Ep #172: 7 Words That Changed My Life

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #172. Today, I’m sharing seven words that changed my life and how you can use those words for yourself.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. 

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Well, I’m going in a little bit of a different direction today. So, if you’ve been around here at all, you know that I am a huge book nerd, or maybe I’d be better off saying I’m an Audible book nerd. But either way, I’ve consumed a lot of books in the last few years, and maybe you’ll know this phenomenon when I describe it. Many of the books that I read or listen to are self-help books. I cannot get enough. And what I have learned after listening to countless self-help or self-improvement books is that they often say the same thing. The messages are the same, but they may be wrapped up differently depending on the author’s style or messaging or language choice.

But now, with that being said, what I will say is that sometimes, you hear or read the words of a book and it hits you in just the right way or at just the right time that those words become burned into your brain and imprint on your soul in a way that changes you. Or is that just me? I’m not sure. But all the same, I want to share seven words that literally stopped me in my tracks. So those words came from the book, Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. And if you’re not familiar with him, he’s a retired Navy SEAL, an ultramarathoner, and probably one of the most extreme examples of mental toughness you will ever encounter.

His whole story is about pushing past the limits your brain sets for you and building resilience through what he calls callousing the mind. So this book is raw, it is intense, and honestly, at times it feels a little over the top, but the message is undeniable and it’s powerful. And buried in all of that is the one line that stopped me. And that line is, “No one is coming to save you.” And that sentence, or really that truth, is what I want to unpack with you today.

So here’s the thing. When I first heard those words, “No one is coming to save you,” I wasn’t even in the middle of my hardest season. That part had already happened. My hardest season, so far anyway, was years earlier when literally most everything in my life seemed to be unraveling simultaneously. I was completely burned out in family medicine and felt like a cog in the wheel, plugging along, seeing patients, always under the pressure to produce more. And I hated it.

And the thing is, I knew deep down that remaining in medicine was not the right answer, but I felt so trapped and so stuck within a career that I thought I wanted that I had no idea what to do. And I felt completely paralyzed by the fear and especially by shame. Who works that hard to become a doctor only to decide to throw it away? That was what I was wrestling with for years. I thought about the amount of time, money, and energy I had invested into becoming a doctor. I thought about the people. What would people say when they found out I left clinical medicine? I thought about my own career trajectory and what it would look like to start all over again. And all of that led me to do absolutely nothing for years.

And while I kept ignoring what I knew deep down about my career, hoping that things would just get magically better, they did not, in fact, get better. Instead, things got worse in other parts of my life. My parents’ marriage was blowing up right in front of me, and at the same time, my own marriage was at its lowest point ever. So in every direction I looked, there was junk at work, at home, with my parents. Everything in my life felt incredibly heavy and overwhelming, and I remember feeling like I was stuck in quicksand. I felt like I was totally sinking.

But here’s what I’ve realized. When I look back on that really messy, very unpleasant time of my life, I realized I didn’t wait for anyone to pull me out. I did not wait for my circumstances to magically get better. I didn’t wait for my parents to suddenly get it together. I didn’t wait for my marriage to repair itself. I didn’t wait for my boss to hand me a lighter clinic schedule. So what did I do? I finally stopped waiting. I stopped waiting and I started making some real adult, scary, big girl decisions and acting on them.

And here’s the truth. Taking action was the hardest part because waiting feels easier in the moment. Waiting feels safer. Waiting lets you convince yourself, “If I just hang on just a little longer, someone will show up. Someone will fix this. Something will change.” But no one came. There was no fairy godmother. There was no magic wand. There was no one but me. And nothing changed until I did.

And so, piece by piece, I started saving myself. I finally grew up and made the decision to leave family medicine, even though it terrified me and even though people thought I was crazy. I answered the questions about what I was going to do, what about the money, and what if you want to come back? I answered to all of that. I started facing the mess in my marriage instead of pretending it wasn’t there. And in doing that, I realized that I was doing something that my parents never did. So in short, I started acting on the kind of life that I actually wanted to live.

