kind of unhealthy connotations with health.

And it wasn't until I found Pilates for me personally that that started to change.

I found Pilates at a time in my life when I was dealing with extreme anxiety, so really

debilitating anxiety, a lot of pain in my body, a lot of symptoms manifesting in my

my body that I didn't know why and Pilates really helped me to instead of exercising

as a way to change or fix my body or work against my body, it allowed me to tune into

my body, honor my body, start to understand where I might be holding some of the stress

in my body, where I actually can work with my body instead of against it.

And then that led me into a career in Pilates and now I teach actually on a digital platform

and write books and we have an app in a wellness community called Lindy Well where we focus

on Pilates and breathwork and mindset and that's how I spend my time now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow. That's amazing. You have a family.

You live in California. Tell us about your family.

Dr. Nandi Lazarus Yes. I have four kids. Uhm– ages– they all just had birthdays.

Ten, eight, and then twins that just turned five.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow. So a little busy, it's a little busy and it really actually is amazing and empowers the

work that I'm doing though because I am one of those people who's incredibly busy like

so many other people.

Hard to find time for myself. It's really easy to put my health and wellness on the back burner but in order to show up

for my family in the way that I want to, I've had to figure out how I can do it in a realistic

and sustainable way which is what I'm really passionate about.

So tell us, just in case somebody's not familiar out there, what is Pilates, how

does it relate to maybe yoga or some of the other things that people may have

heard of, what sets it apart?

Yes. I get this question a lot. A lot of people put them in the same bucket or think they are the same thing, Pilates

and yoga.

They look similar from the outside but they're actually very unique forms of exercise.

So Pilates can be done on a mat like you might see in a yoga studio.

It can be done on a mat or it can be done on equipment like called the Reformer and

the Cadillac which sometimes you might see that a lot of people think it looks like torture devices.

I promise it's not although they can be challenging. But Pilates was really developed by a man named Joseph Pilates as a form of physical

fitness in both mind and body.

So he actually started training prisoners and soldiers and rehabilitating them.

That's why actually some of the pieces of equipment look like hospital beds actually

because he was rigging pulleys and straps on these hospital beds to rehabilitate soldiers.

And then he and his wife ended up training dancers and athletes and developed this really

powerful method that's designed to keep your body functional and healthy and strong.

So there's a strong focus on core stability, a strong focus on alignment and posture and

just healthy movement patterns.

And one thing that's a distinct difference from yoga that I think is interesting is yoga

has a spiritual component tied to it, to its roots.

And Pilates does not.

It's purely a form of mind-body exercise.

It can help you to personally connect in any way that you would like to your, you know,

how you're doing emotionally and spiritually, but there isn't a spiritual component connected

to the actual exercises themselves.

So some people that are, that are familiar with the Eastern origins of yoga, then it

might be uncomfortable with some of that Pilates wouldn't have any of those barriers for any of those folks.

Yes, correct. And it's not just aimed at women either. I think it might be another misconception, right? Men can do Pilates.

Absolutely. Absolutely a misconception and sometimes I feel a little bad because I lean into that

misconception because we talk a lot to women and women's challenges.

However, Pilates was developed by a man, he is trained, you know, it's great for athletes,

golfers, all people can benefit from Pilates.

Nice. And you talk in your book about mindset and the importance of kind of changing the way

you think around some of these things.

And you tell a really personal story in the first chapter of kind of a labeling thing

that somebody said to you when you were a little girl, just unpack that for just a second

and how that offhand comment almost by somebody when you were young kind of showed up later

in your life and really changed things for you.

Talk about that for a moment if it's not too personal.

Yeah, I'm happy to share. So the story that I share in the book

is of one of the first times I can remember someone

making a comment about my body and me internalizing that as a problem or as something to be ashamed of or feel bad about.

So I was over at a friend's house.

I was probably about eight years old.

We're just playing dress up in the basement, dress up like twins, wearing the same outfit.

We run outside to show her parents our cute little outfits. We thought we looked so good.

We're like, just look at us. We just wanted the parents to say,

wow, you're so cute. You know, that's all we were hoping for.

