121: Why Can't I Stay Consistent? The Missing Piece to Lasting Change

You're not consistent, not because you lack willpower, but because you think you need to be fixed.

When we look at the science of motivation and the incredible impact self-compassion has on our likelihood of moving toward our goals, the first sentence takes on a much more profound meaning.

So let's unpack that together:
🌟Understand what's really driving your inconsistency and resistance.
🌟Learn how to make change feel easier by connecting to what truly matters to you 
🌟Discover a simple framework to create lasting habits from self-care, not self-criticism.

 If you keep wondering, "Why can't I just stick with it?", I made this episode for you. 💛 

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Questions from this episode:
(Listen to full episode for more context!)

1. What might I gain when I do that thing?
2. Why is that important to me?
3. How might this positively impact those around me?

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Resources:

The Neuroscience of Goals and Behavior Change - Elliot T Berkman

Being Compassionate to Oneself Is Associated with Emotional Resilience and Psychological Well-Being - Rick Warren, Elke Smeets & Kristin Neff 

The Power of Self-Compassionate Motivation - Kristin Neff

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My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

Transcript

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This brings me to something really important that I have noticed within this community. And that is often the reason why we are trying to create change around chronic skin peaking, hair pulling, and nail biting is because we feel like we're not enough. We feel like we need to fix something, like we're incomplete or like we're broken. And when we're coming from a place like that, it can be really hard to stick to the small things that will help us to make the change that we want to see so that we can get better in the long run. And there is a wealth of research behind what I've just shared. And I'll be sharing with you all my resources in the show notes. To be able to become more consistent, there is a fundamental shift we must make in how we approach our goals and the things that we want to achieve and change in our life. I'm going to share with you what that is, why it's so important to change it, and then I'm going to share with you some questions you can ask yourself at the end to help yourself to create this change. Because these podcast episodes are all about giving you the information that you need and then also tangible steps you can take to implement. So if you want to become more consistent without using more willpower and force, make sure you listen all the way to the end. You are listening to episode 121 of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling. My name is Rafaela Murray. I am your host. I've healed from 15 years of chronic skin peeking through addressing the root cause and treating it like an addiction. And now I help others like you to heal as I did. And I share absolutely everything I know and everything I learn with you on this podcast. And if you appreciate the work that I do and you would love to support me, make sure you hit like and subscribe, leave a comment or a five-star review. Any way you interact with this podcast helps to push it out to more people, which helps me. And if you would like more support, I would love to invite you to share your story with me. This is an opportunity for you to feel deeply seen, heard, and understood. And where I can share with you my insights about the root cause of why you pick pull a bite at your body and the tangible next steps that you should take right now. If you feel like that will be greatly valuable to you, go ahead and click on the link in the show notes. Make sure you take advantage of this opportunity. I'm here for you and I so look forward to hearing your story. The reason why you can't stay consistent is because most likely what you're working towards is motivated by extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation. All that means is that we are either being motivated by social pressure or we are being motivated from within by our values, by our authenticity. We're motivated because we feel like we are worth the effort for the thing that we are trying to work towards. But how do we cultivate more internal motivation? We want to move away from thinking I'm doing that because I think I should, to I'm doing that because I know I'm worth that effort. So if you find that you're telling yourself that you should be doing things a lot and you find that you're not doing the things that you know you should be doing, then let's unpack this a little further and see what's going on underneath the surface that is making it so hard for you to stay consistent. When we unravel this, this is going to help you to maybe shift your perspective, shift your approach to the things that you want to do so that makes it easier for you to move forward. And this is not going to remove all resistance, any kind of change that we want to create in our lives. It is going to contain resistance in it. It's kind of a prerequisite for change is that it's uncomfortable to some degree. But through this process that I'm going to share with you, we can reduce some of that discomfort and bring a greater sense, a greater sense of self into the process, which makes it easier to move forward and do the things that you know you want to do. Here's a fundamental psychological principle we must understand about consistency and motivation. Your actions tend to reinforce the emotional state they are rooted in. When we repeatedly act from a place of self-love, our actions strengthen that relationship with ourselves. On the flip side, when we repeatedly act from a place of self-judgment, I should be doing this, I shouldn't be doing this, why can't I get myself to do this? Our actions can unintentionally strengthen that pattern instead. This is what makes it really hard to be consistent because a lot of people in this community, I think pretty much everyone I speak to on some level, wants to make change because, like I said, they think they aren't enough as they are. They're trying to fix something about themselves. And if we're trying to fix something about ourselves, it presupposes that we are broken. This is when social pressure comes in and starts to say, what are people going to think? You're not going to be accepted. You're not going to be enough. People are going to judge you. And a lot of this happens on a very, very subconscious level. So we may not even realize that we are holding these fears. We'll just find that we're trying to get ourselves to do a lot of things, but we're somehow really struggling to remain consistent. Now, this is supported by research by Elliot T. Berkman. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. He's done an incredible amount of research into motivation. And he says a behavior will hold greater subjective value to the degree that it is related to one's core values and sense of self. Identity-linked goals are more likely to be successful than identity irrelevant or identity counter wants. Identity-linked goals come from a place of I deserve this, I'm worthy of this, I'm worth the effort. Identity counter goals are I'm doing this because I need to fix this part of me, because I'm not enough as I am, because this isn't okay, because I'm not okay. I jump because I'm judging myself for doing this thing, or I'm judging myself for not doing this thing, therefore I should be doing it. If I eat healthily from a place of loving and nurturing my body, I will feel loved and nurtured through the act of eating well. Now, if I eat healthily from a place of judgment for my body, the act of eating healthily will confirm and build on the judgment I feel towards myself. And when we are coming from that place, no wonder it's hard to stay consistent when the thing that we are doing is confirming a negative belief about ourselves that we don't want confirmed. And so we are going to shy away from doing things that put us at risk of confirming the judgment that we feel towards ourselves. As self-compassion researcher Kristen Neff puts it, unlike self-criticism, which asks, am I good enough? Self-compassion asks, what's good for me. I eat well because I know it's good for me. Not because I'm asking, am I enough? And to be enough, therefore I need to eat better so I can look better, so I can be enough. I eat well because I know it's good for me, and that's enough. Now, don't get me wrong, to become consistent in something, we don't need to get rid of the negative beliefs or the negativity that we might hold towards ourselves. But we do want to get curious for and explore the other side. What is actually good for me, for me, not based on what is going to get me more acceptance from other people or what is going to keep me safe the most from other people's judgment, but what is actually good for me. What do I need? We are able to hold that complexity. We are able to recognize that there is a part of me that feels like I'm not enough as I am and I want to work out and eat well so that I can look better and therefore feel more worthy. We can acknowledge that there's a part of us that maybe believes that. We can also acknowledge that there is also a part of us that wants to eat well because I deserve it. I deserve that care because it's good for me. That's what we want to get curious for and start tapping into it. And I'm going to share with you at the end a few questions to help you to start to connect with that more. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be on food or exercise or literally any topic we can do this on. Anywhere where we feel like we're getting stuck and not making the progress that we want to make, anywhere we feel like we procrastinate and we struggle with consistency, these questions I'm going to share with you are going to help you with that. They're going to help you to connect to the internal motivation behind why you want to do something. And I want to share with you a really powerful relaxed example from myself, which was around exercise. Now, for the longest time with exercise, I had the belief that it had to be all or nothing. So I had to be going really hard out, doing intense HIT workouts. And if I wasn't doing that, then it wasn't really worth my time. Understandably, this led to me having really intense periods of exercise and then long periods of nothing, because it's hard to sustain that intensity. I think, especially as a woman with how our cycles change, we can't keep up with really high-intensity workouts throughout the entire cycle. Now, another thing that motivated me was that I wanted to be super fit because I wanted to feel physically capable, because that was something to me that was cool. And I've talked about this in a few other episodes before as well. But for me, being cool was a really strong armor. If I was cool enough, people wouldn't judge me. People couldn't get to me. And so if I was super fit and capable, I had a motorbike in my early 20s. I kind of built this life around me that was really cool. And I tried to come off as a really cool person. Now, I think I am a pretty cool person anyway at my core. I don't think I'm this aloof badass that I was trying to be in my early 20s. But I'm my own version of cool. I'm just thinking back on that now. I mean, I love I love that version of me. Um, and I super appreciate her and how she helped me to become who I am today. But now I think of the version that I am now, and I mean, I'm silly and I'm super nerdy and I'm a bit weird sometimes. And that is now my version of cool. But anyway, so of my motivation for exercise and being fit was extrinsically motivated. It was because I thought I should be doing that. It was because I wanted to, being fit meant that I could protect myself from judgment of other people. So I always struggle with consistency. Until one day I really asked myself, what do I need today? What if I just moved in a way that my body needed and I didn't push myself harder than that? And this especially came as well because I was pushing my body hardcore towards burnout, and I recognized that I could no longer do HIT workouts and feel well afterwards. I think I was dangerously close to pushing myself into an autoimmune condition, to be honest, with how my body was reacting to intense exercise. I would need a week to recover. It was not healthy. And I don't mean in the sense of having sore muscles, I mean in the sense of having really intense brain fog and feeling a bit ill after doing an intense workout. Now I'm okay. But I really had to adjust, severely adjust my perspective, my approach to exercise. And so I started to approach that, well, what do I need today? How can I move my body in a way that feels good for me? And since then, I have been consistent with exercise. And I don't mean consistency in that I have been working out every single day since that day. But every week I find a way to move my body, even if it's just gentle stretching. And I do it because it feels good, because I enjoy it now. A big reason why you might be struggling with consistency is because you're doing the thing because you should. Not because it's actually what's good for you. Not because it's actually what you need. And it doesn't matter if you logically know, but this would be good for me. So why am I doing it? Because there is a should there, I should be doing that because I know it's good for me. There's not a uh, we're not connecting to our body in that. We're just thinking with our mind and trying to push ourselves to do our that thing with our mind. We want to also bring our body into this, connect to the emotion that's fueling why we want to do it. Let go of what you think you should be doing and ask yourself what actually would be good for me in this moment? What is it that I actually need? And before I share these questions with you that are going to help you to figure that out, I