Overcoming "I'm Not Enough", with Britt Lefkoe

[00:00:00] Today's episode is sponsored by Survosity. I created Survosity because I was an MSP who lost data and had to face my client. I don't want you to ever be in that situation. So what's different

[00:00:13] about Survosity is that we test your backups maniacally, we test those daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. We manage the backups for you so 80% of your workload is gone and you can focus on your

[00:00:25] core mission and all of the storage is both immutable and unlimited. It like to learn more, take a look at Survosity.com. The person we want to become is buried inside of us. They are

[00:00:40] buried underneath layers of accomplishing and achieving and shame and not good enough and so it's not so much of becoming as it is an unbecoming, right? It is getting rid of everything you're not

[00:00:50] so that you can be who you've always been and I don't think we need to go build that person. I think we need to get rid of all the layers of crap that are on top of that person so that we can be

[00:01:00] who we've always been. Hi everyone, Damien Stevens, host of MSP mindset. Today I got the blessing of talking with Brit Lefko. She's world renowned on overcoming your fuel fear of failure. She works

[00:01:20] with Google, Meta and the Fortune 10. So if you'd like to get down to what's really holding you back and by the way, what's holding me back then you don't want to miss out on our conversation.

[00:01:35] Reggirely, struggling with like this, you know, sometimes it's an act of your fear but I think probably the best way to say is I'm not enough and it shows up in so many ways and when I think

[00:01:49] I get that thing pushed away or set aside or refream or whatever, it comes back and it does it again and then I'm also a big neuro divergence in neuroscience geek, not that I'm necessarily knowledgeable

[00:02:04] like you but I love that there's all of those things combined here. So I don't think that helps you understand why I'm maybe a little too excited to be talking about it. Well I'll start by saying

[00:02:15] too excited is not a thing, doesn't exist. I'm thrilled to be here and thrilled to be talking to you and you know I said that the thing that I want is for this to be a valuable for you as

[00:02:27] it is for your listeners and I think the thing about the not enoughness problem is we tie our worth and value to these external forces that are fleeting. So if you tie your worth and value

[00:02:39] to achieving or accomplishing in the moments that you're achieving and accomplishing, you're good but in the moment when it's over or in the moment when you hit up against an obstacle or a roadblock that feeling resurfaces. The reason it doesn't get worked on is because we never untangle

[00:02:55] or worth and value from the things that create that internal feeling. And so another example is if you get your worth and value for being from being busy or from working hard, you're not asking

[00:03:08] what's best for my business, you're hustling for your worth. You're not looking for more effective ways or more efficient ways to do things. You're not delegating effectively because you're not actually looking at what is my business need, you're looking at how do I make sure that I don't

[00:03:21] have to feel this feeling that I don't want to feel and how can I replace it with a feeling of enough. And so what you expressed to me is so common, I can't even tell you how common the number of

[00:03:33] clients I've worked with on that exact thing and at the core we have a feeling of not enoughness and instead of working on that, what happens is we overcome it through these capacities but the

[00:03:46] problem is we then rely on those capacities so there's no space to make mistakes, there's no space for experimentation, there's no space for failure because it's not about the failure, it's about losing that feeling of worth and that that's a safety issue. Right? It's like if you're

[00:04:00] not enough, how are you going to make it? So it really crosses wires with our survival instinct and that's why it's so hard to face. I thought it was just me. What they did to all of us,

[00:04:13] it's all of us. Yeah. Well, do you mind if I go deep-escue, please? A little more to end up with questions. Tell me about how this resonated with you. Right? You've got these which you choose to feel to fill with your father and the process

[00:04:33] of how to understand limiting beliefs in those sort of things which is I think outside looking and telling you wonderful, but like everything I'm probably, you know, creates a lot of pressure

[00:04:45] and that sort of thing. So tell me about how that appeared to you and where you felt like that really was breaking through as you were growing up. Yeah. The first one is I got my

[00:04:57] worth in value from being impressive. From a really young age I was validated by everyone. Our dinner guests, the people that I would talk to, you know, I mean, on the street, my teachers,

[00:05:09] I was told my entire life how smart and impressive I was. And there's a huge gift in that, but when you're validated for something and you tie your worth to it, you're no longer in choice.

[00:05:21] Right? I wasn't in choice is this a place in time to be impressive or is this a place in time to receive support? Is this a place in time where I need to be vulnerable? So vulnerability for me was

[00:05:30] like carbon dioxide. It was like I couldn't breathe it because I was afraid of losing my worth. And for me, it wasn't a feeling of like waking up in the morning and feeling like I'm not good enough.