And her dad made an offhand comment and it was just, wow, you know,

look how much skinnier her legs are than Robbins. You know,

it was just a quick judgment. He said out loud, he didn't say that that was bad or good,

but it's interesting to me that me as an eight year old, I took that as a judgment against my body. That was bad.

I remember running down into her basement and crying.

And I remember that, it's funny, we all have these memories.

I recently taught a workshop and I had the people joining say,

can you remember a time from when you were little that someone made a comment about your physical appearance,

positive or negative, that still lives in your head all these years later?

And everybody has something.

So whether it's too skinny, too tall, to.

Too blonde, too, you know, there's who knows what it is. We all have these things that live inside our head 30, 40 years later.

And when we do the work to kind of look back and say, wow, you know,

what's been my biggest insecurity my whole life, my thighs.

I didn't wear shorts for years. You know, I just had this subconscious definition from a young age that something was

wrong with my legs or they weren't good enough or they weren't, you know,

You know, and everybody's got their own thing.

And I think it's just powerful to look back and say, what are some of those messages we

heard from people around us or that we inherited through others or even the media that maybe

we're subconsciously still living out of and believing that is restricting the freedom

in our life and keeping us in a place of guilt or shame or hiding.

Wow. You know, there's something really important in what you said that these labeling sentences

that we absorb from our childhood, we're the ones who attach the meaning to them, right?

So sometimes we tell ourselves a story for years, maybe for the rest of our lives, that

wasn't in any way related to the truth of what the person actually meant.

I have this little story I've told before when I was seven or eight.

I had taken off a belt and I threw it on the floor in my room and I was changing clothes

and I stepped on the belt buckle that was sticking up and it pierced my heel and bled

and I was jumping around and yelling.

And my dad runs into the room and he sees the blood and he says, what happened?

And I said, I stepped on my belt buckle. And he said, well, dummy,

Why did you put your belt on the floor?

Right. And to this day, so I'm 54 years old to this day when I drop something or make some little silly mistake

I say dummy. Why'd you do that? And my dad does not think I'm dumb. He's he was a great

He is a great father, but so I wonder sometimes like did I did I internalize that?

Is that why I'm a brain surgeon like did I try to prove to myself that I'm not a dummy, right?

You had this labeling sentence that that you decide what it means and we carry it for our whole lives. Why don't we do that?

Yeah, I know. And I can tell you as a parent, I think about that a lot. I think about what,

because again, whether your dad was, he was not saying meaning to intend meaning in that.

And I think, what are the things my kids are picking up that they hear me say that somehow

they're going to attach meaning to. And yeah, when they're in their thirties, they're going

to tell me, mom, you said this that one time and it stuck with me. It's hard to know what

those things are but we are meaning seekers, right? We look for meaning in things and sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it happens without us

even recognizing it. That's a big responsibility for parents, you're right.

The things that we say need to be very carefully measured. We don't learn that

till we're older though, right? Hey, at some point you decide that you're gonna start writing about some of the things you've learned and what led

to that? I'm always interested how do people get into writing books? Like what

What led to that for you?

How did you end up deciding you're going to write a book?

Yeah. Well, I have been passionate about this message of really helping people take an almost countercultural,

grace-focused, small-steps-focused approach to health and well-being for the past decade.

So it was when I started as a Pilates instructor, I quickly realized that within the industry,

the health and fitness industry, the diet industry,

it's good for profits and it's good for business if you can keep people feeling bad about themselves.

Once I started to recognize that, it's like, I don't wanna have any part in that, right?

I have had my own challenges with my health, with food, with my body image for so many years.

I got into this industry to help people.

And you can see how some of these messages that are ingrained in the fitness industry

actually keep people more stuck or not feeling good enough. Not always, not always, but sometimes

there's these subtle messages. And I recognized I could either be a part of the problem and

keep enforcing some of these messages or I could try to stay in the industry and make

an impact and make a change, which is what I chose to do.

And so I started blogging and I've been teaching Pilates in person and online for more than

in a decade, really trying to share this message of.

What if we pursued health for reasons that go far beyond the size of our genes or the,

shape of our body or what the number says in the scale, right?

Good health, you know, is about so much more than that.

That is one aspect of our physical health that can look different for everyone based

on our genetics, based on our lifestyle, based on season of life.

