Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Soon. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger at Small Eats, author of Not at My Dastal Lunch, designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help you cut through the health and wellness noise to find what works for you.
This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about one small step at a time. Each episode has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, small steps, and other episodes at small-eats.com slash podcast. Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only.
They are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast is episode 57. I want to say if you love the show, please consider rating it and reviewing it and reviewing it and iTunes.
That would mean a lot to me. And if you think this show might resonate over the friend, please share it. You're listening to the show in semi-real time. It is literally the first of the new decade, which is the whole new decade thing has definitely been strange.
But welcome to 2020. I hope you had a great holiday celebrating with whoever you wanted to or not celebrating and doing whatever you wanted to do for you over the season. Hopefully you got some time off and you got to rest. I hope that happened.
So I mentioned this on the last episode, the last episode of 2019. But if you didn't know, this is a different this month of January when these shows are actually going live. It's going to be different. So this is the start of a five episode series all around intention setting.
So we're not going to have our usual format of solo show interview, solo show interview until forever. This whole month of January is going to be solo shows of just around this one topic around intention setting. We're going to start to dive into that now. So I'm breaking down setting intentions into five smaller steps.
We'll look at the five like bigger steps with smaller steps inside. But we're breaking it down because this process can feel really overwhelming. I have also created some awesome worksheets, which I've never done here on the podcast before. But I've asked a lot of questions in the past.
And I was like, you know what? It would be really helpful to do this in a slightly more structured way as a person that loves structure. By the way, so if you don't love structure, like do whatever you would like to do, what I thought it would be really helpful. So you can definitely get those in the show notes or you can go to small-eat.com slash podcast, look for the show notes and you can download them straight for my website.
Just because it is January when this podcast series is launching, does not mean that you have to listen and do all the things that I am suggesting or offering right now. This series can definitely be listened to at any time. And you can circle back to this process where it's a strict, like you should only set intentions in January or you should only set intentions on the first of something or you can set intentions whenever you would like. So this is here for you whenever you need it.
If you do wanna repeat this process, certain steps that I'm gonna talk about in the coming shows will probably be a lot faster for you because you've already done some of them and you'll have a little bit more clarity on them. Before I dive too much into the show, I do really want to make it clear why I'm doing this series now. Even though you'll hear me say a lot of times throughout all these episodes that you can literally do this process at any time. So it's January.
Lots of people are talking about this right now. This is usually the culturally accepted time where a lot of us do think about intentions, lots of people call them other things, goals, resolutions, whatever. This is the time that we have been conditioned by so many things, some of them being diet culture, some of them being capitalism, some of them just being society at large, that this is the time that we do this. And a lot of people do this because it feels exciting.
Like this is a according to society, it is a new phase of your life. It is a new year. It is not really a new season because we're still in the winter but it is a new time to start new things. And that can be so exciting.
And people want to jump on that and, because it's just so out there and so societally accepted that oftentimes we do this and we get into the cycle and it's quote, this is how it's done. And we don't often realize like what we want because it's what everybody wants, not in a bad way, but what we want may not be actually what we want and may have lots of roots into things we've been socialized in and certain layers of oppression that actually don't help us but we don't know because we haven't really had the awareness and the time and the space to really stop and check in with what we deeply want and what is really right for us. So what happens a lot around this time of year is that people set the common goals of they want to be more active and they want to eat better in order to lose fat, in order to become smaller, which is definitely a diet culture narrative. If you're new to the show and you don't really know what diet culture means, I highly recommend you go back and listen to episode 17 of the podcast, which I talk all about what diet culture is and how it can show up in your life.
And when we set those goals, those goals that are based in like being more active and eating better in order to get smaller, oftentimes those things fail because usually they're not really aligned with what we want. They're aligned with what society wants at large and we're deeply motivated by this like shame and guilt that's pushing us towards getting this thing that we think we want but we don't really want it. We actually really want love and acceptance and this is how we've been told and socialized like this is how we get love and acceptance, right? So we're just gonna do it.
And when it doesn't work and it's a quote, failure, we absorb that failure in heavy air quotes and we decide that we are a failure, that we're not able to set goals and achieve goals or intentions or resolutions or whatever. And so we either abandon it and become a cattle F failure, like the scarlet letter we wear, the staff on our chest. When we go on a failure, I'm such a failure. I can't do anything right.
