5 Strategies to Protect and Maintain Your Headspace Through Challenging Times

Maya Angelou said that “if you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

But how do you keep a positive attitude and outlook through hardship?

I bet you’ve done your share of personal development work over the years. You’ve focused on elevating your thoughts, drawing focus to solutions instead of problems, managing the spiraling rollercoaster of entrepreneurships that’s filled with many dips of fear, self doubt and uncertainty.

Whether it’s a failed launch, a client dry spell, a bad break up or heart wrenching loss, or an unforeseeable and catastrophic event, like a global economic crisis.

It's these moments that your thoughts become more powerful than ever and your attitude will change everything.

Today I’m sharing with you 5 Strategies to Protect and Maintain Your Headspace through challenging times. These are the tangible strategies that have helped me through difficult times and I hope will help you maintain your vision of making a positive impact to others.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Episode# 31. Today I'm thinking about the very profound quote by Maya Angelou. If you don't like something, change it. And if you can't change it, change your attitude. But I can't help but think right now, how do you keep a positive attitude and outlook through really difficult times? You've most likely been doing personal development work over the years, focusing on elevating your thoughts, drawing your focus to solutions, and managing that spiral roller coaster that happens in entrepreneurship that's filled with so many dips and twists and turns of fear and self doubt and uncertainty. But whether it's in your business like a bad launch or bad breakup or heart-wrenching loss or a global economic crisis. In these kinds of times, your thoughts, your attitude are more powerful than ever and they can change everything. So Friend, today I'm sharing with you five strategies to protect and maintain your head-space through challenging times. Buckle up. Here we go.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words. They have this spark that lights you up when you're near them. They have the It factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to Finding Your It Factor.

Speaker 3: 2:03

Welcome back to another episode, friend. I am thrilled to be here with you today. I know t hat you have many things on your mind and many things that you could be doing, so it means a lot that you have showed back up to be working on yourself and working on how you can show up for your audience right now because they need you more than ever. And I've been thinking about a lot of things these last few days and trying to figure out the right words to share with you and to support you during this time. Knowing that there's also so many free resources and emails coming out over the last seven to 10 days and it's just seems to be e scalated a bit more o f that. There was a post that Laura Belgray made a few days ago around, we're going to need a#flattenthecurve around the number of free resources that people are coming out with. And I have to say, I'm a person who needs humor in times of crisis and in times of sadness. I think humor is a beautiful thing and I think it's really important to know that you can embrace the severity of what's happening and have full appreciation respect for it. And you also can still find moments to laugh and have fun. And I think it's really, really important for us to be able to continue the ability to live and joke and have fun while doing what we can to flatten the curve and do what's necessary for us t o survive and thrive and get back on track as a global economy, as a, as a, just so many things, so many things, and we're not going to go down that rabbit hole today. But I've been thinking about how different people react under stress and pressure and this obviously what's h appening i s a big catastrophic thing that is impacting e very o ne, but I couldn't help but also think about just little stressors that come into our lives that tend to throw us off our rocker, if you will. There's that. What's that common expression? Life gives you lemons, so make lemonade. I mean, I'm more of a fan of making a lemon drop. One of my favorite drinks. By the way, i f w e're e ver at a cocktail hour, lemon drop is the way to my heart. But I just have the question that what if life is throwing more than lemons your way? Like what if it's like after an NFL game where somebody is pouring a dumpster s ize cooler of lemons down on your head and you feel like you're just being pelted. You feel like the thing that you're experiencing is unmanageable. You don't quite know how you're going to get your feet back underneath you and as I mentioned, this could be in business, maybe it's a moment where, maybe your website crashed and went down and you lost everything. Maybe your launch did not go according to plan. You got flagged on your email list. I don't know, like anything you can think of that can go wrong. This c an be little, it can be big, but I think what happens is if we don't exercise mental toughness and mental resiliency to keep o urself in the right way of thinking, we aren't going to have longevity in our businesses and we sure as heck aren't going to experience the the vibrancy in life as we could. I think if w e're always taken off the track and down into rabbit holes of negativity when something happens, it's just a recipe for a very volatile and inconsistent level of passion in life and excitement and happiness and satisfaction and enter whatever word do you want to end here? But I think if you have in the past have experienced these moments where something goes wrong and you find yourself quote unquote off the positivity train and you find yourself spiraling down into thoughts of negativity and emotions and self doubt and fear, we all do it.

Speaker 1: 6:30

The question is how fast can you get yourself back up on the tracks? In my experience, the secret to keeping myself in the right mental place, the secret to keeping myself in the right head-space. One of positivity, one where I am in control over my own thoughts, one where I have the ability to come up with as many solutions as possible. The thing that's allowed me to manage through even the most stressful times, and let me give you an example. I've had some very stressful times in my career managing events, managing with an executive team. There was one situation at a live event where 10 minutes before a general keynote session, power went out at the hotel and the show had to go on. I've had people have severe heart attacks during live events. I mean, managing stress and chaos was my job for more than a decade. And I got really good at it. But also managing hard times, I mentioned last week on the podcast around my experience watching my mom battle and fight ultimately lose with cancer when I was a teenager. I think I learned very early on that life's gonna throw crap your way and you have to choose what you do with those moments. And I learned that resiliency and mental toughness are things that you can, it's based off of things that you can do to help yourself choose to see life in a place of positivity and not play a victim when things happen around you. There's that common phrase that life is what 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. And there's another really beautiful common phrase that I think add my let and Rachel Hollis use all the time that what if life's not happening to you, it's happening for you. Meaning what if the experiences that you're going through are had been put in front of you to help you develop the resiliency and the awareness and the experience to set you up for whatever's coming down the road? Maybe for me, I'm a firm believer that the hard times that I've gone in life, my hearing loss, the death of my mom, so many things that I have gone through, I feel like I've experienced those so that I can share my experiences, whether with other people to help them through hardness. I think that for me is I of course, I would love to be able to have full hearing and not have to to wear hearing aids. I think i t'd be crazy for me to think that I would love to be able to hear conversations, to hear my kids, to be part of the little side jokes that happen in rooms. But the reality is l ike I can't, and it doesn't matter how good hearing technology is, I miss stuff. But I c ould choose to be, side side note if me having a hearing loss is news to you, go back and listen to the episode where I talk about my invisible disability of my hearing loss cause I think that is a really interesting conversation. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a disability understanding that we each have something and you'd be surprised to know that something can be your s uper p ower. Coming back to it for me, these things that have quote unquote happened to me, I could easily choose to be the victim and to be upset and frustrated and angry and wonder why me? And I mean, don't get me wrong. Those things have come across my mind over the years, but they don't help anything. The things have already happened or they are already happening. So the better question to be asking is, so what, what are you going to do about it? Or what are you willing to do with it? And I think this idea of staying in the right mental space. I don't love the word mindset because for me I think mindset feels so absolute and it feels so, I don't know, it feels so difficult to get out of. I believe that we all believe things in our minds. We have beliefs that we've acquired along the way in our lives, mostly developing when we were little kids. But our beliefs shape how we see the world. And those beliefs are just beliefs and they can be changed. So for me, I think beliefs and I think about the term head-space, like get your head on right. Get your head in a space that feels good for you, that serves you. That is what this episode's about is, how do you get in the right head space so that you can show up and do what you're called to do. And for you, if you're listening, you're most likely called to make an impact in this world and serve your audience and you're trying to figure out how you can do that better. The most important thing is as a leader, which you are, you need to lead your audience with the right head-space, which means you have to come from a space of abundance. You have to come from a space understanding, believing that everything will be fine. It's going to be difficult. Anybody who's sitting here telling you right now exactly what to do and exactly how to navigate this, they're full of crap because nobody knows. We're in unchartered territory where nobody knows what's going to happen, what's really happening, everything is just speculation. It doesn't mean that you can't have confidence in yourself and moving forward and taking control of what you can. And I believe what you can control are your thoughts and your thoughts can influence your reality because the same negative thing can happen to two people and they'll have two totally different experiences. Just side note, let me give you a little tangent example here for a second, but have you ever watched a movie and absolutely fricking hated it and then you found out that somebody else thought it was the best movie on the planet and you're thinking like, did we watch the same movie? Side note, I'm usually in the reverse order. I would be a terrible movie critic because I think pretty much all movies are awesome and great and usually it's someone else to point out to me that it sucked and I'm like, I thought I was good. Nothing wrong with it. But this idea of something happens and your perception of what's happening is your perception. And so I think when something goes wrong, you have the ability to make lemon drops out of the lemons that are served to you. This is a difficult topic to talk about right now, right? Because what's happening around us is scary. A lot of people are scared and the reality is people are dying and that breaks my heart. And I think at the end of the day, that is, it's a scary thing to know that some people are not taking this as seriously as they could because people's lives have been lost through what's happening right now. And I don't care what the statistics show, I don't care what the ages are. I don't care what the trends are. I don't care about any of those facts. The reality there is lives. People's lives have been ultimately impacted by this. And I think that is, it's so sad. It's so sad. It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me wonder, did any of this have to happen? It makes me question what's happened this far and what could we be doing? But here's the thing, going down the rabbit hole of the past and speculating on all of the what if's, I have to ask myself the question, are these thoughts, these questions, these hypotheticals, do they help or do they hurt? And Friend, that's what I want to ask you to think about. This is where it will shift for a moment where this is not a podcast episode about the pandemic, about what's happened in the world. This is a conversation around how you need to be in control over your own head-space and no one can get up in your mind and take that away from you. You get to choose how you view things. It is completely within your control and what I'd like to share with you today are five specific things that I've adopted over the years through some pretty stressful times that have helped me keep myself in the right head-space to do the important work in front of me. Some of these things are going to feel very simple, some are going to feel very hard to do. And the beautiful thing is you get to pick what you take from this and what you don't. Find what works for you. Because for me to tell you, follow these five steps to do X, Y, and Z, it's just, it's not realistic right now. Only you know what's in your mind and only you know what's the thing that makes you slip and spiral into a negative space of self doubt or worry or fear. Only you get to determine what a positive head- space looks like for you. And I hope that some of the tools that I share with you today help you do just that. So let's dive in.