And so I really wanted to help people understand that. So that's what I've been doing through my teaching

and through my writing.

And so it was about two and a half, three years ago where I had been doing this online for so many years

and I thought, I think it might be time

to put this into a book, like into a place where people could actually

kind of read the whole perspective

and have a chance to really shift their thought process

and also have some practical tools to then figure out how to make realistic and sustainable changes,

not fad diets, not overwhelming your, overhauling your entire life one week

and hoping it'll stick forever, but really doing that.

So that was about two and a half, three years ago and started the process.

And it's been a really great exercise to put all the last decade of experience

into one guidebook, one blueprint.

It's a challenge, it has been a challenge, but now it feels really rewarding

to have it and be able to hand it to people and say, here, this will guide you through it.

You did a nice job It doesn't feel like somebody's first book and listener. I can tell you.

There's a beautiful balance between storytelling and practical sort of how to and why to.

Self help kind of material here you did a nice job at integrating all of that and I thought it might be fun as you're gonna

Do a million interviews around this book launch

You're gonna do a million conversations about the book and all of that and I thought it might be helpful since my community really is

all about how we think affecting how we live can't change your life until you

change your mind kind of things and we talk a lot about directed neuroplasticity and all these different ways that we really can change our lives

by understanding how we think. I thought it might be fun to kind of work through

your first chapter, Reframe, like it's really where the the two of our platforms sort of intersect and so before we do that you you kind of broke

the the program down into ten components and just kind of maybe talk through the

structure of your program and what people can expect from reading your book

and what you hope they that they get out of it real quick and then we'll jump

into just work through reframe. Yeah so there are 10 core components in the book

and these are 10 components that through my last decade of working with clients

and working with people through Pilates and through wellness coaching and also

through research. I'm just an avid reader, avid researcher when it comes to all

things health and wellness. These are the 10 core components that I...

Everybody should be implementing into their life and considering as their total wellness and self-care plan.

Again, I think sometimes we get really narrow and we think I wanna get healthy.

So it's like, I just gotta exercise more and I gotta eat less.

You know, that's kind of the two things people think about first.

But there are so many other factors that impact our wellness and our health overall.

So the 10 core components, You know, we start with reframe, but I cover movement, nourishment, our breath, our rest,

our rhythms of rest.

You know, this is actually essential to be a healthy whole person is to make sure we're

also honoring when our body and our mind need rest.

We talk about play. We talk about the importance of connection and relationship with other people.

All of this backed by evidence and the truth that these are the factors that have an impact

on our immune health, our digestive health, our mental health, cardiovascular health.

It's pretty incredible.

And the first chapter is reframe. And that is because that is the first step.

And so it integrates into every chapter. Every chapter I am actually helping you to reframe maybe the way you have historically

thought about exercise in case there are any limiting beliefs or old patterns or like we

talked about earlier, any, you know, meaning that you have attached to why you would exercise

that needs to be re-looked at and reframed and to, to support everything you share.

It starts in how we're first viewing things and thinking about things.

Otherwise we will just keep repeating the same habits and patterns over and over if

if we fail to think about.

How we're thinking. Yeah, I think it's brilliant. And you give us some really practical bullet points here and you call them reframes.

Let's just work through a few of them because I think it'll be instructive and, you know,

on the health care side, we're always talking about people's BMIs and how much they weigh and it does matter.

It matters in surgery and wound healing and recovery and all these things, but if you

focus extensively or just on the one thing, it can become really an overwhelming burden,

I think, for people in their lives.

So you give us this idea, wellness does not always equal weight loss.

Talk about that for a second.

Yes. I love how you set that up because the importance of this one for me personally and for so many

people that I've worked with is that it's not always connected, right?

So if we are thinking that when we want to pursue a healthier lifestyle that weight loss

is the ultimate focus and the ultimate goal.

What can happen is that we can actually take a route or make decisions that actually aren't

the healthiest for us, right? If wellness is the end goal, then everything becomes a means to an end.

So we might go on a fad diet.

We might take a diet pill that has other side effects that aren't good for us.

We might restrict or, you know, restrict essential nutrients that our body needs or we might

over-exercise or we can take a lot of routes that actually are not supportive of good health.

