386: How to Silence Your Inner Critic: Proven Strategies with Brad Bizjack

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 386.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And today on the podcast, I am thrilled to have back on the podcast, my very, very good friend, Brad Bizjack. Brad and I have been friends since I think about 2022. And I even hired him last year as my own personal mindset coach. He's a little bit of like my secret weapon. But today on the podcast, I'm inviting Brad on to talk about that voice in your head. You know the one, right? The one that when you set a big goal, it says, who do you think you are? You're just going to fail. That one that keeps you playing small because it feels safer there. So today, Brad and I are going to have a conversation because Brad's basically made a career out of helping people rewire their minds for success. And, you know, before you roll your eyes at that phrase, stick with me because we're not just talking about think good thoughts or toxic positivity or just smile and be happy, right? It's way more nuanced than that. And so in this episode, we dive into what the inner critic actually is, why it shows up and most importantly, what to do with it. Brad shares this really awesome framework called Ruler that I've personally used. And we get into a conversation about why all emotions, even the uncomfortable ones are actually serving you. And when we hit record, we realized, both of us realized, gosh, there's way too much content and information to just make this one podcast episode. So this is going to be released in a two-part series. I'll release the first episode today, and then we'll finish up the conversation next week and release that next week. 

Success Accelerator Challenge 02:28

Now, fair warning, Brad's going to challenge some stuff you might believe about how change works, but I promise you, if you've been in that cycle of, you know, setting small dreams or starting and stopping on your dreams, this conversation might be exactly what you need to hear. And speaking of breaking that cycle, Brad is running his Success Accelerator Challenge coming up. It starts on October 20th. I did it last year and I'll be doing it again this year because honestly, this work isn't one and done. And I still have things that I want to have breakthroughs in, in my own life. And Brad's the person who's been able to help me create a lot of those breakthroughs. So highly recommend you sign up for his challenge. If you want to join us and you want to come do it alongside with me, head to bicepsafterbabies.com/success to sign up. That's bicepsafterbabies.com/success. It will be five days of basically doing a lot of the work that Brad is going to talk about during the episode, identifying what's blocking you and then doing the work to shift it. We will talk about more about the success accelerator at the end of the episode, but I don't want you to miss the date. So bicepsafterbabies.com/success. All right, let's get into it. 

Amber B 03:39

I am thrilled to welcome back to the podcast. My good friend, Brad Bizjack. Hey Brad. 

Brad Bizjack 03:47

What's up Amber? I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me back again. 

Amber B 03:51

Yeah. Yeah. You were so well received that we said, let's do it again and provide some more value on a really, really awesome topic. I'm really excited about the topic that we landed on together because it's one that a lot of the women who are listening to this podcast struggle with, and I think that you can provide some really valuable insights about how to move past that. 

Brad Bizjack 04:10

Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. 

Amber B 04:11

Okay. Before we dive into the topic, let's just start with you and a little bit about your background. What makes you qualified to even come on here and talk about the topics that we're talking about? 

Brad Bizjack 04:23

Well, I'm not. Just kidding!

Amber B 04:25

Podcast over. 

Brad Bizjack 04:26

Podcast over. See you guys later. I love this question because a lot of times people are like, well, what's your education in this? It's not like I have a degree in how to rewire your mind, but I do have a PhD in results. That's where I've seen people transform over and over and over again, but it did not start with being able to help all these people shift limiting beliefs and toxic thought patterns. It started with me going through my own journey of a really tough time. For me, it was in the context of financial. I remember I was $92,000 in debt and I so badly wanted to change that. And I was thinking, if I could just make more money, I'd be happy. I know with this podcast, it's not focused strictly on money, but that was where I held a lot of my limiting beliefs. I remember going through and trying to change that, trying to shift it, but no matter what I tried, it didn't work.

I think that's a very common thing in the fitness and nutrition space. Trying all the right things, it doesn't seem to be working. Why isn't this happening for me? I would start to get in my head, is success just not meant for me? I remember just thinking, I need to figure out a way to do this because deep down, what I really wanted, I wanted to change this generational pain of what I was experiencing. I wanted to be able to live a life of freedom. My mentor told me, dude, you need a mindset coach because what you're doing right now, it's not working. You have all the right how-tos, you have the right strategies. You're listening to books, you're reading the podcast, it's not happening though and there's a reason. I had all the excuses. I'm $92,000 in debt, I can't do this, but something in me just pulled me. I have to do something to shift how I was thinking my mindset. Mindset is very different than just being positive, by the way. We can talk more about that later.

