Eat Like You Teach. Irene Pace, RD

       Chapter 10: Take Action - Turn Knowing into Doing

       Chapter 11: Steer Dynamically - Navigate Common Obstacles

       Chapter 12: Own It - You Got This

      I’m excited to bring you the system and principles that helped me through when I needed a reset. They continue to be the principles and systems I live by today.

      By learning the process, you will have powerful tools that can serve you into the future because when your life and your body change, it will be time to update your Manual and you will know exactly how to do that.

Part II:

      Chapter 4:

      Start Here – Make Your Expectations Work for You

      “1.4 A: Don’t get hung up on your views of how things ‘should’ be because you will miss out on learning how they really are.”

      – Ray Dalio, Principles

      Let’s start at the beginning. The best place to begin is where you are now. It’s the only place to begin, really. You can’t start where you used to be or where you wish you were, but sometimes your mind likes to make you think you can. Stepping into the reality of “what is” is an essential principle for building an Owner’s Manual that you can rely on. If you build your Owner’s Manual based on where you were at a previous time in your life or where you think you should or want to be, you’ll be building the wrong manual. It will be for somebody else’s life or the wrong version of your life. Certainly, use past experiences to inform what you choose to do now; you’d be missing out on learning from them if you didn’t. At the same time, expectations that what worked then should work now can get you into trouble. Expectations in general can get you into trouble, and that’s why I’ll give you tools to get them working for you instead of against you in this chapter.

      Start Where You Are

      You want the most current version of your Owner’s Manual, the one that takes into account your body and your life right now. It’s therefore essential that you build it in the context of the realities you encounter in your life right now. As it is, not as you wish it were or as you think it should be – what it is.

      Show up with the intention of wanting to know the truth about your reality (as difficult as that may be sometimes). It doesn’t do you any good to hide from the truth about your life. Correct that: it doesn’t do you any good to hide from the truth about your life if you want to change it. Any good outcome is rooted in an accurate understanding of reality. Start from here, the place you actually live, now. Here are some principles for starting where you are:

      Practice a beginner’s mindset

      Life as you know it right now is not exactly as it was a year ago or a day ago or even a moment ago (if you want to get super technical and a little woo-woo). It’s continually evolving and changing, and this is where those who approach with a beginner’s mindset come out on top. Beginner’s mindset means you approach any situation with the underlying belief that you have something to learn. It’s much easier to learn if you believe there is something to learn.

      This is especially true in the “expert” space, where it’s easy to feel a pull to be the person who has all the answers especially in your area of expertise. Do you know someone who responds to everything with a version of “I already knew that?” Right. Don’t be that guy. The more of a master you truly become, the more you realize how little you know and just how much there is still to learn. Open yourself to the idea that, although it used to be X way, it is totally possible that Y is the way is it now. Or that you believe A to be true but can entertain the possibility that B (or something else you have yet to discover) may also be true. And if that is the case, you want to know.

      Writer and artist Brian Andreas says, “It doesn’t help to listen carefully if you’re only going to listen for stuff you already know.” With each new learning, you get to begin again with a new perspective. Be open to see the next thing you don’t yet know, and it will find you more easily.

      Embrace a growth mindset

      If beginner’s mindset is that you believe you have something to learn, growth mindset is when you believe you can learn. The opposite of growth mindset is fixed mindset. Fixed mindset says you’re born smart (or not). You know what you know (or not). You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That’s a pretty difficult (almost impossible) place to change and grow from. Growth aside, it creates loads of unnecessary struggle, feelings of failure, and hopelessness in life to go around believing that you can’t grow.

      In a growth mindset, you believe that even the most basic, seemingly innate abilities can be developed and expanded through specific and deliberate practice. This fosters a desire for, and love of, learning and practice. The belief that you can learn and grow through something difficult can fuel determination and resilience and allow you to continue to move forward even at times it seems like everything is pushing you not to. Combine this with a belief that experiences in life, no matter how light or dark, are an opportunity to learn something, and you are set to get through anything.

      Check Your Expectations

      Expectations matter (a lot). They can set you on a path to tremendous growth, or they can hold you in a place of suffering. The beauty and the burden of this is that you alone are in control of your expectations. You get to choose to hold expectations that help you or hurt you, but you can only make a choice if you’re aware of them. When you hear words like these from yourself or others, know that expectations are lurking, and use them as a trigger to tune in: must, have to, need to, supposed to, had better, should. You may discover you are should-ing on yourself all day long.

      Why does that matter? Shoulds have a big impact on how successful you feel. If every little success is crowded out by all the shoulds that were not looked after, you can see it becomes easy to feel like you never get to enjoy any successes at all. “I did have a great breakfast today, but I shouldn’t have stopped for a latte on my way to work, and I’ve got to get better a drinking more water, and I was supposed to pack my lunch for today, but I didn’t.” Success breeds success, but not a lot of breeding will happen in the dark land of shoulds.

      If you discover you are running around with superhuman expectations in every area of life – your eating, movement, sleep, relationships, work – you are not alone. As you tune in, you will see how some expectations serve you and some don’t. As much as you would love them to, superhuman expectations don’t necessarily make things go faster. They may actually get in the way of progress.

      ex·pec·ta·tion

      /ˌekspekˈtāSH(ə)n/

      noun

      a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.

      a belief that someone will or should achieve something.

      So, what do you do? You practice checking in with your expectations as you go about building your Owner’s Manual (and the rest of your life). Ask yourself questions like, “What are my expectations right now? Do I believe this expectation belongs to me or someone else? What is influencing what I expect? Does it make sense? Does this expectation serve me? Does it serve somebody else?” It demands frequent tuning in and adjusting course. Expectations are sneaky little things.

      I had no idea just how much my expectations were impacting my life until I started tuning in. I had humongous, unrealistic (and crushing) expectations weighing me down in some places. I had humongous, inspiring (and helpful) expectations lifting me up in other places. Once I started to unpack them, I soon