If weight loss is our number one, those two things are always equal to one another.

So when we break up this relationship, it is possible. Can weight loss be a side effect of living a healthier life?

Absolutely.

Could weight gain be a side effect of living a healthier life for someone who needs to

gain weight? Absolutely. things can be different for each person.

And so when we can shift that initial belief, we actually free ourselves up.

I think in a lot of ways to consider, okay, if I really want to be healthy, what

are our actual goals?

Typically more energy, right?

Better sleep, more vitality. Maybe it's better mental health.

These, these other whys that can really motivate us to make really holistic

changes that support us truly as opposed to just pursuing wellness for the sake of weight

loss which can sometimes lead us astray.

That's exactly right. And it's not to say, I mean, that there are things that we need to do in our journey to

become healthier, right? If you're morbidly obese, that's not very healthy for you.

So we're not saying you shouldn't ever be in a situation where you need to lose weight.

We're saying that an overall attack on wellness or path to wellness would be a better word

doesn't mean you focus on one thing. It doesn't have to be, as you said in number two, All or nothing.

Yes, exactly. And so when we sometimes get stuck and again, the people who resonate with that, I feel like it resonates for some people. Yeah, I've been attaching meaning to that. And that's just what I'm equating with getting healthy. Right. So when we can break through that and recognize there are more ways to care for our health. And as a result, we may actually be able to support that weight loss if that's a goal of yours in a healthier, more sustainable way.

And the all-or-nothing mentality is something that can keep a lot of us stuck and I used

to struggle with this majorly and I think it's very common.

So this for me would play out in a lot of different ways. One being, you know, I would start a program that would start on Monday and I'd have all

my food I'm going to eat and I'd have my new workout plan.

It's going to be four days a week and I'm going to, I'm starting on Monday, right?

We can all resonate with that feeling.

And then by the end of the week, the day went crazy. I wasn't able to cook at home.

I had to go pick up my kids somewhere so we went through the drive-thru.

Then I, you know, skip my workout that day and then what do I do?

Throw in the towel altogether. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. Dr. Jennifer Leisch Throw it all out.

Now, okay. The whole weekend's a wash so I'm gonna forget about eating healthy and I'm gonna forget

about moving my body.

That's an all-or-nothing mentality that keeps us really stuck and then we go a few weeks

or a few months before we muster up enough courage to start again with that all-or-nothing

mentality. Another way this shows up is even just in how you think of exercise.

I used to think that workouts had to be an hour and sweaty and exhausting in order for it to be worth it.

Yeah. didn't have time to do that full hour long thing.

Then I would just do nothing instead. I'd be like, oh, don't have time for my workout today.

Right. And instead, when we can break free of that and recognize that actually what matters

is our long-term consistency and small changes over time and continually starting fresh is what's

actually going to help us sustain our changes and our habits. 10 minutes of Pilates. People will

make fun of me when I say that all the time that, you know, I'll get all the comments on Instagram

And I'm like, trust me, this process works.

If you can get yourself into a mentality to say even just 10 minutes, a 10-minute walk.

10 minutes of jumping jacks, dancing around the room, what happens is you start to recognize

I can fit this into my life.

I can build this habit. I don't need to. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

And then you start to actually build the habit into your life and you know from what it takes

to build habits with the brain and even then recognizing, okay, I was able to be successful at this.

So there's a sense of that accomplishment which makes you far more likely to come back

the next day and think, okay, I can do that again and you can build from there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, that's perfect. I talk a lot about what I call abandoning downstream goals.

What I mean by that is if you especially if you're a real type A like me, like I say,

okay, I'm gonna train for this half marathon.

So when I'm training for that, I want to be able to run 10 kilometers at this pace in

this amount of minutes without stopping to walk, you know, have all these downstream

goals when the real goal is, can I run 10k or can I get to 10k?

Right. in my brain is I say, okay, I just.

Am tired today, I'm at three miles and I'm not going to make that pace,

I might as well just quit at three miles.

Or I give up because I didn't hit some tertiary goal or some goal downstream of the real goal.

And the real goal, as you said, success and failure are not defined by outward appearance.

Success and failure need to be the target of, am I getting healthier?

Am I moving the needle on my ultimate project, right?