: 15:52

Strategy number one, inventory the inputs and clean up your feed. Oh, you might be surprised. This is where we're starting. Inventory the inputs and clean up your feed. Yes, I'm talking about your social media feed, Friend. You see when, I want you to think about this, your mind is a sponge regardless of whether or not your conscious of what's going into it or not. So I want you to think about now more than ever, you are being inundated with messages from other people. The question is, do you want those messages or do you not? For us to sit here and think that we can tune out some of the negative hysteria that's happening, it's even if we don't agree with it, it still impacts our thinking. So I want you to think about protecting your head- space by first understanding that you have to inventory the inputs, inventory of what's being placed in it. Are you watching the news? Are you scrolling through your Facebook feed or you're scrolling through Instagram feed? Who are you getting emails from feel like in the last week it's anyone I've ever talked to in my entire life if they're a business. Side note, I want you to think about this time in front of you right now. I want you to take drastic measures by shutting it down. I want you to shut it down, meaning only allow things into your feed or into your inbox that are going to add and help in your head- space.

Speaker 1: 17:30

What I want you to do is go through your Instagram feed, go through your Facebook feed, go through your inbox, and I want you to pay attention to when you see a from name, ask yourself the question, is this adding value or is this detracting me from being in the right mental place for my audience and for my family and for my business? And if that person's no longer serving you, if that person is sending you down a thought pattern that is not helping unsubscribe. Unsubscribe. You do not need to have that in your inbox anymore or unfollow. On Facebook, you can try it out and just snooze them for 30 days. I don't know if I should confess to this, but on Instagram, no, on Facebook, that unfollow people button. It's life guys, unfollow. You can still stay friends with people and you can unfollow them. Get them out of your feed. If it's distant family or people I knew in another life, it doesn't mean that I don't like them. I just don't want their news sharings or repost or memes or whatever it is that's in the feed that's taking my mental energy. I don't need that in my life, so I'm unfollowing or I am hitting snooze. I really encourage you to do this. If social media is driving you down a rabbit hole and you're not at a point where you want to disengage from social media. I see quite a few people doing that, but recognizing here, principle strategy number one, you need to become aware of the inputs and take control over them. So clean up your feed, clean up your inbox. This should be happening 100%. I would recommend just like spring cleaning, spring clean the crap out of these two things and then put yourself on a pruning schedule. Do this once a month, once a quarter or anytime you see something that pop into your feed that you're like, Oh, this no longer serves me. That's a beautiful gift. This no longer serves me. Move on. Get rid of it, move on. It really will help. You have to protect your mental head-space by making sure that the things that you come across are only things that are going to add value to you. So you can add value to your audience. Strategy number two, and this one is my favorite. I want you to focus on being the light for others by connecting with five people intentionally every single day. Okay? What do I mean by this? I legit mean reach out to five people a day with a message, a note to let them know you're thinking about them with an inspirational quote. Just a, Hey, I haven't talked to you in a while. I just want you to know I was thinking about you. How are things? Five people a day, I want you to focus on being the light of positivity, that connection for them. A few ways that I love doing this are, I'll do this using voice text, so some friends that I maybe haven't talked to in awhile, I'll actually send them a voice, an audio text on iPhone. Did you know there's a little audio button that you can send people? Audio messages, not a text message, audio message, which is so beautiful. I have a friend having a birthday. I oftentimes call or not call message them happy birthday, which is so, so nice. Was I thinking them, I think it is. So that's one way you could use Voxer or my favorite app, which I've talked about before, is Marco Polo. Guys, this is my favorite, favorite thing. Working in business online, it can become very lonely and we all get busy, right? Everybody has this excuse that their lives are so busy that oftentimes we don't make time for people who are not conveniently located. And I hate to be a jerk sounding like that, but for me I was always friends with people that I worked with. That if I switched jobs, my friends would change because I was friends based off of proximity and I, I hate admitting this, I totally hate admitting this, but my friendships and my entire life has mostly been based off proximity of work. Now I have some incredible friends. I love my friends. I feel like I maybe have been a terrible friend because I don't stay in connection with those friends. But to be honest, it's not like they stayed in contact either. So I think this is just a mutual normal thing that happens in lives, that we are friends with people at certain phases of our lives based off proximity. Well friend, my question to you is proximity has gone right now. If you are in shutdown mode with social distancing, it does not mean that you need to be distant from the people that matter, whether it's your friends, your clients, your students, your prospects, your family. You have an incredible tool in front of you. Many, many tools that you can use to connect with people. My favorite is Marco Polo because you actually, it's so- if you haven't, if you're not aware of it, u h, it was one of my top 10 business tools that I talked about. If you go, um, if you go to heathersager. com/power tools, I talk about my 10 favorite business tools on here and have links on there. Marco Polo was one of them and it's essentially like a walkie-talkie, but with video. So it started out when I would travel to different time zones. I would pull up Marco Polo and I would send my husband and my kids a message from mommy at an airport or a hotel, just checking in on them, telling them about my day and then ping the video would go over to them. And then when it was convenient for them and their time zone, they would jump on and send a video back for me and ping. I would get it and I would laugh and watch it when it was convenient for me. It's like FaceTime, but it doesn't have to be in real time. I love it. And the thing that I love about it is, okay, this is a super technical, geeky, sneaky thing considering what I do, but it makes you feel super comfortable about talking into a camera, which if you're an entrepreneur looking to get better your marketing, this is something that needs to happen. So Marco Polo does two things. One, you can have conversations with your friends, not time bound. So whenever it's convenient for you, you send it. Whenever it's convenient for them, they watch it and vice versa. But it also helps you develop a level of comfort on video which is so helpful if you're doing Instagram stories or aything else. So fun little thing there. So Marco polo, that's how I like to connect with people or send direct messages on Instagram or Facebook and in both of those you can absolutely do audio messages. The point around all of this, my whole recommendation is when you reach out to five people a day, these don't have to be different people by the way. Let's say you talk to your best friend every day, that would count. When you have an intention to reach out and be the light for other people, you spark an even bigger light of positivity with yourself. So it's all about the messaging. You're there, you're wanting to be a support and inspiration. You want to be a light, which is a bright beacon of positivity. And when you're focused on that, it's hard not to feel that internally. So for me, reaching out is just as much about adding lightness to somebody else's day as it is to rekindle and keep fueling my fire of positivity. This is one of my favorite strategies. I heard Jenna Kutcher talk about this years ago around how she would voice text her closest girlfriends and I thought, man, I should do that too. So I've adopted that to my daily five connections and that's something that's been really important to me and I can't tell you how connected I feel with other people now and how much more comfortable I feel using these different tools. I just feel I feel a greater sense of purpose and I think this will help you stay connected into the right energy that you want in your business and your life.