I remember on our very first call with this coach that I hired, she transformed how I viewed success. I was telling her all the same things. I'm doing the books, the podcast, the programs, it's not working for me, it's working for everybody else. She said, Brad, you are so attached to success that you're missing the whole point. You think that achieving this goal will make you happy and so all of your personal power is given away to this goal so you have no power left to change your circumstances. It's not more money that's going to make you happy, it's rewiring your mind for happiness that will make you more money. That shifted everything for me. It shifted how I viewed success and I went on this journey of trying to figure out how to do that. It led to really beautiful results in my life, changing our financial circumstances, retiring my wife, and I started sharing it with other people. And over the course of sharing it with enough people, I started to recognize some really powerful patterns. Patterns that keep people stuck and overwhelmed for years, getting the same results over and over again, and patterns that really help people to thrive. Now we share them with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, helping them to shift their beliefs, change their emotions, and actually see the results in the areas that they want to change so badly.

Amber B 07:39

Yeah, well and I love that obviously you're talking in the context of finance, but I mean we literally could just substitute the like if I lose X number of pounds then I'll be happy and you could go back and re-listen to exactly what Brad just said and from that context it would be the exact same thing, right? It doesn't really matter what the goal is so much, but everything that you said still rings true no matter what it is. When we think XYZ is going to give me confidence, happiness, power, whatever it is, that is not the end destination, that's the process. And so everything that Brad talks about is completely applicable to not only your health and fitness journey, which we talk about a lot here on the podcast is your health and fitness journey, but in all these other contexts of your life that you're trying to make better and make successful.

And that's what's really cool about the stuff that Brad does is it touches so many facets of life because we want success in a lot of areas, most of us do, and we don't want just success in just health, we probably want it in our relationships and in our financial situation and as parents and all these different areas and what Brad's so good at is being able to take whatever that definition of success is and then help you figure out how to get there and how to make it work. 

Brad Bizjack 08:53

And I think most people don't recognize that everything impacts everything. 

Amber B 08:56

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 08:57

This is so important. I think I see this all the time, people are like, if I can just change my health and wellness, then I'll be a better parent, right? Or I'll be able to have the energy to start a business or whatever it is. But most people don't recognize there are other areas of life that are limiting our ability to change in another area. For example, if your health and wellness is off, you're probably bringing a low energy to your spouse, you're probably bringing a low energy to your kids. If your parenting is off, there's a guilt that you bring to whatever your professional endeavors are. If your finances are off, there is a craving of certainty which makes you not take risks and not try new things. And so everything impacts everything and it gets in the way of the life that we really want to create. But we think if I can just change this one thing, my life's going to shift. But really what I am all about and what I stand for is, let's holistically look at all aspects of our life and what are the limiting beliefs, toxic thought patterns, limiting identities going on behind the scenes that prevent all of them from working because everything impacts everything.

Amber B 10:58

That's so good. I love that so much. Okay. So you have a lot of results and we're going to dive into how we start to create some of those results in our own life. And the topic that we're going to discuss today is that of the inner critic. And dang, what do we do with that? That inner critic that tells us that we can't, that tells us it's not possible. So I always like to start with a definition of the inner critic. So as we dive into this conversation, when we start using that term, what do we actually mean by that? 

Brad Bizjack 10:27

Yeah. I mean, how many times have you ever sat there and you want to change your life but there's that voice that's kind of quiet in the back of your head that says… 

Amber B 10:36

Or really loud.

Brad Bizjack 10:37

Yeah. Or really loud in some cases. That'll never happen for you. It's on the cards for you. Who do you think you are to try to lose that weight, gain that muscle, compete in that thing, whatever it is? Who do you think you are to make that happen? And a lot of people think that there's something wrong with them. That something's broken about them. But this is actually normal. Incredibly normal. And I'll approach it from two angles to give it a definition. The first is that everyone here has an inner roommate that lives in their head. And they listen to this roommate. If you think about the person in your head that is telling you to do or not do something, the person in your head that is giving you advice on if you should, let's say, binge eat or if you should not work out the day or whatever it is, the voice that's not good enough, the voice that says it'll never happen for you, that voice gets really, really, really, really loud. So my question to everyone listening is, would you get coffee with that person if they were a real person? And chances are probably not because the voice in your head is freaking crazy, right? 

