Paul Salter: 0:00

We have to reframe mistakes as simply learning opportunities that can actually accelerate our growth. And then one of my favorite ways is to understand when, why and how this perfectionistic part of you came to be.

Philip Pape: 0:16

Welcome to the wits end weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Whitson weights community Welcome to another episode of The Whitson weights Podcast. Today I'm welcoming back to the show. My mentor friend fellow coach podcaster, Paul Salter. Paul was one of the earliest guests back on Episode 33, where we talked about sustainable weight loss, emotional awareness and the dieting mindset. Now invited him back to dive into mindset and rewiring your brain, which are his specialties as a hypno mindset and performance coach who has transformed the lives of over 2500 clients, you're going to learn how to turn your excuses your self sabotage your procrastination, and your perfectionism into massive action. By digging beneath the surface to the subconscious mind. Paul is a master at hacking the human psyche, having helped everyone from elite athletes at the pinnacle of their sports to high flying entrepreneurs and professionals across multiple fields. Paul has spent the last 15 years crafting his approach that combines hypnosis, subconscious reprogramming, and mindset shift training, all aimed at one thing, helping you break free from the chains of self sabotage, overcome mental roadblocks and shatter the glass ceilings of limiting beliefs. Paul is also a registered dietician, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a certified hypnotherapist as well as host of The unstuck yourself podcast, you're going to love his insights on how to stop procrastination and perfectionism dead in their tracks. So you can finally get unstuck in your health and fitness journey. Paul, it is always a pleasure to see you and have you on the show.

Paul Salter: 2:15

Dude, your intro just gets better and better. That was the best one I've ever heard. I sincerely thank you for that. And thanks for having me back, man. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah,

Philip Pape: 2:23

man. And I think the listeners have heard us talk a few times on different podcasts. And you're kind of you know, we're reintroducing you here because it's been a while. And we really want to dig into the mindset stuff. I'm really curious as we get into it, about my kind of personal experiences with clients and others. And even myself with things like perfectionism, which I know is just is huge for those of us who, who are hustlers, you know, just like are always on always taking action. So, you know, we want to get into all these things. Why don't we start just at the top with the subconscious mind and understanding why that's important into, you know, as we get into the specific problems, the role in decision making the role in our choices and our behaviors. Yeah, so

Paul Salter: 3:05

let me start with kind of painting the picture of like a foundation, which we can build off of the rest of our time together here. So the analogy I like to use that was first popularized by a doctor Sigmund Freud, who is kind of the pioneer of psychoanalysis is the iceberg analogy. And the iceberg analogy is a wonderful reference in comparison to how we can break down the difference between the conscious and the subconscious or the unconscious mind. So the way that this analogy works is quite simple. When we look at an iceberg, that tip of the iceberg, what we see above the surface, we can liken that to our conscious mind, which is where we are directly aware of our thoughts, our perceptions in that moment. But the truth is, we literally only see the tip of the iceberg about 90% of its structure, its foundational integrity is below the surface. And without the structural integrity of that iceberg, we wouldn't see that tip it would simply not exist. So we like in the part that is unseen of the iceberg to our subconscious mind, which is literally the foundation of who we are because it's within the subconscious mind that resides our emotions, our memories, our beliefs, our habits, our values, our creative power, problem solving skills, and intuition and collectively, that's who shapes who we are as a person that shapes our reality and our identity. And the one thing that so many of us walk around blind to is that yes, our conscious mind and our subconscious mind communicate, and yes, they want to work together. There's just a few challenges in our way first and foremost, there's a one way radio communication between the two meaning our subconscious mind is always communicating upward. If you guys are watching on video to our conscious mind, we can't yell down below to our subconscious mind and say, Hey, stop believing that stop feeling that Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. And then second, as I'm sure we'll get into more, our subconscious has one goal. It just wants to keep us safe. The only problem is, it's incredibly primal, it's irrational, and it's likely running some outdated programming that is no longer serving us in the present moment. And that is where the host of all of the challenges we face in every aspect of our life reside. So it's

Philip Pape: 5:25

an interesting dichotomy, because for many years, I was of the mind, Paul, that, you know, you don't really have to understand the root causes of some of these emotions that you can move forward with action that you can process and you can kind of take things as they go day by day, and move forward. And like things like emotional eating, which are huge with those listening to this podcast, you know, you can either go back and understand the trauma, the emotion, whatever is causing that, or you can do some, you know, put in place tactics to kind of get around it and process. Are you saying that, that we have to understand that unconscious mind? Is there a middle ground, like, especially for left brain thinkers or rational thinkers who tend to think in terms of just like taking action, rather than dwelling on the past? What are your thoughts on that?

Paul Salter: 6:10

I think they're complimentary. So when we talk about like the tactical X's and O's, you know, making smart decisions to set up an environment in the kitchen, for example, the pantry, the kitchen are filled with foods that are nutritious, delicious, and on par with how we want to feel, look and be, those are all wonderful. But more often than not, those who struggle with the emotional eating or the binge eating, find themselves going through periods of time where they are operating so deep on autopilot, it is almost as if an emotion has hijacked their operating system. So in the blink of an eye, they find themselves in the kitchen of sleeve of Oreos deeper, a bag of chips deep and all the sudden it's like, they wake up out of that trance, and like holy crap, what just happened, and they might have had all of the x's and o's taken care of, but every now and then there is still an emotion that hijacks their operating system. So doing some of that deep reflective work to understand what that emotion is, why it came to be, and why this learned behavior came about can really help them to not only uncover the origin of it, but ultimately give them the clarity and awareness, they need to unlearn and ultimately upgrade that behavior. And when

Philip Pape: 7:22

you got into this business, you know, 15 years ago as a sustainable weight loss coach, what was your knowledge base back then, like, what were your thoughts about it, then let's, let's say the first couple years of your practice, because I imagine it takes a while to learn how important this is, and learn the skills to help people with it. Given that I'm like, maybe where you were 10 years ago? I'm just curious how that evolved over time and how early you discovered the power of, of what you're talking about?