Meaning, I didn’t just decide what I wanted. I took the plunge and started acting on it. And that meant having really, really difficult conversations, upsetting lots of people, and taking an enormous leap of faith on myself, not just in my career, but in my ability to persevere through some of the hardest moments in my most important relationships. And let me be clear, I did not do this all at once. I didn’t have some giant breakthrough moment, and there was no come-to-Jesus moment where the light clicked on and suddenly I had all the answers. I saved myself one small, messy, imperfect step at a time.

And so years later, when I heard David Goggins say those seven words, “No one is coming to save you,” it was like someone turned on the lights. I realized that was what I had been doing. That’s what got me through the hardest part of my life. I stopped waiting for a rescuer and I became the person who saved herself. And here’s why those words mattered so much. They gave language to something I had already lived. And you know how I feel about words, right? Those words explained why I was able to move forward while so many people stay stuck.

And to be clear, I was not braver, stronger, or more disciplined than anyone else. I didn’t have extra resources or secret knowledge or some magical safety net. The only thing I did was to stop looking outward for a rescuer and start looking inward for what I could do to change my life. Because what I finally understood was this, it was not about blame. None of this was about whose fault it was. It was about something a lot bigger.

And here’s the distinction I really want you to sit with. There is a difference between fault and responsibility. That’s the part that gets twisted sometimes. Life throws garbage at us. Like awful, ridiculous, unfair things happen, things you never asked for, things you didn’t cause. And that is not your fault. But here’s where people get stuck. They confuse fault with responsibility. They think, well, hey, this wasn’t my fault, so I shouldn’t have to deal with it. But life does not work that way.

And I get it. That way of thinking comes from a very human place because if you didn’t cause the problem, why should you be the one who has to clean it up? Why should you carry the weight of something you never asked for? It feels unfair, it feels wrong, and it feels like a punishment. So, what happens? You throw it back. You blame. You point to someone else or you point to life itself and say, “This is on them. This is not on me to fix.” And in that moment, blame feels good. It feels like a release. And blame says, “Hey, this is proof. I am the victim here.” But there’s a hidden cost to that.

Blame keeps you small. When you blame, you hand over your agency. You decide that your circumstances control you instead of the other way around. You convince yourself you’re powerless because if it’s someone else’s fault, then it must also be someone else’s job to fix it. And the second you believe that, you have just taken yourself out of the game. That is why blame is so alluring, but it’s also so dangerous. It gives you the illusion of relief, but what it really does is trap you.

And this is the part I want you to hear. You refusing responsibility doesn’t punish the people or the circumstances that hurt you. It punishes you. It keeps you waiting, waiting for an apology, waiting for justice, waiting for someone to change, waiting for someone to finally swoop in and fix it for you. But while you’re stuck there waiting, your life doesn’t move and you get smaller and smaller while the years slide by.

And that’s really what victim mentality is. It is constant waiting. It’s the belief that life is happening to you and that you have no say in what happens next. And I have seen this play out in so many of my clients, brilliant, successful, capable women, women who are running boardrooms, operating rooms, courtrooms, women who are managing teams, raising families, doing all the things. But when it comes to managing their own well-being, they tell me they can’t. They can’t exercise because their schedule’s too busy. They can’t meal plan because their kids or their partner won’t eat the food they make. They can’t go after the promotion because their partner isn’t supportive. They can’t rest because their job is too demanding.

And while yes, those circumstances, they are most definitely real, here’s the truth. When you hand yourself and your power over to those circumstances, you’ve already decided you’re stuck. And stock is the worst place to live in because stock feels endless. It feels slow and heavy and infinite. Stuck convinces you to believe this is just how it is. Stuck tells you there’s no way out, that you’re at the mercy of whatever happens to you, so you might as well just settle in. And it feels awful.

And here’s another sneaky part about this. Stuck also becomes familiar. It becomes comfortable, and it becomes your identity. You start describing yourself that way. “I’m just too busy. I’m so stressed. I’m not a morning person. I will never be disciplined.” All of those sentences, they’re identity statements, and if you repeat them enough, those sentences start to feel like hard facts instead of choices. And that right there is the danger of victim mentality. It’s not just that it keeps you stuck waiting for your life to change. Victim mentality rewrites the story about who you are. And the more you tell yourself you’re powerless, the more powerless you become.

