Ep #201: The Advice I Keep Repeating (Because It Works)

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #201. Today, we’re talking about five phrases I say all the time in coaching sessions and why I keep coming back to them.

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?Today, I’ve got a top five list for you. So this morning, when I was back and forth in the pool, swimming at my one speed, I was brainstorming what I wanted to share with you, and I kept coming back to things that I say over and over again.

If you’ve ever listened to this podcast or coached with me, you’ve probably heard me repeat certain phrases. And it is not because I’ve run out of material, I promise, I have a running list of topics for you. But these phrases are simple, they’re easy to remember, and maybe even a little blunt. But I keep saying them because they hold up.

After years of coaching women around habits, mindset, food, exercise, career, overwhelm, self-doubt, and lots of other big topics, I’ve realized that real change comes back to a few simple truths. And it’s not that these truths are flashy or complicated, but they do hold up in real life. These truths apply on busy days, stressful days, and times when you’re likely to overthink everything or make it harder than it needs to be.

So, today, I want to unpack five phrases I say all the time and get to the deeper meaning underneath them because these are not just little mottos or catchy lines I casually throw around. These are principles. They’re ideas that shape how I think, how I coach, and honestly, how I navigate hard things in my own life.

And maybe the reason I repeat these sayings so often is because they’re words that have helped me in some of the toughest parts of my life. And I realized that if they work for me, maybe they would work for other people too. And honestly, sometimes one clear principle that you can keep coming back to is more useful than a handful of new strategies.

Because when your life is in full swing, or when you’re tired or emotional, overwhelmed, or frustrated, you’re generally not looking for more information, and you’re most definitely not looking for a complicated framework. Instead, you need something simple enough to remember and solid enough that you can lean on it and get you through the hard stuff.

So, that’s where we’re going today. We’re going to talk about why the simple ideas that I’m going to share with you actually matter, and then I’m going to walk you through the five phrases that I come back to again and again. And those phrases are, “It’s easy when it’s easy.” “Your work, your results.” “It matters, but it doesn’t.” “Walk through it,” and, “Stay in the game.”

And you may have heard me say these in prior episodes. And if some of these sound simple at first, hang with me because there is a lot more depth to them than it seems. So, let’s start with why phrases like these even matter in the first place. There is a reason I keep coming back to these phrases. And it’s because when life feels calm, most of us do pretty well. We can think clearly, we make solid decisions, we can be intentional, we can follow through on the plan.

But that’s not where most people need the most help. Most people need help when things get sloppy, like when you’re tired or stressed, or your schedule blows up, or your motivation ghosts you. That is when people tend to lose their ground. Because when it gets hard, it’s not that you suddenly become incapable.

Instead, what happens is that accessing what you know gets a whole lot harder. Access to your patience, your perspective, and the whole bigger picture. That gets a whole lot more challenging when you feel like you want to scream and cry all at once. Accessing higher intentional thinking gets harder. And that’s what’s important to understand.

Under pressure, you don’t need more brilliance. You just need some reminders. You need something clear enough to remember and steady enough to hang on to in the moment, when things get really hard. So I’m talking about something that can cut through the noise and bring you back to earth quickly. Because when you want to quit or overeat or go off, or when life gets chaotic, or when you feel super behind, or when you’re super uncomfortable, that is usually not the time for a complicated 10-step framework. You don’t have time for that. You don’t have the brain space for that. Instead, you need something simple and real.

And I want to be clear here, simple doesn’t mean shallow. It doesn’t mean fake. It just means usable, like something you can actually reach for when your real life is happening to you. And that is what these phrases are for. They’re really shorthand for bigger truths, but they help in real moments. And they help you reorient and steady yourself, and they help you get back to what actually matters.

So with that said, let’s get into the first one. And that is, it’s easy when it’s easy. And I know that sounds almost too obvious, but stay with me because this one matters more than it seems. A lot of things feel way easier when life is cooperating. Exercising and eating healthy, they are a whole lot easier when you’re getting seven to eight hours of sleep, when no one is sick, when work is calm, when you’re in a good mood, and there’s food in the fridge, and when your day is going more or less as you expected.

So, of course, it feels a lot easier to make a solid dinner on those days. Of course, it’s easier to get your 5 a.m. workout done. And of course, it’s easier to be patient with people. And most importantly, it’s easier to follow through. And that is not a character trait we’re talking about here. It’s just reality.

But where people get tripped up is they quietly start using those kinds of days as the benchmark. They measure themselves against what they can do when the conditions are ideal. And when life inevitably gets harder, they assume they are the problem. And then many of you start spinning out and wondering, why am I struggling with this? Why can’t I just do what I know how to do? Why does this feel so much harder than it did literally one week ago?