Paul Salter: 7:47

Well, first, I'm not gonna let you not give yourself the credit of your growth and awesomeness. As a coach, you are much further along than I was. But it's a wonderful question. I think very early on, you know, I have a background as a competitive bodybuilder and power lifter. Today, I joke I used to be married to my fitness pal. But I too, would struggle with bouts of binging and I knew what to do, you know, I was studying to become and ultimately became a dietitian. So I knew what to do. But I'm also a human being I had those moments where hunger, sadness, guilt, anger, frustration, stress got the best of me. And despite my knowledge, I kept running into the same problem over and over, it wasn't a lack of knowledge problem, there was something else underneath the surface. And a quick side note to further illustrate this, which will bring it all back together. Like, you know, I took a detour as a professional poker player for a little while. And, you know, I was a you know me very well, I'm a relentless study, or I love to learn, but I started to recognize as I played for bigger stakes with more money on the table, despite the amount of studying I was doing this, despite the coaching I was getting, I was still freezing on the spot not performing well, under pressure, I knew what to do. Logically, mathematically, I could check all these boxes. But in the moment, I wasn't doing it. So if we now go back in time to in the moment of when you're one of your listeners, or myself or even you on occasion, are in the moment with that ice cream, those Oreos faced with an opportunity to make a nutritious decision or a not so good decision, something else is going on that operates from an unconscious autopilot standpoint that we need to get to the crux of and as I started learning, that all the information I was gleaning was not helping, I knew I needed to take a different approach.

Philip Pape: 9:31

So that makes sense. Because you know, you can put in place all of the tactics, all of the barriers for yourself. You can, you know, put the bowl of fruit on the table and put the cookies away in the drawer. And still somehow your mind is going to lead you via these protective mechanisms. You call them protective or you know primal, what exactly is happening and then we can get into details of self sabotage as the next topic. What exactly is happening mechanistically or physiological or however you want to call it And that is causing us to make what others would see as irrational, maybe irrational choices.

Paul Salter: 10:06

Yes. So let's use this kind of operate under the theme or the lens of emotional eating, you know, we are most prone to emotional eating when we're in a very charged state. And that emotion differs for everybody could be stress, it could even be boredom and everything in between, from anger, to sadness, to resentment and guilt. So that food is a way to soothe or cope to help regulate our nervous system, the emotion that we are experiencing has caused such a disruption and dysregulation that we in this individual speak instance, rather, I'll speak collectively, it's like we're lacking the skills to regulate our emotions in that moment. And what happens is these patterns are learned behaviors, to help either soothe or to meet a need that has gone unfulfilled for a long period of time. So there's so many layers to emotional eating and binge eating, but one of them could be through the lens of literally protecting you from attention from being seen unwanted attention, this eating could be a way of belonging, if your parents, your social circle, if they are all overweight and unhealthy. And you start making strides away to that, from that to live a healthier lifestyle, you know, emotionally, these behaviors are deployed to keep you in your comfort zone of predictability and familiarity, because that's what keeps you safe. And that is literally the cycle this kept our entire species alive for however long we have been in existence.

Philip Pape: 11:30

I keep having tangent questions off of this because I'm curious, if someone were to go through a process of self discovery, let's, let's say emotional intelligence and self awareness, training, how much would that benefit, resolving some of these issues in and of itself, if that makes sense? I think

Paul Salter: 11:49

it's a wonderful start in the right direction. And to be honest, it might be five or six steps in the right direction, depending on where that person's baseline of emotional intelligence and awareness is. I think awareness is phenomenal. And the most valuable piece of awareness is awareness of yourself, your past how everything is connected to who you are in this present moment. But at a certain point, awareness will only get you so far, action is absolutely necessary. And of course, like we talked about, the tactical X's and O's are great to help reinforce some of this newfound awareness. But at a certain point, you know, the old cliche with every new level, there's a new devil, we're going to have to dig a little deeper to get out of our own way. I

Philip Pape: 12:29

can buy into that man actions. You know, people talk about motivation all the time, I think I just had one of my quick wits episodes about the idea of just the action leads to the motivation because you get the win. But sometimes there's a disconnect where you take the wrong action, or you take an action and doesn't give you the win, or what have you. But anyway, I want to get into some specific areas that hold people back, we wanted to talk about self sabotage being one of them, which I guess all of this is a form of self sabotage, even the procrastination and perfectionism. So, you know, what's the psychology behind that? Specifically? And then how can we identify, you know, behaviors and the actions that we might take to change?