[00:05:42] It was like if I can just keep the ball rolling, I'll be okay. And that served me in the ways that it served me. But the consequence was one, I was exhausted. I ran myself into the ground. I got sick.

[00:05:54] My health deteriorated, which I also can't tell you how many clients I've had with the same story of their health collapsing. But I also had really meaningful relationships, but they felt paper thin.

[00:06:09] Like I would have deep and meaningful conversations, but I didn't feel like I could rely on anybody. I didn't feel like I could be honest. I didn't feel like I could be vulnerable because in my mind

[00:06:17] if I wasn't being useful and insightful and impressive and smart, the relationship was going to break. Right? It's like the good enoughness would go away. The love would go away. So it was this underlying stress that was so normal. I didn't even know it was stress. I wasn't

[00:06:35] type A. I was never somebody who had the outward perfectionism, I had the inward perfectionism. I didn't need to control the world around me. I needed to control people's experience of me.

[00:06:46] So I needed to control the version of me that I let out. And so it was really, really heavy and really I think the other thing that I really struggled with was feeling like I grew up in a family where

[00:06:58] I learned from a very young age. I learned these deeply logical concepts, but I also learned these very complicated mindset concepts. And so I knew how powerful the mind was and I knew

[00:07:10] that I should, I'm making air quotes, right? I should be able to overcome my beliefs. And so when I couldn't, I really felt like a piece of shit. I don't know if I can swear. I really felt,

[00:07:22] I really felt badly about myself. And so I knew all the answers that I didn't know how to do that with myself. I knew how to do it with others. I knew how to get others to where they wanted

[00:07:35] to be, but I couldn't do it with myself. And so that created not just a feeling of imposter syndrome, but it also created a feeling like there was something wrong with me and I was broken. So my journey

[00:07:45] has been definitely that of my clients. It's been one where I really had to dig into the hard stuff to be able to come out the other side and see that I could have worth outside of just this

[00:07:57] contingency. Tell me about living in a glass castle that feeling is you just got to believe. So I found this metaphor that I felt like I was living in a glass castle, what that meant to me

[00:08:11] was beautiful. It was beautiful. I was loved. I've never been somebody who wasn't loved. It's like people always gravitated toward me and I got so many compliments and so much validation. So it was

[00:08:23] like this beautiful glass castle, but I couldn't, you know, I could look over the city and I could see everybody laughing and all the, you know, the shops and the vendors and it was like I could

[00:08:33] watch everything, but I couldn't be a part of it. I was always put on a pedestal. My whole life was always put on a pedestal and as great as that sounds. One, you're always terrified of coming

[00:08:43] crashing down and two, you don't get to belong. You don't get to be a part of everything. And so I had this feeling my whole life of like everything seemed so perfect. And so I felt guilty complaining

[00:08:56] and I didn't complain, right? Because I felt so fortunate. But at the same time, I felt really disconnected from the world around me because I had to stay on that pedestal. I had to be different

[00:09:09] and that was that was hard. Sure. Anytime you got, you feel like you have to perform to be worthy and at least from what I'm hearing in my own life. Whenever you, when you're very different,

[00:09:26] one way or another was a whatever reason that is, at least to my personal, if it leaves a lot of loneliness, right? It's just nobody can really understand. And I love what you said

[00:09:36] like you didn't really want to complain because you had to make things to be fortunate for. But some of the most successful people have worked with are some of the loneliness because there are still challenges. And but you know, you tell yourself like, oh, I

[00:09:53] make $10 million a year. Who's going to cry for me? But they're still struggles. They're still real battles. So how did you, how did you wrestle with like, I should be able to, especially

[00:10:08] given like, I feel like what you're telling me. I love your metaphors. But I feel like you're kind of telling me you're the, you know, psychiatrist at least and everybody's problems. But nobody can

[00:10:18] ever listen to yours. Yeah, it's multifaceted. And I also, I want to say something about what you said about loneliness before I jump into that. That I had the huge gift of working, um, I did a

[00:10:32] I co-led an event, a mindset event with a group of some of the wealthiest people in the world. They're a part of a group of billionaires that are focused on impact and legacy. And there was

[00:10:44] 30 people. And it was so fascinating listening to the conversations and the challenge that they felt that as they got more and more successful, their problems started to look to others in significant, exactly like you said. And a lot of these people had had really hard childhoods come from

[00:11:06] object poverty or had really abusive parents or, you know, immigrant families that really struggled. And those internal issues never got resolved. And so there were people at that event who really

[00:11:20] felt that lack of worth or who really felt like, you know, they were holding on by a thread. But as they became more and more successful, excuse me, as they became more and more successful.

