How to mindset tools and strategies into practice in real life

Your Dream Business

English - April 24, 2023 00:00 - 25 minutes - 29.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: Why I used to think coaches were full of sh*t!

Next Episode: The vicious cycle of procrastination and how to tackle it

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to put the mindset tools, tactics and strategies that you hear me talk about all the time into practice!

In this episode I share a vulnerable and recent real life story where I took everything I teach about mindset and put it into practice to actually make a difference to something I experienced, at the moment it happened.

So get ready to learn, and if you think there is someone out there that could benefit from this episode, then please go ahead and share it with them. I would really love for you to do that!
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

What mindset is and why it is important
How to reframe thoughts into facts
The importance of knowing and noticing your triggers

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
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Transcript
You are listening to your Dream Business Podcast, and I am your host, as always, Teresa Heath -Wearing. So if you are a regular listener, then right now you might be thinking, this doesn't sound right. Normally, Teresa does an intro. She tells us what episode it is, and then some music kicks in and it's Teresa again telling us what this podcast is all about and why we should listen to it.

Not today and not from now on. I am mixing things up a little bit again. Uh, I mix things up at the end of the year by stopping interviews and now I, I'm on a quest for simplifying things in my life. We have busy and full lives, which is lovely and beautiful, and we are very privileged. However, I am no quest to kind of bring it back to almost like not when I started, cuz I can assure you life is nothing like when I started business, but just bring it back a bit.

Like do I need all the things that we do and should I do them that way? And I just questioned a few things. So one of the things I've decided to do is give you entirely what I'm calling clean episodes. And what I mean by that is as I speak to the recording now, this is what you're gonna hear. No editing, no tweaking, no improving the sound of my voice or whatever it might be.

And I am hoping that it doesn't sound that different. I'm hoping that you don't notice a huge difference cuz we were always very careful about the editing, but I just want to simplify things. I just wanna have things a little bit kind of less complicated, one less step in the process. And if me just hitting record and you hearing me as rawly and as authentically as I am when I record it, then great. I am happy with that.

And like I said, I really don't think you're gonna notice a massive difference. I don't record it and make massive errors that my lovely editor had to edit out. If I swore, which was more likely the case because I'd messed up, then I would go back and delete that as I'm recording it.

So it wasn't like he had to get rid of any of that. It was just that maybe if I took any sharp intakes of breath or paused for too

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to put the mindset tools, tactics and strategies that you hear me talk about all the time into practice!

Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram

Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn

Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook

Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter

So it wasn't like he had to get rid of any of that. It was just that maybe if I took any sharp intakes of breath or paused for too long, like I just did then, then he would probably clean that up. But we're going with it. And this is a. I think this is in line with some other stuff. Like I did a story today on my Instagram saying that I don't use filters anymore.

I used to use filters because I used to think I don't look good enough. I don't, my skin doesn't look clear enough, or my eyes don't look bright enough, or my teeth aren't white enough and I dunno whether it's an age thing. I don't know whether it's a confidence thing that has come with all the personal development stuff I've done.

But no longer, like, this is who I am, this is how I show up. I am very confident in who I serve and what I do, and I know I do a great job. So does having a filter on an Instagram story change that, does having a perfectly edited podcast with amazing intro and outro music and all that jazz change that? No, it doesn't.

It's, it's exactly the same, regardless. So that's what I'm doing. I am showing up perfectly imperfect. And I am debating, and I really wanna get your feedback on this, so I would like you to take some action on this if you could. I would be very, very grateful. I am debating recording myself on video when I do these episodes.

This is not something I've ever done before and I'm debating about checking it up on YouTube like, It's the same. I'm recording it sat at my computer. Um, and I'm actually co-working as I'm recording this, so I'm actually currently on screen with the co-working, uh, people in my executive club. Um, but yeah, just wondering what you think it, you know, does that interest you?

Do you think that could be good? Let me know. Anyway, let's get on with today's episode. So, have you ever thought that when you've heard me talk about mindset, tools and tactics and strategies, and you've thought, yeah, that's great, that all sounds brilliant, but how do you actually put them into practice in real life?

Well, that's what I'm gonna share with you today because this is what happened to me a couple of weeks back. I have the most amazing story, which is very vulnerable, uh, but in my quest to show up even more vulnerable than I do. I'm gonna share this story with you as how I took all these tools and strategies and tactics that I have used over the years to actually make a difference in something at the moment it happened.

So get ready to learn, and if you think there is someone out there that could benefit from this episode, then please go ahead and share it with them. I would love for you to do that. So someone asked me the other day. What mindset was, and no one had ever really asked me that before. I think one person had, and I sat and thought, and I said to them that I think mindset is just the fact of noticing, slowing down and being conscious of stuff.

That's what I think mindset is. That's what I think it comes down to. But how do we get conscious in the moment? How do we stop during that moment when if we could just master our mindset, then it could make a world of difference, because that in itself is hard.

Like knowing the tools, learning the tools is great, but actually when we need it in the moment, that's the bit that's really, really difficult. So how do we do that? So, The first thing I wanna say is like everything. This is a practice, and I know people don't wanna hear it. Like they don't wanna hear that things don't work.

Because if I could give you a magic tip or trick or something tomorrow to make all this perfect, I'd take it. I would happily give it and I would take it because this stuff is hard. But I promise you it's worth the work. So let me tell you my story and then I'll share how I did this and how you can do this too.

So I went away from my birthday. I went to Amsterdam and I chose Amsterdam for two reasons. The first reason was on my goal list this year is going new places. My husband and I have very favorite places that we go, and we go there all the time. And as much as we love it and we really do, I really wanted to try somewhere new.

And the second reason I chose Amsterdam was it's very close to the UK so the flight time for that is about an hour and a bit if that. Now, I don't like sitting in economy because I'm not built for it. And when I say I'm not built for it, I don't mean from a high maintenance point of view. Although I do love the nicer things in life.

Who doesn't? I mean, physically I live in a larger body and sitting on a plane in economy is physically painful because the seats will dig into me. Um, it is. Actually quite humiliating sometimes having to squeeze yourself in and I get a little bit claustrophobic, so I don't like how much space I take up in the seat and how close the seat is to me.

If you are brand new, this is a very vulnerable episode. They're not all this vulnerable, so I. And, and, and I didn't want my poor husband to have to pay for a premium or a business class flight. I will do economy if it's under four hours because I can just about manage in those four hours. And if over four, I can't manage.

So anyway, we get our flight to Amsterdam and my husband being an absolute, well he works in the, um, he used to work in the military in the RAF and now works for Boeing who build planes. So he loves planes, he loves flying. So he always gets a window seat, and I was in the middle seat. So as we get on the plane, and we're normally one of the last ones to try and get on, because who wants to sit on a plane longer than you need to?

So we get on the plane and there's a woman sat in the outside seat. So, um, I get on and my husband goes, we have to get this woman to move, and my husband goes into the window seat and I squeeze into the middle seat, and this woman looks at me in a way that makes me feel as if I don't belong. And as if. I am taking up too much space in this world.

She almost looks me up and down and has a element of disgust on her face, and huffs and puffs a little as I'm trying to get comfortable and get myself sorted. And already feeling pretty anxious about the fact of being in an economy flight. This starts to send me over the edge and I start to get really anxious and I can feel myself, uh, my heartbeat quickening, my breath quickening.

Uh, I can feel it in my throat, I can feel it in my chest, and I am starting to get hot and I am starting to feel very uncomfortable, and I am doing everything in my power to make myself physically smaller than I am, which obviously is impossible, but I have got my hands and arms tucked in as tight as I can. I am leaning as far over on my husband's side as I can, and I'm starting to get really upset.

And I tried talking to my husband, but obviously she sat next to me. So I'm trying to like sign language and whisper to my husband that this woman has just looked at me in a way and I'm so upset and I'm so angry and in my head I start thinking of all the many things I might say to her. Now, the staff, she was from the Netherlands, so I'm not entirely sure that she'd be able to understand me.

But in my head I start thinking about all the things I would say to her, all the many reasons people live in a larger body, and if it was only down to calories and calories out, what a lovely thought that might be, but it isn't ever down to that. And actually there are many reasons people do to do with trauma, to do with, you know, many, many things like treatments, some drugs make you put on way.

Like there are so many reasons why people live in a larger body and lots of them might not be anything to do with them. And also, it's none of this woman's business. But in my head I am like, you know, if this is what you think, you need to educate yourself because that is a very shortsighted view, but of course, I'm doing this in my head, right?

So this is taking about five minutes for me to start to spiral up, and I'm literally holding back tears, feeling like I'm about to burst into tears at any point, and then a moment came in my head and I took the tool that I have been using for a very long time. But I was able to see it at that very point cuz I was able to see me getting triggered.

I was able to feel that I was having these emotions. So then at that point I went, oh, hang on a minute in my own head while still sat there and I sat in the seat and I closed my eyes and I breath. Okay. And I literally took some really long, slow, deep breaths and I got fully in my head. And when, I mean in my head, I mean, I kept my eyes closed.

I had my noise canceling headphones on, and I literally was like, it's just you, you, you know, you're just here. And I thought to myself. What do I know as fact? Okay, so one of the tools I use we look at circumstances or we look at what's fact and then what's thought. Because often we take the thought as fact and it's not. So what did I honestly know as fact?

Well, what I knew as fact was she looked at me in a way I didn't like. Now, I didn't know what she was thinking behind that. Now I can guess, and I'm pretty sure I was right, but I had to say to myself, what did I know as fact? Fact was she looked at me in a way that I didn't like and I assumed the rest. So once I had got to myself, okay.

All the fact is, is that she looked me in a way I then was able to start to change my thoughts. My thoughts changed into ways of, there could have been many reasons she looked at me that way. She could have looked at me in that way because she thought she'd got a whole seat to herself, and suddenly these two people come in and sit next to her.

She could have come off a horrible trip into the UK because something awful had happened. Like there could have been a million things that happened to her to make her look at me in that way. But none of them were to do with me. Even if it was, it still wasn't to do with me. Her thoughts and opinions and, and whatever of me were none of my business.

And I started to relax and I started to feel my chest calm and my breathing slow, which I did on purpose. And by doing that, I am telling my body there is nothing to worry about and telling the anxiety to calm down. I am safe cuz when your breathing speeds up, your body thinks you're not safe. So I brought my breathing down and I, I was telling my body I am safe.

And I went through and thought, well, I don't know the reason she did that. So actually it's none of my business why she looked at me like that. And what do I know for a fact? What I know for fact is I deserve to sit here in this space. I deserve to take up space in this world, and there is nothing wrong with me or anybody else's business, how much physical space my body takes up.

And actually how she looked at me should not impact me one little bit. And I did this and I went through all this process in my head and I reframed the whole thing. And within probably 10 minutes of being on that flight, I had almost dropped into this kind of spiral of I'm gonna have the most horrific time and I don't wanna be on this flight, but I couldn't go anywhere to actually, I don't know this woman, and she's done nothing to me and I'm gonna smile and be my normal self.

And just because she chooses to be a certain way that has no reflection on how I should be and how I should show up in the world. And I sat there and I tried to communicate to my husband how freaking proud of myself I was. And I don't know that he necessarily got it, but like I was like, I just did that.

I just like took myself from potentially spiraling outta control to changing my thoughts. The thing that I have been practicing for such a long time and it worked and I have sat here with a big grin on my face, feeling very happy about going away, being on this plane sitting next to this woman, I am not trying to shrink myself.

I am sat very comfortably in my seat and I deserve to take up space. So that, for me was an absolute revelation. Like I've been doing this work for a while, and sometimes you do the work in faith that it's going to work, but you're not really entirely sure how and when. And that's what happened. I'd been doing the work and then it got to the point where I was able to reverse a situation in a very short space of time. A situation that previously probably would've ruined the weekend, and I know that feels like a complete exaggeration, but my filter of me and my body and the space I take up brings a lot of shame like it has done in the past.

There's a lot of shame that I am the size I am. So for me, that would've spiraled out of control and I would've felt very uncomfortable for most of the weekend and I didn't, I genuinely, and I wasn't even kidding myself. You know how there's the whole fake it till you make, it wasn't even that. It was absolutely deadly serious.

I was fine, genuinely fine and happy. So how do you do that? How do you get to that point? Well, the first thing you have to do is notice. You have to pay attention to yourself, and you have to notice these triggers. You have to see when things are starting to affect you, and one of the ways in which you can do that is noticing when you get an emotion or a reaction that you don't like.

Now, there is no bad or wrong emotions. Emotions are fine. They are all perfectly human to feel every emotion. Someone, people think mindset is like just walking around with a big, that grin on your face all the time. Well, that's not the case because things are gonna happen that are gonna make you sad.

People will die, people will get ill. Life will be rubbish and they will make you sad. And it's not the fact of you shouldn't feel those things, it's the fact of you wanna move through them as quickly as possible or as as appropriately as possible because they just don't feel great. So for me, it's about paying attention when you feel feelings that you don't like.

For me, it might be anxiety, shame, frustration. My anxiety often comes out in anger. So anger is a big trigger for me. It's about noticing those things. Then once you've noticed them, it's about then slowing down and giving yourself the chance to breathe and just pay attention. And it's about then trying to separate your thoughts from your feelings and your thoughts and feelings from the actual facts.

So, For example, uh, you might have put a proposal out there to someone or I, and this is definitely been true for me. Um, I'm sure you guys will relate as well. I have asked to speak. It might not be someone to speak, but you've put yourself out there. You've said, I want to do this thing, or I want to, uh, Work with you or whatever it might be.

But I put myself out to speak on a stage once of people that I knew very well and they said no, and I was devastated and I got upset and I got frustrated and I felt shame because I thought they don't think I'm good enough. And I read so much into that no of my own thoughts, which equated to my own feelings, but the fact is all they said was no.

They didn't say, "No, Teresa, we think you're a terrible speaker, and we'd never put you on our stage in a million years." In fact, they gave me a really good reason why they couldn't pick me. And it was a perfectly reasonable reason. It had nothing to do with me. In fact, the reason they didn't have me was because I wasn't part of their membership.

Oh, no, no, no. It wasn't. It wasn't. It was because I didn't have the product that they were speaking on, so I wanted to speak on a particular subject, and I didn't own one of those products myself. I helped other people with them, but they only wanted people there who had those products themselves.

Perfectly reasonable explanation. But of course, instead of reading that, I read everything else into it. But again, you need to take yourself back to the facts. You need to become the scientist. You need to become the investigator and go, what do I know is true? And then you are able to say, okay, so if that's what's true, Are the thoughts and the...

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