Paul Salter: 13:07

Yeah, so let's start with kind of a working foundational definition. So self sabotage is a deliberate, intentional act of belittling or holding back you from your own success. And it is literally a deliberate form of sabotage. Because at your core, you know, it is not in alignment with who you want to be or what you want to achieve. And the way that I like to break down self sabotage is in kind of two, two different ways. First and foremost is recognizing that it happens both consciously and unconsciously. And what I mean by that is, we all have had a similar moment where we walk into the kitchen, nine o'clock at night, it's been a long day, you know better than I do, maybe it's a tough night, getting the kids down for bed, you're exhausted from the office, and all of a sudden, you reach a fork in the road where you open your freezer door, and you make eye contact with Ben and Jerry. And it's like, okay, I I'm doing it, screw it. Let's go all in, I'm having the ice cream. That's a conscious example of self sabotage, you deliberately chose to go against your goals. But the other form kind of happens in the background. It's through those periods of stillness, quiet reflection, where we reflect back on the last three months or three years, and we start to identify the pattern of credit card debt, the pattern of toxic relationship hopping, so that's when the unconscious is made conscious. So I always like to point that out because sometimes it's very obvious where we're sabotaging. Other times, it's kind of an insightful moment that comes together through a moment of quiet clarity. But even more nuanced. We have what I like to refer to as capital S, self sabotage, and lowercase s so the capital S are the big obvious ones. They are the binge eating the gambling, the addiction, the numbing and the scrolling, the infidelity, anything where it's a behavior that any culture any person in the world is going to look at and be like, Yeah, no shit, you're clearly getting in your own way. Whereas Conversely, the lower case sabotaging behaviors are the things that on their own might not stand out as significant, but they accumulate to pack a massive punch. So that's hitting the snooze button, missing workout, skipping meal prep grazing throughout the day, a few extra minutes Mindlessly scrolling here and there that the small behaviors, that when we take a step back, we recognize not the best use of my time, not clearly in alignment with how I want to feel. So all of these behaviors are taking place, we're all guilty of one or multiple of them. And they are all rooted in one single goal. And that is to simply keep you safe. Because they typically become more pronounced as you start making progress toward a goal as you start leveling up experiencing more success, you know, in the health and fitness industry and your romantic relationships financially or professionally, they are behaviors deployed by your subconscious to keep you safe to bring you back down to a level of familiarity and comfort, which is where your subconscious knows you can and have survived. For

Philip Pape: 16:05

sure, man, the hitting the snooze, I did that for years, and I can understand why it becomes a comfortable thing, right, it becomes a habit becomes a way to kind of to bury yourself back into the bed. And I I think about the from the moment someone wakes up to the rest of their day, they're making a million choices. I mean, it'd be interesting to know how many 1000s of choices we make in a day. But some of what you're saying is so many of those are either unconscious or learned or we've lost the consciousness of it, so to speak, right, because it's just become rote. And then there's big ones and small ones. So whereas choice and willpower fit into this, because I don't want people to realize there's a sense of empowerment, but there's also something we need to learn about ourselves and grasp onto to then gain empowerment. So where does choice and willpower fit into this,

Paul Salter: 16:50

through intentional opportunity to slow down, you know, we all want to do in a million things and achieve so much yesterday. But if we continue to operate from this Go, go go becoming human doings rather than human beings, we miss out on the opportunity to connect with our subconscious. So you know, as you alluded to hypnosis is one of my primary change modalities and like the beauty independent of some of the other science aspects of hypnosis, it's just the fact that you get to enter a state of deep relaxation. And when we do that, rather, whether it's meditation, some people it's exercise, its yoga, its journaling its breath, or whatever your quiet time version looks like. That gives you a chance to what I like to call, turn off the noise of the nonsense negativity that exists in everyday life, and gives you a chance to connect with who you are at your core. And that's what brings back the opportunity to intentionally choose and the more you can schedule, micro moments throughout your day to set an intention for this meal, this workout, this work meeting this time with my kids, this time with my spouse, that intentionality is incredibly powerful and helps you remain in the driver's seat of your life.

Philip Pape: 18:03

I love having these discussions, Paul, because I'm always reminded just for myself to take a break because you know how I go. And it's funny, because I'm kind of in a fat loss phase now. And one thing I committed to do is just get more steps, right? Just walk around. I like to do that via things that I enjoy. But sometimes I realize the day is getting away from me, where am I scheduling in that, that moment, so people listening, take that to heart, the idea that a lot of this is just the space, the relaxation, the grace, whatever word you want to us, that gives you the ability to get this consciousness, because otherwise you're just on autopilot, you're just going through the motions, right? And many of us get tired as the day goes on. And by the time I mean I people can probably identify this, it's eight 910 o'clock. And here's his own dial at that point, you're just done. Like, you're not even in bed yet. You're just done. Here's

Paul Salter: 18:55

something interesting to like, researchers will estimate that we have about 60 to 70,000 thoughts per day, roughly 90% of them are negative. Because our subconscious is constantly scanning our environment to keep us alive. And roughly 80% of them are the same exact thoughts we had yesterday. So if you don't take and make the time to slow down and consciously change, you're not going to change. Wow.

