Grow the Good

In this week’s podcast, Sonya sat down with Katy Milkman, a professor at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, to discuss behavior sciences, behavior change, setting goals, and much more. Katy conducts research that looks at insights from economics and psychology and how they can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good. She co-founded, and co-directs, the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Last year, Katy published How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, which the New York Times named one of the eight best books for healthy living in 2021. She was also named one of the world’s top 50 management thinkers and the world’s top strategy thinker by Thinkers50.

Katy’s extensive resume includes work with many organizations on behavior change, including The White House, Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, and more. She also hosts a podcast called Choiceology,  an original podcast from Charles Schwab, that explores the lessons of behavioral economics, exposing the psychological traps that lead to expensive mistakes.

• How Katy got into behavioral sciences
• Leading reason to make change
• What the hell effect
• How to set an appropriate goal
• Commitment devices
• Temptation Bundle
• Advice

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Excuses can show up in several forms, especially when it comes to following through with goals and commitments. The biggest excuse often comes in the form of procrastination. We say we will do something later and then we never do it.

Other forms of excuses show up as a reason to let yourself off the hook. Maybe you feel like you're too tired, too lazy, too unmotivated, or you just hate doing something.

First, I am going to talk about big picture excuses- excuses that we make to avoid bigger life changes. Next, I'll talk about how to decide if the commitment we made is true commitment or just an interest, and how to make stronger commitments.

Here are some common excuses I hear or that I’ve caught myself saying. Try to notice your own narrative around excuses and the broader meaning behind those excuses. Here are a few examples.

• I’m too old to start (I hear this a lot with mountain biking… NOT true! My dad started in his 60s. My father-in-law is in his 70s and mountain bikes!). If you listened to my podcast with Ian Marshall, he started ultra-running in his mid-40s and is running and traveling the world full-time as someone in his 50s.
  • You’re really saying “I’m afraid I’ll get hurt” or you have a fixed mindset about improvement and aging thinking "I don't believe that I can improve as I age." Hire a coach, take babysteps, realize that you are looking at worst-case scenarios and it’s probably not true.
• I don’t know how to do it.
  • You’re really saying: I don’t know how to do it right now. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to figure it out. I’m afraid I’ll waste my time trying to learn if it doesn’t work out. I don’t want to spend the time. Meet the internet. You can learn how to do pretty much everything if you’re willing to put in the time. If you're not willing to put in the work to figure something out or seek help from someone, you may not be as interested in the goal as you originally thought. It's okay to not know how to do something, but the only way to make forward progress is to start. We also worry about imperfect progress and wasting time as we try to figure out how to do something. The time spent is part of the investment.
• It’s too cold, hot, I’m too sleepy, I have too much to do… excuses not to exercise, do housework, or a project. What are you really worried about? Are you tired, stressed, burnt out, or injured? Those are times you might need a break. You probably are really saying that you don’t want to be uncomfortable. Change your momentum to find out. There are so many times you don't feel like doing something and wait for motivation to strike. You've probably heard me say this many times but motivation follows action, not the other way around. Get started and then decide if you're too cold, too sleepy, or too overwhelmed instead of letting those excuses stop you from starting in the first place.
• I have already spent years in school or in my career dedicated to this path. I can’t change now.
  • You’re really saying that it is hard to start over and you’re afraid of the sunk cost of time and money, but you can always change. You also might be avoiding discomfort, temporary loss of identity, fear of not knowing what to do next, but you can almost always change. Change is hard and it takes work, but it’s worth it.
• I don’t have time
  • You’re really saying you won’t make time. You might have to cut something else out, but if it’s important you always have time. Sometimes you have to be brut

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

We all have ideas of what we want our life to look like. It could be something like weight loss, improving speed on the bike or running, or even cooking more at home.  When you set those goals, how do you go about doing it? Have you set goals and ultimately lost motivation or simply got out of the habit?

With the impending New Year, many of us like to think about what we want to accomplish. In fact, fresh starts are a great time for habit change. (link). I'm here to help you set goals for the new year or any time that will actually keep you on track.