Amber B 11:41

Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 11:41

Yet we let them drive a lot of our decisions. And the reason why is because what the voice in our head really is, is the craving for safety. And the devil you know how to deal with is far easier to handle than the devil you don't know how to deal with. Your brain is a survival mechanism. Its job is not to keep you successful or make you successful and happy. Its job is to keep you alive. So at any moment in time, it is looking for what is unfamiliar. And when it finds something unfamiliar, it labels it as a threat. So let's say that we have some limiting eating patterns. Let's say that we have a lack of consistency with exercise. That is a pattern that is habitual. It is familiar. It is known. And even if you're in pain, you know how to deal with it. So you stick with it. And the idea of, let's say, losing weight or gaining muscle or whatever the goal is, following a nutrition plan, counting your macros, whatever it is, that is unfamiliar. Unfamiliar, unknown, not okay, death. That's what the nervous system links up.

Amber B 12:53

Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 12:54

So it thinks that from following a nutrition plan, you are somehow violating your safety. And what most people do is they say, well, I self-sabotage. No, you don't. If your brain is a survival mechanism, how can it sabotage you? Its job is to keep you alive. What's actually happening, and I appreciate the label of self-sabotage, what's really happening is you are simply craving more safety and trying to go back to what is known. That's all the inner critic is doing. It's got a projector saying, no, no, this is different. Don't go after this. This is scary. And sometimes we listen. 

Amber B 13:31

Yeah. I love that reframe of the fact that it's working perfectly. That's what you're saying. It's like everything is working as it should in order to keep you alive. The problem comes is that most of us don't just want to live. We want to live well. We want to live greatly. We want to live successfully. And that's not what our brain was initially wired to do. It was wired for safety. Then we can get into this conversation. Okay. There's nothing wrong going on here. And if you want something different, you can't just stay in the same pattern. And that's where I would assume rewiring your mind for success really came from for you as you're starting to help people to be able to overcome this need for certainty, this inner critic that we have in order to get to the place that they want to go. What are some of the common themes that you've seen for people of what it sounds like in their head? What are some of the most common words that our inner critic speaks to that's kind of universal for all of us? 

Brad Bizjack 14:33

Yeah. There's definitely words, but there's also patterns of behavior that accompany it. So, some that might show up is, I'm such a failure. I'll never be good enough. I'll be happy when I achieve X, Y, and Z. I should be at that weight, that goal, whatever it is. I should be further along. And it's typically accompanied by a certain set of patterns. And this is incredibly common and normal. And so you said something really profound a minute ago in that everything's operating well, right? It's doing its job, but people tend to, when they're dealing with this inner critic, tend to think that they're broken. And I just want to speak to all of your hearts here. You are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You don't need to be fixed. There is nothing wrong with you. It is just patterns and patterns can be changed. And so this shows up in the behaviors of wanting and craving more information before you ever start. And so you'll over-consume information and get into what I call personal development paralysis. It's where you have 18 million teachers teaching you 18 million things. And then you're like, I don't even know which way to go. You will find yourself in the behavior of perfection, the all-or-nothing thinking where you have to go all in on, say, a nutrition plan. And it feels completely unsustainable. So you interrupt it with a limiting pattern. In most cases, that would be binging or drinking or whatever it is. And then immediately following that would be a sense of guilt. And you go right back into perfection. It's just perfection, guilt, perfection, guilt, perfection, guilt over and over and over. There is typically the behavior of trying not to lose. And what I mean by that is everything you do is about not failing. So you're never really playing to win without recognizing the fact that, of course, you're going to make mistakes along the way. You are a human being. It's part of the game. There isn't going to be this perfect, you follow everything perfectly every single day. That's a recipe for disaster. And then one of the most common ones that I see is nothing you do ever feels like enough. So even if you follow things the “right way”, it still feels empty. Like you're bouncing from goal to goal or day to day or whatever it is, feeling like where's the finish line? Because your sense of worth is based on the outcome. And if your sense of worth is based on the outcome, then it's a moving target. So you never feel worthy. And when you're not feeling worthy, that is when you start to have compensating behaviors come in to make up for this idea that I'm not feeling worthy. And the cycle repeats itself. And there's way more than that, but those are some of the most common.

Amber B 17:08

Yeah. I mean, I see all of those in my clients. Right. So again, it's universal in the fact that it applies to so many different contexts. And I really encourage you as you're listening to be listening from a certain context. What do you want to improve? And then how does what Brad said play into your experience trying to improve that thing? Whether it's your finances, whether it's your parenting, whether it's your relationship, whether it's your health and fitness goals, building a business, whatever it is, I'm looking for each of those areas that he talked about.

Because even as you're going through that, I was like, oh yeah, check, check. I've noticed that myself. Check. I've noticed that myself. Again, what I want to reiterate is like, nothing's going wrong. Like if you notice that in yourself and you're like, oh dang, Brad's speaking to me. Yeah. He's speaking to all of us. And I would, I would assume Brad, you would say I'm speaking to myself as well.

