Change Academy

Welcome to part four of the 50,000 Mile Tuneup Series. In previous episodes, we checked into our beliefs and expectations about aging, updated our goals, and clarified our values and priorities. We then turned our attention to exercise and movement. Take aways:- As we age, we need fewer calories and more protein. - Cutting back on starches and liquid calories can help lower caloric intake. - Splitting your protein intake up into 30g doses, spread over the day, can maximize the benefits.- Don’t forget to include a great variety of fresh, whole foods in your diet on a regular basis. ★ Support this podcast ★

How does the way we move and maintain our bodies change as we go through life? How can we set ourselves up to keep our engines running smoothly and powerfully, even as our mileage gets higher? Takeaways:- The body hates being overworked just as much as it hates being still. So work smarter not harder- Movement is more than just exercise. Don’t just commit to working out. Challenge yourself to live a more active lifestyle.- Respect your limitations (by modifying appropriately) but don’t use them as an excuse to opt out of being active. - Recovery is more than collapsing on the couch in the evening. Active recovery includes gentle movement, stretching, good nutrition, and quality sleep. Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

This information will serve a sort of GPS, helping us make choices and design habits that steer us toward our desired destination. Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

Healthy habits like eating well, getting some exercise, and managing stress go a long way toward keeping your body and life running smoothly  But every once in a while, our lives can benefit from a more thorough going-over.In that spirit, we’re going to begin 2022 with a sort of 50,000 Mile Tuneup for your life.  Whether or not you currently have any warning lights flashing, we invite you to join us  for a system-by-system inspection and overhaul of your health, habits, outlook, and ambitions.Lab Experiment:Let's take a closer look at our expectations and beliefs about aging. Where did they come from? Are they true? What evidence do we have to support them? What else is possible? What evidence can we find or generate to support those other outcomes? ★ Support this podcast ★

We’d l ike to invite you to join us for something we’re calling the 50,000 Mile Tuneup: a system-by-system inspection and tuneup (or complete overhaul, if necessary) of your health, habits, outlook, and ambitions.Each episode in the series (starting with the very next episode) will be a deep dive into a different aspect of our lives (nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress, time management, and so on) and will include lots of additional resources, tools, and (of course) lab experiments for you to explore. So stay subscribed to get your 50,000 Mile Tune-up.  Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

Takeaways:Working toward any type of goal is likely going to benefit you – but being strategic can lower your effort and raise your success rate.Understanding your goal-setting personality can help you be more successful in setting and reaching your goals.Every goal-setting style has both strengths and weaknesses. Leveraging your superpowers and being aware of your blind spots can give you a real leg up. Lab Experiment:Identify your goal setting personality with this little quiz https://changeacademypodcast.com/personality ★ Support this podcast ★

Our guest, Heather Parady, a mental health therapist turned online entrepreneur and podcaster who hosts no fewer than three podcasts!Her Happy Brain podcast is where we originally came across her work, and in that podcast Heather explores a lot of topics that would be of interest to Change Academy listeners–which is why we invited her to join us on the podcast.Highlights of Brock's conversation with Heather include why accountability is BS and how to get clarity on what you should be working on. Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

Some changes happen quickly; but most significant change takes time. And it’s important that your time frame for success be appropriate to the size of your goal. Otherwise, you may not be able to see--or appreciate--the progress you are making. Takeaways:As adults, our brains (and bodies) aren’t quite as plastic as they are when we are very young. As a result, learning a new skill may take a bit longer than you expect. Even once you have a acquired a certain facility with them, new thoughts and behaviors still need time to become the new normal–especially if they are replacing very well-worn thoughts or behaviors. Changes that we aren’t happy with (such as weight gain or loss of fitness) often happen so gradually that we don’t notice them until they are fairly large.  Reversing them takes time too–especially in a way that’s sustainable.Sometimes the best choice is to delay setting expectations about when you’ll arrive until the journey is well underway.Lab Experiment (download a copy)If you feel frustrated by a lack of progress, assess whether your timeline for success might be unrealistic or out of scale with the size of the goal. Specifically:Are you expecting to master a complex skill or achieve a big goal more quickly than is realistic? Are you expecting to reverse in a few weeks realities that took years to create?Are you expecting to root out and replace long-standing behavioral or thought patterns with just a few repetitions of new patterns?After thinking this through, you might decide to adjust your tactics in order to accelerate your progress. Or you might decide to adjust your timeline for success to match the scale of the project. (Or maybe both.) Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

All of us will experience our share of challenges, disappointments, and hardships as we go through our lives. We may go through things that are quite traumatic. Our ability to recover and transcend these things depends a lot on how we tell the story of our lives. In this episode, we’re exploring the power of narrative psychology and how we can each use it to cultivate more resilience. Takeaways Life involves ups and downs, challenges and successes. The goal isn’t to eliminate those and live a flat life.Being able to tell your story in different ways is not about lying or obfuscating the truth. It is just framing the same information with a different lens. The way we talk about ourselves and the events in our lives has a big effect on how we react, recover and overcome life’s challenges. It also has a direct impact on whether we will or won’t reach our goals. It may make your life seem more exciting, more virtuous, more meaningful, or more dramatic to frame it as such, but your life is not a novel – and you are likely the only one reading it. Lab Experiment Identify an area of your life where you feel some frustration or disappointment in your progress or prospects.Write the story of how you got here. What are the challenges, the circumstances, the things that got in your way. What has gone wrong? Really lean into the ways in which you got a bum deal and are forced to deal with it.Now, rewrite your story, without changing any of the factual details, but see if you can find a way to cast yourself as the hero: Resilient, resourceful, doing the best you can with the hand you’ve been dealt and managing to do pretty actually well, actually. Look for the triumphs. Read both stories. Is one more true than the other? Is there anything to be gained by sticking with version A? Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode, Monica Reinagel turns the tables and interviews her usual co-host, Brock Armstrong, all about his new podcast called Second Wind Fitness.Monica and Brock chat aboutthe impetus behind some big life changes that he made in the last yearhow middle-aged and older people are often misunderstood (and under-served) by the fitness industrywhy Brock is no longer willing to help people get fit for the wrong reasonsWe’ve even got an excerpt from the Second Wind Fitness podcast for you.If you’re interested in learning how to move more of your body, more often, and in more interesting and satisfying ways, we hope you’ll subscribe to the Second Wind Fitness podcast where ever you listen to audio.Click here to take our listener survey. Interested in having Monica present at your next live or virtual event?  Learn more. ★ Support this podcast ★