Episode 10: The 3 C's of Success with Esther Avant

What if you could manage to actually reach that health goal? How would your life change? How would you treat yourself differently?

Can you relate to setting big goals for your health, weight or fitness but never quite achieving them?

We’ve all been there and it’s frustrating as hell.

On this week’s episode, my guest Esther Avant, a health and lifestyle coach unpacks why you’re not reaching your goals and how to reframe your mindset around time and expectations so you set yourself up for success.

Grab yourself a notebook and a pen and get ready to change the way you look at your goals.

Episode highlights;

• The question you should be asking yourself about your goals but probably aren’t
• How to reduce the level of overwhelm in your life so you can achieve your goals
• Managing your expectations so you stop setting yourself up for failure
• Why your goals should have a big why if you want to reach them
• The value of making the steps to your goals as small as possible
• Navigating your goal gap
• Creating long term goals to lay the foundation for lasting success
• Esther’s 3 Cs of success
• Repairing your reputation with yourself to build confidence
• Big rock habits that create consistency
• Swapping self-criticism for compassionate ownership
• The power of support and accountability when you’re working towards big goals

Whilst Esther is a health coach, the advice she shares and the conversation in this episode is equally applicable to any area of your life where you’re setting big goals. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat and I’m sure you will too.

Access Esther’s FREE Habit Tracker here.

Visit Esther’s website here: www.estheravant.com

Connect with Esther on Instagram @esther.avant 

If you've got big goals, but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Check out two of my FREE online workshops:

My 7 Step Formula for Getting Unstuck

4 Ways to Stop Procrastination in its Tracks

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi folks welcome to season 2. Episode, 10 of the lemons and pineapples. Podcast today, my guest is Esther Avant. And we're talking about the 3 C's of success when it comes to health and nutrition. First, st a bit about my guest. Esther, is a health industry veteran, with over 18 years of experience in fitness, nutrition, and wellness-related roles.

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Emma O'Brien: She is known for making exercise and nutrition simple and helping. Her clients address the root issues that have been standing between them and results. That last

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Emma O'Brien: her gone for good framework has helped hundreds of women lose weight for the last time, and start living their healthiest, happiest, most confident lives. Her business, Ea. Coaching provides full spectrum, health and lifestyle coaching through a combination of exercise, nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset strategies.

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Emma O'Brien: Esther is also a boy mum, and a navy wife who has travelled and lived all over the world whilst running her Ea, coaching, business, welcome to the podcast.

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Esther Avant: Thank you so much for having me. It's funny hearing someone read your own bio.

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Emma O'Brien: It's quite nice, isn't it? Like? Oh, reminded how brilliant you are! And I think we all need that reminder sometimes. We're talking about 3 things today that influence the achievement of health goals as well as the power of creating good habits when you're working towards a health goal. And I think most women know what they need to do when it comes to health and fitness and weight loss goals.

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Emma O'Brien: What goes wrong.

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Esther Avant: That's a million dollar question. And what's interesting is that's generally not the question that people ask. We tend to

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Esther Avant: just beat up on ourselves. I know what to do. I'm just not doing it. It's because I'm lazy. I'm undisciplined. I don't have any motivation.

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Esther Avant: We blame a personal shortcoming

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Esther Avant: for something which is really just having a human brain. Everybody experiences the

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Esther Avant: kind of catch 22. Of knowing the steps, but not doing them or not doing them regularly.

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Esther Avant: So the real question is to figure out, why not so rather than making that statement as sort of a dead end

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Esther Avant: actually do hoping and get to the root of. So I'll tell you. I'll skip some steps for you, because I've been doing this for a long time. I've helped thousands of people, and it all boils down to the same couple of things.

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Esther Avant: 1st and foremost, we try to do too much at once

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Esther Avant: part of the problem with knowing what to do is that

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Esther Avant: we do have like the the bones of what to do.

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Esther Avant: And then we have a lot of kind of stuff.

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Esther Avant: The bones have a lot of luggage of stuff that we're telling ourselves we have to do. That isn't actually very impactful. But by

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Esther Avant: kind of looking at all as a lump.