Philip Pape: 19:23

Yeah, that's, that's sobering. So, but there's a positive to all this. We're gonna look at it. We're gonna lay that on thick here. I did want to ask one more thing. What is it that people rationalize the most in your experience? Just not not just nutrition and what we're talking about here, but in general, you mentioned the big ask the little is like what are the top of the list so people could say, oh, yeah, I do that. Well,

Paul Salter: 19:43

I think what I've found in all walks of life that I work with is people are so quick test to downplay the significance of all of those little s behaviors. Oh, the snooze button is not affecting me. Oh, it's it's just one time. It's just one time is perhaps the most popular rationalization justification I hear, and then you know this well with the clients, you work anytime we force people to put pen to paper and maybe start logging those one times, and we can reflect back and then it's the oh shit moment like, Oh, when I do hit the snooze or Oh, when I skipped the gym, it was actually three times last week and 16 times last month like it adds up. So just the just the one time to downplay the significance of any one of those smaller behaviors is what I find people struggle with most. And we have to really help them bring awareness to how significant the accumulation of this little s sabotaging moment can be. How

Philip Pape: 20:36

did they get over that first hump? What of the rationalizing the need to track and decide and do it exactly what you're doing? In other words, the chicken and egg of they're not even feel like they're in a place to do that. What's, what's your strategy there?

Paul Salter: 20:51

I like to ask the simple question, how is your life different? So I usually take two frameworks with this, I may say just Just close your eyes for a second and just watch your life unfold for the next 30 days paying attention to your productivity, your relationships with yourself, your significant other your children, like if you continue on this path of skipping workouts, let's just go with that example. Like, what's your life look like? More importantly, what does it feel like? And then contrast that with the same question. But we eliminate that little less sabotaging behavior? What's the big stark difference that we're able to not only see tangibly, but also feel in our body? Because we know logically Oh, yeah, I'm probably going to feel better if I don't miss this, or I miss it far, often. But when we can literally begin to feel it in our body, the experiential factor of that is far more powerful than just kind of like, oh, logically. Sure that sounds great.

Philip Pape: 21:41

Yeah, that's a great technique. We talk about identity all the time and visualizing your future self. But what you just said is, give it that contrast of what you're going to be now as you're living, versus what you would be with the difference. So I love that. So one of the things that ties into this is just not getting that first step done. That's just procrastinating as a form of self sabotage, right? So there are psychological triggers for all these different little subsets. So we're going to talk about what's specific to procrastination. What does that kind of archetype look like? Why do people procrastinate? You know all the things.

Paul Salter: 22:16

At its core, procrastination is typically a fear of failure. Now, there's many more layers, of course, and the one thing I always like to point out here is, it's kind of to two important points to set the stage for this discussion. Number one, we are all biologically wired to want a need to belong, to feel accepted, to feel connected to feel unconditional love. And that's simply because we're a tribal species. And that's how our species survived all these years. On the other end of that we are all also hardwired to have three core fears, the fear of judgment, the fear of abandonment, and the fear of rejection. Simply put, in the past, if we were judged if we were abandoned, or if we were rejected, we were ostracized or ostracized from our tribe, and we either starve to death or were eaten by a saber toothed Tiger. As silly as it sounds today, that is still the same primal operating system that your subconscious is running on. And it's important to bring that out because sometimes our procrastination is very quick for us say, Oh, I'm just lazy. And we adopt this label that doesn't serve us. But procrastination is typically fear of failure, which we then trace back one step further to one of those core fears. I call it the fear jar. Usually, if we are afraid of failure, it's because we're afraid of being rejected. And now it typically works two ways that fate fear of rejection can come from fear of success. Because if we use the example, all of our family members and friends are overweight and unhealthy, and we want to make a change, well, we're literally going to be ostracized from our tribe, if we stopped engaging in happy hour three times a week in favor of the gym and hanging out with other people or doing healthier things. And then in terms of failure, the same thing, we don't want to let those people we care about down because then we might be judged, rejected or abandoned. So this procrastination is rooted in fear of failure. And what I have found is and we can get really clear on the core, the origin of where this fear comes from what we're afraid of, and start talking about it logically, rationally, making it tangible. It's far easier to understand to let go of and to overcome.

Philip Pape: 24:21

Maybe this is a good time to bring up one of the questions from my community that's related to that because I hear this all the time. You know, somebody says, I'm still procrastinating and making excuses right there at labeling, right? I'm consistent with X but I really want to do why like it might be I go to the gym twice a week, but I really want to go three, but I'm not sure I'm ready. That's that's the label that I have from one of my community members. When I asked for them, like what are their fears? Where are their excuses and things like that? Let's try that. Let's let's go with that concrete example. Right? Someone says to you, you know, I just I want to work out more I don't go to the gym enough. Why am I doing that? What would what would you do next?

Paul Salter: 24:59

I would simply We ask, Are you committed? Or are you interested? Because there is a stark difference between the two. And I think it's important to note to speak to that saying it's okay, if you acknowledge you're just interested, you just have to then accept the cost of what it means to be interested versus committed, because it's a different way of being operating, speaking, believing and showing up. When we are committed, we acknowledge that we are scared of XY and Z. And it's totally normal and okay to be scared, but we can't remain stuck there in a state of inaction. So someone who is saying, I want this, it's a very candid, are you committed to this? Are you just kind of interested? Because that sounds nice. And again, there's no wrong answer. But the clarity in that answer will reveal a lot. And if they truly say they're committed, well, then it's an opportunity to push to dig deep. What is that resistance? What are you really afraid of? And you know, this, you're very good at this as a coach, it's more questions it's pushing, it's pushing and getting underneath the surface. One of my favorite questions to ask when people start describing how something feels or what they're scared of, I just simply ask, what's the emotion underneath that? horses in the dig a little more, you know, it turns to fear. I'm afraid of this, I'm afraid of this. And all the sudden you get some emotionally charged answer, I'm afraid my husband will leave me and I'll have to be a single mom, blah, blah, blah, and it's like, Oh, shit. Now we got to the core of what you're afraid of turns out, my mom was a single mom, I don't want to fall into that category. My life was hard, her life was hard. And now you get the juiciness of it. And we start to get to have the chance to do some healing work there that no longer are they afraid of that we reduce the emotional charge of some of their past moments and memory, so that we can use that newfound energy to actually put towards the behavior change that they're trying to accomplish.