: 25:17

Strategy number three, I want you to lean in to learning. When you come from a place of abundance, I think that's fueled oftentimes about being humble and wanting to learn. I think when we are in a space of scarcity and fear and doubt, we have our egos flare up a little bit where we lean more into the I know all the things and I think we closed down the the door on learning because our ego flares up so much that we're just so smart and know all the things and we can figure it out. But I think when you open up the door for learning, it creates capacity for you to be humble, yet confident solutions and possibility focused. So for me it's really important that when I'm trying to stay in the right head-space, I make clear capacity for learning. That means reading everyday with personal development, but also it means learning skills that are going to help me propel in my business and in my life. So I recommend that you block out an hour a day. I know that might feel like a lot, but an hour a day. If that means you need to wake up a little bit early, if that means you need to not watch Netflix at night, if that means that during the middle of day take a break and go to a different room in your house and do learning time. Let's be honest, you're not going to be any less productive because we fill up our days with fluff.

Speaker 1: 26:45

I would bet a lot of money on that. That there is some fat to be trimmed in our days. Speaking for myself, I've worked very hard on this, but I think for you, you probably have an opportunity in here so let me push you on that a little bit, but I want you to focus on learning. Now, I am an online course creator and program coach and what I'm about to say next is probably going to sound crazy town, but learning does not mean that you need to go out and buy a bunch of new programs because friend, if you're anything like me, you probably have online courses sitting on the shelf that you haven't touched since the first week. So what would it look like if you took an inventory of what you already had access to, skim through the modules and said, Hey, ah, I forgot about this and this really would be so constructive in my business right now. I think you should focus on that. So that's what I want you to do. Create space for learning. Read the personal development books if you want some recommendations. I would love to share those. I will post some of those in my Instagram stories over the next week. But I also want you to think about, I want you to think about what could you tactically and skill-based be learning to help propel you in your business related to your goals, especially in times of uncertainty and change. So take inventory of your education that you already have access to. I think there's probably a lot in there that you can pull from.

: 28:12

Strategy number four, move your body. I'm sure you've heard it many times before. Brendon Burchard and Rachel Hollis, both shout this from the room tops that when you move your body, you change your mind. When you move your body, you change your mind and there's actually scientific studies that have been done that show the connection that happens when you get into physical motion and action. Whether that's a run, whether those are squats and lunges, whether that's some Vinyasa, whether that's a 32nd dance party, whatever that looks like for you. Moving your body makes a difference. And I think this needs to come down to doing the 30 minutes a day of physical movement. So whether you break that down and go on a couple of walks here or there, whether or not you go like all out and do CrossFit at home, whether you use like me, I use the beach body app and I love it. I paid like a hundred bucks for the entire year and have an app on my phone that I could work out whenever. You could use free stuff on YouTube. Peloton is doing a crazy trial right now on their app and they have more than just riding a bike. They have a bunch of running and weight training and other types of things. There's a lot of free resources. You don't have to pay for it. Also, a walk around the block is free. Granted, if we have to stay in our houses. Come up with something else, but jumping jacks. Do something, but get up and move your body because it will change the what's happening in your mind and help you get you out of whatever funk that's happening. So I'm a big believer of this. Move your body and you'll start finding, you just I think become more creative. You become more positive, you become more focused. So don't discount this one. I know you already know that you should be doing this. Some of you might already be doing this, but if you're not doing this frequently throughout the day, if you're not standing up every hour and moving, stretching, walking to a different room, if you're not getting up and getting some blood flow happening, you are missing an opportunity