Brad Bizjack 17:59

Of course. I mean, everyone, no one's perfect. Everyone's a work in progress. And this stuff is so much easier to teach than it is to do. Right?

Amber B 18:07

Yeah. For sure.

Brad Bizjack 18:08

It's so much easier to talk about. But you know, after doing this for a very long time, I've been studying personal development for 13 years. And there comes a level of mastery from applying this stuff over the course of time. And the reason I'm sharing that is because the last thing that I want for someone here to do is just take in more information. It's not just about, we have to apply what we're learning. Otherwise things never change because there's a very big difference between knowledge, knowing what to do and knowing I've done it. Right. And that's what I want to encourage everyone here to think about. 

Amber B 18:42

Do you have an experience where you can highlight that maybe in your own growth and development of somewhere that you went through that process? Because I see that a lot too, where it's like the consuming of knowledge makes us feel like we're doing something. And so, I mean, I think that's the fear or the bad, the bad, the dark side of podcasts. Right. It's like, I could listen to podcasts all day long. Right. And I've convinced myself that I am changing now. Right. I've listened to so many podcasts. Inevitably I'm changing. Right. But it doesn't actually nothing changes until something changes. And so I do see people getting caught in this, like, just, I just need to learn more. But you're right that the action is actually what creates the change. And so I'm curious if you have an example maybe where you bridged that, where you can kind of show how you bridge that from learning something to then, oh dang, actually applying it and then getting to the other side of that application of what it looks like. 

Brad Bizjack 19:35

Yeah. Are you cool if I go like a roundabout way of kind of giving a lesson that will serve and then giving the example? 

Amber B 19:41

Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 19:42

Okay. You know, whatever someone's trying to accomplish, let's, let's use the metaphor of climbing a mountain. Right. And let's say that that mountain is Mount Everest, right? It feels like Mount Everest. It's 29,000, whatever it is, feet. Right. And when you look up at that mountain, it's this huge astronomical thing. Like how the heck am I ever going to do that? How the heck am I going to lose that weight? How the heck am I going to do that show? How the heck am I going to whatever it is? And so when we start trying to change our life, we're at zero, zero feet of elevation. And we typically have some baggage that we're carrying with us, right? A backpack full of perfection, a backpack full of giving your personal power away, a backpack full of people pleasing, a backpack full of societal pressure to always be on or be the perfect parent or never take care of yourself or whatever it is. And there's typically other things in that backpack too, like a drive, a determination, some nice things. Right. And we try to start changing our life and we effort and muscle our way to 10,000 feet. Right. And we can carry the weight of the world on our back up to 10,000 feet. Might need to take a break up there, but we start doing something to change our life. And what our mutual mentor has told us for years is what got you here will not get you there. And so what most people try to do then is they're like, okay, well, I'm going to keep going. I am going to go from 10,000 to 15,000 feet. And they start hiking up that mountain, but over 10,000 feet, the air is thinner. Right. And so that 200 pound backpack starts to weigh a lot more and you're breathing heavier. And so life will tumble you back down that mountain, right back to whatever you perceive as your ceiling of growth, whatever you think you can get to, whatever you've been able to handle up until now. 

And so we keep trying. We go up, tumble back down, go up, tumble back down. And eventually we start creating the story that this is all there is for me. This is just how life is. I can't have more. I can't do more. And the reason why is because if we use another metaphor within the metaphor of an outlet, a lot of times people think that their life is like an outlet that kids are plugged in. And the other one there's, let's say marriage plugged in. And they think that if I'm going to take care of my health, I need to unplug kids and plug in health. 

Amber B 22:03

Yeah. 

Brad Bizjack 22:04

All right. And they think that that's one or the other, but this is about actually expanding the capacity to become a surge protector and have all the things plugged in at once. And so life will keep on knocking you back down to 10,000 feet until you're willing to set some of the weight down metaphorically and physically probably, right? Some of the weights of perfectionism, the overwhelm, the anxiety, whatever it is, that's been occupying your mind up until now, because at the higher elevations of where you really want to get to, you need an ice pick, right? Or whatever they call it, the ice axe, right? 

Amber B 22:43

All I can think of is a crampon, like the crampons on your feet, right? 