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Esther Avant: It's overwhelming. And we feel like, Okay, well, if that's what it takes, if I have to. Do, you know A through Z,

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Esther Avant: and I can't do it all right now. I better not start.

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Esther Avant: or we try to do it. Excuse me, we try to do it all.

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Esther Avant: and you know maybe we're good for a couple weeks, and then something happens.

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Esther Avant: Excuse me and our consistency

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Esther Avant: planets, you know. Some some life thing gets in the way, and we start dropping balls left and right, we get frustrated. We throw on the towel altogether. So one of the main reasons that we know what to do. But don't actually do it is that we, rather than taking this sort of gradual

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Esther Avant: stepwise ladder ladder like approach. We just try to do it all, and we have that

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Esther Avant: kind of toggling of starts and stops.

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Esther Avant: Another reason that knowing what to do isn't just enough

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Esther Avant: is that often

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Esther Avant: we have these unrealistic expectations about

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Esther Avant: what our results will look like if we're doing those things.

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Esther Avant: And that happens from all sorts of places, we find

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Esther Avant: anchors

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Esther Avant: that we tell ourselves this is realistic. This is gonna gonna date me. But years ago, probably almost 20 years ago.

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Esther Avant: there's a show in the Us. I'm sure it was known elsewhere. The biggest loser. And basically, people would put their entire lives on pause. They would go live at this ranch, and they were dropping, you know, tens of pounds a week.

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Esther Avant: So at that time there were a lot of people who were seeing the show and thinking, Okay, well, I'm not exercising 6 HA day. I don't have my diet controlled by a dietician, but

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Esther Avant: could probably lose 5 pounds a week.

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Esther Avant: and thinking that was a realistic goal.

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Esther Avant: And what's actually realistic and healthy, is more like a pound or 2.

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Esther Avant: So when you are expecting

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Esther Avant: a really big loss every week, or you know, Major, progress in whatever direction you're trying to go, and you don't get it

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Esther Avant: rather than taking a step back and thinking, Huh! Okay, how do I recalibrate my expectations? We just tell ourselves. Either it's not working. I need to do something else, or if I'm working so hard and I'm not getting anything out of it, why, bother! I might as well quit, or we, you know, totally change tack, we give up, etc.

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Esther Avant: So those 2 things, I think, are

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Esther Avant: some of the most common reasons that we know what to do, but don't do it consistently enough. And then I'd say, the 3rd is just kind of like the general lifestyle stuff where

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Esther Avant: we're not in the habit of making our own needs a priority.

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Esther Avant: So when we're confronted with needing to, it feels uncomfortable, and we just sort of default to what we've always done, which is yes, I can do that for you. Yes, I can do that for you. I'll take whatever's left, and there's nothing left.

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Esther Avant: I also lump things like time management into this, where

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Esther Avant: a big big factor is social media. I recently took social media off my phone and

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Esther Avant: boy, do I have more time on my hands?

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Esther Avant: Things like that where you know, we tell ourselves I don't have time, but we're not actually auditing our time to see. Where is it going, and how could I find it for the stuff that's important. So

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Esther Avant: a lot of that sort of day to day stuff where it's not directly related to exercise, not directly related to nutrition. It's the other lifestyle factors that will make it easier to do those things that needs to be addressed first, st and then you find that the more specific health related stuff is a lot easier to do because you've kind of set that foundation for it.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, so much in there, and so much good advice that translates through any goal that you've got. I've just been having a conversation with a coaching client this morning, and you know I'm a life coach, so different type of coaching to you. But the same principles apply, and she had set a goal for

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Emma O'Brien: creating a side business, really, to earn a bit of extra money, and she's done nothing about it. Hence, then hiring me.

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Emma O'Brien: and we made the steps so small

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Emma O'Brien: that she could do it. And we got on a call today. And she said, I finally done, I've started, and it feels so good to have started. But she said to me, You know it's funny you made it. We simplified it, working together so much that it almost seemed like it was too simple, and she said I had a really big idea in my head of what it should have looked like and what it should be like, which was what was

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Emma O'Brien: overwhelming her and stopping her from doing it, but in in breaking it down to smaller steps, and, like you've said, making it manageable and actually

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Emma O'Brien: looking at what's realistic in terms of expectations. I'm sitting here looking at your beautiful toned arms. And again, that's that's something I got married in April, and I'm very. I'm very slender, but I was like, you know what I've got this wedding dress and these arms need to be tightened up a little bit here.