for you to get a higher degree of mental focus and to have a better intention and a better like GAH! That's a good GAH! Like that was like a zest like yes in your spunk, in your creativity, in your work. So do not sweep this one under the rug. Do not just nod your head and say, I know I need time to do that. Make the time you need to move your body. And it doesn't have to be an hour long crazy workout. It could be short little spurts throughout the day, but the more that you get your body moving, the higher the likelihood of you shaking off, like physically shaking off any negativity, any victimization, any spiraling, any fear, any of that. Shake it off and keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Strategy number five and this one has been a big one for me and it's called adopt a daily, write it out ritual. Adopt a daily, write it out ritual. What I mean by that, write it out, meaning physically write. Some might reference this as journaling, but I like to be fancy and I'm going to call it write it out and why I say write it out is I'm a big believer that when you just keep thoughts in your head and you don't get them out either through written word or verbal expression, you can't move on. Like our thoughts when they get trapped into our heads, we start creating stories and spitting ourselves in spirals and we start dreaming, but none of that actually becomes a reality or none of that can we dispel if we don't get it out? So one, you know me by now. I talk often about saying things out loud, but I'm also a big believer of getting things out on paper. The reason this is particularly important is two fold. Part one is all about the aspirational. Where are we going and why? And keeping us focused. So this would look like for me would be, well it would be reading my daily affirmations, which I've customized for myself based off of my experience following the Miracle Morning routine. But in addition to that, I think it's about reflecting and writing out your accomplishments every single day. I think owning the progress you're making. Some days kid you not, my accomplishment is I took a shower today. High five, that's a big deal. There was a joke that I saw yesterday on social that was like success can sometimes be defined as remembering to put your clothes in the dryer before they get like mildewy. Maybe that's a little bit funny for me, but I think you have to pick what your accomplishments are and I think if you stop and celebrate them everyday by writing them down, it is huge because you feel like you're making action. You're making progress and you are putting the lens of success on your own life by stamping and saying, I did this. It might've been little, but I did it. So I write down every single day the accomplishments from the prior day. The second thing I write down is gratitude. What I'm thankful for, what I'm grateful for. And I write really specific things down. So I don't generally write down, I'm grateful for my husband, I'm grateful for my kids, I'm grateful for my house. Those things are great, but they don't really mean much. And I know that might sound weird, but i t's just a s a hollow thought. And if you write that same thing down every single day, does it really mean anything? So instead I focus on specific moments. So last night I wrote down in gratitude that I was grateful for the Mr and Mrs Pancake story that Owen and I made up together at bedtime. Owen and I like to make up stories. Instead of reading stories, we make them up. And right now we're creating this series about a family of pancakes. Momma Pancake and Daddy Pancake and we're going to turn this into a children's book and we're very excited. But we have so much fun together coming up with these moments. And as I was in the moment, I had this realization of, Oh, this is so nice. And I instantly thought, I'm so grateful for this time with my child. And I wrote it down. When you notice specific moments, when you know that you enter your day looking for moments to be thankful for, it just becomes more vibrant and more fun. So when you focus on gratitude, please don't go general. I want you to think about really specific moments in time that you're grateful for and it'll make a difference in how you see life. In addition to that daily practice, I also journal every single day and I journal freely my thoughts around what I'm thinking about, where I'm progressing. But I also write down any, I hate to say this, but any potentially negative thoughts that I have because what I've found is any negative thoughts I have, if I write them out, I can challenge them and move through those fears or limiting beliefs that I have. So I wanted to share with you a few questions you can post yourself to help you self coach out of some of those negative feelings and get yourself back into the right head-space. So let me share a few of those with you.

: 35:28

Let's say, so you write down a thought. After you write down the thought, okay, so let me use an example that I might use coaching one of my students on speaking on camera. I'll use one of my examples. I, when I first started watching myself on camera, I had this moment of realization. I was like, wow, my left eyebrow is really aggressive and it started bothering me. It started bothering me and then I avoided the camera and then I realized like, Ooh man, I have a gap in my bottom teeth that I had never noticed before. And then I started realizing, Oh, why do I talk weirdly out of one side of my mouth. I started spiraling, noticing all of these things and then it started preventing me from showing up. So one day I wrote down on my journal the thought. I have a weird eyebrow followed by, I have a weird tooth and I talk out of the side of my mouth. I followed up with a question, what am I making this mean? For me I was making it mean that I was unattractive. That of course, who would want to watch an unattractive girl in a video? She's a speaking coach. She can't even control her own face. I was making it mean that I, I'm making that mean. Okay. I was making that mean that maybe I don't actually know what I'm doing. If I teach people body language, but I can't actually fix the shape of my mouth when words are coming out, who the hell am I to teach anyone else? Guys, this is crazy. I hope you're laughing at me and my ridiculous thoughts and thinking about your own ridiculous thoughts that you have. But I was making it mean going down this rabbit hole of making it means something that was crazy town. So then I asked myself the question, is any of this true? No, no, because I have a crazy eyebrow. Like if you're watching the video on this, I'll have a video that I posted Instagram stories. I totally have this crazy eyebrow like I don't know what is. Look at that thing like this eyebrow is very excited about life, but it does not mean that I'm quote unquote unattractive. It does not mean that I don't know what I'm doing. Doesn't mean that I, because I can't control my eyebrow, I can't offer value for my students and clients like that's crazy. So ask yourself the question, what's the thought? So let me go through this real quick. One, what's the thought? Two, what does it mean? Three, is it true? Four, why am I choosing to carry this? Why am I choosing to carry this? And then ask yourself the question, is this helping or hurting?