[00:11:32] And as, you know, their kind of empire's grew, they started to feel less and less able to share those problems. And it was such a privilege to be able to work with these people in this

[00:11:42] environment and to be able to show up and support them because there was so few places for them to go. And one of them ended up becoming a one-on-one client. And she is one of the most inspiring

[00:11:55] people I've ever worked with. She came to me at 80 years old. It's never too late at 80 years old. And she had built an absolute empire. She had one of the most horrific childhoods that you can

[00:12:08] imagine, really, really painful, really abusive mother. And she had the belief love is painful and not worth it. So she had built this beautiful, beautiful empire and didn't have a relationship with her children. And she was so unhappy. She felt unworthy. She felt undeserving. The only thing that

[00:12:33] made her good enough was her success. And untangling that with her was one of the most meaningful things I'd ever done because from the outside, again, she had it all what was she complaining about

[00:12:45] but to know that she had lived in that pain for 80 years. For 80 years that she built all of it and didn't enjoy it, that she didn't have those meaningful relationships. She wrote me a letter. I was

[00:12:57] sobbing about this, you know, backpack that she had carried and the pain and what it felt like to take it off at 80 years old. And so I just appreciate you bringing that up because it can be

[00:13:10] controversial, that people who have been so successful are still worthy of that care and the complexity in that. So I just wanted to share that. And then to answer the question that you had asked which was...

[00:13:28] So I was just curious how how you deal with that pressure, I already feel like I'm not enough and then I feel lonely. And that's one thing, but I imagine there must be more pressure when you have

[00:13:44] these... how to overcome underlimiting belief processes, all these other things. So how to you grit actually deal with that? And to, you know, or how are you dealing with it? Yeah.

[00:13:57] It's a better way to phrase it. So I am obsessed with growth. I'm obsessed. And I work as hard on myself as anything else in my life. I invest in my own development. So it's something that I'm

[00:14:11] aware of and the work that I do with clients. I'm going to tell you a quick story. I was in my early 20s. I started my own practice, working with clients doing mindset work. I started taking

[00:14:24] pro bono clients when I was in my early teens, right? So like I come from the self-well family. I was a part of trainings when I was a kid by the time I was like nine, 10 years old. It was like

[00:14:34] I could see the matrix. I could see people's beliefs all they had to do was open their mouth. And I was like, oh, these are all their limiting beliefs. It was just... it was so natural to me.

[00:14:44] And I had to learn how to manage that. And so I was very young into this work and I started doing this work professionally and a very young age. I was executive coaching in my early 20s. So

[00:14:55] I started to build this business. And what I watched was every client I had fly past me. They worked on all of the things I still had. And the imposter syndrome really started to creep in.

[00:15:07] And I started to feel more than anything out of integrity. It felt so wrong that I was helping them with things that I hadn't dealt with myself. And I took my business and I

[00:15:21] dissolved it into nothing. And I said, I need to go live and I need to go work on myself. And I need to get myself to a place where I can be an integrity. And do I still have work to do? Absolutely.

[00:15:33] Do I still work on myself all the time? Of course. But I really had to build that foundation. And I had to break down so many of my own beliefs. And it was really hard trying to...

[00:15:44] I tried to work with others and it didn't work because I knew that, you know, it's probably not going to sound great coming out of my mouth but I knew how effective my work was. And everything

[00:15:53] else I tried, it just didn't work for me and I was so frustrated. And so finally I really started to look at how can I use my own concepts on myself. And the more I really started to do that,

[00:16:04] the more I started to break through and the more growth I saw. And so I'm always really just asking myself, you know, the question, what are my blind spots where am I limited? And sometimes it takes

[00:16:14] time, right? Sometimes it's something that I notice, you know, I have to sit with for a while and there's things that I still see come up for me absolutely. But I really built that foundation after dissolving my business before restarting it. And so when I restarted my business,

[00:16:32] I knew I had legs under me. I knew I was in a place where I believed in myself or I was confident, I felt enough, I felt worthy, I felt deserving. And now it's been these up levels

[00:16:43] that I'm consistently working on because I do watch my clients kind of run past me in certain ways. And I have to make sure that I'm keeping up with them. I love that. I love that. That's great. What is all the business you're doing for you?

[00:17:04] It made me look in the mirror. I couldn't just rely on the glass castle anymore. I think, you know, a factor in my life was so often people work on themselves because everything's broken.