And here’s the thing. The opposite of victim mentality is not pretending that nothing bad ever happens to you. The opposite of victim mentality is saying, “Yep, this happened. No, it was not fair. But this is mine to deal with, even if I don’t like it. And I get to decide what to do with it.” And that, that right there is where radical responsibility comes in. So, your way out of victim mentality, really, your way of saving yourself is not by waiting, okay? Your way out is through taking responsibility, radical responsibility. And so what exactly do I mean by that?

Radical responsibility is the decision to take full ownership of your life, not just for the parts you created, but also for the parts you didn’t. It’s taking ownership even for the things that weren’t your fault, for the things you wish weren’t there but are still yours to face anyway. So, radical responsibility is when you can say, “This is mine. I didn’t ask for it. I most definitely didn’t want it, but it’s here and now it’s mine to deal with.”

And admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do. But that shift matters so much because it’s the only place where your power is. You don’t have power over what has already happened to you. You don’t have power over what other people choose to do. You don’t have power over the past. But you do have power over how you respond and you do have power over what you decide to do next.

So for me, radical responsibility meant realizing that if I wanted a different life, I had to be the one to build it. No one was going to walk into my house and hand me a new career, a stronger marriage, or a sense of peace despite the chaos of my parents’ relationship. That was all on me. So with this realization, I started acting on it. I started taking control and I started getting unstuck. I left medicine, even though it terrified me and people thought I was nuts. I started building my business, first as a personal trainer, then becoming a life coach, and eventually creating the podcast you’re listening to. I did it all without a roadmap and it was messy. I faced the hard stuff in my marriage and decided how I wanted to show up. I set boundaries with my parents. In the various parts of my life, in the various messes that I was facing, I took one small step after another, even when it was icky, even when I didn’t feel ready, even when I felt like I didn’t have the strength to do it.

And here’s the best part. Despite this, taking control and owning my choices and my actions was empowering. And that’s because it felt so much better to be in control of my own life than to keep waiting for someone to rescue me because waiting felt endless. It felt so heavy and so slow. But choosing, even when it was really scary, choosing gave me relief. It gave me momentum. It gave me more peace and trust in myself because I was making decisions and taking action instead of spinning in stuckness.

And that was the true freedom for me. It was the realization that if I want my life to change, I have to change it. No one else can. And that’s the power shift, the shift from waiting to choosing. And that is what radical responsibility really is. So now, hearing all of this, how do you know if you’re practicing it? How do you know if you’re actually taking radical responsibility for your own life? Well, here are a few signs. Let’s talk through them.

So, first, you stop making excuses. When your brain is locked in on why you can’t, it shuts down the conversation before it even begins. So, you may hear yourself saying things like, “I can’t work out because I’m too busy. I can’t eat healthy because my kids won’t touch vegetables. I can’t rest because everything will fall apart without me.” Here’s the thing. Those sentences, or really those excuses, they feel like they’re true. They sound logical. They feel like facts. But most of the time, they’re only one side of the story. And when you keep repeating them, you close yourself off from even seeing another option.

But radical responsibility means flipping that script. It means instead of declaring all the things you can’t do, you flip it and ask, “What can I do right now?” And notice the difference in energy there. “I can’t.” That’s final. It is a total dead end. “What can I do?” cracks the door open. It invites possibility. Its core purpose is to get you unstuck. So maybe you can’t get a full hour at the gym, but you can walk for ten minutes. Maybe your kids won’t eat salmon and broccoli, but you can still stick a veggie on your plate. Maybe you can’t take an entire weekend off, but you can give yourself twenty minutes of quiet. And take note here, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to look the way you imagine it. But the key is that you’re moving yourself out of excuses and into action because as long as you stay in excuses, nothing changes. But the second you shift to asking what you can do, you’re taking yourself out of powerlessness and back into control.