Philip Pape: 26:41

Okay, so I have two follow up. So that one is can people do this themselves? Because obviously, you're a mindset coach and use hypnosis and other techniques. Can people do this for themselves? What would be a good exercise for it? And the other is, I'm curious, in the general population that you talk to how many people are able to resolve that one or two levels deep versus really having to go deep? If that makes any sense? Yes.

Paul Salter: 27:04

So for the first part, like can people do this on their own? It's the same answer that's applicable across all domains? Yes. Is it likely harder? Yes, will definitely take longer Absolutely. Like one of my go to sayings is the biggest way to accelerate results is to ask for help. So yes, you can do it on your own, it would, I would say are the kind of the prerequisites with a foundation of consistency being essential and implied is, you have some type of reflective practice. I don't care if you call it journaling, meditation, a general overarching quiet time. And then you have prompts and questions. And that's maybe where you're outsourcing to get some of those prompts and questions to dig deep therapy, coaching, all of these modalities are ways to accelerate your results, though, even further than the second question, How deep do you have to go, it's incredibly dependent on the person, you know, is so dependent on their upbringing, and what the challenges at hand that they're working on overcoming but typically, the deeper you can go, the faster the results will be if you're willing to surrender and be open minded enough to go there.

Unknown: 28:12

My name is Tony, I'm a strength lift or my 40s. Thank you to Phil and his Whitson weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros, and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. That's what I like about Phil, he's got a great sense of humor. He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to. One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view is that he practices what he preaches. He also works out with barbells, he trains heavy, not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice. And I would strongly recommend you talk with him, and we'll help you out. Thanks.

Philip Pape: 28:56

Okay, and you mentioned the three fears of judgment, abandonment and rejection. Where does fear of uncertainty come in

Paul Salter: 29:06

to that? So like fear of the unknown in a way? Yeah, fear of the unknown. So typically, what I've found is that can ultimately be traced back to a fear of judgment. Because if I don't know what's going to happen, maybe I'm going to make the wrong decision. I could be judged for that decision. I could be judged or made to look like a failure because I responded to XY and Z way instead of a, b and c way based on the unknown that was at my fingertips.

Philip Pape: 29:29

Okay. Yeah. Just curious, because that's a big one that I face all the time is people don't want to change mainly because they're comfortable. They think they're comfortable with where they are now versus the discomfort of the change.

Paul Salter: 29:43

And I think that's a great point. Let me share one thing I literally had a call this morning with a gentleman who was to be frank fucking terrified to dig into some of his past because like, I don't know what's going to come up and like, admittedly and we could speak candidly about it. He had a very challenging childhood a very deep Call it past and like the thought of reliving some of that was incredibly scary to him, it made him uncomfortable. It made him anxious. And I think it's important to normalize that it's very normal. And that's why going at it alone can prove to be even more challenging. And if you do decide to go out at with the coach and a professional, you know, they absolutely need to foster a safe space, you need to feel safe there, and sharing and going through some of those difficult times. Because even though just like you mentioned, there's difficulty discomfort, and in some of those hard emotions, the freedom, the peace, the fulfillment, the power, the strength and energy on the other side are just fucking indescribably awesome. Absolutely

Philip Pape: 30:44

love what you said before about just envisioning where you're going to be once you make that change is a powerful, powerful technique for that one more thing related to procrastination is procrastinating on the changes that you have now committed to let's say, you are committed, and you know what you want to do. And maybe you've dug dug into the your past and you've done the reflective exercises. And now it's more maybe this is more habit theory, right, which we always we touch on all the time of how do you actually get this new behavior to stick, knowing that all those other things are checked off. So something

Paul Salter: 31:16

that's very common in my clients that I work with is, you know, maybe we uncover and we overcome a big mental block, for example. And that immediately infuses a sense of ease. So for the next couple of weeks, that new behavior, we're able to grease that groove a little smoother, it feels like it's more efficient and effective. But inevitably, we hit a new point of resistance, there's always an underlying emotion that is still preventing you from normalizing or locking in that behavior to ultimately upgrading as a habit. So what I find is, you know, like, you know, that's why as you know, like, I usually meet with my clients every three to four weeks. And, you know, I always dig into like, what, okay, when it didn't go, well, for example, what did it feel like and what and then we can still go back? Okay, maybe there actually is more work to be done on that anxiety Domino, Domino, that people pleasing Domino, that fear of failure Domino, it's likely that you just need to keep hitting that one primary challenge from a couple of different angles before that behavior officially sticks as a habit.