[00:17:17] It's like the coping strategies that they had no longer worked. Often people come to me when their wife leaves them, when their health collapses, when a child is no longer speaking to them,

[00:17:29] when their workaholism has become a problem. That wasn't me. My life was working. Everything was great. So how do you really look on the, how do you really look in the mirror and hold yourself accountable

[00:17:42] to say I'm committed to this? And dissolving my business was the thing for me that had me say no more. I'm not just going to keep relying on the validation because it's fleeting and deep, deep down

[00:17:55] underneath all of the layers of validation. I still feel like I'm drowning. I still don't feel full. I still don't feel that sense of worth. And so dissolving my business for me was the motivation

[00:18:09] to stop trying to cope and really build something within side of myself that felt real. Do you feel like it was the space and time or closing the loops? Because you could dissolve the business and say, I don't, anybody, you know, any deliverables or any responses or anything,

[00:18:29] something else. I mean, what was the biggest gift? I mean, I just wanted it so bad. This work is my oxygen. It's my purpose. It's not just a business.

[00:18:38] It's why I'm on this planet. I have no doubt that I'm on this planet to do this work. The fact that I could do it at 12 or 15 years old like it was gifted to me. It's not just that I'm not smart. It's like the work comes through me,

[00:18:50] not from me. I have no idea what I know. I know. I don't know why I can help people with eight figure businesses and nine figure businesses. Why they come to me for advice. Right? Like I don't understand why people

[00:19:02] who have been through things that I've never been through, why it always know exactly what to say. But this is why I'm on the planet

[00:19:09] and so to not be able to do that. That was hard. That was hard. I mean, it's like I have to do this work. Like I enjoy my vacations, but I am very excited to get back. It's like a piece of my soul. We'll start to

[00:19:21] feel like it isn't there if I go too long without doing this work. It's like it's how I experience my most authentic self. I get to be all of who I am when I am with my clients when I'm doing my work.

[00:19:32] I get to connect to whatever spiritual energy, right? I get to connect to it's like that's where I do it. It's like I go to church in in my sessions. That's like my sacred space. And so

[00:19:44] for me the desire to be able to do it, I think that's a lot of what drove me and it's cool because I see with my clients there's always something that has them say yes. It's an investment. Right?

[00:19:55] It's an investment. So if you're going to make that investment, you have to have something click inside of you that says I want this. And for me my I want this was I don't want to be in pain

[00:20:07] and I want to be able to do this work effectively and I want to be able to know that I'm credible and I want to be able to stand behind that. I don't want to pause their syndrome. I want

[00:20:17] to know that I'm the best and I want to be able to say that and I want to be able to do the work that is required of me in order to get to that place. So I think I think those were the two

[00:20:27] really big pieces that not wanting to be in pain and the wanting to be able to really build my vision in my dream and I knew I wouldn't be able to do that if I was doubting myself at every corner.

[00:20:38] Okay. So if I just said, it just as you can understand that gave you the freedom in this space because but on the other hand it hurt. It hurt not being in the game because it's not just

[00:20:50] I mean look, I get being tied to the business where it's your baby because you created it and everything about it's perfect. And if anybody calls any part of it less than perfect it's like

[00:20:58] calling your baby out of your dog ugly right? It's just ah and then there's this other part that's like it is hard to step away but that could be the best reading part. So was it that tension

[00:21:09] that helped you? Yeah, yeah it was and you know it's interesting like I see I see within myself I often say we live in a world of mirrors right? There's a quote that I love so much it's

[00:21:21] we do not see things as they are we see them as we are. We see everything through our own eyes we don't see the world objectively. We see everything through our hopes and dreams and fears and experiences

[00:21:30] and so I'm very aware of the mirrors where where can I be a mirror from my clients and where even can my clients be a mirror for me and one of the things that I see with my clients is

[00:21:41] when you're playing at a low level you need like a cataclysmic shift. You need these like you need a restructure in a really big way. When you're playing at a high level it's

[00:21:49] subtlety. It's these little subtleties right? If you think of a ship if you're going you know 500 miles in a ship it's one degree to the left. If you're one degree to the left you're going

[00:21:58] to end up on an island in the middle of nowhere. You're not gonna get to your destination. So when you're playing at a high level it's these subtle shifts and you know I think of even like an athlete

[00:22:06] like if you're in a Olympic athlete you're pinky being a quarter of an inch you know away from your second finger that's the difference between the gold medal and not even being on the

[00:22:14] podium it's a fraction of a second. And so it's these subtleties that sometimes I need it to walk away from my business completely for a lot of people it's not the thing you need to walk away

[00:22:25] from their business it's a subtle shift in how they look at their role it's a subtle shift in how they look at their responsibility there's a big difference between being accountable and being to me accountability is about who you want to be. Responsibilities externalize these are the things

[00:22:40] that I'm holding. I don't view responsibility as valuable I think it's very outcome oriented I think accountability is very process oriented so I had to completely walk away from my business and go on