Which is getting myself healthier and being more well. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. That's a great example. And I will find I would have find myself or I see

people we really in our community, our app and our membership, we have a lot of people who are.

Changing this for themselves. The one thing I hear more than anything is I've never been this

consistent with anything in my life. And what we're continually reminding people of is that,

the goal, right, we're in this for the long haul, right? With our health,

Like it's not like you do it for three months, you get healthy and then you get to be done.

This is what we have to continually build into our lives as a lifestyle with habits. And so

when we see people who would normally say, okay, I'm going to try to work out every day this month.

And then to your point, if it's like, oh, I'm not going to make it because I'm going to go out of

town next week. So I might as well just forget that. Start again next month. Yeah. Yep. I'll

I'll start again. I'll try it in November instead. Right.

But in like that right there, we'll just keep you stuck. So it's like, instead,

let's focus. What can you do today?

That's right. What can you do today? And then again, tomorrow, what can you do today?

And if you're going to miss it, it's okay. Start fresh the next day.

What's the importance of celebrating, like giving yourself some pats on the back along the way? How does that,

How does that play in?

Yeah. There's some really interesting research out of the Stanford Behavior Institute that talks

about the power of building habits.

And one small thing you can do is when you do something, let's say you're trying to reinforce

a new habit of going for a walk daily or not being on your phone after dinner time, you

know, these little goals that we may be setting for ourselves.

When we take a minute, and it can just be a small minute, but to acknowledge ourselves

and actually celebrate when we did it, when we accomplished something, it actually helps

to trigger the response in our brain that we just got a little dopamine hit.

We just got a good moment of experience and then that makes us far more likely to build

that neural pathway to come back and want to do it again the next time.

So I love this. It can be small. It can just be a simple acknowledgement.

You can pat yourself on the back.

Within our app, we actually have it built in that you get a little celebration

and you tap on how you feel so that you celebrate that accomplishment. 30 seconds.

But it's enough to help build that habit into your life. And I just love when you can understand little ways.

I mean, you are all about this, how the brain works.

You just are empowered to feel like you have some tools and some understanding

to make it a little easier for yourself to build those habits.

That's it. And it's this idea of giving yourself a little grace, right?

Give yourself a little room to be a real human and not just this person who if you don't

accomplish your goal, you've failed. And so you talk about this idea of guilt over grace,

which I love, that needs to be on a t-shirt. You probably already put it on a t-shirt.

Yeah, yeah, we do. We've got it on bags. We've got it all over the place. But yeah,

we talk about grace over guilt. And this comes from...

I said that backwards. Yeah, it's okay. I knew what you were saying and I've done it myself many times. But when

you look at what keeps a lot of us stuck, so again, most people struggle with consistency

or trying to really build these habits into their life at some point in their life or

another, right? You might be in a place right now where you're feeling really good about

your habits. You might be in a season where you're trying to get going again but you're

you're just feeling a little unmotivated or a little challenged, and that we all have those seasons.

When you can extend grace to yourself, which is essentially self-compassion, the research

shows that you are actually much more likely to make forward progress towards your goals.

So a lot of times we think if we just layer enough guilt on ourselves, or we beat ourselves

up enough, or we're hard enough on ourselves, then maybe we'll be finally motivated to make the change.

Like, if I just, how did I let myself get this way? Gosh, how did I fail at this again?

And then I'm going to finally get motivated.

It turns out, if we actually extend more kindness to ourself, we're going to not only be more successful,

we're also going to enjoy the process a lot more, which in turn makes us more likely to be more successful.

So an example of this is that very same thing. Like, let's say you had grand intentions

and you set a really great goal for the month to do three workouts a week.

Or to, you know, it could be related to anything. Go for three runs, you're training for your marathon, and you skip a run.

You know, life happens. You're human. It happens to all of us. Some things are in our control.

Some things are not. Instead of piling on that guilt and shame of, here I failed again. I always

do this. I skip out on these things. I can never stick to anything for long. I'm a failure, whatever

label you might put on it. Just extending grace to yourself and even having that mantra to say.

I'm going to choose grace over guilt here, allows you to keep moving forward. And it's powerful to

to see how this shift, it can apply to health and wellness, it can apply to your business,

it can apply to parenting.