In this guide, you'll learn:

• The mistakes people make with setting goals
• how to set a process or behavior focused goals (instead of outcome goals)
• how big of a goal is too big
• strategies to avoid the self-sabotage of all-or-none thinking
• SMART Goals: the actual elements of setting an achievable goal
• some ways to track your goals
• how to stay motivated with your goals ove rtime
• define what success looks like

It's normal to look at what we want to achieve with a goal.

I want to lose 10 lbs. I want to finish top 10 in my race. I want to run a certain 10k or marathon time. I want to make a certain amount of money. These are all outcome-based goals.

Outcome goals are focused on the product of your work. The problem with outcome-based goals? A lot of the time, they are out of our control You cannot control a race result. In some ways, you cannot control an exact dollar amount you want to make. And even if they are within our control, outcome-based goals can be demotivating. You hear of people who train to run a marathon, do the race, and never run again.

Ultimately, we are trying to grow as a person or slightly change our identity. The goal of someone who wants to run a marathon is really that they want to become a runner, but if they miss this bit point, they may just run the marathon and quit running.

I'm sure you have heard about process-oriented goals. In coaching, we call this behavior-oriented goals. What behaviors can you consistently commit to that will move you toward the outcome you want? The behaviors, the process, the work- that is what gets you to your goal and that is what is within your control.

It's okay to have an outcome in mind, but set that goalpost and then forget about it.

Ultimately, we set goals because we want to feel proud. At the end of the day, it's the consistent work we put in that makes us feel proud, even if the outcome isn't exactly what we wanted. I've felt really proud of race results that didn't even land me of the podium because I know what I did to get to that point and I was proud of my performance.

As Atomic Habits author and podcast guest James Clear says, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become." Focus on your daily actions, vote to be the thing you want to achieve. The goal isn't to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal isn't to write a book, the goal is to become a writer. The goal isn't to lose weight, the goal is to be someone who eats healthy. What are the actions of someone who already has that identity and how can you replicate them and feel

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Imagine rocketing head and face-first down a frozen track around 80 miles per hour with the rapidly moving ground just inches from your face. Well, that sport is called Skeleton and Duff Gibson won a gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics for being the best. Not only that, but he is the oldest gold medalist in history in the Winter Olympics, winning gold at age 39 after decades finding his niche in sport. Duff didn't start in Skeleton and spent a lot of time finding high degrees of success in winter sports, but it wasn't enough to help him realize his Olympic dream he had since childhood. Duff knew when to walk away and try new sports to help him achieve his ultimate goal- Olympic Gold.

As an athlete, Duff was a provincial champion speed skater, a national champion and national team member in bobsleigh, and then a world and Olympic gold medallist in the sport of skeleton. As a coach, he led six different athletes to podium finishes at a world level. Competing against, working with, and learning from numerous world-leading athletes and coaches has provided Duff a breadth and depth of experience few others have had.

Duff is passionate about the mental side of sport. He wrote the book the Tao of Sport chronicling his story along with many other high-achieving athletes and Olympians with the mental side of sport interweaved into the narrative. He regularly works with younger multi-sport athletes and is based in Calgary.

"Number 1 is doing it forth the love of it. The mindset is give me the chance, give the chance and I'll show you my best as opposed to I hope I don't screw this up. So that's a mindset thing."

• How did he know when to switch sports
• Using positivity in sports
• What is skeleton?
• Managing fear in his sport
• How to deal with pressure
• How to use visualization in sport
• How to be confident if you don’t know the path

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• Go to Tao of Sport
• My podcast episode mentioned: David Epstein and his book, Range
• My podcast episode mentioned: Youth Mental Training with Jennifer Etnier
• Check out my Substack about high-performance mindset
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter! 

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Muay Thai is a martial art and combat sport that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques, and being plant-based has been a gamechanger for Cass Warbeck.

Cass Warbeck started training martial arts at the age of 11 and is a black belt in Goju Ryu karate and black level in Kurama Yama kickboxing. After reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell in 2013, she went plant-based and never looked back.