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Emma O'Brien: My mother, who is 72, has the most fantastic arms because she exercises every day. So she she created me what we called the arms like Madonna regime that I procrastinated on, and then I was like the months before the wedding. Damn it, I really need to get on with this, and you know what even doing that exercise routine

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Emma O'Brien: 3 or 4 times a week, did not give me arms like yours, because arms like yours. No, but it's it's it's weight training. It's consistent weight training. It's not going to appear in a month.

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Emma O'Brien: It's not going to happen. It's months of training to get super toned and look like someone who's on the cover of women's Fitness magazine. And I think you're so right. It's about managing

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Emma O'Brien: where you are.

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Emma O'Brien: is it, you know? Is it realistic to get to a 6 pack and super toned? If you've only really got 3 HA week to do exercise?

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Emma O'Brien: Probably not.

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Emma O'Brien: Yep.

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Esther Avant: You're exactly right. I read a

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Esther Avant: Personal development book once. I wish I could remember what it was called, so I could credit it, but it was about talking about goals.

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Esther Avant: and how, if you

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Esther Avant: have

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Esther Avant: fallen short of a goal that you set, or if you can, you know, sort of project out and see that you are likely to. You have 3 options. Number one, you can change the goal. Maybe your falling short is indicative of you not actually caring that much. I see that a lot with women who have just perpetually said, I want to lose, you know, 10 pounds

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Esther Avant: where it's more vanity weight. It's almost because. And I used to say this when I was 1st started as a personal trainer. My goal was always like, I'll lose 5 pounds and tone up.

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Esther Avant: and I just probably picked it up through, you know, kind of diet culture

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Esther Avant: and feeling like, oh, women are supposed to say they want to lose weight.

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Esther Avant: So maybe you realize, yeah, part of why I'm not doing this stuff is because I don't. I'm not actually that motivated by the goal. Okay, so number one, you can change the goal

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Esther Avant: number 2, you can change the timeline. All these things are pretty arbitrary. We say, you know, I set this business goal. I want to reach this revenue by the State. You just pick that out of a hat. You could extend that you can. If you say I want to lose 10 pounds by my birthday, or you know, 50 pounds by the end of the year. And you're you're tracking, you know, behind that. Okay, so how about by February or March? The point is, you'll still reach the goal. It'll just take a little longer.

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Esther Avant: The 3rd option is that you can change your approach. And what I think is interesting is this is what a lot of

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Esther Avant: people default to with their health goals is.

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Esther Avant: instead of doing kind of the the mental work of, do I really care about this? Why is it important to me? Maybe if I were more in tune with that I'd be more committed.

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Esther Avant: We.

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Esther Avant: you know, don't don't even address that. The goal could change. We don't want it to take longer, because we just want to be there already. So we tend to default, to alright. I need to change things up. I need to do more. I need to do something more intense. I need to

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Esther Avant: switch focus, and when it comes to health and weight loss, really the last, if you're if you're taking a healthy approach. In the 1st place, the last thing you want to change is the approach you really do want to settle into what you're saying, which is that

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Esther Avant: results are gonna take longer than you want them to. And you think they should come. Most people that you

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Esther Avant: see looking really fit

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Esther Avant: have been doing it for a really long time. So it's less about

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Esther Avant: what you can accomplish this week or this month and more about how do I

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Esther Avant: get myself into a headspace where I am thinking more about what I can accomplish in the next 6 months in the next year, in the next 3 years, and recognize that if I'm committed to my health, then the results are going to come.

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Esther Avant: And how do I

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Esther Avant: create that foundation? So that, regardless of motivation or discipline of those things, I'm showing up the way I need to, and I'm taking pride in the results that are really hard earned.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also

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Emma O'Brien: celebrating the small wins along the way

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Emma O'Brien: rather than I think, beating yourself up for what you haven't done.