Next, when you take radical responsibility, you also own your choices. So this one is huge. Owning your choices means you get very real and honest with yourself and tell yourself the truth. Like, “I stayed up scrolling. I ordered takeout. I skipped my workout.” You own it. And this is not beating yourself up. It’s just being honest. So, when you say, or when you believe, “I had no choice,” you’re telling yourself that you were at the mercy of your circumstances, that you are powerless. And if you truly believe you had no choice, then what happens next? You’re stuck. Because if you had no control then, why would you have control now?

But when you say, “I choose this,” even if it’s not a choice you’re proud of, you’re acknowledging that you had agency, that you were the one making the call. And here’s the key. If you had agency then, you have agency now, too. If you could choose that, you can also choose differently next time. So owning your choice, even the messy one, is what keeps the door open. It gives you the power to say, “Okay, I didn’t like how that turned out. So I’m going to make a different decision next time.” And that is the difference between being stuck in a space of this happened to me versus I choose this, which means I can also choose something else. The ability to choose is where all of your authority lives.

All right, next. The next thing you can do to take radical responsibility is to stop leaning on blame. So, blame is really tempting. Blame is fast, blame is comfortable, and it feels like a release. Blame also gives you a target, meaning it’s easier for you to point to your boss, your partner, or your family and say, “See, this is why I can’t.” And to be clear, sometimes those circumstances are very real. Maybe your boss does overload you. Maybe your partner really isn’t supportive. Maybe your family does not pitch in the way you’d like. Those things, they can all be true.

But here’s the problem. The minute you let blame run the show, you’ve given away your agency because it’s all on them. And then you’re stuck until they decide to change, and that might never happen. So while you wait for your boss to ease up, your health goes on hold. While you wait for your partner to get on board, your goals stall out. While you wait for your family to step up and pitch in, you put your own needs last over and over. And that’s why radical responsibility matters. It means saying, “Yes, these things are real. I don’t have to like them, but I still get to decide how I show up.”

So it’s not about pretending that those obstacles aren’t there. Instead, it’s about saying, “I’m not going to let these obstacles be the reason I give up on myself.” Do you see that? That difference is huge.

All right? And another way to accept radical responsibility for yourself is when you focus your energy on solutions instead of living in your problems. So here’s what I mean. Sometimes, you get stuck replaying your problem over and over again. And when you do that and perseverate on your problem, you end up digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole. And I have seen this play out in my clients circle the same sentences in their head repeatedly. They’re sentences they share with me, like, “This is too hard. This is not fair. Nothing will ever change. I can’t do this.” And the more you repeat those sentences, the heavier they get, and the more they start to feel like the truth. Those sentences start to feel permanent. And the longer you stay in that loop, the more powerless you feel because all you’re doing is focusing on the problem and what’s wrong.

And that is why radical responsibility is such a shift. Because instead of spinning endlessly on why it’s hard or why it’s unfair or why things aren’t changing, you interrupt yourself with a very simple question. “Okay, so what’s next?” That is turning your eyes towards solutions. And to be clear, asking that question does not erase your problem. It doesn’t suddenly make things fair. It doesn’t make things magically easy. But it does take you out of the swirl of helplessness and puts you back in motion. And here’s the key. The solutions you come up with, they don’t have to be big. In fact, most of the time they’re not.

Sometimes, what’s next is a 5-minute walk when you really wanted an hour workout, but 5 minutes is all you’ve got. Sometimes, what’s next is chopping a few veggies when you can’t prep an entire week of meals because that’s what you have time for. Sometimes, what’s next is going to bed on time tonight instead of solving your whole evening schedule in one fell swoop. So while tiny, imperfect actions, they are not glamorous, they do move you forward. And forward, even if it’s in inches, that will always feel better than living stuck where you are in the same problem day after day, not doing anything about it.

So yes, let me spell this out. Radical responsibility, it is not easy. It requires honesty. It requires humility. It requires you to look at yourself in the mirror and admit to yourself, “This is on me now.” And that is hard. Okay, really hard. But the freedom that comes with that is everything. The empowerment of no longer waiting, but taking control and choosing, that is what changes your life.