[00:22:51] my journey but for a lot of people that's on an option I don't think you necessarily need to walk away from the business but I do think you need to view your relationship to it differently and those

[00:23:02] subtleties right those shifts in perspective are what open up the spaciousness to show up differently and to have that growth that you want to have and so I just wanted to kind of emphasize that because

[00:23:15] for you know your listeners as an example not everyone can walk away from their business but I don't think you have to right I haven't had a client walk away from their business. I've had an identity

[00:23:24] shift that's allowed the way that they relate to their business to give them the spaciousness for that becoming or that unbecoming right the learning or the unlearning of how they want to show

[00:23:35] up. Okay yeah and it's probably bad financial advice to say walk away through your business and keep paying me like that's a kind of a conflict a mystery but so I know you help with a lot of things

[00:23:52] in your coaching but what do you see coming up the most? What are you know do you call you put it under like kind of limiting beliefs or upper limit problems or what would how would you kind

[00:24:01] of frame us? I think there's a few buckets um businesses require so many different parts of you and we very often rely on the parts that we view as our best and what happens is the business suffers

[00:24:18] because especially if you're an entrepreneur your businesses are a reflection of you where you're strong your business is strong and where you're a week your business is weak and so when we only rely

[00:24:28] on our strengths our business suffers. One of the places this manifests is that people don't delegate because they feel like they need to do everything themselves or they feel like again their

[00:24:39] worth and value is tied to being busy or doing it all or working hard and so I see one bucket is the kind of overworking and the over relying on strengths. I think another one is there's a place

[00:24:53] and time to win and there's a place in time to lose you have to know when to experiment you have to be clear on where it's okay to fail and where it's not okay to fail there places where you put

[00:25:02] your notes to the grindstone and you do not fail but their places where failure is safe is okay is valuable and so when people have an aversion to mistakes and failures it really impacts their

[00:25:15] business it's incredibly stressful but it also prevents them from being able to utilize a more creative and up-leveled mindset and so I think that's another one I think another one is I see

[00:25:24] people stay in the weeds and these are people who are strategic right like there is a time and a place to be an integrator or to be doing the implementation yourself and there is a time and a place

[00:25:35] to hand it off you need to know when to be a producer, when to be a leader and when to be the visionary and so I see people not effectively navigate those three spaces we hire people right similar to the

[00:25:44] delegating we hire people and we don't use them and so we don't use them to their capacity and so I think another one is people really being in the weeds in their business and not stepping out

[00:25:54] and so they become the bottleneck. We need to know how to empower our team to be brilliant to do the best work of their lives to feel like they can be owners to feel like they can be

[00:26:04] excited and accountable and we really get in the way we disempower our team and we become a bottleneck and then I think the final one is just a generalized anxiety from my perspective and what I've

[00:26:15] seen working with clients is anxiety is not natural. What happens is we have a sense either that we're not safe, that things are not going to be okay, that the other shoe's going to drop, that we need

[00:26:24] to be in control and so we create this cycle of anxiety that instead of looking for our way we look for the right way and if you're trying to figure out how to do it right and not do it wrong

[00:26:35] you are going to live in a cycle of anxiety and so instead of looking at what is my authentic way of doing things that's really effective we get in this again these cycles of anxiety

[00:26:46] and so I think that's another place these anxiety patterns that I see that really keep entrepreneurs stuck or that create burnout or that create these glass ceilings and so there's kind of a few

[00:26:58] buckets that I see entrepreneurs really struggle with. That makes it ten a sense so when you're kind of just talking I talked about the not being enough part so do you see that come up

[00:27:13] comes up constantly it just manifests in different ways right for some people the not enoughness comes in overcompensating by trying to do everything themselves trying to prove them self trying to achieve an accomplish for some people to not enough manifest as a cycle of anxiety

[00:27:29] because they feel like they're not enough and they feel a sense of fear what if I'm found out what if I'm exposed what if I'm an imposter I think for some people not enough

[00:27:39] manifests as them trying to do things other people's way well maybe if I can be like this person I'll be enough and so they abandon their genius own they abandon their core values to try to be someone

[00:27:49] else and then they create misalignment in their business so the not enoughness is underlying for so many people it's just how it manifests in the in the business will change based off of kind

[00:27:59] of their coping strategies based off of their upbringing based off of what's worked in the past. I got you so how I'll just put myself in the game how do I face my I'm not enough

[00:28:13] and I don't have experienced in a different way I felt like I'm not enough when I've been stretched to thin for my family and business and I feel it you know constantly because

[00:28:24] there's always that tension you know I can spend more time with a family how can I give everybody at the business what they need and the team and the leaders and the clients and the