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Emma O'Brien: If your goal is to exercise 5 days a week, and you manage 3

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Emma O'Brien: well, you manage 3, 3 is better than none.

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Emma O'Brien: and it's 2 less than 5, so your gap is 2. So the following week can you do 4, and then, can you do 5? You know, I think that's it. You're you're right. It's about managing expectations and

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Emma O'Brien: doing something rather than doing

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Emma O'Brien: nothing. I I heard. I think it was Jack Cornfield was talking about this principle of looking at the gap. So even if your goal was to lose 10 pounds and you lost 8,

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Emma O'Brien: you lost 8. The gap is 2. You're 8 pounds closer to the goal than you were when you hadn't lost anything, and I think it's just reframing

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Emma O'Brien: that reframing failure.

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Emma O'Brien: And and I love what you shared at the beginning, and it's been something I've been talking about a lot recently is failure is just feedback, Baylor. Say failure in inverted commas. Because I think it's a word we actually need to remove from language when it comes to to goals, and especially things like weight loss and health goals

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Emma O'Brien: is okay. So it didn't quite work out according to plan. What did work? What didn't work? Why didn't it work? And if it's a time thing like you've said, and time management is a huge part of this. If you, your your aim was to fit 5 workouts in and you only did 3,

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Emma O'Brien: why did you miss 2?

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Emma O'Brien: How much time do you need to find to add 2 in? And can you stop scrolling on your phone? Because we all know

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Emma O'Brien: 45 min can disappear like that when you're scrolling, and you could have done a 45 min workout.

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Emma O'Brien: And it's just reevaluating how you use your time. And and

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Emma O'Brien: you've also said how important the goal is to you, because if it doesn't really matter like you've said, you're not really going to go after it. How do you make it matter? So I don't know whether I mean here's me jumping 10 steps ahead, but you know, if you were aiming for

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Emma O'Brien: your summer Bikini body. Do you need to book a holiday to give yourself a deadline for it? Because I had a wedding, and I was like, Oh, Crap! I need to get lifting some weights and doing something. If I want these arms to look better than they do now, and really, ideally, I should have been doing it 6 months before the wedding. But you know I didn't, because it doesn't matter

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Emma O'Brien: that much to me. So yeah, talk to us a little bit about your 3 C's of success cause. This is really the the fundamentals of

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Emma O'Brien: the program you teach and how you coach. And and I think this is this is a really interesting piece of information for people.

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Esther Avant: Yeah. So we've we've already

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Esther Avant: kind of hinted at at them. So what I found is that in order to really be successful at

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Esther Avant: not just your health goal, but really, any goal that you want to achieve. You need 3. C's.

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Esther Avant: The 1st we've been talking about is kind of the the most obvious for people is consistency.

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Esther Avant: We all know that if we're not

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Esther Avant: day in and day out doing the things you know most of the time, we're not. Gonna we're not gonna see the results. So that's number one.

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Esther Avant: The second one is commitment which we also touched on. It's like, why does this goal matter to you? What difference does it make whether or not you achieve it? And a lot of times we just kind of stick to surface level and we focus on, you know, the aesthetic of like, I just want my clothes to fit more comfortably. And it's like, Okay, well, you know, why does that really matter is that kind of 5 wise exercise I'm sure you're familiar with, and you sound kind of like an annoying toddler. Why, why, why?

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Esther Avant: But it helps you dig deeper. And what you really usually end up finding is that it's more about how you feel about yourself, your self-esteem, your energy throughout the day wanting to be healthy and have a long, independent life. So when we stop at you know, I just want my clothes to fit.

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Esther Avant: we're selling ourselves short as far as commitment goes, because if you really get to the root of the emotional reason of why you need to accomplish the goal.

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Esther Avant: it's a heck of a lot easier to stay committed to the goal which therefore, is going to make you more consistent. You're not always going to want to do the things, but when you know why the goal is so important and you're committed to it, it's a lot easier to just make yourself show up, anyway.

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Esther Avant: The 3rd CI think, is the one that is most often overlooked, and that is confidence.

