The Real Reason Women Over 40 Are Stuck: It's Not Discipline

Why “Just Try Harder” Is Bad Identity-Change Advice (And What To Do Instead)

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I’m just a bad sleeper”? Or “I’m an emotional eater”? Or “I’ve never had any willpower; I’ve just always been this way”?

I have. More times than I’d like to admit.

This week on Fit Girl Magic, I sat down with business psychologist Ryann Gillen, and about ten minutes in, she said something that stopped me cold: those aren’t facts about you. They’re stories you’ve repeated so many times your brain decided to make them true.

And once your brain believes a story, it gets to work proving you right.

Why You Don’t Have a Discipline Problem

Here’s the thing Ryann kept coming back to: identity drives behavior, and behavior creates results. Not the other way around.

Most advice out there is built for people who struggle with motivation or follow-through. But if you’re the woman who works out six days a week and still can’t figure out why the scale won’t move, or the one who’s tried every diet and still beats herself up at the holidays, you don’t have an action problem. You have an identity problem.

If you believe you’re “the person who has no self-control,” your brain isn’t going to let you prove that wrong. It’s going to keep handing you opportunities to be right about it.

The Goalpost Isn’t the ProblemYour Reason For Moving It Is

We also got into something I think about constantly: why does it feel like the second you hit a goal, you’re already inventing reasons to push the finish line further out?

Ryann’s answer reframed it for me. Moving the goalpost isn’t automatically bad. It depends on why you’re doing it. If you’re stretching because it sounds fun and you genuinely want to see what’s possible, that’s an aligned move. But if you’re moving the goalpost out of fear, or because some part of you needs to prove you’re worthy before you’re allowed to feel done, that’s a different thing entirely.

The real question isn’t “should I change my goal.” It’s “what’s actually driving this.”

The Judgment You’re Afraid of Is Already Yours

This was the line that really got me. Ryann said the things you think other people are going to judge you for? Most of the time, that’s just your own self-judgment, bounced back at you.

Think they’ll call you fat if you wear that shirt? Some part of you already agrees with them. Think they’ll think less of you for not having it all figured out? Some part of you already thinks less of yourself.

It’s not exactly comfortable to sit with. But it’s also kind of freeing, because it means the work isn’t about managing what everyone else thinks. It’s about cleaning up what you think.

So Where Do You Actually Start?

Not with a five-step plan. Ryann’s answer was almost annoyingly simple: regulate your nervous system first. Before you touch the mindset work, before you try to change a single behavior, you have to get out of a dysregulated state, because you can’t make a real change from there.

Her version of step one is walking outside without headphones for the first ten or fifteen minutes. No podcast, no music, just you and whatever’s around you. It sounds too easy to matter, and that’s kind of the point, most of us are looking for a complicated answer because the simple one feels like it can’t possibly be enough.

It’s also exactly the kind of permission this season calls for. If you’ve been doing Feet Up Summer with me, you already know I’m not about adding more to your plate. This is just one more reminder that the slower, quieter move is usually the one that actually works.

The Real Takeaway

This conversation wasn’t about trying harder. It was about getting curious enough to ask: is this actually true about me, or have I just repeated it long enough to believe it?

That’s a different question than the one most of us have been asking for years. And it might be the one that actually gets you somewhere.

Listen to this week’s episode of Fit Girl Magic with Ryann Gillen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Links
TikTok: Ryann | Business Therapist on TikTok
Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/ryanngillen⁠
Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/ryanngillen
YouTube: ⁠Ryann Gillen

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