Ep #213: What Happens When You Stop Arguing with Reality

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #213. There are a few truths that took me decades to accept. Today, I’m sharing the ones that changed my life the most and why I wish I had accepted them sooner.

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’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately because there have been a lot of different things happening over here. I just turned 48. And at the same time, this podcast just hit its fourth anniversary. It actually debuted on my birthday four years ago, which is pretty cool.

I also just came back from giving a workshop to a medical practice in Virginia, which was super fun and a really good stretch for me professionally. And then, I just spent the last few weeks rewriting my entire website. And mixed in with all of that has been some pretty icky family stuff too. And this was all a reminder that life is never just one thing. There are times when really exciting things are happening at the exact same time that really hard things are happening. And honestly, that is just life. That’s the 50/50 proving itself yet again. You get the good and the bad all at once.

And I think when you find yourself in the middle of one of those stretches, like I have, by nature, it makes you zoom out and take stock. You start looking back a little. You start noticing patterns. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, and maybe it was realizing that I’m now closer to 50 than I am to 40, I found myself asking, “What have I learned that I keep coming back to? What do I understand now that I didn’t understand before?” And not because someone taught it to me, but because life keeps teaching it to me.

And what’s interesting is that none of the truths I found are particularly earth-shattering. In fact, these might be things you’ve heard before. And honestly, the problem isn’t that I didn’t understand these truths. It’s just that I didn’t like them. These are truths I have spent years arguing, wishing they weren’t true, hoping there was another way, looking for a different answer. And eventually, I realized I wasn’t even arguing with other people or even arguing with myself. I was arguing with reality.

So what does that even mean? Well, I was spending so much energy wishing reality were different that I never stopped to ask, “Okay, well, if this is really true, now what?” And here’s the funny thing about all of this. Once I finally stopped arguing with reality, I had somewhere to go. I could finally work with these truths and decide what I wanted to do about them.

So today, this is not a how-to episode. Instead, I’m going to share some of the truths I’ve stopped arguing. Not because I think I’ve got life figured out, because I most certainly don’t, but because these are the ideas that keep showing up in my coaching, in my own life, and in the decisions I make. And maybe, as you’re listening, the question isn’t whether these truths are true for you too. Maybe the better question to consider as you’re listening is, “What truth are you still arguing with?”

So let’s go. The first thing I’ve stopped arguing with is this: Not everyone has to understand my decisions. And this one, admittedly, took a long, long time. Many of you know that before I became a coach, I practiced family medicine. And if I’m being completely honest, when I first left clinical medicine six years ago, it was really hard for me to even answer a very simple question. “What do you do?”

Because answering with, “I’m a coach,” felt super uncomfortable. And it wasn’t because I didn’t believe in coaching, and it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it. It was because I knew not everyone would understand and people would have opinions about it. Because medicine is a profession filled with opinions. And the notion of physicians becoming coaches is definitely no exception. Some people think it’s great. Others think it’s a terrible idea. And for a long time, I found myself wanting people to approve of my decision before I even fully approved of it myself.

I spent a lot of mental energy wishing everyone would understand why I left medicine and chose this path instead. And honestly, I spent a lot of time arguing with the fact that not everyone is going to understand it. But eventually, I realized I was waiting for something that was never going to happen. And that is the hard part because not everyone is going to come with you. Some people will not understand your choices. Some won’t agree with your priorities. And that’s actually okay. It is not your job to convince everyone else that your life makes sense. It’s your job to make sure it makes sense to you. Because if you spend your life trying to make sure everyone else is comfortable before you’re allowed to move forward, you are going to spend a lot of time stuck.

And I think that’s why I misunderstood what it meant to be confident in my decision. I thought confidence would come once everyone understood my decision. It did not. Confidence didn’t happen because someone gave me permission either. It didn’t happen because the criticism suddenly disappeared. In fact, it actually had nothing to do with the people I was so afraid of in the first place.