A plant-based diet fueled her throughout her amateur Muay Thai fighting career and in March 2019 she fought for and won the World Kickboxing Association (WKA) North American Bantamweight Muay Thai Title.

Cass has always loved inspiring and educating others to achieve better personal health through physical movement and nutrition. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Health and Fitness Physiology from the University of Calgary and worked as a Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) certified personal trainer before applying to medical school. Currently Cass is a 3rd year medical student at the University of Alberta wants to improve the nutrition education provided to medical students in Canada. She looks forward to utilizing the power of lifestyle medicine and plant-based nutrition in her future medical practice.

Cass has been featured in the book, Legends of Change, and the magazine Canadian Vegan. She is a long term volunteer for the organization Nutritionfacts.org and is the host of The Plant Fueled Podcast.

"I read this book and it opened my eyes to how food and diet can actually affect long term health, and not just your immediate body composition or how you look or how toned you are. It can actually affect long-term health and your longevity and all these different things. I just couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t learned this before. I was taking a nutrition course. I just had never made the connection. What I eat today could influence whether I would get breast cancer in the future.  It was just kinda downhill from there. I just started reading all I could about nutrition and plant-based diets."

• Muay Thai: what’s it like to fight someone
• Confidence as a female fighter
• Her plant-based diet change
• Food affecting long term health and longevity
• Cutting weight for fights
• There’s a lot more to health than exercise

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Microsoft Word - Cass Warbeck Podcast Bio.docx

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

"It's too late for me. I'm too old to start." Have you ever used these excuses are barriers? Meet Ian Morgan, an ultrarunner who is crushing it in his 50s. And guess what? He didn't even start on this journey until he was in his mid-40s.

Ian was primarily focused on his engineering career and property investment company in his 20s and 30s. Realizing that a primary focus on money, materialistic possessions, and career achievements wasn't making him happy, he took a 180 turn in his life. Ian said, " I was overweight, stressed, and unhappy with myself, so I started to run. This is where I discovered a passion for ultra running. Eventually, I sold everything I owned (Houses, cars, bikes, and all my furniture) and started living a more nomadic minimalist lifestyle, traveling the world and running 50 to 250 km plus ultra races in some of the world's wildest places."

How did this happen?

Starting as a proverbial couch potato to present day super-fit ultra runner (seriously, he ran a 2:50 marathon and as you just heard, he gets in some serious distance), Ian knows what it takes to claim responsibility for your life and make lasting changes. And to top it all off, he says you're never too old to get started. How many of us would think we could start our running career in our late 40s and early 50s? His current job is to run and he works with sponsors as a competitive lifestyle athlete and inspires thousands with his Instagram account.

"Mental laziness is something that you can use as an excuse, but at the end of the day, I had to face myself and say "is that the person I really want to be?" I remember when I was a kid, I wasn’t that way. I used to challenge myself, I used to push myself so I guess I went back to those childhood experiences, examined it and thought  “what can I do now as an adult to bring that to the forefront, to push myself again?" Once I realized I had this propensity for mental laziness, I then know when it comes up, I know when I start telling myself those excuses, I can check myself and use that discipline, use consistency and start putting in the work."

• Who is Ian Morgan?
• Why we lose connection to ourselves as athletes
• Overcoming mental laziness
• The problem with taking on too much too quickly
• Ian Morgan's inspiring transformation
• You're never to old to start
• Defining Success

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• Follow Ian Morgan on Instagram
• My podcast e

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Have you ever noticed that when you get close to the end of something hard, you wish you were at the finish line? I notice this feeling the most in a mountain bike race. It doesn't matter how long the event is, but when I'm 70% done (or sometimes even before), I start dreaming of the finish line. It also happens during a workout or a project.  We start anticipating being done and then wish to be at the finish line.  I admit I've even done this looking at how long it'll be before my son's nap, wishing the time away so I can have a break. 