You don't trust yourself. All these things or what happens with people is that they go further down the static culture rabbit hole and go even harder on themselves and double down on the shame, double down the fact that, well I'm a failure so I need to keep investing in all of these things because I need to make up for all this failure that I have because I'm doing things that's not working because there's not actually really aligned with you, but you may not know. So I hope that by releasing it at this time of year that I can help bring some pause and bring some deeper reflection so that you are able to, if you want, do this process right now and see what you want and what you maybe have had or maybe you've thought about this in December and you're like, this is what I wanna do. I just wanna create some, slow in it down and getting some more reflection to make sure that the things that you want, the tensions that you wanna set, the resolutions, the goals, whatever, those are actually really aligned with what you deeply want in your body, in your soul and not the narratives that are literally everywhere pressing down on you and motivating you from a place of shame or making you can tour and do all this mental and emotional and physical gymnastics to be something that is recognizable, that you know gets a lot of attention whether you are aware of it or not.
So I wanted to say that this is why I'm doing the show now and that around this timing and you can do this process, like I've said, anytime you would like and if this is not the right time for you, that's totally fine. You can listen to the show and see like, okay, maybe I'll do this process, when I feel like it but I'm not gonna do it right now or you can just not listen to this entire series. I'm sure that's like some business person is like shouting like, why are you saying that? But you can do this at whatever time you want and including like you don't have to do this now, like you don't have to listen to this whole series.
You can come back in February when we go back to our usual format of interview, solo show, interview, solo show and you can do what you need to do. So if this resonates with you, I really hope you enjoy the series of done a lot of work into it, writing it, creating awesome worksheets so you can work through it. It's going to be great and if it doesn't resonate with you, that is also totally fine. Or if it doesn't resonate with you right now, also totally fine.
One of the series really helps you get some clarity on what you want and maybe take some of the pressure off because it's really common to have those like big long lists of I wanna lose X amount of weight or I wanna get back into the size of clothing or I wanna do all of these things are a lot. And they could be all really awesome things and I also hope that by checking in with you and getting clear on what you want that it can provide you a little bit of some relief and some clarity and to feel more confident in the intentions that you're sending and how you're moving through the world because you know that this actually really does mean a lot to you and not to the narratives that we're all looking at and questioning and seeing if is this something that we wanna continue carrying or looking at or participating in. This is working down into small steps and this episode is all about setting the stage for intention setting. So I'm gonna be talking about things in the ways of intentions and I'm gonna elaborate on that in a little bit.
And I think before we get into setting intentions, I think there's some really helpful things to do first that can help make sure that you are creating intentions that really means something to you. Before we dive too deep into that, I wanna like set the stage for what exactly intentions are and what I mean when I'm talking about intentions. A lot of times nowadays, goals, intentions, resolutions that all use interchangeably. And so I wanna make a clear distinction about what I'm talking about for the next five episodes.
So Webster's Dictionary defines an intention as a determination to act a certain way. I define intentions as a plan or a way of being that you plan to embody or act on. So they're a little bit more open-ended and flexible and because they're more open-ended, they can adjust to all of the potential situations that can happen in your life because like things happen, which we don't expect that we can't plan because we are not robots and that we're not in the Truman Show. So it's I like intentions more because they feel a little bit more flexible and they feel like they can move and just evolve.
So examples of intentions that are all focused through the health and wellness sphere, they can apply to a lot of other things too, but I'm gonna provide these examples. I will move with more ease and fun. I will nourish my body with foods that support me or I will nourish my body. I will make meaningful rest more of a priority.
I will make my needs more of a priority. I will create more joy in my day, on my week or my month. So intentions can be set for any amount of time. A lot of times I've seen people set monthly intentions like the beginning of the end of each month.
It's like, all right, this is what I wanna focus on for this month. You can set intentions for literally any time you would like. You can set daily intentions, weekly intentions, monthly intentions, quarterly intentions, year intentions. You can set intentions in whatever way that you want that resonates with you.
And depending on what it is, it might have a certain time period or it might not. Or you might feel like, all right, I feel good about this. I would like to move on and focus on something else, which is something that you get to decide. So I mentioned that goals and intentions, those words can be used pretty interchangeably.
So like, what is the difference? There is a difference. I define goals as something that is a specific thing that usually almost always has a very clear timeframe or completion attached to it. So examples of goals that are health related, I will drink at least 80 ounces of water each day.
I will go to bed before 10 p.m each night. I'll go on a walk in the afternoon at least three times a week. I will have at least two veggies in my weeknight dinners this week. I will pause on eating eggs for two weeks to see how my stomach feels.
So these are very specific. They have ways for them to, like, smart goals, I'm sure you've heard that. It's smart, measurable, actionable, accountable, and I don't remember the last one. But they're written in a way that they're very clear.
They have like, you're gonna know, like, this is exactly what I'm doing for this period of time or this amount of time to achieve this certain thing. Like they're very clear and straightforward and concise. And those can be very, very helpful. While goals are also really important, this series is going to focus on intentions because they're more flexible, wider encompassing, and they can give you something to move forward with for longer periods of time.
I can see a lot of goal-related things, especially health-related things that are very, very relevant, and they can become habits that we incorporate into our practices that we do over time. So I wanted to talk about intentions because the feelings of those can be really helpful and they can kind of help guide things. And once you achieve these certain goals, like those goals could also jump into, like, I will nourish my body. A smaller thing of that could be that would be that I need at least two veggies or I want at least two veggies.
So especially if you're, like, very overwhelmed by setting goals or intentions, or if maybe you are working through some diet culture stuff around, like setting a certain amount of weight goals or mapper goals, or like if goals have, like, a kind of sticky feeling around them, I think intentions, though, they feel very similar, aren't quite the same. And so that's why I wanted to focus on intentions because they're a little bit more flexible and honestly, life is really flexible and very difficult to feel comfortable with sometimes, especially as someone that, speaking from personal experience, has really light control. And the more that I ease into letting go of control, the easier life seems to get. So I wanted to do something that was a little bit more flexible for our lives.
I'm sure it's a flexible about 12 times already. Before we get into what these intentions are and how we brainstorm them and think about them, I think it's important to get clear on a few things. And so there are three things that I think are very helpful to get clarity on before you start thinking about intentions. So we're gonna be laying the groundwork in this episode because we can't just jump in because we have to look around and be like, well, what's here?
What's important to me? What's going on? Like, we can't just jump into it and not know where we're going and where we've come from, right? Trust me, you can just jump in and do the thing and that can be great.
And I think as someone that is a big proponent of awareness, having that space to pause and connect with yourself and be like, all right, well, what's really gonna be helpful for me and zooming out? That's what this is about. The first question is what are your values? You can also phrase this as what's important to you.
Values are one of the biggest things in my life, in my practice, with my clients. I see values as the anchors and the guiding things in your life. So I go back to my values when I'm trying to make decision. When I'm working through, feeling some really big feelings, anything that helps me around figuring out how to self-soothe, both during my confidence, if I'm not sure, especially when I'm making decisions that feel outside of like what's accepted in heavy air quotes.
And that might feel like emotionally unsafe to me on some level. I have done several values exercises over the years and I have five values that I look at. Literally, I'm staring at them right now. They're written on piece paper and stuck to my board.
So I see them all the time. But if you don't know what your values are, you don't have like the actual words, this would be a great time to do a value exercise. So I have talked about this several times throughout the show and just for you, I have made a values worksheet printable. So you look at a big list of values and then you are like, yeah, you circle as many as you can and you're like, okay, cool, this seems great.
And then the next step of it is to like narrow those down and narrow those down until you get to, I like five. Some people prefer two or three as imagine number, I like five and knowing that even if you're like, oh man, but I have so many that really, really resonate with you, some of them can like live underneath others or you can make the meaning of those words a lot more flexible than you thought before. One of mine is connection. Connection can mean a lot of things.
Connection can be connection with myself, connection with other people, connection with communities that I have or want to have. It can mean how I want my relationships to be, how I want like all the things, these words can have multiple meetings and that's totally great. I'm gonna have a values exercise that will basically walk you through that so that you're able to do that for yourself. And if you've already done that and you know what your values are and maybe like me, you have them on your board or somewhere that you've seen them a lot, write them out again and see if they're still aligned with you because values like everything else can grow and evolve.
So maybe in one point in your life, connection was a really, really important value you wanted to focus on and maybe that shifted from connection to integrity. Like just because the values evolve doesn't mean like you don't do them anymore, but these are the things that you really feel like you want to really strongly embody or focus on this point in your life. So getting clear on what your values are is really gonna make shit really, really clear because if your intentions don't align with your values, that's gonna help with the FOMO. That's gonna help with the, oh, but I'm not doing these things that everyone else is doing.
Okay, well, do you have the same values as every person? Probably not. Do you have the same values as that person that wants to do X, Y, or Z that you're like, oh, I don't know if I wanna do that. The answer is no, which probably isn't because we all have different values.
That can give you a little bit of comfort and a little bit of like, okay, I feel more secure in my decisions, even though it may still feel kind of uncomfortable because you know what your values are and you know that certain resolutions or intentions may not align with you anymore and that's cool. So the second question to ask yourself is what do you need or want right now? Because tensions are things that change and grow at all times, it's really important to be like, what do you actually want or what do you need right now? Also, your values can definitely help inform this question as well.
So set aside some time to get really clear on what you want and need right now because that can help narrow down the intentions that you set. Maybe this is for a certain time period in your life, like maybe you are setting intentions just for this month or maybe you're setting intentions for this year or maybe you're setting intentions for multiple periods of time. If you're new to this though, I wouldn't recommend just choosing one just so you can kind of ease into it and figure out what you wanna focus on because sometimes the more intentions you have, the more overwhelming it can be. Set aside some time and there's gonna be a worksheet where you can just like brain dump all the things you want and need right now and I really encourage you to not edit yourself as you write down all the things because the more that you tap into what you feel like you really want or need, the more that you really get to the bottom of it because sometimes we think we want something which we might want but there could be a lot of deeper things underneath that where it might show up as like oh yeah, I really want to lose X amount of pounds but what's really underneath that?
A lot of times, especially with a lot of my clients, a lot of other people that I see, it's not really about the way, it's about wanting to receive love and attention from lots of other people and knowing that that is a way that is socially acceptable to receive a lot of love and positive attention. If that is something that resonates with you, no, that that's not bad. These are the ways that we were taught how we receive love and attention. So we are just following the script because that's what we know.
And now that we know that there are other ways to receive love and attention or if you know that we're just doing things in that way to receive love and attention is really fucking exhausting, you can make other steps. Keep writing as much as you want, get really what you need because the more that you think about it, the more that you're gonna get really clear on what you really, deeply, deeply need in your soul. And I'm not saying that these intentions are gonna like fix all of your problems or that they're gonna, that they need to be super fucking deep. Basically why I talk about journaling all the time is because journaling and kind of is getting it all out and not censoring yourself can really, really help cut to the heart of shit, right?
And so this question is helping you cut to the heart of shit. What do you really want? What do you really need? And then maybe that can inform the intentions that you want to create based on those things.
So write that out, don't censor yourself, just let it all go. Also if you run out of pages, because these worksheets are just like, this is only gonna be one page, print out multiple ones where you can grab a journal, anything you like. If you print it out, flip it back to the paper, just keep going or get another sheet of paper. The third question is something I've alluded to earlier and something that is definitely worth asking yourself is now the time to set intentions.
Is right now like the time that is best for you. And I mentioned earlier that this is going up in January around resolution time, this is a popular time to do it, and that it's also not a fucking requirement for you to take that time and set these intentions right now. If you are very much vibing with the season, because we're still in the fucking dead of winter, especially for people not like me in Los Angeles, it's still fucking wintertime. Animals are still sleeping, things are still hibernating, flowers are not blooming yet.
If you need the time to continue to chill, to continue to rest, or if you know that you're just in generally in a season of real life, maybe you're recovering from something, maybe you're moving through something, maybe there's just stuff in your life that is more of a priority than setting intentions, know that that is okay. The more that you can give yourself permission not to participate, because a lot of times, again with the foam most stuff, we're like, oh, but everybody's doing it and I wanna do it too, because it seems fun, and everybody's doing it, I don't wanna feel left out. So I'm gonna do it, and then it doesn't work because it's like really not the time, and so we don't do it, and then of course, the whole like failure thing that I mentioned earlier happens again, we're like, oh, well, we're failure because we didn't follow through. But was it really the right time for us to do that?
Was it really the right time for us to set those health goals or set those fitness goals, or any goals really, or create intentions if this really is not the time? And the only person that knows if it's the right time for you to do that is you. So if you already know that there's a lot of shit going on and you need to focus on that, cool. And if you're not sure, is it the right time?
I would invite you to try it, and if you can, if you can think about this, if you can put your experimentation hat on, and like really keep it on there, think about this as an experiment, and try it and see what happens. Like, I'm just gonna try this and see what happens and not as much as you can. I know this is, this can take a lot of work and a lot of mental work, try not to attach too many expectations to it. The thing that happens is like, oh, you know, I'm just gonna try it, and we still have the expectation.
Like, it's gonna be fucking great, we're gonna nail it, and everything's gonna be great. We're gonna follow through with all of our intentions. We're gonna nourish everybody, we're gonna move the things, we're gonna do all the shit we want, and it's gonna be great, right? And if it's not great, even though we were experimenting, we made better ourselves about it.
I really wanna invite you, if you are that kind of person, to be really aware of that, and give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion. If you are like, I don't know, I'm gonna try it. And if you trying it doesn't yield the results that you thought or that you intended, giving yourself a lot of grace and kindness, and you're like, okay, I tried this thing, and this thing happened. It does not have anything to do with my value, with my worth, with my intellect, with any of the things.