[00:28:33] investors and all the other folks that you know are involved we're touching so many people live so and you know sharing at the kind of the beginning it's one thing when you say okay I see it

[00:28:44] I think even recognizing it is a step in the right direction hopefully but you know how do I take a step past that like what do I do with that how do I break that down and how do I figure out

[00:28:56] where's this coming from you know how was it manifesting itself and what do I do? A beautiful question so there are certain things that trigger that feeling and I think understanding the triggers a big part of it is it when I'm falling short is it when someone's disappointed

[00:29:12] in me is it when I don't live up to expectations so one understanding what the trigger is will give you a sense of the the patterning and when it shows up so you can start to become a little

[00:29:23] bit more clear on your relationship to it but I think the most important thing is understanding where it comes from and the zero to seven age range is really important from a development standpoint right

[00:29:36] so we in those years don't have a prefrontal cortex I'm going to give you like a little basic neuroscience 101 there are three yeah there are three parts of the brain that are really

[00:29:46] important for the purposes of this conversation the first one is your prefrontal cortex this is not just logic and reason this is your executive functioning this is the part of your brain that visions

[00:29:57] and dreams this is the part of your brain that is incredibly confident it understands things this is a part of your brain that meal perhaps right the part of your brain that wants to go to the gym

[00:30:07] that wants to get up early that is really clear on what you want and how to get there then you have your make-dala your make-dala is your emotional brain this is also the decision-making

[00:30:17] center of your brain which is really really important to understand there are people who say I make emotional decisions and I make logical decisions no you don't everybody makes emotional decisions there is no one who makes logical decisions because the decision-making center of your brain is

[00:30:30] the emotional part of your brain now how well you justify those emotional decisions with logic determines if you view yourself as a logical person or not the emotional brain for the most

[00:30:40] part the belief systems that drive your emotional brain for the most part are locked in by the age of seven why part of why is because you don't even start developing your prefrontal cortex until seven

[00:30:50] years old so in those early years you don't have logic reason rationalization will power you see the world in emotional black and white and because you are in what I call codependent survival

[00:31:02] which means your survival does not depend upon yourself it depends upon your parents or primary caregivers what you're looking for is safety the primary function of the brain is to keep you safe it's not

[00:31:12] to make you happy it's not to make you successful it's to keep you safe and so you're trying to figure out how to be safe but instead of looking at danger what you're looking at is how to create a feeling of harmony in

[00:31:23] your family because if you have harmony in your family as your primary caregivers that harmony is conflated with safety and when there is this harmony that feeling of safety is broken so what happens

[00:31:35] is during those first seven years we are trying to determine how do I be safer unsafe in the way that we do that is by understanding what creates a feeling of harmony or disharmonine our family

[00:31:44] that then drives our decision making for the rest of our life so if conflict in my family from zero to seven created this harmony I will be afraid of conflict at 35 or 45 or 75 because the trigger in my

[00:31:58] brain is tripped every single time there's conflict I say oh that's not safe so what happens is these belief systems are formed early in life when we're trying to understand how do I get my parents

[00:32:08] to validate me because validation and love are also conflated the part of our brain that can understand cause and effect and these complex dynamics of being busy or being stressed and your

[00:32:18] parents have jobs none of that exists when we say that we're in the ego early in life I think that that can feel very confusing when I say ego all I mean is you cannot understand cause and effect

[00:32:29] outside of yourself if your parents are fighting it's because of you if they're happy it's because of you so what have I done to cause this throughout our life what happens is we start

[00:32:41] kind of developing these feelings of I have all this evidence well this happened and this happened and that happened but it isn't evidence what happens is you find what you look for if early in life

[00:32:53] you develop a belief that I'm not enough you will then view your life through that lens if instead you had a belief I am enough what would you look for you'd look for evidence so we look

[00:33:04] for evidence of the beliefs we already have so so often people say well I think I developed that belief when I was 32 and I was in my second business and I my second business failed if you view

[00:33:16] the world through the lens if I'm not enough this will be evidence if as a kid you had learned let's imagine you had an Auntie Brit right who lived in your home with you and when your parents were

[00:33:28] critical or frustrated as parents will be and you said Auntie Brit why why are they frustrated with me what have I done and Auntie Brit was able to describe to you and explain to you that your parents

[00:33:43] you know were stressed out by this thing called work and that they had parents who acted in the same way and that's why they were showing up that way and you would really be able to understand

[00:33:54] right if you had been given the gift of a prefrontal cortex at five years old you would have viewed the world differently and so the first piece is really getting they parents did their best

[00:34:07] or whoever raised me did their best but what do you learn about parenting right you learn very little if you onboard an employee what do you do you train them you onboard them you give them

[00:34:19] you have a child good luck and then you go to school and instead of learning how your nervous system works or how your beliefs are developed or how to have difficult conversations or how to ask for help

[00:34:30] you learn about the 13th president of the United States and a physics equation that you're probably never going to use right so we're not really set up all that well and so we have parents who do their best

[00:34:39] but don't understand early childhood development they don't understand the the different cycles that you go through there's so much that happens that is so complex and nuanced that adults really don't

[00:34:50] understand and so as a result these beliefs will limit us for the rest of our life and so often we don't even know where they come from or why we have them and so I want to say one of the

[00:35:02] thing about the third part of the brain the hippocampus the hippocampus is learning and it's memory from the perspective of learning but there is no part of the brain that houses our memories

[00:35:13] there's no part of the brain that houses our memories why because we don't actually store them we have relationships to them there is no memory storage so what does that mean what that means is

[00:35:22] because we don't store our memories our memories are malleable our memories are malleable every time you remember something your memory of it changes we are incredibly neural plastic we are incredibly neural plastic and because there is no area of the brain that stores memories what that means is

[00:35:39] our imagination and our memories are stored in much the same way and so when we can use our kind of neural plastic nature to shift our relationship to memory the memory can change our identity is so much impacted by our memories therefore our identity can be changed

[00:36:00] as we change our relationship to our memories and so going back to the source of these beliefs and being able to see things from a different perspective is so incredibly valuable I want to

[00:36:11] give an example I had a client yesterday who was telling me a story of when he was young and something that happened within his family where he felt very much abandoned by the people around

[00:36:23] him he didn't feel like anyone had his back and one of the things I did was I took him through this kind of visualization but what I really did was I talked him through if as a kid he really had

[00:36:34] understood that it wasn't about it was something where he lost and I said it wasn't about winning that life wasn't about winning we all know how to win what he really needed was to learn how to

[00:36:45] lose because in life the people who don't know how to lose really struggle they really struggle and so he was in the long game and what he was going through was going to prepare him to be somebody

[00:36:59] who knows how to lose somebody who knows what it feels like to be abandoned to have nobody have their back that he needed to know the hard one so that he would never do that to anyone else

[00:37:09] that he would be a good person and he would have integrity but two so that he would know what he was made of he needed to know that he could have his own back before he knew that anybody else had

[00:37:19] his back and I watched his grown man right start to tear up and he said it felt like my whole identity changed and that moment I just had this feeling of confidence like I really did have

[00:37:33] my own back like I wasn't abandoned because I wasn't enough it was like I really needed to learn how to have my own back and that later in life I could find other people like me and for me this

[00:37:44] example is it's like the one of millions where when you tell a different story and you really feel that different experience your identity will start to shift because it's not our stories it's not our events that cause the problems it's not the events it's our stories about the

[00:38:01] events it's the idea that trauma is not what happens to you it's what you take from what happens to you and so there's a very kind of long answer of where do you begin one you go back to the beginning

[00:38:13] and you really ask yourself what are the stories that I'm telling that don't serve me what are the stories that I'm telling about what happened and if I told a more empowering story how could I

[00:38:22] feel that differently in a way that would change my identity and change my beliefs and then the second piece is the first thing I said which is better understanding your triggers helps you start to navigate

[00:38:32] them better because it's not the same for everyone for some people they're not enoughness is triggered again when they don't live up to expectations there's going to be something in your childhood about living up to expectations for some people it's when they feel powerless for some

[00:38:45] people it's when they make a mistake or fail those are the things typically that you were criticized for or where that disharmony ensued and so the more you understand something the more you can

[00:38:55] work through it so I would say those two pieces are really key. Got it so the more I understand where I'm struggling from not feeling like I'm enough and if I heard what you're saying

[00:39:08] despite it being formed between zero and seven I can re-frame my identity by reframing the stories and just a different way I think about it maybe if you see if this thinks exactly it

[00:39:22] is that you know your future doesn't have are your pastes enough to determine your future you can reframe so identity is actually more fluid if I understand what you're saying

[00:39:32] then almost all of a sort of which is you are a product of your past and your you know your future is more or less based on your past and sprinkle a little current in there but

[00:39:45] and so your were reframing of it because all the way down into the neuroscience with the neuroplasticity of your brain so I think really interesting to learn that the memories are not really stored as much as they are correlated so identity is quite fluid. I think our

[00:40:06] identities one of the most valuable things we have and I think there's a difference between thing your identity who you think you are and your kind of truest self the way that I think about it

[00:40:20] is the person we want to become is buried inside of us they are buried underneath layers of accomplishing and achieving and shame and not good enough and so it's not so much

