Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. This week we continue our conversation on mindset, and this one’s gonna be a little bit different because I just want to sit down and speak from the heart with you about a few things regarding where you’re headed, what you’re doing, and even more importantly, what you are saying to yourself.
3 Questions to Ask Yourself
We are in the time of year where Amy Porterfield is getting ready to launch her signature course, dig Digital Course Academy. She’s got her bootcamp, her paid bootcamp that leads into that. And even though I’ve been through Digital Course Academy, D C A, I’m in her membership momentum and I’m kind of active in all of that, I still join these bootcamps and everything that she runs because I love the vibe, I love the energy, and it’s just such an uplifting opportunity to take action in business, to think about things from a new perspective. I love getting in there because especially in the bootcamp, there’s lots of folks who are just getting started. And for me, that was several years ago.
And I like the opportunity to be able to go in and just embrace that newness of things, but also to provide support where I can, because hopefully, I like to think I’ve learned a few lessons along the way, and if I can help make anyone’s journey just a little bit easier, I am up for it 100%. One of the people that I have connected with is someone that I actually met in a group a few years ago, and she reached out, she said, oh my gosh, I remember you from this other group that we were in together. I’d love to reconnect. I said, awesome. Let’s hop on a call and just chat about what’s going on. I’d love to hear about your business. I’d love to know what’s going on. And she said, sure.
We scheduled a time for the very next day, and we talked for about 45 minutes about business, about life, about all the things that were important. And one thing that I noticed popping up is that she said she had lost her bravery. She had had a lot of different life events, a lot of things had happened since the last time we had kind of connected. It would, it had been about two years, and she had lost her bravery along the way. She was feeling a little bit in her words, wimpy. And at the end of the call, I said, you know what? I’ve noticed that you keep saying that you’ve lost your bravery, but I’m seeing bravery all around. You got on this call, you’re posting in the bootcamp, you’re doing all of these things, you’re continuing to grow your business, it’s doing really well. You are rediscovering your bravery, and I would encourage you to say that to yourself instead of, I lost my bravery. And we talked about that a little bit. She said, oh my gosh, you’re kind of right. You know, I, I’m gonna work on it.
This morning I woke up and I saw that she had posted in the bootcamp, and she said that, you know, that one call helped her get unstuck. So here’s my reminder to you today. I told you I don’t really have an agenda for today’s episode. This is very much free flowing. I just wanna make sure you understand the importance of connecting, because sometimes we, our mindset gets out of, gets in our way, a lot of times it gets in our way. In fact, a lot of people know exactly what to do business wise, but it’s that mindset that keeps ’em from taking the next scary step, the next brave step that puts them outside their comfort zone. And we’ve talked about putting your toe outside your comfort zone before.
As you go through this week, what I really want you to think about is how can you reframe how you’re talking to yourself? Those words are so powerful, the words you’re using with yourself. And we are often very hard on ourselves. Instead of, I lost my bravery, I’m being wimpy. It becomes, I’m rediscovering my bravery. I’m leaning into being brave. I am figuring out what it means to be brave, depending on your life circumstances, right? Sometimes you feel like maybe you’ve never really been brave, and so you’re learning how to be brave. Maybe you have been really brave in the past and life has gotten in the way, and it’s kind of just pulled that bravery and put it in a box and locked it away. And now you need to unlock that box and pull it back out and say, I’m ready to wear this mantle of bravery again. So start reframing the words you’re using with yourself and the labels that you assign to yourself, because the way the brain works, here’s the psychology, pardon me for Dr. Moira a moment here. The way the brain works is that when you say something over and over or someone says it to you, then it strengthens the neural pathways in your brain. It basically is kind of like making a road that’s brand new pavement, really smooth, right? You love when a road is newly paved because it’s so smooth, it’s easy for the cars to travel, there’s no potholes every time. It’s kind of like putting a new layer of pavement down so that everything’s nice and smooth.
If you are consistently saying things that are not really nice to yourself, then you are adding another layer of pavement, which means the next time a situation comes up, the brain is gonna travel the easiest path, the past path that is smoothest. You have a smooth path to the negative words. Instead, what happens is, if you don’t use that pathway, it falls into disrepair. We’ve all heard, you know, especially with languages, use it or lose it. If you don’t practice your Spanish that you learned in middle school and high school, by the time you’re two or three or four years out, you’ve lost most of it because you don’t have access to those pathways anymore. They’ve deteriorated.
Let’s build up really strong pathways of encouragement, truthfulness, kindness, and of a mindset that allows us to grow. You know, one of the things that I talk about in my methodology, within my coaching program and my one-on-one coaching is this concept of mastery mindset. We are working to master things, but we’re also working to master our mindset. And what I mean here is that it’s gonna be a process.
The goal is that each time you notice yourself opening your mouth to say something that might not be the best in terms of we’re strengthening a negative pathway, I want you to stop, breathe, and choose something else. You are mastering your words, you’re mastering your breath, you’re mastering your actions, you are mastering your future when you do that.
Now, if that is a little bit, kind of too much to think about at the moment, let me give you something really simple that my kiddos school taught him when he was in primer, first, second, and third grade, they used it all throughout their lower school. And it was to filter your words through three questions.
Is it kind?
Is it truthful?
Is it necessary?