When you give yourself a little bit of this, it's not an excuse, right?

It's not a, oh, grace all the time and so there's no consequence and no responsibility.

But most of us know that if we actually extend a little bit of grace to ourselves, we're,

probably going to actually show up better moving forward.

That's exactly right. It's exactly right on the brain science side too and the spiritual side.

You gave it a good term, tuning up your self-talk. I like that a lot.

Like, careful how you talk to yourself, right?

We're guilty of not only accepting labels from other people, but putting them on ourselves.

And you've got a whole host of labels that you've probably accepted

that you've applied to yourself over your life.

But how do you work on a personal level, Robin? And how do you tune up your own self-talk?

Yeah, I think the first step is becoming aware of it, which is why I love your podcast and

the message that you're sharing.

So many of us just operate day in and day out without any awareness of the internal

conversation we're having with ourselves throughout the day.

And so I always say the first step is just starting to notice.

And even I have, you know, some activities in the book that kind of tell you some exercises

to do this of how to start recognizing where those thoughts coming in. It kind of blows

your mind when you hear yourself talking to yourself how often you might beat yourself

up or just you know you said you throw something on the floor. Dummy, right? Like we have these

things that run and play in our head all day and we don't even notice because it's just.

Running in the background. So the first step is just becoming aware and even starting to to write those down.

What are some of those internal conversations you're having with yourself?

And are they true, right?

And there's a lot of ways you could define what is true. I mean, I look at our worth

and I believe our worth is inherent, right? We are worthy of love.

We are loved by God. We are inherently worthy people.

But how much of our self-talk reflects that?

Often it's the opposite.

So the first step is just becoming aware and starting to consider,

How can I replace that with a new thought or with truth?

And if that feels like too much of a stretch, to replace a negative thought with a positive thought

just doesn't feel true or real.

This is from Kristen Neff, who writes about and research self-compassion.

But I love that she suggests just saying, replacing it with, I'm doing the best I can.

So at least that there is extending some compassion to yourself if replacing with a positive thought feels too far off.

Are you are you more likely to succeed on this wellness journey if you say gosh my husband and my wife really would like me more if I lost 50 pounds or you're more likely to succeed when you are shooting at a target for somebody else or when you're doing it for yourself?

Doing it for yourself.

Doing it for yourself, finding your own motivation is key. I really help people understand how can you connect to your deepest why.

And part of your why might be that I want to show up, I want to be able to love my husband well, right?

Or I want to be energetic so that I can have energy to have a conversation on date night

and not feel like I need to fall asleep and don't want to talk to anyone.

I've been there, you know, or it might be for your kids, your motive,

your why could be related to your children.

You want to show up as an active parent or grandparent, but that has to come from you and what you want and what you are worthy of.

Because you are worthy of it for yourself first, not just for other people.

And I think that's really important to make those connections for yourself to

stay motivated over the long haul.

I think that's exactly right. I mean, if you're a spouse, a parent, a grandparent,

a colleague, you can't really take care of anybody else if you run yourself out of gas all the time, right?

You gotta recharge and reset, and you gotta have some ability to love.

The Bible says that what's the most important commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

What's the second one?

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Like if you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody else well.

So I love that you point that out in the book.

Just a beautiful job of taking this concept of wellness and giving us some foods to eat and not eat,

things to focus on, this whole journey.

How do people find out about Lindy Will? What's the listener today who says,

I really resonate with your idea, besides reading the book, how do they get your app? What do they do?

Yeah, you can go to lindywell.com and we have a membership and an app that provides Pilates

workouts that can be done from home so you don't need any equipment.

We have a ton of those 10-minute workouts just to empower that small changes add up

over time, sneaking it in on your lunch break, you know, when you just have a few minutes in your day.

We also have Breathwork which is designed to truly help you calm your nervous system,

reduce stress, manage, you know, the busyness of life and take a little bit of time for

yourself and we also have recipes that are all focused on nourishment, not restriction.

So all of this language that I believe is so important, the reframing, it's all embedded

into the Pilates workouts, into our community. So you can find out about that at lyndywell.com

and we have a free trial so you can just try the app for a couple of weeks and see if it,

helps you and we're also over on Instagram at wearelindywell and love to post quick tips

over there and quick exercises and ideas to reduce stress and get your body moving throughout.