Brad Bizjack 22:47

Yeah. Crampons. You need oxygen. You need a heavier jacket. You need more materials at this higher level where if you're carrying the weight of the world in your backpack, you can't carry any of the gear that's actually going to get to the higher levels. And so a lot of people keep trying to force it and force it and force it, and they keep tumbling back down. And that's where I was. I would try to be positive. Be positive. Brad, be positive. You got to be positive. Be positive. But positivity itself is just as toxic as pessimism. I didn't realize this at the time. And so I call this toxic positivity, where I was always the happy guy. And the reason why, if I look back to my childhood, my dad was very conflict avoidant. He wouldn't deal with problems. He would avoid them and say, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine, right? And my dad was my hero, right? And so I kept on trying to be like dad. And I would avoid these problems, avoid these problems. And one time I was on the phone with, or what happened first, excuse me, before I was on the phone with a coach, I was being positive about all this stuff going on in my life. And I remember I had accomplished a lot, right? But I was still feeling unsatisfied and miserable. And something, I mean, it's like, what's going on? Like I'm moving forward, but I'm not experiencing happiness from this. And this might be, in your life, it might be an example of I'm raising great kids, but I still don't feel whole as a mom, right? Or whatever it is. I was doing all these things.

And I remember having to, I had a call with my coach and my coach was asking me about this and just a normal checkup, right? How's your week going? You know, I didn't get this done, but I'm fine. It's fine. It's good, right? This positivity, right? Brad, what's going on? Like, why are you just avoiding this? I'm like, I'm not avoiding. It's fine. It's fine. I'll figure it out. It's fine. Just like, well, are you avoiding anxiety? No. Are you avoiding stress? No. What emotion are you avoiding? Are you avoiding anger? I don't get angry. And I was like, oh my goodness. For the longest time, I had made anger wrong. And the exact same time all this is going on, I had built up a business about teaching people how to be positive. And so I realized in that very moment that number one, everything I was teaching up until now was no longer applicable because I was going based off of what I had knowledge on, right? Knowledge that you could just be positive. Knowledge that you could reframe a challenge. But I didn't realize that this whole time I was making anger wrong. And anger is a very resourceful emotion. It can be valuable if you're in a situation where you need it. Because all emotions serve you. And it's when I realized that I need to let go of making uncomfortable emotions wrong before I can ever teach somebody fully how to let go of uncomfortable emotions. 

Amber B 25:49

That's so good. Can you speak more? Because I think you kind of dropped a little line there. And I think people are going to be like, what? He needs to talk more about that. And that is that all emotions serve you, right? I think that is something that would shock a lot of people. Because we do have this binary thinking of emotions like we have good emotions, we want to cultivate those and we have bad emotions, we want to avoid those. So can you speak more to how all emotions serve us? 

Brad Bizjack 26:14

Oh, absolutely. Do you have four days? This is like one of the most passionate things in the world for me. Like I mentioned, I had made emotions wrong, right? Anger was wrong. And when I reflect on why, it's because my mom used to get angry, right? And I made a promise that I didn't want to be like that. But let's say that, you know, someone was attacking my little girl. I'm going to get angry, right? 

Amber B 26:40

You need to get angry. That's valuable. 

Brad Bizjack 26:44

So people will label emotions as negative or positive, and they're neither. They are uncomfortable and comfortable. And if we look at emotions that way, all of a sudden they don't take as much power away from us, right? Like an emotion, what someone labels as a negative emotion is a call to action for a change in your life in some way, right? If you think about what anxiety is, anxiety is run from a perceived threat. Anger is attack a perceived threat. Depression is I've tried those things and have no energy left. I'm going to play dead so the threat doesn't get me. I have no more resources. And so it's a call to action about how do we deal with a perceived threat. What people would label as positive emotion is a reward for how we've been living. It's seeing the beauty in something. And I'm not saying that we want to be in uncomfortable emotions most of the time, but if I take a look at where you have the most uncomfortable emotions, that is typically the place of the largest gift in your life that you don't see as a gift yet. Because life's lessons will get louder and louder and louder until you pay attention. And a lot of people think they can avoid them, but those problems just get bigger and it ends up kicking us in the butt. And so the gift is wrapped in pain. So you pay attention to it. So you actually view it and do something about it and learn the lesson from it. So wherever we have uncomfortable emotions, it's giving us a gift. But if we look at it like it's wrong, like it shouldn't be there, then we're denying the beautiful gift of the lesson. And it typically starts off with a little feather dusting like, hey, you should probably pay attention to this. But because we don't listen, life wants to get our attention and teach us something. So it writes you a note and it ties that note on a brick and it throws that brick through your living room window and glass shatters everywhere. And you're like, well, the glass shouldn't have shattered. This isn't fair. It's harder for me. Why isn't other people's glass shattering? But the note sitting right there in your living room, you're just not looking for it. And glass keeps shattering. Next thing you know, you got a pile of bricks and all of your neighbors, they have their windows intact. Success is easier for them. It's harder for me. You don't understand what I'm going through. And we find significance by having bigger problems. And so life wanting to give you a lesson, writes this message on the front of a truck and it runs you over when you're staring right at it. And you can either wake up and say, I shouldn't have gotten hit by the truck, or you can learn the lesson. 

