Description:
Have you ever tried to quit a bad habit yet failed to make a lasting change?
You were motivated, you knew what was at stake and yet you went back to your old ways faster than you could say “whiplash”
What if I told you there something you could do that would EXPONENTIALLY increase your chances of achieving any goal you set for yourself?
Well, that’s exactly what this week’s episode is all about! Tune in this week to learn how to leverage the power of this lesson and use it in your own life.
Because while achieving goals are great, it’s about SO much more than that.
It’s about creating an incredible life that you’re proud of and seeing what you as a human being are capable of. Because, look, we’re only here for a short amount of time, so we might as well make the most of it, right?
Topics discussed in this episode:
- an emotional story about a young man and a mother’s duty to her child
- how to use the human need for connection and community to help you crush your goals
- why feats of “hysterical strength” like lifting a car off a person can occur
- how to rid yourself of limiting beliefs and bad habits by using the pain-pleasure continuum of creating lasting change
- a powerful exercise to help you visualize your future and the consequences of maintaining the status quo versus making a necessary change
If you’re a professional woman of color who wants to break old limiting patterns, feel empowered and go from where you are to where you want to be, then click on my website luyikathyzhang.com to book a free coaching consultation!
I’ll be your guide every step of the way on the journey to from “stuck” to your most empowered, authentic self.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
– Chinese proverb
Transcript
My colleagues were trying to get this woman, the mom, to sit on the chair. She had just gone limp. She could not even hold her body up. She couldn’t stand. Her sister was trying to get her onto the chair. She just collapsed onto the chair, but she didn’t fully collapse on the chair. so she was hyperventilating. She couldn’t breathe. She was sobbing. She. So distraught and obviously rightly so, right? This was her only son and he was very young and um, and um, in the midst of this acute grief reaction that she was having, we tried everything to try and get her to.
Take some deep breaths to be able to calm herself down because she was going to like pass out or she was gonna fall and we were gonna have another issue on our hands. And my colleague said something to her and I didn’t hear it at the time because of all the commotion. He said to her, he’s like, Your son needs you right now.
And all of a sudden you could just tell that she just pulled herself together and there was this immediate change and she kind of went into mama bear mode almost.
I was like, how there’s a life lesson here, and how do I extract a lesson from it and share it with you so that we can learn from this situation too. And what I thought about was this,
This is the purpose filter of a podcast that helps living people apply dying lessons before it’s too late. My name is Dr. Luyi Kathy Zang. I’m a mindset and life coach and an end of life doctor, so I’ve learned a thing or two about living, and I’m here to remind you that you have one extraordinary opportunity to live your best life on Earth.
And together we’re gonna help you do it your way. This week you’ll hear a story about one of my patients and his mother, and you’ll learn a priceless lesson about how to exponentially increase your probability of achieving your goals. And look, setting and hitting a goal is nice, but it’s so much more than that.
It’s about creating an incredible life that you’re proud of and seeing what you as a human being are capable of. Because, look, we’re only here for a short amount of time, so we might as well make the most of it, right?
And this week I wanna give a special shout out to Shirley c Tom, who left this review on Apple Podcasts. And it says, I started listening after I heard her on another podcast, and I love this so much wisdom to share. Everyone can benefit from this perspective. I’m sending episodes to friends that I think would be helpful.
Thank you so, so much, Shirley. I am eternally grateful to be able to share this podcast with you, with everyone else who’s listening. And thank you for taking the time to. That review. If you want your review to be featured on the show, make sure to go to Apple Podcast Spotify, but. , and if you want your review to be featured on the show, make sure to go to Apple Podcasts.
Leave a rating, and write a review and share this podcast in these episodes with a friend, because that is how we help more and more people to create a life on their terms, to create a life that’s well lived. That they can look back at the end of their lives and be so happy and proud of. And if you wanna feel happier and more in control of your life than ever before, click on my website in the show notes, luyikathyzhang.com so you can close the gap between where you are and where you wanna be in a fraction of the time that it takes on your own.
All you have to do is book a free call with me and I’ll help you find clarity on what your issue is and how to find some freedom from it. And without further ado, here’s this week’s episode.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to another week at The Purpose Filter. I hope you’re doing incredible. This week I wanted to share with you on today’s episode, a story from my work recently. It was a slow day, and if you work in healthcare or maybe some other sector, maybe you have certain superstitions or beliefs about.