And it’s not like you suddenly became lazy or undisciplined. It’s just that the conditions changed. So now you’re more tired or you’ve got stress you’re trying to manage and the days are getting away from you. And the overall result is that you have lower bandwidth, and that matters. So, why do I even make such a big deal out of your bandwidth? Well, I think it’s an important distinction because so many women I work with, and maybe some of you listening are in this boat, but you’re incredibly hard on yourselves for having a normal human response to a harder circumstance.

And sometimes you think that because it feels harder, that means you’re failing. But often, it’s just means that it is harder. It’s harder to chop up a salad when you’ve got five minutes before your kid’s soccer game starts. It’s harder to wake up at the crack of dawn and go to the gym when you’ve gotten five hours of sleep. It’s harder to focus on yourself when you had a huge fight with your partner the night before.

And none of that means you’re failing. It means you’re human and things got harder. And honestly, that’s where the real work is. The real work is not whether you can do your habits on the magical unicorn day when everything lines up and you feel amazing. A lot of people can do well there.

The real work is what happens on a random Tuesday when work ran long, everyone needs something from you, you are annoyed as stink, and you’ve got about 20 minutes worth of energy left. What happens then? Can you still do something instead of nothing? Can you still make a reasonable choice for dinner instead of needing the perfect one? Can you follow through even if it’s in a smaller way? How can you adjust instead of abandon your goals altogether?

That is the game. So when I say it’s easy when it’s easy, what I’m really saying is this. Stop expecting your habits to only exist in ideal conditions. Because real life is not ideal conditions, not at all. Real life is messy. There are interruptions, low motivation, bad moods, sick kids, travel, weather, fatigue, unexpected meals out, weeks where you feel totally off.

And that doesn’t mean your system failed. It means your system needs to account for real life. So, instead of only asking what you can do on your best day, I want you to ask what works on a hard day. What still counts even when I’m not firing on all cylinders? What is the minimum that keeps me in it? Because if your plan only works when everything is ideal, it’s probably not a very good plan. So, it’s easy when it’s easy.

And once you see that, the next question becomes, so what is it that creates change in the first place? And the answer to that question is your work. So the next phrase is, your work, your results. And let me tell you what I don’t mean by this to start. I don’t mean that life is perfectly fair. I don’t mean that everyone starts from the same place.

I also don’t mean that you can control every outcome if you just hustle hard enough. That is not real life. What I mean is something much more useful and more real than that. In so many areas of our lives, there is a relationship between what you do consistently and what you experience over time. And that means the more you show up, the more results you get. And that means your actions matter.

Your follow through matters. Your patterns also matter because your actions, your follow through, and your patterns will all give you results. And I think this one is so important because a lot of people stay focused on what they want while avoiding the question of what their current behavior is producing. Meaning, they want muscle, but they’re not regularly strength training. They want more energy, but their sleep is getting sacrificed nightly.

They want to feel less chaotic, but nothing gets planned. They want confidence, but they keep walking away from hard things. They want change, but they’re waiting to feel different first. So, there’s a mismatch here between what people want and what they’re willing to do. And I say that with zero judgment. I say it because it’s human. We focus on the desired result, but often stay totally disconnected from the work that it requires to get that result.

And that disconnect is important because no one else can do the work for you. No one else can lift the weights or walk the miles or eat the salads or go to bed or have the conversations for you. No one else can follow through on the promises you made to yourself. That’s your work. But honestly, that’s actually really good news. Because if the answer were entirely outside of you, then you’d be powerless.

If nothing changed unless it was perfect circumstances or someone else fixed things for you, think about it. You’re stuck waiting. You’re stuck waiting for motivation or more time or life to calm down or someone to hand you the answer. But that’s not the case. When your actions matter, then you’re not helpless. Because you have the authority to decide to go to bed earlier tonight or plan tomorrow’s lunch or take a walk or do the workout or have the conversation. And you can stop pretending it will somehow change on its own.

Because you are in charge of your life. You really are. So when I say your work, your results, I’m not offering pressure, I’m offering agency, ownership. And honestly, that is the best because it puts you in the driver seat of your own life, which is exactly where you belong. So not blame, not shame, just ownership.

And then the question becomes, are my actions lining up with what I say I want? And if not, that’s okay. That’s workable. It’s honest. And that’s where we start. Because your results are not created by just wishing harder. Your results are shaped by what you do next and what you keep doing after that. And once you understand that, there is another truth that becomes equally important, because while your actions most definitely matter, not every single moment deserves the weight we give it.

