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Episode 60: Mind Seeding

A simple practice to help you become your future self that’s quick, easy and painless.

This episode is for you if you want to change your beliefs and become your future self, you will probably need some help to step outside your current paradigms.

If you listened to episode 59 of this podcast you will probably understand what I’m talking about. 

To recap briefly, most of us have entrenched habits – both thinking and doing habits – that happen automatically, unconsciously. And as you can imagine, those entrenched, automatic habits can be very hard to see, let alone to change.

When you achieve this clarity and awareness, there is one more thing to navigate – the fact that your brain is naturally wired to find evidence to support your current beliefs rather than your future beliefs.

In other words, if you want to become your future self, you need to uncover the hidden beliefs and then, convince yourself that behaving differently is a good idea.

As you can see there’s a little bit to navigate in order to become a better and more powerful version of you! 

To summarise, becoming your future self involves three things:

  1. Uncovering your unconscious beliefs about yourself that shape who you are
  2. Challenging and changing those beliefs and
  3. Being consistent with this until you start thinking and acting differently.

Most of us don’t have the time or space to do this in our lives.

You’re busy with your kids, making lunches, getting them to school and then yourself off to work.

Most of us are lucky to snatch 5 minutes to ourselves, so it can be really difficult to cut out all the noise and stress of modern life and to start changing our thinking and doing patterns.

That’s why I want to walk you through a simple process to help you move more quickly toward your future self. 

I call it MIND SEEDING.

I highly recommend listening to episode first 59 FIRST so this all makes more sense.

Mind Seeding

I find it so fascinating that we are able to run so much of our lives on autopilot – around 90% of what we do, in fact.

So if you think about it, our thoughts and beliefs are the instruction manual that we automatically follow each day to get things done.

It leverages off the fact that we run on autopilot and that our brains are highly suggestible.

I propose that we can use this to our advantage, and ‘seed’ our minds with the thoughts of our future self.

Want to give it a go?

Mind Seeding 101

There are so many things in life I struggle to remember, but for some reason I can easily sing the jingle from the 1981 Swatch watch commercial.

Can you relate?

This is a great illustration of the first part of mind seeding – telling yourself something short and simple, repeatedly, will cause it to stick in your head.

And as you know, if you listen to my podcast regularly, the things that you say to yourself repeatedly become your beliefs.

Here are two simple examples from my own life.

When plastic debit banking cards arrived in Australia in the 80’s (yes, I’m that old!), I realised how easy it was to start spending money. And like any normal teenager, I had started spending with my new card!

Yet I wanted my future self to be a proactive saver and accumulating wealth, rather than debt. I needed to find a way to do this.

As a measure to curb spending, I started to tell myself that I if I didn’t have cash in my purse, then I didn’t have any money.

It’s amazing how this halted my spending. I would withdraw $20 each week and this was my spending money and once it was gone, it was gone.

By the time I was 15, I had saved $1,000 and had put it into a term deposit. This one simple mind seed got me closer to my goal and up to Level 3 in my Four Levels of Money.

A year later, I was struggling with anxiety and insomnia as exams and the question of my future became more pressing.

When you are feeling stressed or a sense of lack, it’s moving away from your future self. 

I had started working a casual job in an aquarium shop, and they had a coffee machine there. It was a machine that turned instant coffee into a hot milky drink, not like the fancy barista models we get today. 

I had never really been a coffee drinker, but that machine was a lure and I found myself drinking 2 – 3 coffees on my Saturday shift. I realised that coffee had a grip on me. I found myself looking forward to the shift so I could drink coffee, and then feeling wired and jittery after it. But it felt SOO good to drink coffee.

Within a few weeks I realised that coffee was bad for me at that stage of life and I decided I wanted to stop drinking it. It was making my anxiety worse and disrupting my sleep on the day or days that I drank it.

So I seeded my mind with the concept that “I don’t want coffee to control me!”

Thinking that way about coffee was really assertive and positive for me because it spoke to me about what I wanted, not what I was missing out on. This really helped me to be disciplined with a simple habit and it made a huge difference to my state of mind.

Notice that in both examples, I was seeding my mind with thoughts that felt strong and powerful, rather than judgemental or fearful. 

This is the key to getting your new seed thoughts right.

So right now, think about ONE activity that your future self is doing or not doing, for example, not drinking coffee, or not drinking alcohol, or exercising regularly, or speaking in front of people – and create a powerful, positive statement about it.

This is one of your mind seeds that will grow into a habit that aligns with your values.

Step 2

The second part of mind seeding is to open yourself up to new ideas and opportunities. 

Think about it – it’s easy to get so caught up in life that you forget who you are and what you want to achieve; you can lose focus on your goals and clarity on your vision.

You can fall into a scarcity mentality and get lost in it.

This can cause you to lapse into negative thinking, and to lose focus and hope.

And when you are feeling stressed or a sense of lack, it’s moving away from your future self.

You can reverse things by putting a wedge in place to get your inspiration back and reinvigorate some creative thinking.

Here are some ways of doing that.

  1. Read a book on a topic you’re interested in, whether it’s related to your business, industry or a personal goal. 
  2. Take a free online course into an area of interest and learn something new.
  3. Take up a hobby that engages you and gives you a sense of flow.
  4. Block out a whole weekend with no responsibilities or commitments, to just meander and do what you want and need.
  5. Do something that will give you a quick win and is easy to do without any brain strain – like an exercise session, or cleaning out a drawer.

Seed your mind with thoughts that felt strong and powerful, rather than judgemental or fearful. 

Any of these can be enough to give you a brain break and switch things around to get your ideas flowing again.

I find that when I am feeling low, flat or defeated, I am instantly revived and excited again by listening to something inspirational or something that creates awe, curiosity or a sense of achievement.

This is positive psychology in action.

Ready to change your beliefs and become your future self?

Step outside your current paradigm and find out who you can be! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

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Episode 26: What is showing up and why do it?

What is Showing Up and Why Do It?

Showing up means investing 100% in an experience and participating fully, to the best of your ability. 

It means acting with personal integrity.

It means being committed and accountable to yourself and others.

It means setting and upholding your own moral and ethical standards.

It means taking action, being seen and putting yourself out there – no matter what.

So why should you show up and how does it work?

I’d like to start with a story of showing up.

Once upon a time, before I was a coach, I was the co-owner, director and principal scientist of an environmental consulting firm. We ran a tight and successful ship with 40 staff – but it wasn’t always that way.

When the CEO and I started the company, just the two of us, there was a lot of banter, discussion, casual conversation and a few arguments about how things should be done.

As we hired more staff and started to build and systemise our business, we got into this terrible habit of carrying our criticism and arguments over into team meetings and open work spaces.

We were sloppy about running regular staff meetings and sometimes showed up late.

And while the business was working, it was a hard slog and we were trying to lead 10 staff at that time in a unified and cohesive direction.

We recruited a new director and he pulled me aside one day and said a few quiet, calm words to the effect that ‘it’s probably not a good look for you and the other owner to criticise each other in front of the staff, or to complain about them when they’re not around.’

That conversation shifted my perspective 180 degrees.

I realised then that I needed to lead by example and that our current behaviour was the direct opposite of what we were trying to create.

Thank you David, for the life-changing moment.

 

And from that moment on, everything DID change.

I knew I had to start showing up and role modelling the values and behaviour we wanted to our company to stand for

I had to start showing up as a collaborative, empathetic leader.

From that point on, quite a few things changed.

I stopped complaining about the CEO and he stopped complaining about me.

We resolved our differences in private in a calmer way.

We got business coaches in to help us be better leaders.

We got conflict resolution and negotiation training for our growing team.

We set and held staff meetings at the same time, every week, consistently.

We started and finished our meetings and events on time.

We developed a strong brand.

We got uniforms.

We collaborated with the team to define our values, from which we set professional and personal standards.

These were all new things for me and for the CEO. It took some time and patience.

But what happened was it launched our business into a professional outfit that was respected in our industry.

We hired another 30 staff and we built from two specialised teams into six specialised teams with a competitive advantage in three key areas of biological science consulting.

So now, back to you.

Why should you show up?

Because if you set a big goal for your personal or professional life, you are probably going to have to develop new skills and become a different kind of person.

You need to learn how to respect yourself, and to think and act in a way that matches the calibre of person you are yearning to be.

At the day-to-day level, Those thoughts and actions might include:

Starting the day with a clear intention.

Making positive commitments to yourself.

Doing what you say you will do no matter what.

Being on time for appointments.

Finishing your appointments on time.

Being honest – not making excuses.

Setting boundaries in all areas of life.

Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say.

Striving for facts, not judgement.

Setting moral and ethical standards.

Asking for help when you need it.

Doing personal development work to help you change your behaviour, faster.

Setting aside judgement and learning empathy.

Becoming more flexible and agile.

Building resilience.

It sounds like a big list and yes, it will take time.

Maybe you’re good at some of these things already.

But if you really want something in your life – to lose 10kg, to become a better teacher, to run your own business or to simply stop doing the things you know are bad for you – this is your time.

Define where you want to show up.

Make your list of traits.

Then create a schedule of actions that you will do repeatedly to start becoming the person you want to be.

Ready to start showing up?

If you need help with this process, or to learn how to self-coach, click here for more information on my self-coaching membership.

See you there!