When we say in healthcare, don’t say the Q word “quiet” because otherwise you know things are gonna explode in your face and maybe this happens in your sector as well. So it was a slow day and around four o’clock I go downstairs, I go get a coffee, I figure I’ve got another hour of work or so, and I’ll just finish up, go home, I go back.
And this patient that I had been covering that day, I hear wailing just like loud sobbing and wailing from the room, and I was like, Oh, I know what’s going on here. This patient, just so you know, is a very young patient in his thirties. With a very terrible, terrible disease and I’m not gonna share just to, you know, try to keep Confidentiality’s sake.
And his mom was in there and he was dying and we were taking care of him, making sure he was comfortable, that sort of thing. He was in and out of consciousness because of his disease, a little bit delirious. And his mom, his family, they all knew that. The patient knew that too. But at that moment is when he really.
Deteriorated for worse. And at that moment is really when he started to go south. And you can tell when someone starts to look a certain way and when they start to breathe a certain way. And his mom knew it. And my colleagues were in there already, two of them, because the nurses had come to our office and been like, We need help.
And so when I went in, My colleagues were trying to get this woman, the mom, to sit on the chair. She had just gone limp. She could not even hold her body up. She couldn’t stand. Her sister was trying to get her onto the chair. She just collapsed onto the chair, but she didn’t fully collapse on the chair.
She kind of collapsed on the edge of it, and so she was hyperventilating. She couldn’t breathe. She was sobbing. She. So distraught and obviously rightly so, right? This was her only son and he was very young and um, and um, in the midst of this acute grief reaction that she was having, we tried everything to try and get her to.
Take some deep breaths to be able to calm herself down because she was going to like pass out or she was gonna fall and we were gonna have another issue on our hands. And my colleague said something to her and I didn’t hear it at the time because of all the commotion. He said to her, he’s like, Your son needs you right now.
And all of a sudden you could just tell that she just pulled herself together and there was this immediate change and she kind of went into mama bear mode almost. And I was thinking about the situation because it was so emotionally charged because this guy was barely older than I am. He’s literally a.
Birthday is seven days ahead of mine, seven days older than I am, and he was dying in front of all of our eyes and it was, you know, it was really difficult. And plus his mom, like I, I’m not a parent and maybe I will be one day, but God I cannot. Imagine losing a child. It’s just unimaginable, right? So I was thinking about the situation.
I was like, how there’s a life lesson here, and how do I extract a lesson from it and share it with you so that we can learn from this situation too. And what I thought about was this, if I could distill it down. Is that we as humans will do way more for others than we will for ourselves. And it makes sense, right?
We’re social creatures. We thrive in communities, we depend on others, evolutionary speaking, and in the animal kingdom we care and tend to our young for way. Way longer than some animals and some other species like birds, you know, after a short amount of time they’re like, All right, you’re on your own fly.
Or, you know, just, it’s not gonna happen. And you know, we kept telling this mom, breathe, breathe, take care of yourself, et cetera, et cetera. But as soon as my. Colleague told her, Your son needs you. She totally became this different person, and then she was taking care of him. She was tending to him. He said, My legs hurt, and she was rubbing and massaging his legs.
He needed something. She was there for him, and she was kind of that rock for him. In the final hours of his life when he died. Um, I would say probably from that time it was around four o’clock. He passed around one or 2:00 AM So in that very, very short amount of time afterwards, she, you know, I heard was a mess again.
She had to be wheeled out, uh, in a wheelchair because she was so, Just at a loss for energy. Like she was so wiped, everything was drained from her. And again, rightly, rightly, so.
and it made me think of a process that we went through at the conference and the seminar that I recently came back from, it’s called The Dickens Process, named after kind of Charles Dickens and a Christmas Carol, where Ebeneezer SCR ends up being visited by three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas, past, present, and future, that sort of thing.
And. Basically, this process is meant to help people visualize a future in which there is so much pain associated with a certain issue. Like if you’re having trouble with your health and you’re not taking care of your body, they have you visualize what it’s actually gonna be like 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now if you continue down this path.