J.B. It's outstanding. The book is beautiful. It's very well done.

It comes out on Tuesday of next week.

We're going to, listeners are going to hear this a couple days before the book comes out

but I really pray for your success here Robin with this book.

It's going to help people change their lives and by changing their minds really before

they change their bodies because nothing will stick if you don't change your mind first, right?

That's right. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here. It's been great.

Now, before you go, I want to ask you one question. There's people listening today who are in the middle of this, what we call the massive

thing.

There's a lot of listeners here that have come because of grief or loss or major trauma.

They're in the middle of something.

And I think that sometimes when those things happen to us, it can get us stuck, not just

in our emotional state, but it can stick us and we stop moving, we stop taking care of ourselves.

So what words do you have, Robin, for somebody who's kind of in the acute phase of something

that's really hurting them?

How do they start to move again? Like what would you do to kind of say, hey friend, it's time to, here's what I would

advise you to start to think about as it's time to start moving forward?

Yeah, that's very real. And I love that like that's one of our goals is to try to surround people with support

because life is hard and heavy and there's we are all find ourselves there at one point or another.

So two things come to mind. The first is I love the phrase, do the things you need to do to feel the way you want to

feel. Yeah. that can get me.

Help me when I'm feeling really stuck. So, you know, okay, I don't feel energetic. I don't feel motivated

I don't feel sometimes we can't wait for those,

Feelings to come instead we can say what is the action I can take that will bring a little bit more of that feeling into

My life, so if you want to feel more energetic, you know going for a walk,

We'll get you there, you know, you might that feeling comes after the action instead of waiting for the feeling to come

So that's a phrase I love to say to myself.

Sometimes that will motivate me to go get a glass of water because I want to feel a little healthier.

So I'll fill up my water. And then with that, start really, really small.

So if you feel like it just feels hard to get going, literally set a five-minute timer on your phone.

And walk for five minutes.

Dance around the house for five minutes. It doesn't even have to be happy dancing.

It could be slow dancing.

Whatever your mood is capable of, but start that small and you will recognize,

you'll get that moment at the end of that of I did something and you'll recognize that you feel better and that will help you start building up that

motivation to keep going. So start as small as possible, even if it seems silly.

Sound advice. Listen, you've done a great job with the book.

I'm encouraging people. We're going to push it out to all our channels.

If you read this book, It's gonna help be helpful to people.

Wish you the best. God bless you and your family and the important work that you're doing, Robin. Thank you. Thank you.

Do the thing you need to do to feel the thing you want to feel that my friend is sound advice.

If you want to feel better, you don't wait. You don't wait to feel better. You do something that

will lead you to feeling better. We're always talking about that. That's exactly right.

Actions lead and feelings follow. If you want to feel better, do better. Even if it's just a step,

okay? Even if it's just five minutes of standing and walking around your house instead of sitting

for that five minutes, even if it's just turning the television off and going out and standing

outside in the yard and letting God's beautiful earth nourish you. Do something. If you feel stuck,

if you want to feel better, do better. Do something new. Do the thing you want to feel.

Right? I love what she said. If you want to feel better, you got to do something. You got to move.

Hey, listen, well to the core is worth your time. If you're stuck, if you're trying to find a new

approach to wellness. If you keep trying and failing and not getting the ground covered

that you want to get covered, you want to become healthier, feel better and be happier.

Check out Robin Long's book, Well to the Core. Her community online might be just the thing

you're looking for. Lindywell.com, L-I-N-D-Y-W-E-L-L.com. Lindywell.com is Robin Long's website. Her,

book comes out on Tuesday of next week and I encourage you to read it if you're stuck,

If you're looking for a new approach, a new path, listen, we're all here to become healthier,

feel better and be happier.

We all know that we're trying to transform our thinking, renew our minds, become the

people that God is calling us to be in our lives. And we all know that there are times when we get stuck and when you're stuck, you need,

to start today.

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Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you

by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.

It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio book,

if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

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and go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014,

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I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life,

until you change your mind, and the good news is you can start today.

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