Philip Pape: 32:17

Yeah, that's a good one. Because people will people often get unlocked, like you said, They'll grease the wheels or start making progress. And then they hit a wall, right? He hit a wall, maybe it's a fear of the next. It's all the same fears that are just re materialized and add a new level. One other thing came up there procrastination, what is Oh, when people are depending on other so let's say spouses, that's a great example, or families where the husband or wife wants to make a change, and the other spouse is supportive. But let's say there's a how do I want to put it, there's like a fixed situation that I guess can't be changed in the moment. Like, let's say one spouse has shift work. And they just, you know, they need to go to bed at a certain time. That just doesn't quite jive with the other person's timing. And the other person's trying to get more sleep. You know, what I mean? Like, how do we do just try to get creative and come up with alternate compromises and solutions? Or what are your thoughts there? Yeah,

Paul Salter: 33:07

I think at that point, it comes down to communication. And it's really having that input. It's having open, honest, uncomfortable conversations with your spouse in that situation. And perhaps to that's a wonderful opportunity to bring in a third party simply to get another set of eyeballs, ears and a brain to help facilitate creative solutions. Because the chances are in that particular scenario you shared to sleep deprived individuals who are butting heads trying to find common ground are not the two best individuals to create the best solution. So a third party could be wonderful in that situation. Fair

Philip Pape: 33:40

point, fair point. Yeah. Just let it cover all the bases here. All right, then we get to my favorite, which is perfectionism. So I did a very short podcast episode a few months ago, about four, four icons, archetypes of perfectionism. And I don't remember what they were ahead of in my notes, but they were intended to help people identify what kind of perfectionist they identified themselves with, to maybe take an action and I guess I'm the type of perfectionist, and that's a label. Who, it's not that it has to be perfect. It's just that I want to, you know, I want to make the right choice to move forward. Not that it's perfect, but I want to make sure it's right. Well, I guess that is perfect. You know, what? Anyway, tell us about perfectionism as a barrier to to success, right? Especially for people who are oftentimes using that perfectionism in a positive way I'll say like that just their general you know, get it done. They they move forward, they they try to make things have a high quality, but sometimes it then holds them back because they don't move forward and they get stuck. Yeah,

Paul Salter: 34:44

yeah, so perfectionism is a really unique entity and Beast I'm I'm actually pulling up my notes. I want to find a cool quote, but I'll keep speaking on it for now. Oh, here here's one actually says by Brene Brown. So just to kind of paint the picture or foundation rather for perfectionism. Brene Brown, best selling author of a million freaking books, a really good thought leader says perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought. If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment and blame. Now, remind me, Philip are How many siblings do you have?

Philip Pape: 35:25

I have one.

Paul Salter: 35:25

And Are you the oldest? Yes. Yeah. Okay, so the good news of the bad news for everybody listening, so if you are the oldest, or if you are, if you have siblings, you are more prone to perfectionistic tendencies. But if you're the oldest, I have found in research a degree you are likely most prone to these tendencies. And perfectionism is all rooted in how well your core childhood needs were fulfilled. So we talked about the acceptance, the belonging, the connection, but as a child were you heard are you seeing are you validated, as soon as baby number two comes, the amount of attention and time you get from mom and dad is instantly split, the more siblings you have, the more of their limited bandwidth, they have to divide amongst others. So given that we are hardwired with all of these coordinates, and these are really human needs, but they're much more pronounced when we're children, because we literally can't fend for take care of ourselves. So when we have to compete for that limited time and attention, our subconscious gets creative, it starts to develop patterns of behavior to help us get more of what we need. So one common example I like to give that definitely rings true with me, between the ages of nine and 10, I was a frequent wild child, I was always in trouble at school. And if you reflect back, I was the oldest of three at that point with another one on the way. So I was just lashing out for attention. And although you look back and you're like, Okay, you were the little Elementary School troublemaker. That behavior pattern got me what was missing in my life, I got the attention. Now it wasn't the best attention or what I really wanted or needed, no. But the point being is that we're going to develop these patterns to get what we need. So with perfectionism, you know, at some point early on in your childhood, maybe you got a good grade on an exam, a test a project, a good report card, you did well, in sports you did well, in extracurriculars, you got a nugget of praise from mom and dad that was so inconsistent, you latched on to it, your subconscious learns, okay, if I continue to perform in this way, I can replicate this feeling. And I'm going to do it over and over again. So one silly example I'll share with you is I'm a big math nerd. So I know you'll appreciate this, but I played this game in elementary school called challenge 24. Never heard of it. No, I haven't. Okay, so it's a card game, where essentially, there's like four, six of you who play at once there's a proctor who puts a card in the middle of you, there's four numbers on it, you got to put your finger in the middle of the card, the first one there gets a chance to solve the problem. All you have to do is use all four numbers to get the number 24. I got real into it. I used to play all the time and practice and whatnot. I won a couple tournaments and then I can distinctly remember to this day that when I did not win a tournament, there was just kind of a nonchalant response from my parents. It was like immediate disappointment. I felt shame. So what did I do? I woke up before elementary school every day for the next couple of months and went through the deck. I essentially memorized the whole deck never lost a tournament again, because I wanted that validation and praise from mom and dad.

Philip Pape: 38:34

Okay, so there's sounds like there's different types of perfectionism here, right? Because what you're describing is you didn't have a need fulfilled, so you compensated for it. I feel like there's another type to where you just have unreasonably high standards for everything that you might place on yourself. There's also the perfectionism where everything has to be perfect before you move to the next step. I don't know where I'm taking all this, Paul. But I guess for the listeners who are struggling with perfectionism, or can we break it into like, a few different types, then what what would we do for that type? Yeah, so

Paul Salter: 39:09

there's typically three types. So number one would be self oriented perfectionism, where we demand perfection of ourselves. That's the unrealistic high expectation that creates a false sense of pressure and urgency to be flawless in our execution. The second type is going to be other oriented This is where you demand perfection from others. This is where you are incredibly critical. And hard on those you work with your spouse, your children, you can be a real bear or pain in the ass to work with to be with and then reflecting back on ourselves. Again, that third category is typically known as socially prescribed perfectionism, and this is when we feel pressure from others to be perfect. This is when we start kind of involving these people pleasing tendencies so that we come across as perfect so that we are liked we feel like we belong where accepted, loved and connected, which goes back into one of those core needs we referenced earlier.

