Giving Your Best Life

Episode 101: Embrace Progress (not Perfection) The Power of Resilience and Micro-Goals in Achieving Your Dreams with Guest Zach Lloyd

• Stephanie L. Jones, Giving Gal

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Have you ever found yourself stuck in the vicious cycle of "starting over" every time you falter on your goals? Join us as we unwrap the secret to resilient progress with our sustainable anti-diet coach, Zach Lloyd. We'll share intimate tales from our own lives, unraveling the pitfalls of the reset mentality that so many of us fall prey to. Discover why it's not just about how often you fall but how you rise that truly counts, and learn how to maintain your course without backtracking to square one. Life's curveballs don't have to mean starting from scratch, and together, we'll explore how to fortify your resolve and transform setbacks into powerful lessons.

We'll talk about taking those tiny, mighty steps towards your dreams. In this heart-to-heart, we demystify the art of overcoming procrastination by initiating action with micro-goals. Imagine the ripple effect of spending just 15 minutes on a task or the triumph in flossing a single tooth—yes, it can lead to a cascade of productivity!

We'll also link arms with episode 95, revisiting the essential connection between your health and your life's purpose. So whether you're looking for motivation to uphold a balanced lifestyle or seeking the push to show up for your calling, let this episode be the gentle nudge you need to keep moving forward, one small victory at a time.

Connect with Zach:
 Zach's website here
Get a free resource: End Calorie Counting Toolkit here
Follow Zach on IG: @zachlloydcoaching 

Connect with Stephanie:

Get a free resource The 4G Method Journal here.
Shop Stephanie's books here.
Follow me on IG: @Giving_Gal or FB/GivingGal


Stephanie L. Jones:

Hey friends, it's Stephanie here with Giving your Best Life Podcast, and.

Zach Lloyd:

Zach Lloyd a sustainable anti-diet coach. I forgot who I was for a second. I know, I know.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Anyways, we meet together on Mondays and then we decided to like start having a conversation. Bring you on the podcast, our last episode together. We talked about consistency and the power of consistency, and I think you were even talking about, like the lie, does consistency even exist? Well, something happened, because we are accountability partners. Is we actually were inconsistent for two weeks. We didn't meet, and I know, like, can you believe that? But I think it's important to know, is sometimes in our goals and I want to hear from your standpoint when it comes to eating and working out is, if we miss a couple of weeks, or we miss a week, or maybe you're on a business trip and you can't do what you needed to do, maybe you got sick, like I think you were sick, yeah, which then maybe we missed. Is we get in this mindset of well, it's done and my goals are smashed, and then we end up off the rails.

Zach Lloyd:

Do you see that happen? Yeah, there's this feeling of being like you're so far behind that it's just like, oh gosh, how am I ever going to catch up? What's the point? And then there's this almost a start over effect where you're like I'm going to start over or I'm going to start again, or I hear that a lot from people, my clients, and it's like no, stop saying that. Why are we starting over again?

Zach Lloyd:

Cause that's a whole new basket of bad times. It's like just keep, keep doing what you were doing, right, like don't. It's like two things are true yeah, you didn't do everything you wanted to do, but you're still on the horse and people are like no, I fell off the horse.

Zach Lloyd:

Like no no, you didn't fall off the horse, unless you're trying to fall off the horse. No, you didn't. So it's having that, that mentality of okay, why did I miss this metric? And then what can I do differently right away, today or this week or next week, and then learn from that, but stay on the horse, stop starting over.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Yeah I think that's important. I think, too, is like it's such a short amount of time of when we will quit. It's like, well, I had two bad days of eating this weekend, or I went off the rails on this, or we missed two weeks. So it's easy to say we missed two weeks, like let's just be done. It's like that's such a short amount of time. If you think about so. This morning, as we were talking, I Want you to share of, like we were talking about that long term like it's, it's mentally helped you because we have long-term goals.

Stephanie L. Jones:

So, even though we missed that two weeks last week, we got back on track. Like that, like it just happened, like we're back on track. Today is our second week consistent. Yeah, talk a little bit about your mindset about that stuff.

Zach Lloyd:

Well, long-term goal, let goal. Let's just talk about Beyonce for a second. No, can we not? She has. I think I'm really close if I don't get the number right, but if you thought about how famous and how successful she's been in her music career, you would think that she has hundreds of songs right and then you're like, okay, well, how many of those were like actual hits that really like moved the fame and success up higher right?

Stephanie L. Jones:

well, I was shocked.

Zach Lloyd:

She only has like 88 songs okay out of her entire career and it was less than 20 of those were hits. So 80 of her songs were a literal drop in the bucket and didn't really move the needle at all for her. And if, if we look at our two weeks, if we look at like our entire careers or our life's work, then it's a drop in the bucket, a literal drop in the bucket, that really doesn't matter that much. But what matters is how we react to it and, like we're saying, did we like fall off the horse or not?

Stephanie L. Jones:

and she's just kept going making songs and it's worked.

Zach Lloyd:

So it's more going back to last week of that consistency, but it's really like what's the mentality that you bring to it right and it's the consistency of the long term.

Stephanie L. Jones:

you know, like us, missing a couple of weeks is we have a long-term view and it's also it goes back to people. This is why accountability is so important, because if I didn't have to show up like even though we missed two weeks is, if I didn't have to come up, come in here and meet with Zach, I probably would have given up on the three goals that we're working on together yeah, because it's like well, I have no accountability no one else cares if I'm writing my fiction book, some of my speaking stuff, like nobody cares and then you just go do what is easy yep or do nothing at all, which I think is what people do.