Most of the time, we worked hard to even get to the start line, and then we catch ourselves wishing the time away.   I don't have all the answers, but there are my thoughts.  I think that sometimes we wish time away because we are bored, uncomfortable, or thought things would be different.  The thing I've learned through racing that applies everywhere else in my life is that the uncomfortable moments never last. The patience of wading through them and catching the next wave teaches us that we are resilient. It doesn't mean you have to enjoy the discomfort, boredom, (insert how you feel and why you might be wishing it away).  I used to wish time away, even when I was winning a race because I felt like I had everything to lose and felt vulnerable. How can we savor more moments in life, even when we find ourselves wishing it away?

• The awareness that you are  trying to rush time or wish time away is a good place to start
• Ask yourself why you might be wishing time away.  When I catch myself wishing time to pass with my son until naptime, it's because I want a break. When I wish time away at a race, it's because I either feel vulnerable to something bad happening, I'm bored, or things aren't going my way and I just want them to be over.  What insight can you get from noticing you are wishing time away?
• Ask yourself how you can savor the moment. What joy can you find, if any? How can being present and not wishing it away serve you later?
• Remind yourself “this is what I came for.”  When you do an interval workout and you are suffering and just want it to be over, that discomfort is actually what you came for because it's how you improve.  If you are out doing a sport or at the gym, this is what you came for. If you're a parent, raising children is what you came for.  It doesn't necessarily make it easy, but a simple mindset shift maybe makes you realize that it isn't going to be perfect or feel good all the time.  It shifts you from avoiding discomfort and into a mindset of accepting the discomfort as normal, but also impermanent. Another note is that we often look back fondly, even on hard times. I hear people say some of their favorite times in their lives were when their kids were little or some of when they were in the thick of the hardest (voluntary) challenges they've done. We look back fondly at these moments, but sometimes when we are in them, we want to speed up time because we wish things were easier. Savoring the challenges and knowing that later this will also be a moment or moments that you will fondly reminisice is powerful. How will the "future you" feel if you savored the moment?
• There is wisdom in discomfort as long as you aren't damaging yourself.
• There is a texture of acceptance for what is when you try to savor instead of wish it away.

“Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Sarah Sturm is a cyclist who can't be grouped into a specific category of cycling. Although you might know her bright smile and speedy results from gravel, she is a 2x Singlespeed Cyclocross National Champion, a podium finisher at the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race this year, has multiple high-profile gravel accolades (aka Belgian Waffle Ride, Steamboat Gravel (SBT GRVL), Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder, The Rift in Iceland, and more), and done a sizeable amount of racing road and cross-country mountain bike races... to bikepacking adventures for fun. Oh, and let's not forget to mention we met at the Trans BC Enduro stage race. When there are two wheels involved, Sarah's spirit for adventure, connection, and fun has taken her down many trails, roads, and paths.

In addition to all the time Sarah Sturm spends cycling (in the saddle) and professional commitments, she also coaches young riders in the Devo Program in Durango, CO, and has a successful graphic design business called Oso Creative. Sarah isn't only inspiring a new generation of riders, but also the fellow racers lining up next to her.

Sarah Sturm's trajectory as a cyclist hasn't always been easy. Early on, she found she wasn't having any fun racing her bike and after a hiatus, came back to it with a newfound sense of joy and perspective. In this episode, you'll immediately feel her ability to connect with just about anyone, her positivity, and vulnerability no matter who you are.

"I know progress not perfection. We hear these things, but it’s so hard to actually embody that sometimes because you just want to do well all the time and be the best. It’s not even about crossing the finish line, but proving it to myself sometimes if that makes sense. I’m not very good at actually looking back and being proud at some of the stuff I’ve accomplished.” 

Key Takeaways

• the pressure of professional athletics
• progress not perfection
• challenges of being a female athlete
• how to have a good relationship on social media
• our own jealousy and insecurities
• how vulnerability can be powerful
• what’s my worth
• how to deal with pressure

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• Follow Sarah Sturm on Instagram
• Grab the book Mindset by Carol Dweck
• Check out my Substack about high-performance mindset
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter! 

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Most of us try to balance the act of doing and the feeling of being in our lives. We ask ourselves questions like, "How can I work hard and have success without burning out? What do I need to do to feel fulfilled while striving for improvement?"

Brad Stulberg, author of the bestselling author of the new book, The Practice of Groundedness, and also Peak Performance regularly researches, writes, and coaches on the many elements of health, well-being, and sustainable performance. And today, he returns to the podcast for his third conversation all about how to feel more grounded. His research suggests 6 principles of groundedness: acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability, community, and movement.

More specifically, The Practice of Groundedness focuses on:

• Accept where you are to get to where you want to go
• Be Present to Own Your Energy and Attention
• Be Patient to Get There Faster
• Embrace Vulnerability to Build Genuine Strength and Confidence
• Build Deep Community
• Move Your Body to Ground Your Mind

Brad's book combines ancient wisdom with modern science to dive into how to build a strong foundation. We talk about separating your work from your sense of self, how heroic individualism can be challenging, the importance of having local community, and how to have a more deliberate relationship with striving.

Heroic individualism is a never-ending game of one-upmanship against yourself and other people, so you’re constantly trying to beat yourself and other people where measurable achievement is the main arbiter of success and the goal post is always 10 yards down the field, so you never actually arrive.  You think that if you just accomplish this, or just win that race, or just achieve that thing, or just fall in love with that perfect person, then you’ll be content. But what you find is that there is no arriving at contentment and having that mindset will make you miserable. Whereas contentment is an ongoing practice of the principles that we talked about with groundedness. Contentment is every day, aligning your being with your doing and practicing those things. 

 His work has been featured in The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Forbes, and more. In his coaching practice, he works with executives, entrepreneurs, and physicians on their performance and well-being. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Make sure you listen to our podcast episodes on Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox!

"Keeping it fun is really important for me. Particularly taking the work very seriously, but not taking myself seriously at all. What does that look like in practice? The Practice of Groundedness, this book, I care deeply about. I think it’s excellent. I'm going to do everything I can for the book. But the book was such a team effort with so many people. The book is just my brain at one point of time, it’s not me. But now the book is its own thing. Separating my sense of self from my work.  Really caring about the work but realizing that it's something I did, it’s no longer me. That’s be

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co. 

Sonya has been committed to a plant-based diet for almost a decade. Her interest in and passion for the benefits of plant-based eating has led her to connect to those equally committed to the space. 

Cue this week’s episode with Stevan Mirkovich - owner of Planted Expo, a trade show, platform and network to connect Canadians to local vegan and plant-based businesses. Sonya will be speaking at Planted Expo this weekend and had a chance to speak with Stevan leading up to the event.

Stevan is a recovering food addict, who experienced overeating, junk-food veganism, and eventually found his way to a plant-based style of living. He has guided hundreds of people in plant-based nutrition, cooking through sharing educational resources to help people transition to a better way of eating.

Sonya and Stevan had a fantastic conversation spanning the topics of leadership, cooking, plant-based diets, human connection and more.

"“That control piece is an interesting one because the truth is, you’re the only one that can control what you eat, or should be the only one that controls what you eat, right? And it shouldn’t be, well my spouse does this or my partner does this or my family does this, and therefore, I can’t have the agency that I’m looking for in my dietary choices...just to really stay narrow here. But, that being said, it is tricky because the nuance there is what you raised, in that a lot of our responses to our emotional upheaval or our emotional dysregulation is a desire for control. That desire for control can express itself in a variety of settings, in a variety of ways. For me, it happened to express itself through controlling what I eat and I think probably for a lot of people that is the truth. So it’s reframing your perception of control and not abnegating your agency in what you choose to eat, but also having a healthier relationship with the choices you make around food when you’re aware of your emotional state.”" 

• When something throws life out of balance
• For the love of food and coffee
• Planted Expo
• Cooking classes
• Getting comfortable in the kitchen with plant-based recipes
• Going plant-based in 2003
• Emotions around food
• Searching for control
• Food as a social issue
• Importance of human connection

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• Learn more about Planted Expo
• Liked this episode? Listen to other podcasts on plant-based nutrition
• Check out all of my info on plant-based nutrition
• Check out my Substack about high-performance mindset
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter! 

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co.