Confidence in my decision to become a coach happened one client at a time, one session at a time, one breakthrough at a time. It happened as I watched the women I work with take better care of themselves, set boundaries, get stronger, change how they thought about food, work, relationships, and themselves. And confidence happened because I realized I played a very small part in helping my clients do that.

And sometimes, even now, I’ll finish a coaching session and think to myself, “Yes, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.” And after enough of those moments, something changed. I realized I was asking myself the wrong question. For years, the question was, “Will everyone else understand why I made this decision and be okay with it?” But that was never really the question that mattered. Instead, the real question was, “Do I understand why I made this decision? And do I like my reasons?” Because at the end of the day, I’m the one who has to live this life. I’m the one who has to wake up every morning and do this work. And I’m the one who has to decide if this work feels in line with who I am and what I value.

And once I stopped looking to everyone else around me to answer those questions, things got easier. Because I genuinely believe I’m doing the work I’m supposed to be doing. I love coaching. I love helping women think differently. I love watching someone realize she is capable of more than she thought. And I love seeing the ripple effect that it has on her family, her work, and the rest of her life. Those are my reasons.

And my reasons don’t have to make sense to everyone else. They just have to make sense to me. And I wonder how often we do the exact opposite. We spend so much time trying to convince everyone else we’ve made the right decision when we haven’t actually convinced ourselves yet. We keep looking for approval because we think that’s what will finally make us feel confident. But what if confidence doesn’t work that way? What if confidence isn’t the result of everyone agreeing with you? What if confidence is just deciding, “I know why I’m doing this. I like my reasons, and that’s enough.” That’s what I had to do. And once I really settled into those reasons, something interesting happened.

I stopped needing everyone else to have the same opinion as me. And I stopped trying to convince everyone else that I made the right decision because I had already convinced myself, and that’s all I really needed. Because there are going to be people who don’t understand your choices. They may not understand why you set a boundary, why you stopped dieting, why you started lifting weights, why you changed careers, why you finally said no. And maybe they never will. But if you’re waiting for everyone else to understand before you’re allowed to move forward, you may be waiting forever.

So maybe the question to you then is not, “Does everyone else understand my decision?” And instead, maybe the better question is, “Do I? Do I know why I’m doing this? And do I like my reasons?” All right. Now, here’s another thing I’ve stopped arguing with. And that is, the success you want often requires the work you’re trying to avoid. And honestly, I really wish this one wasn’t true. And I’ll use my business as an example because if I’m being completely honest with you, there are parts of running a business I really don’t enjoy.

I don’t particularly love social media. The idea of making videos makes me cringe. Writing sales emails isn’t exactly how I dream of spending my afternoons. And none of it comes naturally to me. If someone told me I could build the exact same business without doing any of those things, I would sign myself up immediately. I would love for there to be another way.

But I don’t think there actually is. And believe me, I’ve spent plenty of time arguing with that. I’ve caught myself thinking, “Well, maybe if I can just keep making a good podcast, or maybe if I keep speaking, or maybe my word-of-mouth referrals will be enough.” And don’t get me wrong, all of those things matter, but they don’t replace the uncomfortable work of letting people know who you are and how you can help them.

At some point, I had to stop wishing success required something different than it does. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this really is not about marketing or social media. I think it’s something we all do. We all have our own version of this. Maybe yours is the difficult conversation you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s strength training because you’re intimidated by the weight room. Maybe it’s asking for help or going to therapy or applying for the promotion or setting a boundary.

Whatever it is, I think we all have this tendency to hope there’s a different path forward, one that’s a little less awkward, a little less uncomfortable, a little less vulnerable. We keep hoping that success won’t require the very thing we’re trying to avoid. And I don’t think we’re avoiding the action itself. We’re avoiding what comes with it, the possibility of failing, looking awkward, looking inexperienced, hearing no, feeling vulnerable. Because if we’re being really honest, it’s rarely the task itself we’re afraid of. It’s how we might feel when we do it.