want to invite you to consider shifting your attention away from chronic skin picking, hair pulling, and nail biting and shifting it towards a different area of your life. Stop thinking of what are ways that I can make myself stop this behavior and shift towards what is something that I would love to start to change inside my life? How might I like to maybe better manage anxiety or create closer relationships with people or build community around myself or become better at speaking or storytelling. For a for a little while in my early 20s, I really admired people who could tell really funny stories or tell really engaging stories. And so for a little while I was really focused on improving storytelling. And that sounds so insignificant, but it was really meaningful to me to learn how to do that. And that absolutely helped me in my healing journey. Without me realizing it, it helped me in my healing journey. So set aside trying to figure out how to make yourself stop this behavior and focus on in your life what are some areas you would like to grow in that would give back to you. Just mull that over a little bit because there are so many incredible facets to who you are as a human being that want to have more space in this world. Now I'm going to share with you the three questions I have to ask you to help you to connect to the why behind your actions, to connect to the intrinsic internal motivation rather than external, and also to help you figure out maybe what you've been trying to get yourself to do actually doesn't mean that much to you right now, even though you think it should. And maybe you'll find that this thing that you're trying to get yourself to do, you actually should just let go of and focus your energy on something else. I'm going to share an example of something actually this week that I want to focus on for myself, which is it's going to be wonderful weather this week where I am in Switzerland. And I want to make sure that every morning I go to the lake and go for a swim before I start my work. Now, these are three questions you can ask yourself. What might I gain when I do that thing? Using my goal for this week? What might I gain from going to the lake every morning before work? The first thing I notice, honestly, is just a feeling of self-love. It's going to help me to ground myself, to take care of myself, and to also regulate myself before the day starts. The next question you're going to ask yourself is why is that important to me? Why is it important to me to regulate myself, to ground myself, to give myself a moment of peace and to show myself self-love first thing in the morning because I deserve it? That's really the first thing that comes to my mind. But also because how am I supposed to serve and care for other people throughout the rest of my week, which is a lot of the work that I do, having coaching calls with my clients, group coaching calls, doing free support calls for people in this community, creating this kind of content. How can I give so much of myself to other people if I neglect to give myself to myself even a little bit? Even saying that makes me sad. And so that is important to me because I am worth that care and I deserve to be cared for. And it's going to help me to navigate this way this week with grace rather than in overwhelm and to feel to fulfill to feel fulfilled and satisfied this week rather than feeling overwhelmed and burnt out and like I'm not good enough by the end of the week. And trust me, I've had weeks like that where I've totally neglected myself and just pushed myself really hard. It sucks. It fucking sucks. I don't want to have a week like that. So that's why it's important to me. This is the third question you're going to ask yourself. How might this positively impact those around me? I kind of answered that question before. It's going by giving back to myself, it's going to allow me to give from an overflowing cup. That when I love myself deeply, I can give that love to other people freely. I can essentially lead by example. I can live with integrity. I can actually help people because I'm first helping myself. So there's, there is a huge ripple effect with the work, with just simply me taking that time for myself in the morning to go to the lake. When we answer these questions, it helps us to connect to our heart and your own worth. That is how we help ourselves to stay consistent. If I were going to the lake every morning this week because I thought I should, then that automatically, even just thinking about that, that automatically brings up a sense of guilt of, oh, I'm not, I'm not doing enough. If I don't go to the lake, that means I'm failing. That means I'm doing something wrong. Saying I should be doing that presupposes I'm doing something wrong if I don't. But there's nothing wrong if I don't go to the lake. I just know that I deserve that effort. Now, if you ask yourself these questions and it's really, really hard for you to find an answer, then maybe the thing you're trying to get yourself to do is not actually the thing that would be good for you right now. Even if your logical mind is saying, yeah, but it would be. But it would be. Maybe what you're expecting of yourself is just too much. Scale it down, make it way more simple and achievable. In fact, if you want more help with goal setting because you're still feeling a bit stuck, go to episode 93 of this podcast. It's titled Plan How You'll Heal from Chronic Skin Bicking in 2026, science-based. If you struggle with hair pulling or nail biting or cheek biting, any of those, it's it will serve you just as well. This is where I really walk you through a process that will help you to set goals and expectations for yourself that actually make sense and feel tangible and that you feel motivated and wanting to move towards. What I share in that episode, these are things that I do with myself constantly. And it's why I rarely get stuck in moving forward with things that I want to do. I still feel resistance, but I find a way forward. So go to episode 93 if you still find that you need more support. Otherwise, you'll find the three questions that I just asked in the show notes. If you found this episode valuable, please do hit like and subscribe, leave a five-star review, leave your comments down below. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What I've shared with you in this episode is not just something really fluffy that I found on the internet that sounds really nice. This is something that I do for myself constantly. It is ingrained into my brain. It is ingrained into how I perceive and approach things that I want to do that maybe I'm feeling resistance around. And it's also based in science. And if you still feel like you need more support, I invite you to share your story with me. You'll find the link to do that in the show notes. Thank you so, so much for spending this time with me. It is a pleasure as always, and I'll see you next week for the next episode of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling.