Welcome to the Brand Builders Lab Podcast. I'm your host, Suz Chadwick, certified business and mindset coach, author, and speaker. Each week we'll be talking about simple but powerful business and mindset strategies that will help you build a lean, clean, and profitable business so you can learn to get out of your own way and pay yourself more. Forget average. It's time to level up. You. Hey, lovely. Welcome back to the podcast.

Amazing to have you here. I am really excited to share this week's podcast episode with you. And I'll tell you why. Shall I tell you why? I'll tell you why is because I actually ran a corporate workshop in Melbourne this week, and I talked all about mindset management, how our brain works and how we can learn to get out of our own way. And one of the things that I think that I assume too often is that people understand how their brain works. But you know something? I didn't know how my brain worked before I became a certified mindset coach. I didn't know about how our brain searches for evidence all the time and why we get stuck and how we can shift ourselves. So it was such a great workshop.

I really enjoyed sharing it. I know that the group that I shared it with got so much out of it, and so I thought, I really want to share this with you on the podcast as well. So that's what we're talking about today. Now, a couple of things that I just want to let you know. This podcast episode is going live in July, but I want to let you know that we are going to be having our next live round of the Bold Business Academy in October. Now, you can join BBA now and you can get through the work. You can join the coaching calls that are there, and then you will be ready for our live round in October. Otherwise, if you're planning, if you're somebody who's a bit of a planner and you've been wanting to join BBA, then you can start planning right now to come and join us at the beginning of October for eight weeks.

And there will also be a new offer coming out for those eight weeks very soon. So I'm excited to let you know, but I wanted to give you a heads up because some of my audience might be planners. So if that's you, then come and join us. It'll be awesome. But listen, without further ado, let's dive into this week's episode. So let's talk about mindset management. There are three main functions or three main jobs that your brain has been charged with. And so really understanding what your brain is here to do for you and what its primary focus is can really help you to learn how to get out of your own way and understand why your brain is offering you thoughts, is holding you back.

If you don't know how to manage it. So the three main functions that your brain is here to do is number one is safety and survival. At the end of the day, if you go to bed and you're alive, your brain is giving itself a high five. Yeah. So its job is to keep you safe, make sure you stay alive, make sure that you're fine. At the end of the day. The second function of your brain is movement, which is also connected with safety and survival, because when we think about our fight or flight response, our brain controls our body so that we can move. We can move out of danger, we can move towards whatever we need to.

And so movement is the second main function of your brain, is to control all of the parts of your body in order to get you in and out of danger, to get you to where you need to be. And the third function is around community. So it is looking to seek out community connection, acceptance, because if we think about the wild and we think about animal herds, if an animal is left behind, its likelihood of survival is a lot less than if it's with the herd. So it's not only about safety, again, in numbers, but it's also about, obviously, the ongoing survival of our species. So I just want to reiterate that your brain's main function is survival, making sure you're safe, it's making sure it can get you in and out of danger quickly. And it is also about ensuring that you stay in the herd and therefore you're accepted into that herd as well. And so the reason that it's so important for us to understand it is because our brain's job is to preserve calories. It wants you to do as little as possible, which is why if you're somebody who's like, I really want to exercise more, I really want to be more physical, your brain is like, no, let's just stay comfortable.

Let's just stay where we are so that we don't have to burn calories. Yeah, it means that we're also going to stay out of danger. If we don't do anything new, if we don't change our habits, if we don't do anything new, if we just stay comfortable where we are, then once again, the likelihood of us putting ourselves in danger is a lot less. Remember, that's the number one function of the brain. And the third thing is to avoid uncomfortable feelings. So we don't want to feel uncomfortable. We don't want to have that fight or flight response. We just once again, want to stay really safe.

And so at the end of the day, that means that it doesn't want you to take any risks. It doesn't want you to do anything out of the ordinary, it doesn't want you to think in new ways, and it doesn't want you to risk getting kicked out of the tribe or the community. And so what your brain does is that it then sends you these thoughts that deter you from doing anything new, uncomfortable, risky. And those thoughts could be, there are people that are better than you at that, or that would take a lot of work for you to do, or you'll probably fail if you do that. Otherwise, it could be, do you really think that you're good at that? So the first thing that I just want to tell you is that you are not your thoughts. Eckhart Tolly said that. I'm sure he was the first one to say that. But we are not our thoughts.