Speaker 1: 38:12

This is one of the most powerful things that I think you can take into so many aspects of your life, but most importantly within your own thoughts. Is this thought helping or hurting? If it's helping, well, it's probably a powerful thought that you should continue to believe. But if it's hurting you, why keep it? So ask yourself then, what would it look like for you to let it go? What would it look like if I let it go and replace it with a new belief? What is my new belief? So let me give you this. I know this is such a weird example, but let me go through this with my eyebrow example. So I wrote down the thought, I have a weird eyebrow. What am I making this mean? Well, I am unattractive. Clearly I'm unattractive. Okay, what am I making that mean. If I can't control my own face, why would people believe me when it comes to teach other people to show up as an authority in their field? Is that true? No, that was some crazy narrative that my ridiculous mind came up with. So why am I choosing to carry this? Well, I'm choosing to carry it because I was self-sabotaging and trying to come up with reasons for why I didn't want to become more visible online because I was scared for people to point out things about my nose or about my eyebrow, about my face or about whatever because I didn't want them to say mean things. But is having this thought of speculating on strangers opinions, is that helping or hurting me? Clearly it's hurting. I can also ask the question is me getting caught up in my own head and not creating content, is that helping or hurting my audience? It's hurting because I'm not getting these messages out. So what would it look like for me to let go? Well, for me it looked like I needed to get over it, which means that I had to press record on the camera and just talk to myself on video and get used to what my face looks like because I'm used to seeing life from my vantage point. I don't ever see what other people see in me and so I had to get comfortable seeing what other people see and realize that, huh, I have an eyebrow. Look at that, I actually have two. One is just playfully more active than the other one. So the new belief that I chose was, huh, I have character. I have crazy facial expressions and actually it's fun. It makes me stand out in a sea of very bland faces online. I'm okay with that and I'm going to choose to show up anyway. I know this is a really funny example and it's not a big life challenge, but sometimes limiting beliefs or sometimes negative beliefs don't have to be this really big crazy thing like a giant crazy pandemic in the world. Sometimes these challenges times might be an internal thing that you're struggling with, but you're afraid to voice it because you think it's silly. I think my eyebrow is silly, but also it was something I had to work through. So I want you to think about, remember this, that you were in control over your own thoughts. You were in control of your own attitude. I'm in control over my own thoughts. I'm in control of my own attitude. I'm in control of my own actions. So were you and we can't change the past. And we, there are things in life that we can't change, but just as Maya said if you don't like something, change it. And if you can't change it, change your attitude. There's always something to be done. And I am a big believer that if you can focus on your attitude specifically say it in the right head-space so that you can show up for yourself. You can show up for your business, you can show up for your family, you can show up for your audience, you can show up in the way that you know will make an impact. Well, I think that's where you need to put your focus.

: 41:59

So let's recap these five strategies again to help you do just that. Number one, inventory the inputs and clean up your feed. Number two, focus on being the light for others specifically reaching out to five people a day just to add value and check it. Number three, lean into learning. When you're focused on learning, you can be in a place of abundance versus letting your ego come in to try to solve everything being a place of scarcity. So create capacity for learning. I recommend an hour a day. Focus a little bit on personal development with reading and then also take stock of those courses you already have. Open them up and get going and get some skills that are going to help you propel forward in your business. Strategy number four, move your body. Move your body every day, all throughout the day. Get yourself moving. When you change your body, you change your mind. And strategy number five, adopt my write it out ritual. Write it out. Get it out of your head and on paper so that way you can help it become a reality. So remember, there's two different areas to focus on. Focus area number one is I want you to focus on the positives of the reoccurring things of if you do affirmations, your affirmations. Write down your gratitude. Recognize your accomplishments every single day and write on your goals. That has to happen. But in addition to that, allow yourself to do some free handed journaling. What are you thinking about? How are you feeling about what's happening in your life, in your business? Where are you challenged? And then ask those simple questions that I gave you before. These are available for you in the show notes. All five strategies along with the simple questions that you can go through to challenge your own thoughts. I hope that these are a powerful tool that will help you take control over your head-space and start making some really important things happen. Friend, I'm so appreciative that you keep showing back up and I hope this show is helping you maintain a head-space that is adding value to your life but also allowing you to serve your audience. I'm so grateful for you and I will see you again next week. Same time, same place.

Speaker 2: 44:20

Guys, thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail Your Next Talk. 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or 80 snags. Turn the Q&A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over heathersager. com/10questions

Speaker 3: 45:26

[inaudible].