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Esther Avant: And keep in mind that the 3 C's are not like a linear thing. It's not. 1st you do consistency, then you do commitment. They're all they're all interconnected.

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Esther Avant: Where confidence comes in is that at the end of the day. If you don't believe that it's possible for you to achieve the goal that you're after.

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Esther Avant: it's not.

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Esther Avant: and I don't say that to to make it seem like you need to become confident before you start.

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Esther Avant: because the confidence comes from the consistency, from the commitment, from taking action, doing the things like you said, taking that feedback

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Esther Avant: and introspecting and asking yourself, you you nailed a skill I call compassionate ownership.

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Esther Avant: which is reflecting back and like, wait what happened. Why did I miss those 2 workouts? Not to beat yourself up, not to make it a big thing, but to learn and to say, Okay, now that I'm aware that you know this is an issue, or that I'm spending too much time on my phone.

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Esther Avant: What am I going to do differently? That's where you're taking ownership of. It's up to me to make this change. So how am I going to do it?

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Esther Avant: And that's where confidence comes from from setting those small goals you mentioned, and from, you know, the weeks you don't hit them scaling them back until you do.

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Esther Avant: increasing a little bit until you have trained yourself

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Esther Avant: to set goals that are realistic, to follow through, and ultimately to be someone who does what she says she's going to do.

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Esther Avant: That's where confidence comes from. So yes, you do need a little bit of confidence just to start, because if you truly thought it was impossible.

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Esther Avant: you know, if I'm not going to bother like seeing if I can launch myself off my deck and start to fly, because I don't believe that that's possible. Does it need to be like a little kernel of it.

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Esther Avant: But and that's where working with a life coach or a health coach to come in is you can borrow someone else's belief in you and their confidence in you, somebody who just wholeheartedly, it's like, of course, this is possible if you don't believe it, but you know, borrow mine, and you start to start to develop it. So you do need a little bit of belief to start. But really you build it as as you're going, and one of, I think, the most rewarding things as a coach.

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Esther Avant: and you may have experienced. This also is when your clients sort of turn that corner to

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Esther Avant: knowing that their success is inevitable. They might not be there yet. They might still be wanting it to be faster, but they sort of that light is switched on where they're just like, okay, look, I'm doing it. I have some evidence that this is working. And it's because what I'm doing, and if it doesn't feel unsustainable.

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Esther Avant: I think I can do this. And then it's just like they sort of turn turn up the the effort. And and it really does become possible. So consistency, commitment, confidence, are the 3 C's. You need to accomplish any goal.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah. And I think that's that's just so. So brilliant. And confidence like you've said comes from

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Emma O'Brien: starting. You need to start.

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Emma O'Brien: And you need to to have your why, of why you're doing something. And like I watched my client today who, you know, when we had the coaching session, and she said. I've actually done it. I've done what we discussed, and you could see she's like, I've actually stepped up for myself and done it. I can keep going with it, and you have to just sometimes get over that hurdle of

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Emma O'Brien: feeling the fear and doing it anyway. And like you said, confidence comes from taking

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Emma O'Brien: action. When you've stepped up for yourself each day, and you've done it, and you've committed to it. You can start to see. Actually, I can. I can get up a little bit earlier to get a workout in, or I can, you know, make a bit of time sometime in the day to do it. And after 2 or 3 weeks you're gonna start to feel better.

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Emma O'Brien: And so it builds. But that's it. It comes from like you've said consistency. And I know you've got a specific framework for developing consistent habits, because obviously, consistency really is a habit. Doing a workout each day is a habit

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Emma O'Brien: stepping up for yourself as a habit.

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Emma O'Brien: Talk to me a little bit more about your framework for helping clients, create consistent habits in their lives.

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Esther Avant: Yeah, thank you for asking. So there's 3 components to this as well.

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Esther Avant: The first, st and we've all sort of we've touched on all of them. The 1st is what I call learning and mastering the big rock habits.