So the next one, it matters, but it doesn’t. And this one is all about perspective. Because I think a lot of women swing between extremes. On one side is overreaction where every choice feels super loaded and super high stakes. Then on the other side is checking out completely where nothing matters, so why bother?

But this phrase right here, that lives in the middle. So what I mean is that yes, your choices matter. Your actions, they have an impact. What you do repeatedly shapes both your results and your experience over time. So I’m not saying nothing matters, not at all. I’m also not saying do whatever you want and it all evens out in the end. That is not what this is.

What I am saying is that many individual moments do not matter nearly as much as your brain tells you they do. So think about it. One workout matters, but not that much. One missed workout also matters, but not that much. One meal matters, but not that much, right? And one dinner out also matters, but not that much.

And then zooming out a little more here, one off day matters, but not a whole lot. One hard week matters, but also not a whole lot. So, I think this is important because people often hand single moments or single decisions way too much power. Where you miss one workout and suddenly you’re slipping. Or you overeat at dinner and now the whole day feels ruined. Or you have an off day and your brain starts freaking out and you think you’re back at square one.

And that, that is the part we have to catch. Because while individual moments matter, they don’t matter in isolation. What matters way more is your pattern, your overall direction, your habits over time. How you respond next, the relationship you have with yourself across months and years, not just one random Tuesday afternoon. And honestly, this matters because it helps lower the drama without making you careless. Because you still care.

You still take your choices seriously. You still want to show up. But you stop treating every moment like it’s a test and you stop turning one decision into a story about your entire future. That is what perspective looks like. So it matters, but it doesn’t. Care about the moment, learn from the moment, but don’t hand that moment any more weight than it deserves.

Because when every decision feels like an emergency, people either panic or they quit, and neither one of those helps you. So, sometimes, the healthiest response is much simpler than that. It’s noticing what happened, keeping your perspective, and making the next solid choice. And that becomes especially important when you’re facing something uncomfortable, and that’s where this next phrase comes in.

So the next one is walk through it. And this one really is about discomfort. More specifically, really, it’s about how much energy people spend trying not to feel it. And I get it. Nobody hopes for more uncertainty or more awkwardness or more disappointment or more pain in their lives, right? No. Most of us would prefer relief or closure or certainty or comfort. And again, this is totally normal.

But when I look at where people get stuck, it’s often because they’ve built a life around avoiding certain feelings. And sometimes the hardest part of a situation is not the situation itself. It’s the desire to avoid the feeling that situation creates. And sometimes it looks obvious, but other times it’s subtle. Maybe it’s that you keep emotionally eating because you don’t want to sit with stress, so you eat it instead.

Or maybe you delay having the hard conversation because you don’t want to feel the awkwardness. Or you quit early because disappointment feels too hard. Or you change the plan because boredom feels intolerable. Or what I see most often is you don’t try because failing feels too exposing. So those are the moments I’m talking about. Because in those moments, a lot of people think the answer is to make the feeling disappear as fast as possible.

But sometimes, the better move is much simpler than that. And that’s walking through it. So that means you walk through the stress you’re having instead of reaching for a bag of chips to eat it away. Or you walk through the nerves that come up with you into that hard conversation. Or you walk through the boredom of repetition without looking for constant excitement.

You walk through disappointment without turning it into a reason to quit. You walk through the uncertainty of not knowing the outcome and you take a step forward anyway. So do you see the difference here? It’s the difference between avoiding something because of how you think it’s going to make you feel versus turning head first towards that discomfort and proving to yourself you can handle it. That, that is what I mean by walking through it.

You’re not fixing it, you’re not numbing it, and you’re not waiting for the conditions to be perfect. Instead, you keep moving forward even while the uncomfortable feeling is there, and you let that uncomfortable feeling be there with you. And I think this matters because so many people have unknowingly built the habit of treating discomfort like an emergency. Where if it feels bad, something must be wrong. Or if it feels hard, you should stop. Or if it feels uncertain, you need more time.

But discomfort is not always a problem. It’s not always danger. Sometimes, it’s just part of doing something new or different or meaningful to you. Think about it. Sometimes, growth feels awkward. Sometimes, healing feels sad. Sometimes, honesty feels really scary.

Consistency, that can feel boring, and change can feel very uncertain. But none of that automatically means you’re off track. It means you’re feeling something. That’s it. And honestly, the goal is not to create a life where nothing feels uncomfortable. The goal is to learn to manage it. The goal is to become someone who can walk through discomfort without abandoning themselves.

Because growth requires feeling something instead of escaping it. And once you learn and actually see in real life that an uncomfortable feeling can be present without controlling your next move, then you gain so much freedom. And then when you do that, this last phrase becomes incredibly important. And so this last one is stay in the game.