A lot of times when we are speaking about ourselves, the first question is going to be a no, it’s not kind. And you stop there. Maybe it’s kind, maybe it’s not truthful. So you gotta adjust it a little bit. Is it necessary? So I want you to really run through these three questions. Once again, here they are. Is it kind, is it truthful? Is it necessary? And unless the answer is yes to all three, I want you to stop, breathe, and rethink what you’re about to say to yourself, whether it’s out loud in your mind, in your journal. You know, some of you journal a lot, and I love that.
When you’re journaling, a lot of times it’s a stream of consciousness. But when you go back to your journal and kind of read what you’ve written, I want you to notice are there moments when you haven’t been kind to yourself? Take an extra few minutes right then and there to add a few sentences to the end of your journal entry and reframe what you’ve said about yourself.
Reframe it. Now, some of the people I know are sitting here thinking, but that’s toxic positivity. And here’s what I’m gonna say. The way I’m talking about it, the way I want you to do it is not, I don’t want you to be it. I don’t want you to ignore the stuff, stuff that really needs to be fixed.
I don’t want you to pretend that everything is good when it’s not. What I want you to do is encourage your brain to think about the possibilities of where you are right now and where you can be. We’re not ignoring the challenges, we’re not ignoring the heartache, the hardness, some days are just really stinky kind of moments of life. What I’m saying is, let’s build the strongest pathways possible so that when you hit those speed bumps, those massive potholes like we have here at my home state, they don’t stop you. That your brain says, ah, this really stinks. But I know that I have it inside me. I have this strength of bravery, of foresight, of sticktoitiveness, and that’s going to get me to where I wanna be.
It doesn’t feel like it right now, but it will be possible if I stick with it. So notice the difference. I am not ignoring the bad, the challenge, the ugh moments of business and of life. What I’m instead encouraging you to do is to shift how you talk about them. It’s okay to say, today was the worst day I’ve had in a long time.
If there’s no way to parse it, it was a good day. It just wasn’t. Say that, acknowledge it and then say, tomorrow I can make some changes. I don’t have to do the same things I did today. I have a choice in what I’m gonna spend my time on. Say social media sucked you in, and it was in a, in a spiral downward. You know, sometimes that happens. You know what? I’m just not gonna open social media tomorrow. I’m gonna leave it be for the day and I’m gonna do something different with my time. That’s the mindset we’re talking about. That’s mastering your mindset and having a mastery mindset where you believe that you can master what it is you are doing, how you’re thinking, how you’re acting, how you’re feeling, that it allows for the ups and downs of life, but it doesn’t stop you. The downs don’t stop you. They slow you down and you think, I’ve got this. Here are the shifts I can make.
Is it kind? Is it truthful? Is it necessary?
Be aware of the labels you’re using with yourself.
Action Item
Let’s talk about action items for this week. I would love for you to head over to Instagram or Facebook, go into your dms and DM me at Entrepreneurs in Flow. And I want you to let me know that you’ve listened to this episode. I want you to let me know that you have kind of bookmarked it, saved it, so that you can come back to this and replay it when you are struggling, because everyone needs to hear this sometimes, including me, including me. I need to be told this by my coaches, by my mentors, because we all slip into this, this mindset. So DM me at Entrepreneurs in Flow, Facebook or Instagram, either or, I don’t care. It comes to the same place for me. And let me know, you listened to this episode, let me know that you’re gonna save it so you can come back to it. And I want you to tell me one good thing about yourself right now, I want you to and, and it can be something that you consistently say, that’s fine. It can be something that you are hoping to reframe so that you can build a stronger neural pathway.
You can put that in there and let that be the first time you say it and hit send. That’s what I want you to do. I will respond to every single message I get. Personally. It’s not a pitch, it is not a sales tactic. It is an acknowledgement that as entrepreneurs, oftentimes we are alone and everyone needs someone to say,
I’ve got your back, everyone. So DM me, that’s your action item. It’s so simple. It will take you 60 seconds at most. You can do it while you still listen to me. Finish up this episode, you can head over to your dms and do it right now at Entrepreneurs in Flow.
Conclusion
Here’s a summary for today. What have we talked about? We talked about mindset, and I told you this one’s a little bit different. I usually have a big old plan for my episode. I know the big points I’m gonna cover. And honestly, today, I just wanted to sit here and talk to you from the heart. I have a sticky note on my computer, but here’s what it says from the heart story, reframe questions. That’s it.
Usually I have a whole lot more notes than that. That’s all I have for you today, because I want you to start thinking about the words you’re using with yourself. I want you to think about having and developing a mastery mindset where you are mastering your mindset. You are also creating a mindset of mastery that each day is an opportunity and that you can shift your thinking, shift your beliefs about yourself, about your business, and that it is not about cutting out the challenges. It’s not about ignoring the massive potholes or the really tall speed bumps. It’s about training our neural pathways to be strong, to help us move forward.
I’ll leave you with these three questions. Is it kind? Is it truthful? Is it necessary?
(By the way, these work really well with kids too, and with yourself just in general life.)
I hope that was helpful. I hope it helps you take action today, at the very least, to send me that dm.
I’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, where we focus on mentoring, community and implementation. It’s all about taking action so that we can remove the overwhelm of building a successful and profitable business and add in a little dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
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