Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, handling hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and a life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. If you're anything like me, you might be a little bit impulsive when it comes to change. Now I'll be the first to admit that I will read about a new workout trend or a challenge, and I jump on it like white on rice. If I set a new goal, I'm out there looking for instantaneous results. My conscious brain knows that most of these goals are gonna take time, but the sticky floor that I find myself standing in is one of impatience.

Erica: Now here's what you may not know about change. It's not a one step process. So most people operate under the assumption that if you want to change, you just do it. For example, if you wanna work out, you just go work out.

Erica: If you wanna eat healthier or quit drinking, you just start eating healthier and quit drinking. But change is more complex than that. Now in the nineteen seventies, Doctor James Prochaska and Doctor Carlo DiClemente created a five step model of change after studying what made some smokers successful in their quest to quit while others really struggled. What I find fascinating about this five stage model is the act of starting a new habit and quitting an old one is actually the fourth stage of change. It doesn't start with this act of stopping or starting.

Erica: It's not Atomic Habits. It's not all of these other hot topic books right now that are all about building the better routines. There is a five stage model of change. And this model illustrates that just thinking about the change without doing a damn thing is a stage of change. Yes.

Erica: You sitting on the couch, thinking about how you wanna go work out or quit drinking or smoking. That is a stage of change. You see, change is this process that does not start with action. You're probably like, what the heck, Erica? So let's dive in.

Erica: The first stage of change is precontemplation. And this is the stage where you are just totally not even thinking about it. You're out there living your life. You are collecting experiences. Now you have to collect experiences, both the good and the bad, for your brain to even start to formulate what it wants more of and what it wants less of.

Erica: The second stage of change, contemplation, is the stage when you start to get that itch. Those feelings, those nagging thoughts that just don't go away, that are coming from all of the experiences that you just gathered in phase one. This is when you start thinking about what is it that you wanna change? How do you wanna change it? When?

Erica: Why? You know, maybe you've gotten tired of your jeans being a little too snug every time you try to button them up, and you're just feeling a bit frustrated and down on yourself. This leads you right into step three, preparation. And this is the stage where you've made the decision that you want to change. You wanna start prepping, and you start planning out, okay.

Erica: If I'm going to start working out, I need to wake up thirty minutes earlier. Maybe you need to go buy some new running shoes or some new leggings or something to just get you motivated. Right? This is also when it's a good idea to enlist a friend as an accountability partner, someone who might meet you at the gym every morning. So this is the stage where you do all the things that you think you need to do to create change, without actually starting the change.

Erica: That leads you to the massive stage four, where most people think change starts, the action stage. By now, though, you know and have seen that there's a lot of work that goes into working on a change before you even take action. You've spent time thinking about the change. You've been prepping for the change. You've been planning on how you're going to accomplish the change.

Erica: You might be nervous because it is a huge change for you. The amount of mental energy that you've put in already, this is something that I want you to be proud of, because that, my friend, is work. Okay? All of the time and the energy that you have put into thinking about how you wanna improve, what you want to change about your life, is huge, and I don't want you to brush past that. I want you to be proud of it.

Erica: But now that we're in step four, we've moved through the precontemplation, the contemplation. We've moved through preparation. We are ready to do the work. And stage four, action, is when you actually start the physical change. You get yourself to the gym.

Erica: You throw out all the unhealthy foods in the house. Right? Maybe you chew a piece of gum instead of going out for a smoke. This is doing all of the work that you've been planning for. Now the final stage, stage five, is maintenance.

Erica: Have y'all ever heard that quote that says quitting is easy, I've done it a thousand times? This is my favorite saying when it comes to habits, because the start of something is so much easier than maintaining it. This is when the real important work starts. This is when you start solidifying that change that you wanna make.

Erica: What I want you to realize, and what I hope motivates you, is that change is not a linear process. Very rarely do you declare that you're gonna make this change and you have immediate sustained success. There are ups, there are downs, there are peaks, there are valleys. Emergencies pop up that throw your workout plan off course for a month even. You get a piece of stressful news.

Erica: You reach for a smoke. I don't want you to be discouraged. I want you to pause, and I want you to take a moment, and I want you to look back. Look back at those other four steps. Look at all the work that you have already done.

Erica: Yes. That mental work is work. You have made it through three stages of change already. If you are thinking about change, you are doing so much more than that person who hasn't even started thinking about change. You are not going back to square one if you mess up.

Erica: You have already come so far. Now this isn't the moment to just throw all your change in the trash and declare that it's too hard. You've messed up. You failed. You regress.

Erica: This is natural. It's going to happen. It's a part of life. So now I kinda wanna switch gears on you, and I wanna go back to the beginning when I was talking about habits. Okay?