So if I had to choose only one phrase for the majority of the women I work with, it might be this one. Because progress is generally not lost in one dramatic moment. Instead, it gets lost when you make the decision to mentally step out. So to put it very simply, the biggest threat to your progress, it is not the plate of cookies or the missed workout or your vacation or the rough week at work. Those things, they’re normal and they’re part of your life.

What tends to do more damage is deciding that those moments mean you’re out, that you’re off track or you blew it or your streak is broken and all the momentum is gone. It’s that mental shift that matters way more than the cookies ever will. Because once you believe you’re out, you start acting like you’re out. You disengage or stop paying attention or drift for weeks at a time and then create a dramatic reset instead of just getting back to what was already working.

And I see this all the time. People assume that success goes to the most disciplined person or the most motivated person or the person with the perfect routine. But really, success goes to the person who stayed in the game long enough to see results. So that means you stay engaged, you keep showing up, and you adjust instead of quitting. You get back to it instead of going off the rails for a month.

That is why I say stay in the game. Because one off weekend does not remove all the progress from months before. Feeling unmotivated does not mean you’re finished and should hang it up. And a plateau does not mean nothing is happening and you stop. None of these require a dramatic reset. Most of the time, it just requires that you stay connected to the process.

So, maybe that means doing a shorter workout instead of skipping it altogether. Maybe it means having the normal breakfast after a night of overeating, instead of trying to overcompensate and eat as little as you can the following day. Maybe it means looking at a rough week honestly instead of calling it a total failure. And maybe it means accepting that progress can look slow and it’s not a reason to step out. That is how you build something sustainable. Not by dominating or crushing every day, but by refusing to make normal disruptions mean the whole thing is over.

You don’t have to win every day. You also don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to feel fired up all the time. No one does. But what you do need more often than not is to stay in the game and stay with yourself long enough for the process to work. You are not out of it unless you decide you are. Stay in the game. You can decide it.

So, when you step back and look at all five of these phrases together, they are all pointing to the same general truth. And that is, most change is a lot less dramatic than people expect it to be. Change does not happen in one big breakthrough moment where everything suddenly clicks and you become a new, different person overnight. It is rarely one perfect day or one perfect week where you nailed your nutrition and workouts with zero misses. No.

That is the version that people hope for because it feels exciting. But real change is usually much quieter and way more messy than that. Change looks like handling a busy Tuesday a little better than you used to. Or recovering faster after a really hard weekend. Or making one solid decision while you’re stressed instead of five reactive ones that you wind up regretting later.

It looks like noticing a pattern sooner. It looks like doing the thing you said you would do, even when no one is watching. And it’s easy to overlook that kind of change because it doesn’t always feel wild or exciting in the moment. But over time, it really does change everything. And that is why these phrases matter.

They bring you back to the kinds of things that actually move the needle. Like staying engaged when it would be easier to check out, or doing the basics long enough for them to compound, allowing discomfort to exist without letting it take over, keeping perspective when your brain wants to make one decision mean everything, and learning how to show up in the life you actually have, not the fantasy version with unlimited time and energy. None of that is flashy, but it is effective.

That is why I keep repeating those ideas, not because they’re catchy or sound good, but because they hold up in real life. And if there’s anything else I want you to take from today, it’s this. Sometimes, the advice that helps you most is not brand new. It’s the things you already know but haven’t practiced or come back to consistently. A lot of people are looking for the next big thing while overlooking what’s been sitting right in front of them the whole time.

And it’s not because they’re doing anything wrong. It’s actually because familiar, simple things can seem too easy to be powerful. But ordinary is really where most of life happens. Your crazy Tuesday morning, your stressful afternoon, the dinner that didn’t go as planned, the week when motivation went out the window. That’s when these ideas really apply. Not in theory or on a vision board or on the cover of a color coded planner, just in the middle of your real, busy, imperfect life.

So, instead of trying to overhaul everything right now, maybe you choose one idea you can come back to when things get noisy. Like, stay in the game. Or, your work, your results. Or, walk through it. Or, it matters, but it doesn’t. Or, it’s easy when it’s easy. You do not need to practice all five at once. Just take the one that speaks to you and let that be enough. Let it guide your next decision.

Because really, that’s how change often happens. Not all at once, but in one decision at a time. And if you want help applying these ideas to your real life, that’s exactly what coaching is for. When you coach with me, we take these ideas and turn them into something practical for your actual life so that change becomes possible. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching can help you build a way of eating, moving, and thinking that lasts. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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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.