So on the flip side, let me offer you this. What if the thing you’ve been avoiding isn’t standing in the way of your growth? And what if it is the growth? I don’t know. Maybe there is another way, but so far, I haven’t found one. And every time I finally stopped walking around the uncomfortable thing and just walked through it, that’s where something changed. Not because it suddenly became easy, it’s because I stopped spending so much energy wishing I didn’t have to do it and just got to work.

And maybe that’s why I’ve stopped arguing with this one. Because every time I’ve finally done the thing I didn’t want to do, it moved me forward. Not wishing for something different, not waiting for it to feel less uncomfortable, but just doing it.

All right, and here is another truth I’ve stopped arguing. And that is, guilt isn’t always evidence that you’ve made the wrong decision. So this one is still pretty fresh for me, but to put it into context, I recently found myself in a situation with someone in my family where I needed to make a decision. And if I’m being fully honest, I knew pretty quickly what I wanted to do. I knew my answer. But instead of trusting that answer and trusting what I knew was true for me deep in my bones, I spent days, well, actually, really weeks, going back and forth. Not because I didn’t know, but because I kept trying to convince myself that what I wanted must be wrong. I kept thinking a good person would not do this. Maybe I’m being selfish. Maybe I should just do this instead. And after running my brain in circles, totally overthinking this one decision, I finally landed on it. I wasn’t trying to decide what to do anymore. I already knew. I was just trying to talk myself out of it.

And I wonder how often we do that. We tell ourselves we’re still thinking about it or that we just need a little more time. But sometimes, we’re not actually looking for clarity anymore because we’re not confused, we’re just conflicted. We know what we want to do. We just don’t like what it might cost us. We don’t like that someone might be disappointed or that someone might misunderstand us or that we might feel guilty. So instead of making the decision, we keep hoping another answer will magically appear.

But for me, that different answer never came. So eventually, I decided to listen to myself and do what I knew was right for me. And almost immediately, I felt guilty. But at the same time, I also felt relieved. And that combination totally caught me off guard because for so much of my life, I have been using guilt as evidence, meaning if I felt guilty, I assumed I did something wrong or that I needed to reconsider or that I was being selfish. But the older I get, the less convinced I am that guilt actually works that way.

So, sometimes, yes, guilt tells us we made a mistake and that there’s something we need to make right. But sometimes, guilt is just what it feels like to do something you’ve never allowed yourself to do before, like disappointing someone or setting a boundary or saying no or choosing yourself. Those things can all feel guilty, but that doesn’t automatically make them wrong.

And I think this is something so many of us do. We can be really quick to use our emotions as evidence, like, “I feel guilty, so therefore I must be wrong.” Or, “I feel anxious, so I must not be ready.” Or, “I feel uncomfortable, so therefore I should probably go back to what I was doing before.” No, feelings don’t always work that way. Sometimes, your feelings are just telling you that you’re doing something new and different and unfamiliar, or that you’re breaking a long, old, unhelpful pattern, or that you’re choosing a different path than what you’ve always done. And of course, that’s going to feel uncomfortable.

So, now, when a decision feels uncomfortable, I don’t immediately assume I’ve made the wrong choice. In fact, some of the decisions I am most proud of have actually come with serious grief or uncertainty or guilt. And that is such a strange place to be. To make a decision you know is right for you and still have it feel pretty bad. But I’ve gotten much better at allowing both things to be true instead of hurrying up and backpedaling just to make someone else feel better.

And it’s not because they were the wrong decisions. They were hard because they required me to stop responding in the way I had responded for years. They required me to disappoint someone else instead of automatically disappointing myself. And that was a very different approach for me. Because I realized I’d spent years making sure everyone else was comfortable at my own expense. And maybe that’s another truth I’ve stopped arguing. Sometimes, the right decision still comes with really uncomfortable feelings, and that does not automatically make it the wrong decision.

So, as I was putting this whole episode together, I realized something. On the surface, all of these sound like different truths. One is about leaving medicine. One is about building a business. One is about a family decision. But underneath, all of these truths are really about the same thing. There is a common denominator here.