And so the way that you can start thinking about it is I want you to think about yourself on the right and your thoughts on the left. So here's you on the right being somebody who's optimistic and excited and who has ambitions and who wants to do big things and has drive and determination. And then your brain and your thoughts are over here on the left saying, no, you need to be safe. You need to just stay where you are. You need to not do anything that could harm us, that could end our lives, that could be really dangerous. Now, obviously, our brain is running a very ancient software program. So your brain is a supercomputer, and it's still got a very neanderthal type of thinking where it's like, we're either going to die or we're going to live. But nowadays, we're not really in the same danger.

But our brain hasn't been upgraded unless we do the work to upgrade our brain. And so doing the work to upgrade your brain is about understanding, how does my brain work? What is it that it's trying to do? And then how can I help my brain to upgrade in order to help me to achieve more of the things that I want? So this is a step by step process. I understand how my brain works. I understand what it wants. I understand why it's sending me all of these thoughts now. And I can also understand that I am not my thoughts. I am over here on the right. My thoughts are over here on the left.

And the amazing thing is that I can choose to accept or reject a thought. So when that thought comes in and it says, are you really good enough to do that? Or what if you fail? I now respond to my thoughts and I say, I might fail. Does it really matter? It's not life or death. Like, I really want to do this, so I'm willing to take the chance. And how exciting could this be? How amazing could this be? Imagine if this is successful and I get everything that I want. Like, I'm willing to fail forward in order to try and achieve that. And so when you understand that you can be separate to your brain, then you can also know that you can upgrade your internal software and tell your brain that actually it's okay. I'm reassuring you that it's fine, we could fail.

And you know something, that's all right, we'll deal with it when it comes, but we're still going to do this, so let's go. And the more that you can do that, the stronger your ability to move through resistance, to move through procrastination will be. And what an amazing place that'll be when you get there. Now, the one thing I want to say is that this is never a done and dusted thing. I think that you can definitely build your muscle as far as getting stronger with pushing through resistance, doing the things that you want, telling your brain no. But our brain also continues to want to do its job. So it will continue to throw these thoughts at us, but we can just become really great and knocking them out the park and saying, I see it and I appreciate you, but we're going to keep going this way. And so when you can get to that place, can I tell you, you will start doing so much more of what you want.

Now the first thing to think about once you have understood all of that is that we have an identity. So right now your identity may be one of the things that are holding you back. And so for example, you might say, well, I'm really shy or I don't know how to do that and so I'm not going to be able to do it. And we hold on to these identities really tightly because it's kind of like a comfort blanket. Well, if that's my identity and I'm somebody who's shy or I'm somebody who's not very confident or I'm somebody who is this or that, then it allows us to not stretch ourselves, to not go after the things that we want. So it's really asking yourself, what is it that you want? What are the outcomes that you want? And then taking a look at your identity and saying, what are the things that I'm saying to myself? How do I see myself? What are the labels I'm giving myself? And based on that identity, am I helping myself to achieve my goals or am I holding myself back? So for example, if your identity is I'm not a very good speaker, then that could come from something that's happened in the past. Maybe you had a bad experience. Maybe somebody told you you weren't a good speaker.

Maybe you just kind of had that thought one day and it's just never really moved on. And so now you want to start thinking to yourself with the deliberate thinking, with those intentional thoughts. I am somebody who's going to become a great speaker if that's something you want to do. And it's starting to shift that identity. It's starting to shift those thoughts. And so I'm going to give you some tools today as well to help you shift those thoughts. And these are tools that I give my clients and that we work on all the time. So I know that this is going to be really helpful.

These are also tools that I use myself and I use them on the regular and they work a treat. So once you have identified what your identity is and whether the identity that you're holding on to is something that's helping you move forward, or whether you need to start to shift your identity and start telling yourself or seeing yourself in a different way, then that is something to start to articulate. And I would really recommend with all the mindset management work, writing things down is going to make such a difference because a lot of times we're just in our own heads and we can go around in circles being in our own heads as well. So if you write down, this is how I see myself. So for me, I'm like, I'm somebody who gets things done, I am a confident person, I'm a great speaker, I'm a good coach, whatever it is. But then my other identity is I'm not a runner, I'm not somebody who finds exercising or being active easy. And so if I wanted to change that for myself, then I need to start working on what does that look like for me? What about if I just told myself that I was active and every day I just walked around the block like, I don't need to go and run a marathon. I can just start doing things in small ways and with small actions to start building that new identity for myself.