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Esther Avant: So that goes back to what we talked about very early on how there's some stuff that makes a big difference. And there's some stuff that makes a tiny difference, and we tend to give them all equal weight. So what can really help build consistency

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Esther Avant: is to get rid of all the noise. Just stop stressing about the stuff that is pretty inconsequential, like, you know what time you eat dinner, or, you know, should you count net carbs and things like that, and you just start focusing on the the things that give you the most bang for your buck, your strength, training, your walking, your protein, intake, your fiber, intake, etc.

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Esther Avant: When you focus more on those you have more energy to devote them, which means they'll start to feel easier, more quickly, which means it'll be easier to be consistent without it taking a ton of effort. So that's 1st and foremost. And when you are getting started, or when you're trying to reestablish or develop a new habit, I recommend just a basic tracker. I have one that we'll put in the show notes. You can get@sra.com slash habits.

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Esther Avant: It just is a paper calendar that you print off. Put on your fridge, and you put a little check mark, or a smiley face, or a sticker. Each day you do the things to number One. See those small efforts adding up, once you get kind of that streak going, you want to keep doing more, but also for you to to

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Esther Avant: highlight where your consistency is lacking. You might see that. Okay. For the last 3 weeks I got my stickers Monday through Friday. Not a sticker to be found over the weekend. That's good information for you to then figure out, okay, what needs to change for weekends. So

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Esther Avant: that's 1st and foremost, is the exercise nutrition, big rocks, keeping it simple with what you're trying to do.

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Esther Avant: The second is having some form of support, accountability, guidance, etc. This can be working with a coach. And in a program like ours, you know, we have the built in community. We have

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Esther Avant: all of that kind of in one. It may be working with an In person trainer or going to a group exercise class, or you know some. I this, I think, is often doesn't work as well as people would like, but some sort of, you know, accountability partner, a friend or somebody. Just some way, some external accountability, so that you

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Esther Avant: have a little bit of extra incentive to do the things.

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Esther Avant: Ultimately, you do want to build that intrinsic motivation where you don't need somebody looking over your shoulder to do the stuff.

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Esther Avant: But in the beginning, when you're developing the habits, it's super helpful to have somebody go through those exercises with you and say, Okay, here's the goals we set. How did it go?

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Esther Avant: What went? Well, let's celebrate that. What didn't. Let's work on that

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Esther Avant: so that you can develop the habits more quickly. And then the 3rd component is what we

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Esther Avant: touched on the compassionate ownership, the the other kind of skills and tools that we need in order for this stuff to be easy. So one of those is to not oscillate between this, like all or nothing.

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Esther Avant: Either I'm I failed, or I'm you know, on top of the world. We just kind of settle into the middle, which is like this stuff is gonna coexist. There's gonna be some stuff we do. Well, some stuff we don't do well, we need to be able to take it in stride and learn from it.

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Esther Avant: This is also where we do kind of the deeper work of

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Esther Avant: looking at our past and understanding. How is that impacting our habits right now, and how we feel about ourselves? So those 3 things I find. You know, we've got sort of the surface level with what the habits are. That's what most people focus on. We've got the or I guess that's above the surface we've got right at the surface is the accountability most people recognize. I'm better when somebody's, you know, holding my hand or or

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Esther Avant: on my, you know, on my team. What most people don't really focus on is what's beneath the surface, which is kind of all the other stuff that can make or break this. And this is what we talked about with, you know, boundaries, time, management, self worth all of that stuff is playing a role in our ability to be consistent and therefore reach our goals. So when you're not doing that work, you're really kind of doing yourself a disservice.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, love me a bit of mindset. Really, as a coach, I think that is the fundamentals of the work you do with a client because you can set goals. You can make an action plan. But fundamentally, if underneath it you don't believe you can do it.

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Emma O'Brien: You have got limiting beliefs that are holding you back. You have to go through the messy middle to understand that, unpack it and repack it, to be able to to reach a goal, I think. And and I'm really glad you brought that up, because you can have all of the habits in the world. You can have habit trackers. You can have a coach, you can have accountability, but if

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Emma O'Brien: underneath it you've not done the inner work.

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Emma O'Brien: nothing really changes. All all begins in here, and I think that's what for me is so exciting about about coaching is helping people get to that. I'll often have people who come to me for coaching about one thing.