So my point with this is that these uncomfortable emotions are beautiful gifts that lead to less of them showing up if we pay attention to them. And a lot of times what people do when an uncomfortable emotion shows up, if we can kind of give tactical on how do we handle this, they make it wrong. Let's use the example of anxiety. I think everybody here has had the experience at some point in their life of what I call the dark night of the soul. It's where you start to get anxious about something. And then you start to think that, no, no, no, I just, I just got to get it together. You know, you're logging into chase.com and doing mental math to see if you can make the mortgage, right? Or whatever it is. And you're starting to freak yourself out. And then you start getting feelings about your feelings. You get anxious that you're anxious. And next thing you know, it snowballs into this big, big thing where you want so badly for your partner to wake up and comfort you, but you don't want to be perceived as weak, right? We've all had the dark night of the soul, but watch this. Notice how you made the anxiety wrong in that example. But what would happen if we actually just said, I'm feeling anxious. That's interesting. What's it trying to teach me? Oh, I must care a lot about the future. And the anxiety gets lower because it's no longer wrong because the cliche, whatever you resist persists.

So one of the greatest keys to make uncomfortable emotions go away faster is to welcome them with open arms and see the gift of what they're teaching you. And when you do that, all of a sudden you can experience more of the, what people call positive emotions more often, because you're not pushing what you don't want away anymore. And if I were to give one final piece on this as a metaphor, and this isn't completely medically spot on, but we'll go with it. So imagine blood flow in an artery, right? And the blood flow is the beautiful sensations in life, gratitude, love, peace, happiness, joy, whatever it is. Well, whenever we resist an uncomfortable emotion that shows up, it's like plaque building up, right? And when that plaque builds up, it restricts the blood flow. There's not as much. And we think that when our life changes, that's when we'll be happier. Life becomes then about avoiding things that stimulate your fears. It becomes about avoiding what people label as their triggers. Well, the trigger is just a piece of your heart that hasn't healed yet. And that's exactly what you should focus on. And so they go about their life, avoiding stimulating their fears, which means avoiding growth. And so they don't ever change and they feel empty inside. The key is to learn how to dissolve that plaque so the blood flow happens more often. And one of the greatest keys to doing that is to feel them, to experience them, and to not make them wrong. And so anyways, I can go on and on about this, but the reason this is so important is because the emotions that you're in are typically followed by a behavior that either supports your goals or hurts your goals. When you're in a state of anxiety… Go ahead, Amber. Sorry.

Amber B 32:19

Well, I'm just trying… I'm linking… Because you've done such a good job of drawing the line between the emotion and then the behavior, right? And we've talked through some of those behaviors that we see so commonly. And I want to back up a step and link in the inner critic to that emotion because these emotions often come from somewhere. Sometimes they come out of the blue, but oftentimes they come from that inner critic. And these uncomfortable emotions that you're talking about, these “negative emotions” often come from that spark of the inner critic that is saying those things to us. So can you kind of speak to that link between what is happening inside of our head and then the downwind effects that that creates? 

Brad Bizjack 33:02

Yes, absolutely. So all of life is cause and effect, right? And the effect is how your life is right now. And the cause is how you've been living internally because your external world is a mirror for the internal world. And I promise I'm coming around to the answer for this, okay? I tend to get winded when I get passionate. Just cut me off if you want to. So a lot of people when they're trying to change their life, they go about it the wrong way. They start with the how-to, the strategy, right? And when they start with a strategy, it immediately questions, criticizes your ability to handle it, right? Because you're typically in a lower state. Am I going to be able to navigate this? I don't know. And it leads to a limiting story. And that limiting story, when you're in a state of the inner critic going, you'll never make this happen, ask yourself what emotions follow, right? Sadness, depression, anxiety, whatever it is. And the cycle repeats itself. So I need more certainty. So I'm going to go find another how-to, that inner critic speaks louder, and then I feel even worse, right? But successful people go about it the opposite, right? They start with the emotions, their state. When you're in, and you've all had experiences where you're in a high vibe state. When you're in a high vibe state, what happens to that inner voice? It's not critical. 

Amber B 34:26

It’s supportive.