Every one of these truths forced me to ask the same question. When things got uncomfortable, was I going to trust myself? And I think that’s really what having your own back means. So I know I use that phrase a lot, and here’s what I mean when I say that. Having your own back does not mean believing you are always right. That can get you in serious trouble. I also don’t mean pretending you never doubt yourself. And I certainly don’t mean acting like other people’s opinions don’t matter. We are human, so of course, they matter sometimes.

So, what does having your own back actually mean? Well, to me, it means after you’ve thought about it, after you’ve considered it, and after you’ve gathered the information you need, you stop abandoning yourself. Because making the decision isn’t the end of the work. Living with it is. And that’s where it can get really challenging.

Life suddenly doesn’t become easier after you’ve made the decision. You still have doubts. You still disappoint people. You still feel guilty sometimes. You still wonder if you got it right. But the difference is when you have your own back, you stop making those feelings mean you failed. You stop turning against yourself every time discomfort shows up. You stop assuming that uncertainty means you chose wrong. And most importantly, you stop treating yourself like the enemy every time things get hard.

And maybe that’s why I’ve realized confidence isn’t what I thought it was. For a long time, I thought confidence meant clarity. I thought it meant knowing that I made the right decision, never doubting myself, never wondering if I should have done something different. But oh, I was so wrong. And I don’t think that’s what confidence is anymore. Now, I understand that confidence is trusting that even if I don’t know exactly what is going to happen next, I will take care of myself. Even if someone disagrees with me, I’ll take care of myself. Even if I feel guilty, I’ll take care of myself. And if I discover later that I need to make a different decision, I’ll take care of myself then too.

And I think that’s what having your own back really is. It’s trusting that no matter what happens next, you’re not going to abandon yourself. That’s self-trust.

So, maybe I’ll leave you with one final thought. I don’t know what truth you are still arguing with. Maybe it’s something about your health. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s your career or a conversation you’ve been avoiding. Or maybe it’s just admitting that something isn’t working for you anymore.

Whatever it is, I wonder what would happen if you stopped spending so much of your energy wishing it weren’t true. Because that’s really what I’ve been talking about this whole episode. Not the truth itself, but the arguing, the wishing it were different, the hoping that there was another way, the trying to convince yourself what you already know shouldn’t be true. That is the exhausting part.

And I also want to be really clear here. Accepting reality is not the same thing as giving up. In fact, I think it’s exactly the opposite. Accepting reality instead of arguing with it, that is where your choices begin. So my coaching has never, ever been about resignation. It’s also never been about saying, “Well, I guess this is just how it is.” No. Instead, it’s about looking reality squarely in the face and then deciding what you want to do about it.

Because what I’ve learned is that the truth itself usually isn’t the hardest part. It’s all the energy we spend arguing with it. And that’s what every one of these examples has in common. Arguing with reality doesn’t change reality. It just keeps you stuck. But as soon as you stop arguing with what’s true, then you get your agency back. Because that’s when you can ask, “Okay, this is where I am. Now what? Now, what am I going to do with this?” And that’s when you have somewhere to go. That’s when you have something you can actually work with.

I can’t control other people’s opinions. I can’t control every outcome. I can’t make life fair. But I can decide how I’m going to respond. And here’s another thing I’ve stopped arguing with. Nobody can make peace with your life except you. Not your family, not your partner, not your colleagues, not your friends, definitely not strangers on the internet, and not even your parents.

At some point, you have to become the person who says, “This is the reality I’m living. Now, what do I want to do with it?” And that is the invitation I’m extending to you with this episode. Not to find a different truth, not to wait until you can feel certain, but to stop arguing with what’s already true. Because once you do, you finally have somewhere to go. So I’ll leave you with the same question I’ve been asking myself. What truth are you still arguing with? And if you stopped, what might be possible?

And if you want help with this, let’s go. Because here’s the truth. It’s really hard to stop arguing with yourself on your own. When you coach with me, we untangle the thoughts, beliefs, and patterns that keep you stuck so you can start trusting yourself and move forward. If you’re ready for that, head over to my website at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact and let’s talk about how coaching can help you. Thank you again for hanging out with me. 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.