So, for example, you might be like, I'm not a speaker, but then you might get on a podcast and do an interview with somebody and that starts to build the evidence. That actually something that was really good and I did really well. And so is there any reason why I couldn't be a speaker? And we're starting to shift that identity. I'm somebody who's going to become a great speaker. I'm somebody who is a good speaker. And so I just want you to start to think about what are the identity elements that are holding you back right now and how can you start to change those as well. So the first tool that I love to give my clients and one that I use myself, is the model by Brooke Costillo. And I've spoken about this before and so the model is really looking at the circumstance that you're in.

So the circumstance doesn't change. Yeah, so it could be the circumstance is that you want to get fit and healthy. Let's use an example. And so the thought that I might have is I'm not a runner, I'm not very active, I find it really hard to get fit and healthy. I'm built for comfort, not for speed. Those could be thoughts that you have. And so the feeling that I get when I have all those thoughts is that I'm not very motivated. It doesn't really matter.

I feel a bit like, whatever, not excited about it at all. And also I don't feel like it's something that I can do. And so if I have those thoughts which create those feelings, then what is the action that I take? I take no action, or I take very little action, and then I don't get the results that I want. Whereas if I'm like, okay, I want to start to become really fit and healthy. What is the thought that I need to have here? So the thought that I need to have is that I can just go for a walk around the block. What an easy thing to do. I can build up my fitness. I can start to get healthy.

Like, I already eat really healthy. What else could I do? And so my thoughts are positive ones, ones that are about what is possible. And so when I have those thoughts, I'm like, well, this can be easy. I feel motivated now. I feel excited about it. And so from those feelings of excitement and motivation, I'm now going to go and take action. Just go get my shoes on, take the dog around the block, take the dog down the street, whatever it is. And the result is that I start to create these small habits that then allow me to make big changes in my life.

So the model is such an amazing tool to use, and it's one that I use regularly. So writing down circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result, and then working through it. So every time you're like, I'm not getting the result that I want, then you can start to take a look at, well, what are the actions that you're taking? And maybe you're not taking the right actions. How are you feeling? What are the thoughts that are fueling all of this? And then try and create those intentional thoughts and work through, if I think this, I'm going to feel this, I'm going to take this action, and then I'm going to get that result. So that's like, the first tool that you can use and the tools that I'm going to give you, I feel like they work really well together, because what happens sometimes with the model is that people are like, I don't know what the thought is. I feel like I get clients that say that all the time. I'm like, what's the thought? They're like, I don't know. And so then we have to kind of dig.

So I feel like really seeing the thought, the core thought for what it is is not something that we just know. I think it's something that we've got to explore and ask ourselves and work on as well. So the next tool that I use with my clients is flip the script. And so if you were to get a piece of paper and you were to draw a line down the middle of that piece of paper. On the left hand side of that piece of paper, I want you to write down all the negative thoughts that you're having about a particular thing. So let's say that you got money beliefs that are not serving you and so you want to increase your prices. Could be the circumstance and the thought is nobody's going to pay that what I create is not worth it, that's too expensive, whatever the other thoughts are. So you'd write that on the left hand side of the page and then on the right hand side of the page, I want you to flip the script, which is to write the opposite thought on the right hand side.

Now, when it comes to writing the opposite thought on the right hand side, this is now what we want to practice believing. But it's not as simple as that. The way that your brain works is that it looks for evidence of the negative thought to reinforce it for you. So for example, I have had clients where they don't want to put themselves out online because five years ago they may have had a negative comment from somebody about something completely unrelated to work. But when they think about now putting themselves out there online for their business, their brain goes and searches the archives to find that one negative thought about this completely irrelevant time that something bad happened online. And it says, see what happened? If you put yourself out online, this is going to happen again. And so what we need to do is that we need to now tell our brain about all the positive things that we've experienced that help us to reinforce the positive thought, the flipped the script thought. So if you're like, nobody's going to pay that price, then the thought could be there are going to be so many clients that are going to be happy to pay for what I have because they know the incredible value they're going to get.

