Hello Reader,
My inbox blew up this week.
After last Sunday’s newsletter — the one about your body being the most valuable vehicle ever made — I got more responses than ever. And almost every single one said some version of the same thing:
“Beth, that P.S. at the end. About how you changed. I need to know more.”
So here’s what I wrote, in full:
Hey, I wasn’t always someone who took care of my vehicle (body). There was a time I ate processed garbage and barely moved. I changed when my back was up against a wall, when I was worried I would lose my job if I didn’t take care of my body. My change came when I was on vacation with friends that exercised and ate right. Today I am so grateful that I made that change at that out-of-the-way cabin in Vermont. I’m even grateful for the fear, the desperation that brought me to that. Because it turned helping people feel good — whether by inspiring them to get healthy or by teaching them techniques to go from invisible to undeniable — into a passion.
So here’s what I want to dig into today — because the reason that Vermont trip worked was exactly what organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy wrote about in is book, "Willpower Doesn't Work."
We all agree with that book title, right?
Vermont worked because I changed my environment.
WHY YOUR ENVIRONMENT CONTROLS YOU (WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT)
So how do we know Hardy is onto something real? Because Hardy spent years studying why people succeed or fail at change. And his conclusions pull from some genuinely powerful science.
The first is something called ego depletion — the idea that willpower isn't an unlimited resource. It's more like a muscle, and like any muscle, it gets tired. Every time you resist something — the chips on the counter, the couch when you should be working out, the scroll on your phone — you are burning through a finite amount of mental energy. By the end of the day? That muscle is exhausted. And when it's exhausted, you default to whatever requires the least effort. Which is almost always the old habit. This is why you can be disciplined all day long and then completely fall apart by evening. It's not a character flaw. It's biology.
Then there's the Pygmalion effect — research showing that the expectations of the people around you literally shape your behavior. If the people in your life expect you to stay exactly who you are, you will. Not because you're weak. Because we are wired to become what our environment and the people in it expect us to be.
Have you ever made choices that weren't in your best interest just to please or fit in with the people around you?
Let me tell you about the Pygmalion effect working in my life — and it had nothing to do with health. It was about my career.
After my first run on Guiding Light, I moved to LA. I'd worked constantly in commercials before that. But suddenly I couldn't book anything. And I now know exactly why, even if I couldn't see it clearly at the time. I was spending all my time with other out-of-work actors. Actors who talked nonstop about how terrible casting directors were. How impossible it was to get hired. It was a kind of learned helplessness — this shared belief that the system was unbeatable and we were powerless against it. And without even realizing it, I was absorbing every single bit of it. For two years, I made no money. Zero.
Then my husband and I moved back to New York. I stopped hanging out with those actors. And I made a new friend — Maggie. She wasn't an actor. She was successful in her own work, and she didn't carry a single one of the limiting beliefs I'd picked up in LA. We decided to form a support group — just the two of us — to help each other go after our dreams.
Within eight months, I went from making zero dollars to making a hundred thousand in commercials.
But here's the moment that really changed everything. One day while I was meditating, I heard a voice — I genuinely thought someone had spoken to me — that said, "Send your reel to Paul Rauch." Paul was the executive producer of Guiding Light at the time. Now, my agent had already reached out to the casting department about me returning to the show. They said no. They weren't interested. So when this idea came, my very first reaction was exactly what you'd expect: "No way. That isn't how it's done. You go through your agent."
I told Maggie about it on our next call. And she said, "You send that reel before we meet again, or I'm going to be really disappointed in you." We were meeting in two weeks. I knew I had to do it. I still didn't want to send it, but even more I didn't want to sit across from Maggie and see disappointment on her face. I didn't want her to look at me like someone who wasn't really serious about her dreams.
So I sent it.
Guess what? By the time I sat down with Maggie for lunch, I had a contract to return to Guiding Light.
Here's what gets me every time I think about this: if I had asked my actor friends whether to send that reel directly to the executive producer, every single one of them would have said, "No. Absolutely not. You don't do that. You go through your agent. That's how it's done." They had the exact same blinders I did. Maggie didn't. She was successful in her own life. She didn't see the walls the same way. And because of that, she pushed me right through one I didn't even know I could get through.
That's the Pygmalion effect in real life. The people around you don't just influence you. They define what you think is possible.
Whether you want to finally map out a life you love, dust off and go after a dream goal, or get healthy and really make change — you need a change of environment and a change of people. Context creates the person. Not motivation. Not a positive attitude.
What you need is a friend like Maggie. You need someone who isn't bound by the same false limitations you are.
THE VERMONT MOMENT — AND WHY IT CHANGED EVERYTHING
But let me go back to the Vermont vacation that changed me because that was a lucky moment. I didn't know it then but it was the only way I was ever going to make real change.
I was at a cabin (away from my regular environment with friends (who lived hours away from us-not my regular crowd) who ate right and exercised. That's it.
Hardy calls this a "forcing function" — an event where your default behavior is reprogrammed.
That Vermont moment is what I have wanted to recreate for others for 20 years. I remember so clearly looking at that Vermont cabin a few years later when we returned to it for another vacation. I was a truly different person because of one week in that cabin. I remember thinking, "If only I could do this for others." But I didn't see how I could until Imiloa. You see the other key environmental change in that Vermont cabin was no WIFI, no phone, no television. This was all key. I was cut off from the constant distractions that kept me from connecting to myself, from connecting meaningfully to others. At the same time I was surrounded by incredible natural beauty. Imiloa has all of this. Okay, you will have WIFI in your rooms, you won't have it other places. You will connect with yourself. You won't be being programed by the news or your social media scroll, but by a supportive atmosphere of new friends and your own inner knowing that has been drowned out for years.
Keep commanding,
P.S. Below is a link to ROAR: A Retreat For Those Who Refuse To Fade, May 17-22 in Costa Rica. Five days. Just 30 of us.
And if a little voice in your head is already saying “I can't afford that” — I want you to consider something.
What is the cost of staying stuck for one more year?
THE “NEXT YEAR” TAX
“I’ll do it next year.”
It sounds reasonable. It sounds responsible, even. But Hardy would tell you — and so would Steven Pressfield in The War of Art — that “next year” is a lie you are telling yourself. What's really happening is your are in the 80% of people that become paralyzed to act, even in the face of a disaster like a plane crash. And the other 20%? 10% will become hysterical. Only 10% will take decisive action. For 80% next year becomes next decade. Someday becomes never. Your dreams don’t die from lack of talent. They die from lack of now. I used to be in the 80%. I remember the day that I decided I didn't want to be an 80 percenter anymore. I wanted to be in the 10%, the ones that take action. But that's a story for another time, another newsletter.
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THE REAL QUESTION ISN'T "CAN I AFFORD THIS?"
The real question is:
"Can I afford another year of how I'm living?"
"Can I afford to die with my dreams still inside me?"
"Can I afford to teach my granddaughter that women fade in the service of others?"
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