Zach Lloyd:

Or what we were talking about. We go to like some random thing in the house like a chore, like we'll rather like clean the dishes or do the laundry than do the thing that we should be doing, and then we feel good about it because, oh, we're getting something done.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Yeah, you get that dopamine hit. That's so true. I'm glad you brought that up, because that's what you can end up doing is you have goals, you set them, you get a little off track and if you don't have accountability, you will start doing things that make you feel good. Yes, but do not get you to what. For me, what I always say is what God's calling you to do.

Zach Lloyd:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Stephanie L. Jones:

So no, that's good. Do we want to dive into a little bit of like, just those little things?

Zach Lloyd:

avoidance yeah, avoidance yeah.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Yeah. Yeah, what's okay we're using to avoid yeah well, I avoid writing all the time, even though I love it, and once I sit down and get in it I I Will stay in it longer than what I set my goal to do. So I will write in 15 minute increments, but usually I will write longer to that. But it is avoiding Sitting down in writing and that will be the number one thing.

Stephanie L. Jones:

If people want to write a book, I always ask them are you writing? Which sounds so stupid. But most of them are not writing. So what I will do is I will go do the dishes, I'll go do laundry, I'll work on email, I'll write a thank you note. I will do 50 things Then write. So what I told you, my cycle is, and Zach and I talked about, like us, probably being ADHD or whatever, like I don't like labels. But if you look at my life and if we look at the checklist, Makes a lot of sense.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Is. I will literally get a sheet of paper and just write, writing 15 minutes, and that is the only thing I can do. And some there's something about writing it down and staring at it that makes it real to me Like now I can't avoid, now I can't go. Oh wait, dishes. Why is dishes important? Why is that? Thank you, note important.

Stephanie L. Jones:

But once I write 15 minutes, I will allow myself to go do something like that because then it still does feel productive, like I still have to do the dishes, I still have to do laundry. Um, I call this my cycle. Is I and I do that all day long, especially on a weekend is I will write writing 15 minutes. That's the only thing. Once I get that done, I cross it off, I get my dopamine hit. I will write down dishes.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Go do the dishes, cross it off, writing 15 minutes but it is amazing because by the end of the day or the end of the weekend I've gotten a lot done. I've accomplished my goals. I can come in here on Mondays and say, well, I didn't write as much as what I wanted to yeah, but I I'm moving, I am progressing on the goals that I write yeah, yeah, you move the needle in the right direction.

Zach Lloyd:

Yeah, yeah, which would have been so easy not to right yeah yeah, and I feel the same way about the, the video stuff that I do, because it's there's this friction of, okay, sitting down writing, planning, blah, planning, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then that's what I focus on, but when I actually do the video portion, I actually enjoy that.

Stephanie L. Jones:

So it's like if.

Zach Lloyd:

I can get through that immediate part of planning and writing and like actually sitting down. That's really helpful where it's if the environment is not set correctly, and that's the other thing I realized. There's environments that are more critical to my success than others, and so, like if I'm in my house on my laptop or whatever, it's not a good environment because there's things that are dirty, there's people coming in and out, there's windows, there's all these things that are distracting me, versus if I can just come into my office, it's's like okay, the office is prepped to get work done, and so that's really helped me stay away from those other things as well.

Stephanie L. Jones:

I think you bring up a good um like environment is you have to create those and you can't use the excuse of like I have too small of a house or I have too many people. Like there's so many excuses, so knock the excuses out. For me, it is like having fitness equipment. If we're going back to like fitness or whatever is in the house and making it easy, I have to have a variety, like having a list of things that I like to do. Like bought a bike and even you know I'll ride around up and down my driveway. Or I just bought a little tiny trampoline because I was reading the benefits of that.

Stephanie L. Jones:

I can jump on that trampoline for 10 minutes while we're watching TV, like it doesn't take up a lot of space. So I think it is important of the environments that you create, the distractions that you get out.

Stephanie L. Jones:

I also think it's, though, is don't use the environment as an avoidance. Don't use the environment as an avoidance, because sometimes I can like I do like to write at my desk, but sometimes I can look and go oh, my desk is messy. I got to deal with all this before I write, and so it's like Nope, get your 15 minutes of writing in and then have that next thing, be clean off your desk or whatever.

Zach Lloyd:

Yeah, and that's such a good example, cause you, just you, you made the goal so small that you it's like it's. It's like the flossing the teeth thing we've talked about before, it's like just floss one teeth, tooth, teeth, that that seems so ridiculous but it's like the person that shows up every day and just want does one tooth.

Zach Lloyd:

They end up doing more teeth right and so it's like let go of your ego or whatever feeling that is, and just do the 15 minutes like you're saying, or make it bite size, whatever it is for you. It's like just pick up the dumbbell, or like runners we hit all that with runners like just put your shoes by the door, whatever it is. That's such a good point.

Stephanie L. Jones:

Yeah, so we covered a lot of things today in a short amount of time. So at the end of the day, we just hope that we're giving you tidbits to help you live out what God's calling you to do and live it healthy. On episode 95, we talk about like health and why bother with health? And so if you don't have health, then you really can't do all the things that God is calling you to do. Any final words what the health? I love it. No-transcript.