Erica: We talk a ton about habits on this podcast. And if you know me, I love a good habit and I will strategize all day long on how to make a habit stick. But we often don't talk about the stages of change and how they relate to habits, which in my opinion is doing us a huge disservice. So most of the literature that we see surrounding habits is all about just solidifying that habit, which is stage five. It doesn't even touch on all of the other work that you put in to stages one through four.

Erica: But each one of those phases requires your time, your energy, and it's important that you recognize that. I also want you to recognize that you can spend days, months, and even years in some of these stages. And you may regress, moving from the maintenance phase back into contemplation phase, back into action, back down to contemplation. Again, it's not necessarily a linear journey. You need to recognize that change doesn't happen overnight.

Erica: Oh, y'all. My stickiest of floors. I'm a 100% guilty of working out for one week, and then I expect a six pack. Right? And I'm a fitness professional at heart.

Erica: We live in this world where we crave instant results. You know, we think about a book we wanna order on Amazon, and we get it straight at our doorstep the second we click buy now. Okay. It's not quite that fast, but y'all know what I'm saying. We live in a world where everyone is told to move with pace and urgency.

Erica: But the amount of time that you spend in each phase of change is not wasted. It's a part of your process. It is a part of your growth. It is a part of your story. Now I'm not saying it's okay to just allow yourself to go from taking action and maintenance back to contemplation because you slip up.

Erica: Okay? Now that we understand the model of change, you have the knowledge, we can use the power of habits to stay in action and stay in phase five, maintenance. Build in emergency moments. These are moments in time where if you miss a goal, you do not regress or give up. So let's take working out, for example.

Erica: If you have the goal to work out five days a week for thirty minutes every day, you allow yourself one emergency day. This is a day that you can hit the snooze on your alarm clock. You know, you wake up late. Maybe you have a kid get sick. You've been up all night, and you just are too exhausted to go for a walk.

Erica: That's your emergency day. That's okay. This is life, y'all. It doesn't go perfectly. This is when you can call in that emergency, and it gives you the permission to miss without having to give up on your goal, without starting over.

Erica: This emergency moment strategy, it is what keeps me out of the what the hell effect. Now the what the hell effect is when you make a decision or you take an action that doesn't align with the goals you've set. And this is something, oh, I am the worst at. Here we go with another sticky floor moment for Erica that I'm a 100% aware I can get stuck in. Trust me.

Erica: I'm working on it. I'm a sugar fiend. I love candy. I love ice cream. I love treats.

Erica: Trust me. It's a problem as a fitness person. You put a Crumbl cookie in front of me, there's no way I'm saying no. I'm also the guilty party that if you put that cookie in front of me on a Tuesday, I very well might say, well, I guess I just have to start this whole thing over on Monday. What the hell?

Erica: Y'all, that's the what the hell effect. The logical part of me knows it's ridiculous. Even saying it, it's ridiculous. But I think many of us have been there, done that. So the reminder that I give myself when I start spiraling is that if you get one flat tire, you would not go and slash the other three tires.

Erica: This gives me a really good visual of how ridiculous I might be acting. But if I build in these emergency days, it gives me the permission to keep moving forward with my goals even if I messed up, even if I eat that Crumbl cookie. It helps me not throw my hands up in the air and just say, well, I can't do anything about it now. Guess I'll just have to start over on Monday. It keeps me progressing towards my goals, and it stops that downward spiral.

Erica: The best part about building in emergencies is it prevents this cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is this state of having thoughts or taking actions that don't align with the person you wanna be. So for me, I want to be a healthy person. I want to be a fit person. And for me, being a fit person doesn't mean falling face first into a bag of peanut butter M and M's.

Erica: The actual definition though is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially relating to behavioral changes or decisions. So if I do fall face first into a bag of peanut butter M and M's, or I find myself stuck in a Crumbl cookie box, or I miss a workout, those emergency days keep me from experiencing the cognitive dissonance. They keep me from the what the hell effect. They keep me from moving out of stage four or five back into contemplation, because I have these days built into my plan. It keeps the small dips in my road from being potholes.

Erica: Now wherever you are in your journey, keep going. Remember, this isn't always about that one new goal that you're reaching for. It's about all of the goals, the habits, and life changes that you've made. They all exist in phase five. The one that you're able to maintain.

Erica: You are already doing the work. You are already a success. Truly. You are. But one last thing before you go.

Erica: I need your help. I'm on a mission to get 105 star reviews before my one hundredth episode, and that's coming up quick. It's a huge goal. Will you help me? All you have to do is scroll on your phone, tap the five stars, and leave a comment about what you love.

Erica: It truly helps this podcast land in the hands of the woman that needs to hear it most, and it helps the message get out there. So please drop a review. Help me hit that goal, and thank you. Thank you. Thank you.