And then you think about all the times when you've worked with clients and they've gotten great outcomes and they've paid you for what it is that you obviously are selling. So if they paid you $2,000, they would probably be willing to pay you $3,000. But if you can communicate the value to them, then that's going to be fine. They're going to be totally happy to do that. So we've got to start to take a look at the evidence that people are willing to pay us, that there is money out there, that people are probably spending more to get the same result as what you offer. And so working on not just what that thought is or what you want it to be, but then I want you to think about all of the evidence that can show you that that's possible. And the more that you can offer your brain evidence and practical evidence, not just what you want to think, but other times where you've had success, other times where you charge more, other times when you increased your prices and it wasn't a problem. Yeah, other times when you increased your prices and maybe you got amazing clients.

So look for that evidence as well. If it's a health goal, then maybe it's kind of like, well, I want to get back in shape. And your brain is saying, well, we've done that before and it didn't work. And so now you're like, well, I have done it before so I know that I can do it again. I've learned how to do that so I know I can do it again. And this time we'll try and keep going. So once again, you've got to be that kind of motivator for your brain to be like, you can have all the negative thoughts that you want, but we're going to just go, we're going to keep going on this. And these are all the other times that I've done something that's been hard and it's been successful.

So I'm going to draw on those thoughts and those experiences and that proof to show you that I can do this. So when you're doing the flip the script, it's about really spending time to understand what the negative thoughts are and even exploring where they come from. Where did that come from? Is that somebody else's belief? Why do I think that? And then if I want to think the opposite, what would the opposite be? And then what is all the proof that I could believe that? And then it's really about starting to work on those beliefs as well. So really thinking about how you can start to use those tools to move your mindset, to move you in the direction that you want to go and be able to know that you are not your thoughts and that you can build like a muscle. Your thoughts, the things you want to think, the experiences and the proof that you can achieve what it is that you want. And also just knowing that even visualizing, we know that athletes visualize getting the gold medal. They visualize crossing the line first, they visualize winning. And that is such a powerful thing because our brain doesn't always know the difference between what's online, what's real life, what we visualize, what we've achieved yet.

And so if I'm like, well, I know that I can achieve that, I'm visualizing it all the time, then I am going to be more likely to go after that because it feels so real. I already know that it is possible for me. I already know that it's available to me if I want it. And so when you start to put all of this together, like understanding why your brain does what it does, understanding the model and understanding that your thoughts create your feelings, your actions and your results, understanding what those thoughts are and then flipping the script on them and finding evidence to back you up, to know that you can achieve it. And then visualizing the successful outcomes that you want. Like, for me, I visualize seeing those. You've got a new Kajabi student. Those emails.

When I get emails from clients saying, I want to work with you, I get emails from the media saying, we want to interview you for CEO magazine, or I get speaking invitations. Whatever it is, I'm visualizing it. I'm like, that is already there. People are coming to me. I believe this. And as I've shared before, if you've listened to the podcast, I have got intentional thoughts stuck to my pin board next to my desk that I look at every day. And they are thoughts that I want to cultivate. They're things I want to visualize.

They're things that I want to create and manifest in my life. And so I ensure that I am surrounding myself with the thoughts I want to be having so that I can have the feelings. Because remember, we want to visualize it and then we want to feel it in our body. Like, how amazing is it going to be when I'm standing on that stage, running that entrepreneurial event with some of my favorite business people around me and like 500,000 people there? Like, how incredible will that feel? What will I be wearing? What will the stage look like? Yeah, I'm going to have a whole AV team. And we'll do like, virtual as well as in person. And it's going to be such a powerful event. And I just keep thinking about it. I'm just like, I want to do that.

How do I make that happen? And so I just want you to know that if at any time you feel like you're in your own way, if you ever feel like you're stuck and you can't move forward, I would love you to use these tools and give yourself the space and the time. Like, sit down. Sit down somewhere different. Sit down and write, what am I thinking? What am I feeling? What are the actions that I'm taking? And then how do I flip the script? What can I visualize? Let me invest time in actually working on this because it will make such a massive difference to your business and to your life when you can start to manage your mind. I talk to my kids about this all the time. I tell my kids, you can choose to think what you think. And I have to say it over and over again because you've got to remember, our brain is like, that's bad. We don't want to do it.

That's too hard. And I just say to them, like, if you want to do that, you can train your brain to think, yes, this is good. Yes, I'm going to love that. So use these tools. Let me know how you go. If you got value out of this episode. I would love you to share it. I would love you to leave a review as well, but share it with your community, because I think that these are such powerful tools.

And I just want not just my clients, but you, my community, to know about them so that you can use them to create the business and life and achieve the goals that you really want. So enjoy and I will see you on our next podcast.