Brad Bizjack 34:26

It's supportive. It's loving. It's like, of course you can do that. Like a lot of people have been at a conference or something, and they're all like, whoa, like they're in a state of energy and excitement and passion. They're like, I can conquer the world. That's the story that's playing. But when they go home, they no longer in that energetic state. Emotion, by the way, energy in motion. It's the energy that you're living in right now. And so they go home. They're no longer in that state. So the inner critic follows. And so the greatest key to this is elevate the energy, elevate the emotions that, and when you learn how to do that and make it subconscious to where it automatically, your default becomes high vibration, high energy, the inner critic is naturally more quiet. And when the inner critic is naturally more quiet and more supportive, and you're in a high vibe state, then all of a sudden you'll actually start applying the right strategies consistently to support your growth instead of just questioning them.

Amber B 35:19

So good. Can you speak a little bit to, I'm trying to tease this out of my mind. So I don't know if the question will come out well, but we just talked about how we don't want to make emotion wrong. And like feeling that emotion and like moving through it is really important. Um, and then, then we talk about being, and you talk a lot about being intentional about your state and how we have a lot of control over our state and we can, can change it intentionally. So how do you reconcile those two different ideas of like, if I have control over my state and I can do it intentionally, is there some inherent way that I'm making it wrong to not be in that other state? Do you see what I'm saying? Like I'm trying to piece those two pieces together.

Brad Bizjack 35:50

I will be the bridge for you. 

Amber B 36:00

Okay. Thank you.

Brad Bizjack 36:02

Yeah. So when we make an emotion wrong, it shows up more. And a lot of people, they want to skip to the good part, right? They want to experience all the beauty. And that's where a lot of the positivity comes in, right? Just pretending that problems don't exist. It's like going to your garden and chanting, there are no weeds here and expecting that the weeds disappear. Right? 

Amber B 36:20

Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 36:20

That's not what this is about, right? This is about feeling that leads to healing. And I'll explain through an acronym. And this is a tool that everyone here can use on a daily basis to be able to process uncomfortable emotions and get back to a more empowered state. So yes, you do absolutely control how you feel 100% of the time. And that might make you want to flick me in the forehead. I'll explain that a little bit later if you want to go into that, but just because we can control our states, there are three keys to controlling your state, by the way, we can go to those if you want to. Just because we can control our state doesn't mean we always should. Because whatever you avoid controls you. And so imagine that, and this is based on Michael Singer's work in The Untethered Soul. Imagine that you're going through the woods and you hit a thorny patch, right? And a thorn goes into your arm. Well, common sense would say, take the thorn out. But most people don't because it's painful. And so they build up a contraption to make sure that their stuff doesn't get hit, right? They make sure that thorn that's in their arm is never stimulated. And so they walk around with this big contraption. Finally, they find a way around their stuff getting hit. And they're like, that doesn't control me anymore. Yet it controls their entire life because they haven't pulled the thorn out. Now it's infected. You could touch it with a piece of fuzz and it will still sting, right? Like because you got to pull the thorn out if you actually want to heal. If you just pretend the thorn isn't in your arm, that isn't serving you. So there's an acronym that I use with all my clients that I think will serve you tremendously. And it's an acronym called RULER. R-U-L-E-R. And this is a practice in not avoiding or resisting emotions.

The R stands for recognize it. What is this emotion? Just that alone, the curiosity about what it is will decrease its intensity. The U stands for understand it. Is this actually anxiety or am I hurt right now? Am I hurt or am I angry? And why? And getting curious about what it is. The L stands for label it. Label it is essentially the same thing as the first one just with more information, right? Okay, so this is actually overwhelm. It's not so much anxiety, it's overwhelm. Okay, now that whole process takes 17 seconds, but most people want to skip to the end. The E stands for express it. Get it out of you. Express it out of the body. This is why when you have a really good cry, it feels like a release, right? When you go and take a boxing class, it feels amazing because you're beating the crap out of a punching bag, whatever it is. You feel better when you journal, you feel better when you express the emotion. But the key here is to express the emotion without consequence. Because let's say that the emotion is anger, I can express that on my kids, but that has consequences. So whatever you got to do, scream into a pillow, journal, meditate, go for a run, whatever it is, get it out of your body. Let the emotion be felt. Because the key to healing is feeling. Once you feel it, it burns through you and then you can get to the R, which is regulate it. Regulate it, that's the, I'm going to change my state. That's following the three steps to elevate in that state to make sure that you're in the best place to go forward. So you don't skip it. But when you do this, then there's less uncomfortable emotions that come up so often. And then you're living in the more empowered states more often.

Amber B 40:01

That's so good. Yeah. What I'm really present to is, uh, Bernie Brown calls it like near enemies. It's like things that can like look very similar, but there's a difference there. And so you can look at someone and you can say, Oh, like they're so positive all the time. And, and look, they're like regulating their state so well. And it can come from a place of someone who has done the work behind it. Right. I'm not ignoring their emotions. They're feeling them. They're processing, they're working through them and then they're moving their state. Or it can be someone who's ignoring it, pushing it down, pushing it away, building the contraption around the thorn. And they're, they're being really positive as well. But it, it's like the behind the scenes looks very different. Um, and I, and I find that so fascinating because it's so easy for us to sometimes, um, lie to ourselves a little bit, you know, like, Oh yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm just really good at controlling my state. And I can just be happy, happy, happy, kind of like you were saying, you know, in the past, I can just be happy, happy, happy all the time and nobody controls me, but you're being very controlled by not being willing to look at the negative stuff or feel the negative stuff and process it before you get into taking control of it. 

Brad Bizjack 41:06

I'm going to give you a standing ovation. That's spot on.

Amber B 41:09

You know, you know me, I'm a straight A student and I love a good, I love a good A. You're speaking to my inner critic right now. Perfectly. Uh, okay. Well we have more to chat about. Um, there is going to be a part two to this episode, but before we get there, that'll release next week, Brad, you have something that's going to really help with the application piece of some of the stuff that we've like talked about. So we're going to share what you have coming up and in store for my audience.

Brad Bizjack 41:35

Yeah, absolutely. So I dealt with a challenge, uh, a couple of years ago I would speak on podcasts and so many people were inspired and moved by them. And then I kind of did this little mini study to myself to see where they were a couple of months later and nothing changed. And I was like, what? Like I just poured so much value. 

Amber B 41:57

So inspirational. 

Brad Bizjack 41:58

Yeah. I like, but inspiration without action is delusion. 

Amber B 42:03

That's right. Yeah.

Brad Bizjack 42:03

Right. And so it's, we have to be able to do something about this. And so I was like, I need to make this applicable for people. So it's not just theory, not just excitement. And so I took all these patterns of 13 years and studying human behavior and success in any context of what you're trying to create, whether that's health and wellness, finances, parenting, whatever it is, your definition of success. And I put it into a five-day challenge. I call it the Success Accelerator. And this is really about identifying what are your biggest goals and dreams in all aspects of your life, identifying how your mind is currently wired. And when I say how your mind's currently wired, I mean, some total of your limiting beliefs, your toxic thoughts, the limiting emotional patterns, the identities that you're carrying with you. Like for example, if you have a big aspiration to be a healthy person as an identity, right. But you carry the identity that I'm big boned, that's going to have some consequences. Right. And so we need to identify what those are. And so the first day of the challenge, we identify what is the big dream in the most important areas of your life that you want to change right now. What are the limitations, the blocks, the subconscious, subconscious meaning under your awareness that you can't see getting in the way. And then the rest of the week, we go to work and give you exercises to actually overcome them. So by the end of the week, you have a completely different belief pattern that makes success now incredibly possible for you. Not trying to think it's possible, not toxic positivity-ing your way to possibility, but actually believing in all of who you are that it's possible with an action plan to make it happen. So this challenge has changed 75,000 lives from all over the world now. Amber's done it. It is a life changing experience. It is totally free and it starts on October 20th. Amber has the link for you to enroll. Highly recommend that you join.

Amber B 43:54

Yes. So I did it last year. I will be doing it again this year because it's one of those things where it's like every year you can go a little deeper and you understand yourself a little bit more and there's more to uncover. So I'll be doing it again this year. But you can join me at bicepsafterbabies.com/success. And you can come join Brad and I while we hang out for a week and work on ourselves. And I mean, I love the term success accelerator. It's like, let's freaking go. I'm ready. I'm ready to accelerate it. So yeah. So bicepsafterbabies.com/success to go and sign up. We'll drop that in the show notes as well. And don't miss it because this is just part one of my conversation with Brad. We're going to be back next week with part two, as we continue to dive more into talking about the inner critic, talking about beliefs, and we're going to really dive into that belief of believing that whatever it is that you want is actually possible because that's a huge one that a lot of people struggle with. So come back next week for that. 

Oh gosh, that was such a great part one. And I'm so excited to release part two next week. In next week's episode, we'll dive more into how you can really get yourself to believe that change is possible. Because for a lot of us, we have had so many experiences of trying and failing that it can be really hard to even believe that we'll be successful in the future. And so we get down to some tactical things that we can do to be able to really believe in our success and really, you know, create that in our own life. Again, please come and join me while we do the success accelerator. It starts in a couple of weeks, October 20th, it's free. And Brad's going to walk you through how to start to identify some of these blocks in your own life and then how to start working through them. So if you go to bicepsafterbabies.com/success, you can come join me and we can hang out for a week while we let Brad coach us. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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