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Emma O'Brien: and then it morphs into something completely different. When you start to sort of peel the layers back. And actually, the problem isn't the problem at all. It's the symptom of something else that really deeply needs to be dealt with. And once that starts shifting, everything else becomes much much easier. So, you know. Thank you for bringing that up. And the other thing is, you don't have to walk a journey like this alone.

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Emma O'Brien: It's hard, especially for people. If they've got a big weight loss goal or a big fitness goal, it's really difficult to motivate yourself and do it on your own. But if you're paying somebody. You're spending money. Coaching is an investment. It's not a cheap exercise.

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Emma O'Brien: You're betting on yourself there.

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Emma O'Brien: and I think that's where the big power of it comes in. Is you spending this money? So if I've spent the money, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna do the work.

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Emma O'Brien: and that in itself, I think, can be the biggest motivator for people sometimes.

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Esther Avant: Absolutely. There's so much good stuff in there. We we use the term messy middle as well cause that it's really about just kind of settling in there and recognizing that like, yeah, we we're we're used to extremes. And most of the stuff happens in the messy middle, which is like, you know, most of your workouts are gonna be decent. You're gonna have some that feel terrible, some that are amazing.

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Esther Avant: Most of the time. It just, you know you showed up. You did your best. You moved on.

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Esther Avant: and getting getting used to that, getting used to the

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Esther Avant: the day-to-day, and

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Esther Avant: how to

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Esther Avant: change how you show up in your day to day is is really what it's all about.

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Esther Avant: There's something else that you mentioned that I wanted to comment on, but I've forgotten, so I'll let it go.

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Emma O'Brien: I'm gonna wrap us up here. What is one piece of advice you can give to someone who's listening, who maybe has a await goal or a big health goal. And they need to make some big changes. And it might be something they've been wanting to do for a really long time, and they've just never quite got there.

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Emma O'Brien: What could you say to that person to

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Emma O'Brien: help them

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Emma O'Brien: get themselves into action?

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Esther Avant: That's such a good question.

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Esther Avant: The number one thing I would want you to remember is that

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Esther Avant: all you have to do is start.

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Esther Avant: and it doesn't need to be this big declaration. It doesn't need to be posting in your social media saying, starting Monday, I'm you know, going full carnivore or anything drastic. In fact, that is the opposite of what you should do. I think there's so much power in

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Esther Avant: exactly what you said earlier, Emma, which is

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Esther Avant: breaking goals down to really, really small pieces. Yes, pieces that feel

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Esther Avant: inconsequential that you're just like, come on, that's not really going to get me there individually. They're not you waking up and drinking a glass of water before you have your coffee is not going to help you lose 100 pounds.

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Esther Avant: But

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Esther Avant: what it's gonna do is help start repairing your reputation with yourself where you over time

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Esther Avant: a lot of us

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Esther Avant: have

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Esther Avant: chipped away at that reputation, that self-trust by

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Esther Avant: saying things and setting goals that we then don't follow through on, and it just trains us to feel like that doesn't matter what I say. I'm not going to do it, anyway.

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Esther Avant: That's a terrible place to be, if think about. If you had any other person in your life who you're just like. Oh, yeah, they're unreliable, and I can't ask them to pick me up from the airport, because they probably won't.

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Esther Avant: We would not want those people in our lives.

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Esther Avant: But when it comes to just us.

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Esther Avant: we

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Esther Avant: for some reason think it's okay. So the number one thing to do that will make you more successful is to repair that reputation, and the way you do that is by giving yourself small opportunities to prove yourself trustworthy. So it's not about the water. It's not about, you know, pacing around your living room until you hit 10,000 steps.

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Esther Avant: It's about setting a goal and then doing it

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Esther Avant: solely because you said you would.

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Esther Avant: So when you start small, there's just fewer ways to talk yourself out of it where you're like, yeah, it's just a glass of water. It's just 5 min. It's just one email, whatever.

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Esther Avant: Okay, fine. I'll just do it. I don't think it's gonna make much of a difference. But I'll just do it because it's not that big a deal.