And this is where David Goggins’ words come full circle. So, in his book, he is most definitely extreme, pushing his body and his mind to the brink in order to prove how much more we’re capable of. So, you do not have to go run ultramarathons through Death Valley or do Navy SEAL Hell Week in order to get the lesson, okay? The point is this, stop waiting for someone else to change your life. That’s your job. And that’s your power because here is what I know. Waiting never saved anyone. But choosing and trying out solutions does.

Now, I want to turn this back to you for just a second. And I want you to really check in here, not with judgment, not with shame, but with honesty. So think about this question. Where in your life are you waiting for someone to come and save you? Are you waiting for your boss to notice how hard you work and finally lighten your load? Are you grinding away hoping and waiting for someone at work to see how much you carry while every week your pile keeps getting bigger?

Are you waiting for your spouse or your partner to suddenly become more supportive? Are you waiting for him or her to wake up one morning and see the light and finally get it and give you the encouragement or the help you’ve been waiting for? Are you waiting for your kids to get older so you can finally take care of yourself? Are you telling yourself some version of, “When they’re more independent, when life slows down, when things aren’t so busy, then I will have more time for me.” Or are you waiting for your circumstances to magically calm down? Are you waiting for that one day when things just line up, the stress goes away, and finally life feels easy?

So, if you recognize yourself in any of those, I’m asking you to pause, because this is where so many women get stuck. You might tell yourself things like, “When my job changes, or when my partner changes, or when my kids are older, that’s when I’ll finally do the thing. That’s when I’ll finally take care of myself. That’s when I’ll finally go after what I really want.” But here’s the truth, and I say this with kindness and respect and a little bit of tough love. Those things that you’re waiting for, they may never happen. Your boss may never lighten your load. Your partner may never give you the support that you’re hoping for. Your kids, they might always need you in some way, and life might always feel just a little too messy to do things differently.

And if you keep waiting on all of that to change before you take action, you’ll still be in the same place you are a year from now, or 5 years from now, or 10 years from now. And I’m not saying that to scare you. I’m saying it because I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to keep putting your life on hold, waiting for things that may never change because you could be waiting forever. And what’s worse, when you keep putting off changing your life because you’re waiting for someone else, you shrink yourself. You give your power away. When you make your ability to change conditional on someone else’s behavior, you stay stuck and you stay small. And that is no way to live.

So instead, I encourage you to ask yourself honestly, where are you putting your life on pause, waiting for someone else to make the first move? Where are you outsourcing your future to someone else’s behavior or decisions? And then take it a step further and consider this. What would it look like to stop waiting? If nothing around you changes, what can you still decide for yourself today? Because waiting will keep you stuck exactly where you are. But choosing, even small, messy, and imperfect choices, that is what creates your momentum. And once you start moving, even if it’s in inches, you’ll see it. You don’t need someone else to save you. You are fully capable of saving yourself.

So, let me leave you with this. No one is coming to save you. And I want you to hear me. This is not bad news. In fact, it’s actually the best news ever, because it means you don’t have to wait. You don’t have to cross your fingers hoping someone else will finally show up. You don’t have to keep giving your life away to circumstances you can’t control. It means the person who saves you is you. And when you really allow yourself to let that sink in, it is so freeing. It’s liberating. It’s everything because you no longer have to wait for perfect timing. You don’t have to wait for someone else’s permission. You don’t have to wait until your life or your schedule or your parents or your marriage gets easier. Instead, you can decide to start where you are with whatever you’ve got right now, even if it’s small, even if it’s messy, and even if you don’t feel ready.

Because here’s the truth. Waiting will keep you circling in the same place. Choosing, even tiny, imperfect, brave choices, that is what moves you forward. That’s what creates momentum. That’s what builds confidence and it’s what sets you free. And every time you choose, you’re proving something to yourself. You’re proving that you’re strong. You’re proving that you’re capable. And you’re proving that you don’t need a rescuer because you’ve already got everything it takes to rescue yourself.

All right? If you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, you stop waiting. You own your choices and you become the strong person who saves herself. Check out my website, head to www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching will move you away from stuck and into action. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me and I’ll catch you again next week.

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You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.