If you don’t take care of your body, if you. Poorly if you don’t exercise, if you don’t sleep enough and do all of these things. And so one of the things that I’ve realized doing all of this personal development and coaching all this stuff, is to really be able to enact massive.
And so one of the things that I’ve realized doing all of this personal development and the coaching and all of these seminars, conferences, and being around people who have a different type of mindset, is that one of the ways to really, really create lasting change, not just temporary change, something that’s going to be permanent and just a fundamental shift in either how you think or who you are.
That comes from being able to create massive, massive pain around something that you’re either unhappy about or something that you wanna change. And creating massive pleasure and associating massive pleasure with the solution, with the new thing. And one of the ways that we can do that, and that’s what I wanna talk about in this episode, is.
Using other people, we will do so much more for other people than we will for ourselves. , and it’s one of the reasons why people can make drastic changes after either they themselves get sick, they’re facing a life threatening issue, or they lose someone that they love. Because what’s more painful than losing someone that you truly care about to make you realize that you cannot keep living life the way that you current.
Are that something, the status quo is no longer acceptable and you need to change. And sometimes that motivation, that internal purpose or drive whatever it is, sometimes it’s not enough to do it for ourselves. Like people who smoke cigarettes, they know that it’s cancer causing, they know that it’s bad for them.
They know that it’s toxic and. Cannot do it for themselves sometimes, but, and my dad is a prime example, right? When I was a kid, my dad was a chain smoker and he, you know, his friends and family all in China, they smoked. And I would actually go to the library and I would borrow books on lung cancer, uh, and human anatomy.
And I would flip to them and I would literally show them to my dad and be like, Which lung do you want? The healthy one that’s pink and lovely. Really love, pretty the healthy one that’s pink and lovely and really pretty and smooth, shiny aerated. Or do you want this lung which was black and. Just really nasty, gnarly looking.
And I kept doing it to him. And you know, he, he ended up quitting and I think, I hope that it was because he realized that it wasn’t just about him, it wasn’t just about his life. He had to find a way to dig deeper because. Maybe I was depending on him. Maybe my mom was depending on him. Maybe if he ended up having cancer, he wouldn’t be around for us.
And so being able to leverage that is so, so key to help you be able to achieve your goals and do what you want. And you’ve probably heard of these feats of hysterical strength, right? There was this guy I looked. There was this guy, his name’s Tom Boyle. He ended up lifting a Chevy Camaro off of a teen.
This teen was hit by a car. He was dragged. This guy, Tom, witnessed it and this kid was pinned underneath, and this adrenaline rush was so powerful that it ended up decreasing his pain threshold. He didn’t realize until a while later. That he was having mouth pain and it was because he cracked eight of his teeth during that event because he was straining and clenching his jaw so much to be able to lift part of a car off of this child, off of this teen.
And there’s been other. and there’s been other reports of moms lifting cars off of children. There was this one mom up in Canada like in 2006. This polar bear was sizing up her seven year old. They were out playing ice hockey. And this polar bear comes up to her child and she runs to the polar bear and starts beating up the polar bear.
The polar bear literally swatted at. She was on her back kind of like kicking at the polar bear until someone was able to shoot it. And this woman really didn’t have a lot of injuries. And again, she took on a 700 pound bear. Right. So if there’s a change you want to make in your life, but you’ve been having trouble getting the motivation to do it, or you lack consistency, I want you to start thinking and list who you’re making the change.
Four, because obviously you’re gonna do it for yourself, but if you add in other people, other players, other stakeholders, that is going to wildly increase your chances of success. It’s the reason why they have accountability groups and mastermind groups, and team sports and team challenges. If you’re gonna walk or you’re going to exercise, or you’re gonna do running, or you’re going to save money for a certain amount of time and budget.
All of these things, they are team based. They are community based because it is easier to do it for other people than it is for ourselves sometimes. Okay. So I want you to really think, visualize how are the lives of other people going to be impacted by you continuing to do things that are not conducive for your health, for your finances, for your relationships, for your emotional health, for your mental health, for your career, Like, What’s it gonna be like for your spouse, for your children, for your siblings, for your friends?
If you continue to be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, what’s it gonna be like for them? If you never have enough confidence to ask out the person that you’re really interested in, what’s it gonna be like if you continue to doubt your greatness or. Never pursue your dreams and stay in a career that’s not fulfilling, that makes you feel like you are literally dying on the inside.
How is it going to impact them and your future generations? What’s that generational curse or what’s that gonna be like for years and years and years down the line? Not just you, but for the people. , but for the people who are going to come after you long after you die, if you’re trying to make money, why are you making this money and who are you making it for?
There’s a different type of feeling behind, I’m making this money for me, versus I’m making this money so I can take care of my family, so I can make sure that my parents, my children, my spouse, whoever it is, will never have to worry about money ever again. There’s a totally, totally different feeling and intention and drive behind those two thoughts.
And it’s the same thing with your health. If you’re trying to get more fit, if you’re trying to lose body fat, if you’re trying to kick a nasty habit, whether it’s substance use or tobacco or whatever it is. Why are you doing this, and who are you doing it for? It’s not just enough to say, I’m gonna quit smoking because I know it’s bad for me, but maybe I can quit smoking so that I can be around for the people that I really care about.
Because if I get sick, if I get cancer, that’s not gonna be. If you’re trying to start a business, why are you doing it and who are you doing it for? Are you doing it so that you can solve problems for your clients because you care so much about their problem that you’re like, I will do anything, anything in my power to make sure that these people will never have to encounter this problem again because I have created the solution for them in my business, in my product, in my service.
If you’re trying to break generational trauma, why are you doing it and who are you doing it for? It’s the same questions that you just have to be intentional about asking yourself when you’re trying to fix something, when you’re trying to change something, when you’re actually trying to make a difference in your life because you, again, have decided that the status quo is not acceptable.
It’s the same thing with leaving a toxic environment, leaving a toxic job. Anything that you wanna change, anything that you’re unhappy with, this is the thing that’s going to help you transform your motivation. This is going to help you immensely in being able to have that drive, have that motivation to really be consistent with the work that you need to do in order to make the change of reality and not just some vision and some thought in your head.
And think about it this way, if that patient. And think about it this way, if my patient’s mother in the midst of knowing and realizing that her only son was dying, if she was able to turn it around and compose herself because she told herself, my son needs me and it’s not about me right now. what’s possible for us, because clearly that’s within her.
Clearly that’s within all of us. She’s no more special than we are. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman, but it doesn’t mean that we are not capable of the same, and so I want you to keep that in mind. We don’t use nearly enough of the muscle fiber. , we don’t use nearly enough of our potential because we don’t realize how far, how high we can go.
And it’s the same thing with that hysterical strength. They’ve said that even elite Olympic athletes a lot of times will only recruit 80% of their muscle fibers. That mind and muscle connection, and maybe what it is, is that that extra 20% allows people in a life and. Situation to lift a car or to fight a polar bear.
So remember what? So I want you to remember and ask yourself, what can I actually do? What am I really, really capable of?
And when you’re trying to make a change, I want you to associate pain with continuing. , I want you to associate pain, massive, massive amounts of pain with continuing to do the thing that you’re unhappy about right now, not changing. To continue with the status quo. Associate a ton of pain, not only for yourself, but for your family, your friends, your kids, your spouse, your siblings, your community, whoever.
Is because when you do that, you attach more and more consequences to it. And when you attach more consequences to it, it becomes more compelling cuz you realize this does not exist in a vacuum. This is not in isolation. This is not just about me. This affects so much more than just my life. And. Be able to associate massive pleasure with the change that you want to make, the change that you’re hoping to make in your life, and the change that’s going to make in other people’s lives.
When you can do both of those things, I guarantee you your chances of success, of achieving your goals, of doing whatever it is that you’re hoping to do are going to increase massively, and you will see that it really truly works.
So there you have it. People will do so, so much more for others than they will for themselves. It’s human nature, so you might as well take advantage of it and use it to help you achieve your goals, to help you make a change in your life, to help you break free from the limitations that are holding. Back and again, if you wanna feel more confident, if you wanna feel more empowered and ready, and if you, and again, if you wanna feel more confident, more empowered, and to have the mindset of someone who will do anything and not let anything.
and have the mindset of someone who will let nothing stop them from what they want. Then all you have to do is book a free call on my website, luyikathyzhang.com and until then, I will see you next week. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. See ya.