I tried this thing, and this thing happened, and like, leaving it at that. And learning from it, of course, because I'm forever a learner, so I'm like, oh, what did this tell me? And one of those things that it tells me is not that you are a fucking failure. It's not that I am a failure, it's not that like, it's like, oh, I tried this thing, and this was the result.
Maybe it wasn't the right time to do this. Maybe it was the right time to do this. Maybe I should do intentions more often. Maybe intentions aren't the thing for me right now.
There are so many babies and so many possibilities, right? I encourage you, especially if you're like, an all-nothing person to be aware of that, be aware of your own tendencies, to really figure out like, if you wanna do this or not. If you're not sure, if you know these, like, nope, this is not the time for me to do this. Cool, I see you, I'm giving you the thumbs up over here.
Do it when I feel right for you. And if you're not sure, try it, and lower the expectations. Think about this as an experiment. If you're more a sciencey person, think about it as this is a way that you're gathering data and information, and if you're not a sciencey person, just be like, all right, let's see what happens.
I have a few people in my life that I really look up to them because they are so fucking chill. They are so fucking chill. They always seem to go with the flow. They always seem to be really fucking flexible.
I'm like, nah, what if I was more like them? What would it be like if I was more like them in this instance? What would they do in this instance? Maybe you had that person in your life.
What would happen if you were more like them? Not like forever, but in this instance, what would they do in this situation? How would they respond to that? Something I think about a lot, as someone who has had a very high bar set for themselves, and I know that a lot of you out there, because you've reached out to me, have said that you also have a very high bar that you're very hard on yourselves.
I understand. I know, I so know, I so, so know. And I hope that you can start to shift a little bit more to this, all right, we're gonna try something else. Do what happens, and lower the bar.
Lower the bar. Not that you're lowering your standards and that you're like all of a sudden gonna accept shit in your life, because that's also a thing that I worked through too. But knowing that things don't turn out exactly how you want, that that's okay. And can definitely help you move forward with potentially trying, setting intentions, and seeing what that's like without getting stuck in the failure spiral that I've been talking about earlier.
Those are the three questions, recapping those three questions. What are your values? What do you want or need right now? And is this the time that you want to set intentions?
Just wanted to say again, I've said it a few times. I always wanna say this, is that know that if you don't wanna do this right now, when lots of other people do it, even if that feels very like not safe or feels nerve-wracking, then it's okay. Throughout this whole process, I say this all the time in the show, and it definitely, I'm going to be saying it a lot in this intention series is, please give yourself as much kindness and compassion around this. I'm gonna put in links to the show notes around an episode about self-compassion.
I'm also gonna put in the book, Self-compassion, written by Dr. Chris Nef, because it is really, really helpful stuff to try and cultivate more kindness and compassion for yourself. That's how this stuff can be a little bit easier, not so tight and tense. So the small steps for this podcast are to ask yourself those three questions.
You can do that with the work sheets that I have on my website, in the show notes, you can do that in your own notebook. If you are not a writer but you're a talker, you can talk them out in your voice memo app or with a friend or listening person or therapist, whatever way works best for you. Those three questions are, what are your values? Consider doing the values exercise.
If you haven't done that, what do you want or need right now? And is this the right time for you to set intentions? And also remember giving yourself a lot of kindness and compassion for yourself as you work through this, as you think about this throughout this entire process. So this week, if you're gonna follow week to week, this is kinda like many assignments, I would highly recommend if you're interested in doing this, to go to my website, get the worksheets, write it out, just let it show.
So do the worksheets, it might take you, depending on how ready you are for this, it could take you like an hour or so. It could take you some time over a few days, get the worksheets, try them out, sit on it and see how it goes. And we'll be back next week to build on the next part of this, we're gonna have more worksheets. It's not overwhelming, it's literally like a few pages, it goes pretty quickly.
So we're gonna keep building on this, keep talking about this, and then we will get to building intentions throughout this month. And as always, you can check out all the information about the show and the show notes, we've got links to all the things that I've talked about, and we also have the worksheets in there. Again, if you wanna get the worksheets directly, not through these show notes, go to small-eats.com-podcast, and you'll see the episodes, information right there, and you can tell the worksheets directly from there. As always, if you come up with some cool stuff, you wanna get me feedback about this intention series, please send me on my Instagram at small-under-score-eats, or you can leave a comment on the show notes, you know how to get a hold of me by now.
And that's it for this week. I hope that this series is something that you enjoy and you get a lot out of. Please let me know through this process. If this is something that you enjoy, I will definitely look at making more fun podcast series in the future.
And so remember, until next week, you can do this. One small step at a time.