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Esther Avant: What happens when you do that is, you build some confidence. You get some momentum. You feel good, just like your client was experiencing. Like I I did what I said I was gonna do. I'm starting to see, you know, as you take a step forward, it's like the next step in the path lights up. And you, you realize, okay, I can. I can do another thing. I can keep going from here.

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Esther Avant: So just start, whatever it is that you've been putting off.

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Esther Avant: Don't make it a big deal. Just think of one thing, brain dump a whole list of like. What are all the things I could do? That would be a little bit healthier than what I do. Pick one, start with it.

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Esther Avant: celebrate the hell out of it, and then do it again, and then do another thing. When you feel ready, that's how you'll get there. Yeah, it might take longer than you'd like

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Esther Avant: surprise. It's gonna take longer than you'd like, no matter what you do. So you can't snap your fingers and be there. So just start today and and and do I, I think, Emma, you touched on such a good point about celebrating

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Esther Avant: along the way, I actually just interviewed a celebration coach for for my podcast who was talking about how we tend to

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Esther Avant: under celebrate. We think we have to wait until we accomplish the goal to celebrate, and how much more pleasant, and actually, how much more successful will be if we celebrate along the way. So it doesn't matter how small it is. You don't need to throw yourself a parade because you drank the water, but, like put yourself on the back, acknowledge that this is a win and go from there, so I guess all of that in a nutshell is just start, pick something small and start, and then just keep going.

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Emma O'Brien: Yeah, just excellent advice, and a really.

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Emma O'Brien: really like what you shared about repairing your reputation with yourself and likening it to.

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Emma O'Brien: How would you treat a person who constantly let you down, you kick them to the curb, and you'd get rid of them, and you can't do that to yourself.

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Emma O'Brien: But also you wouldn't tolerate someone treating you like that. So why do you tolerate treating yourself like that? So I think that'll be a big, light light bulb moment for a lot of people listening to this. So

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Emma O'Brien: folks, if you have got, we've got to the end of this here and you, wanna I would go back with a notebook here because there is a a stack of amazing information. Esther. Thank you very, very much for all of your insights. Today we're gonna pop the link to your free habit tracker. I'm gonna put that in the show notes so people can go and download that put it on the fridge and get started.

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Emma O'Brien: What else is coming up for you this year?

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Esther Avant: Thank you for asking. I have a book coming out.

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Esther Avant: Tbd. Hopefully. I think you said this will come out in August hopefully. September, October ish. I'm waiting to hear back from the publisher on the exact release date. It's it's called to your health a lifestyle of health, happiness, and confidence, and it is the opposite of a nutshell of my coaching philosophy. It's exactly what I do in my coaching program in book form, so you can get get all the nitty gritty and start applying it yourself.

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Esther Avant: since I don't know exactly when it's coming out. Coming out. The best way to find out that information is, go get the habit tracker. You'll get on my email list. I will absolutely send

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Esther Avant: an email or 2 when when it comes out. So if you're interested in that, that would be the best way. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram, and connect with me there. And I'm happy to pass along the information when I have it.

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Emma O'Brien: Amazing and congratulations on having a book out. I mean, there's no mean feat, and it sounds like it's going to be a brilliant read, Esther, just share where people can find you on your website and where they can connect with you on socials, please. I'll put the links in the show notes. But if you can just tell people where they can get you in case they're just listening.

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Esther Avant: Perfect. Yeah, my website is Esther, avant.com. I'm also pretty simple. It's Esther avant on both Facebook and Instagram. I'm also on Linkedin, trying to get more involved there. So if you're on Linkedin, I'd love to connect there. And you can also find those in my from my website.

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Emma O'Brien: Brilliant. Thank you very much. I'll pop this in the show notes. This has been a really amazing, insightful and value packed conversation. So thank you very, very much. It was really really lovely to connect with you.

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Esther Avant: Thank you for having me.

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Emma O'Brien: Thank you for listening folks. If you've enjoyed this episode, come over and say, Hi, and let me know on Instagram. It's at Emma O'briencoach, and you can also pop me a text message straight on the podcast at the top of the show notes as well

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Emma O'Brien: thank you for being with me, and I will see you same time next week bye, for now.