Philip Pape: 40:05

Okay, so what do we do about it? What do we do about perfectionism? Yeah. Because again, we want to avoid labels. But we want to identify where we fall and what what we can do about it.

Paul Salter: 40:16

Yeah. So we have to first examine your relationship with imperfection. Like, how do you feel when you use this loosely make a mistake? How do you feel when something isn't perfect, and it's a reframe of that relationship to a give yourself permission to make mistakes and to be imperfect. And it is then be creating a sense of safety and making mistakes. You know, the truth is, depending on your upbringing, when you made a mistake, didn't get straight A's struck out on the baseball field, it's possible your parents were so incredibly hard of you, you became scared to make a mistake, the only way to feel connected was to be flawless and perfect. So we have to start giving ourselves grace and letting go giving ourselves permission to be less than perfect. We have to reframe mistakes as simply learning opportunities that can actually accelerate our growth. And then one of my favorite ways is to understand when, why and how this perfectionistic part of you came to be. So I can share this with you after I actually just published a newsletter yesterday, today all about understanding when, where and how this perfectionistic part of you came to be. And there's a few journal prompts at the end there. But it's really as simple as finding that quiet time again, and reflecting back to some of your earliest memories where you felt compelled to be perfect to perform without any mistakes, and just really understanding what was going on in your life at that time. What was that eight year old boy going through? What was he missing in his life? And how can you begin to fill in some of the missing pieces for him the love the connection, the belonging, to help ease the burden of that little boy, which has a wonderful present day healing effect as well. Yeah,

Philip Pape: 42:01

that makes a lot of sense. And when we look at the like nutrition, for example, a very common situation is the all or nothing approach the trying to be perfect. And part maybe part of the conflict comes from the fact that when someone is going after a goal, whether they're an athlete, physique, competitor, whatever it might be, you know, there are parameters, and there are like cause and effect as part of that process. And so you're taking action to create a cause and effect. And when you don't do it, quote, unquote, perfectly, the effect is going to go off the path you intend, right? Just like with anything in life. So where do we reconcile the need for consistency, and the need to give ourselves grace when we're not, quote unquote, perfect? Because we don't need to be perfect. Let's just put it out there. Versus perfection? Because I think some people even see consistency as a form of perfection, it makes any sense.

Paul Salter: 42:54

It does, and without bringing in too much spiritual woowoo, to answer that question, you know, at the end of the day, it's just recognizing that every decision and outcome is just is. And you have the power to control how you respond, because you're always in control of your effort, your attitude and your actions. So these pivots, these unexpected changes in direction course are pathways to get where you want to be. They happen to teach you something to remind you something to give you another chance to learn a lesson you might have, you should have been able to learn maybe many moons ago. So when we wrestle with the idea of consistency, giving myself grace, we should always give ourselves grace and compassion. And always trust to be true that we're doing the best we can. We're not literally trying to get in our own way on a conscious level every single day, we don't wake up and think how can I screw up my goals today? It does happen unconsciously. And we have those micro moments of little less sabotage, but the end of the day, like it's just an opportunity to learn. And the more we can really lean into that the more we experience a lightness, a lessening of the pressure that we constantly put on ourselves or have other people put upon us.

Philip Pape: 44:13

I like how you said that we we have this volition, this freewill, this ability to control what you said effort, attitudes, and actions, right? We always have the choice, even though from what we were talking about earlier, the context could be there are many unconscious choices. Again, I want to make sure to use the right word if we're making choices or not even if they're unconscious, where they can coexist. And it's almost like we're trying to get the higher and higher you know, the iceberg to become higher above the water in a way. Yeah, so that our effort, actions and attitudes predominate. What we're doing and what the outcome is, does that make sense? It does

Paul Salter: 44:53

and to build off of your iceberg mentioned there, we want to create what's known as mindset congruency. We want your conscious mind and your unconscious mind on the Same page, because when they are on different pages, the unconscious mind always wins. And what I mean by that is like, if you are just trapped in a scarcity mindset, you grew up, money is tight, rich people are evil, money doesn't grow on trees. But here you are, you know, all of that gets embedded into your subconscious. But if you're here consciously, I want a million dollars tomorrow, I'm worthy this that the other there's a clear disconnect or contrast and incongruency between the two, and your unconscious is always going to win. So you're always going to default back to that scarcity mindset unless you dig in and do that deep work necessary to heal some of those money rooted wounds. So we have to create congruence see. And that's why there's just so much power and reflective work slowing down to really give you yourself a chance to slow down to connect with your subconscious and start rewiring some of those beliefs patterns that exist. I

Philip Pape: 45:57

knew you'd have a name for it. So that's good mindset congruence. See, but also I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of, what do you call it? Seesaw, right? Where are a balance where on one hand, you have this friction, this this big sense of friction, that's created by the lack of awareness of the unconscious, and on the other side, you have your action in your intention, right. And we're just trying to lighten that load over there. So you don't need as much, you know, force or willpower, or whatever it takes to move it in the right direction. That kind of comes to mind. Yeah. And

Paul Salter: 46:28

that's the beauty to like one of the kind of the under the surface, or under the radar rather benefits of like hypnosis, and some of this deep work is when you heal some of these emotionally charged core wounds, you know, you get the benefit of all that healing. But what happens is all of the negative emotions that we're prone to holding on to you know, guilt, grief, anger, resentment, sadness from areas of our life, those are very energetically expensive emotions. So when you do the necessary healing work, you free up all this energy all the sudden, and you and I both know, forming a habit is incredibly energetically expensive. But with this new energy, all these behaviors that we've struggled to try to change suddenly become easier because we have so much more energy, which is a phenomenal place to be.

Philip Pape: 47:13

Yeah, so not only have you reduce the friction, you've transferred that energy to the other side of the ledger. Beautiful, yes. Okay, so to wrap up here, I want to touch on dieting, or touch on nutrition training, you know, Fitness, Health, all of that in a couple areas. So I guess two things come to mind. One is from our community, one of the other struggles or challenges someone mentioned was with emotional eating, tied to stress when their life is such that there are so many stressors on them, you know, that are, quote unquote, not in their control. But but we can talk about that. Like, like they have a child and their child has poor health, and they're dealing with that, you know, a busy mom who's taking care of their whole family, and everyone's dependent on them. And then they're not, quote unquote, able to commit fully even though they're in their mind deeply wanting to commit. Yeah, like, what are your thoughts on that?

Paul Salter: 48:04

So I want to give credit where credit's due Ed, my let popularize this concept. This is mine, but it's known as like your emotional home, we all have these foundational emotions that are home to us, we come back to they might be confidence, joy and love. But we also likely are filled with grief, sadness, negativity, the world is out to get me. So we operate with these core emotions that essentially facilitate how we behave. And if emotional eating is how one of these behaviors manifests. Stress is a conductor, stress just amplifies the ease in which we can behave in that negative and counterproductive way. So when you think of like stress, stress is never the core emotion. Stress is a byproduct of life, stress is good. It can be counterproductive, depending on your response to it. But stress is is amplifying the core wounds. So you have to get to the core wound. And not just think of all the surface level stress management strategies. Like I like to say like, you know, when you attack the surface level, it's like putting a band aid over a bullet wound is a short term solution, it doesn't stop the bleeding. And it's not a long term fix. So stress is kind of that middle road. It's what we see. It's what we feel. So it's logical to go to what we see and feel and try to solve the problem there. But it's not the core or the origin of that problem. We have to go deeper and understand where when and how this part of you that is sabotaging yourself came to be what is the emotion in there that is connected to it?

Philip Pape: 49:29

Yeah, that makes sense. Like so many things, there's often a root cause the symptom may not be indicative of it. And if you just put a bandaid on the symptom, it could give you some, you know, minor temporary relief, which then may slow you down from fixing the root cause, you know, so we gotta go right to it. We see it all the

Paul Salter: 49:44

time with people they do a diet it works for three to four weeks and then it's but it's it never fixes the core issue of their binging their emotional eating, so they have some success. Oh, this approach doesn't work for me. They try another bandaid. It works for a month they revert back to their old way and they try another and 20 years go by, and they're still having the same conversations and frustrations.

Philip Pape: 50:04

Yeah, I just tell people just eat more food and build muscle. And don't worry about it, you know? All right. Is there anything else you wanted to cover in these? Because these are these can be some very big deep topics that could each be its own episode as they are on your podcast on a regular basis. So is there anything else you wanted? That you wish I had asked or any other topic I wanted to cover? Yeah,

Paul Salter: 50:22

I think one question that I often get asked is like, who needs mindset and performance coaching, and like, it's a weird dichotomy, like you and I have this discussion, like niche down that niche down and get really, really specific on like, who you want to work for. And the beautiful thing here is like we all can benefit from having a trusted and safe professional to help you dig into some of the discomfort and emotionally charged situations of your past, and to do so in a way to set the intention of learning from a healing so that you can move forward and ascend to that next best level of of who you are. Yeah,

Philip Pape: 50:56

it makes sense. I mean, I can't tell people enough that when there's an area of your life that you are committed to and you identified your committee into, why wouldn't you pull on all the resources possible? And oftentimes a third party resource that's that's a level of stress reduction right there, right, because now you're not wondering, okay, what book or podcast I have to read what exercise I have to do, when do I do it? How do I do it? So that's great. And just so people know, I personally had a session with Paul not long ago, and it was fantastic for uncovering some things that I wasn't aware of. So if as far as trusted, safe and professional, he's your man. So Paul, where can people find you and connect with you? Yes,

Paul Salter: 51:32

the best place is on Instagram at Paul Salter coaching. I'm active there daily. It's a wonderful Hubber library of just education and resources all about the subconscious mind self sabotage everything under that umbrella topic that we hit on. And then like you mentioned, so kindly, the unstuck yourself podcast, I'm there live every Thursday as well. All right,

Philip Pape: 51:51

the unstuck yourself podcast and iG app pulse halter coaching, and we're gonna include that in the show notes as always, and I really love talking to you always. And, you know, we always go into a different direction each time and it's a pleasure to have you on.

Paul Salter: 52:04

Yeah, thank you, Phil. It's an absolute pleasure from my end. I always thoroughly enjoyed these discussions. All right, we'll be

Philip Pape: 52:10

talking again soon. Yep, take care of him. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of wit's end weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.