[00:40:29] of becoming as it is an unbecoming right it is getting rid of everything you're not so that you can be who you've always been and I don't think we need to go build that person I think we need to get

[00:40:39] rid of all the layers of crap that are on top of that person so that we can be who we've always been and so the identity that we hold is not who we really are right it is in so many ways in a

[00:40:52] malgamation of our hopes and fears and dreams and limitations and beliefs and all of these things that we carry and as you start to reframe these stories what happens is you notice this energy emerging which is authenticity right it's passion it's purpose it's alignment and there's a big

[00:41:12] difference between living from overcoming your fears and living in alignment with your core values we have all of these adaptive strategies so that we don't have to feel how we feel

[00:41:22] well as long as I do this I don't have to feel that way and as long as I do that I don't have to feel that way when you're out of these compulsive and avoid and strategies what happens is you

[00:41:32] have this spaciousness to just be in choice your compass instead of good bed right wrong enough not enough your compass is aligned misaligned is it in alignment with my values or is it not and then

[00:41:41] decision making becomes very simple and then if you want to play around with something go play and again you have the discernment to know where it's okay to fail and where it's not it's not about

[00:41:51] saying failures great sometimes failure is great sometimes failure is not great but you have the discernment to know the difference and I think that the gift of this work really is ultimately discernment in choice having a deep sense of discernment and having a come from of choice

[00:42:10] hmm so I want to come back to discernment in choice but there's another part that you've mentioned and you talked about it's not becoming a different person it's really shedding the layers and

[00:42:22] all of that so it's like deleting all this extra false narrative and people pleasing and trauma and other things will let me we might be carrying around so how do we choose the way and find that

[00:42:38] person that I love that question so much so something I would I would ask is who do you want to become what are the qualities is it somebody who's incredibly perseverant is it someone who's joyful

[00:42:51] is it somebody who's kind of got a silly playful side like what are the qualities and then I would go back into your childhood and I would go back to these harder memories these moments of challenge

[00:43:07] and if you can tell a story where you can kind of insert those qualities what you'll find is the identity will start to loosen I'll give you an example so let's use a live example can I

[00:43:25] can I work shop it with you please I would love to work shop that okay so what is something that you would love to have as a quality that you maybe don't see in yourself so much right now

[00:43:41] quality I love to have that I don't see as I think there's a few different levels one of them is like one of the one of the things I was journaling that day it's like if it's worth doing

[00:43:55] it's worth ever doing this is one thing I've noticed about myself so it's like it's either let's reinvent everything and and become it's kind of like your purpose I'm going to be the best at this

[00:44:05] and and so I think that means I can go deep in a few areas and I should stay out of most of the others but I know that that is great when I want to be super deep in an area super passionate might

[00:44:19] have my wife asked me to sweep the floor it's really not helpful to figure out all the ways this could be done and how this could be the best way in the world and spend an hour sweeping the floor

[00:44:29] when it could have been done okay I love this so if you go back to your childhood where do you feel like you learned that like do you feel like you had a parent who had that belief or that there

[00:44:39] was just high expectations that things were meant to be done a certain way like where did you learn that? I think so I think that have a similarity of your story and then maybe others that aren't

[00:44:50] similar but you know we you know only a mother at home and kind of having to become the the man of the house really young and you know poverty and all of these sort of things basically

[00:45:07] you know had this I need to provide and and I realized it had gone too far I need to provide for all kinds of people in every way and so you know balancing that the other part of that there was

[00:45:17] a lot of the praise that I got was performance space so there's maybe this similarity where it was just like if you do this and if you outperform this way and if you become the best in this

[00:45:26] area and you know test out of all the other things and perform above all the others and when every math contest spelling be every you know every other area like you know like and so there was a

[00:45:36] certainly like if you don't if you're not in Minta why do you exist in Mistina that there's one of the words but that was basically kind of the performance orientation so I just felt like you know

[00:45:48] like one of the remember my mom celebrating a very odd thing now which is in fifth grade you you're left to turn an essay and one of my teachers marked our word is a son of the word

[00:46:00] Ergo as incorrect because she didn't know the word and you know but we celebrated like the fact that like we you know I knew things that the teacher doesn't know and look how look at this

[00:46:10] bass vocabulary then what it really did is maybe sound like a jerk by making things overly complex and so there was a big performance culture. the beautiful examples. so let's let's just address

[00:46:22] both briefly so the first one is I have to provide and I think one story is and then I had to provide and I think another story that you could play with is if as a little boy we're going to go back

[00:46:33] to this anti-brit you would have an anti-brit and you said anti-brit I need to provide and anti-brit looked at you and said every little child is meant to be provided for and that's an experience that you've never had so you're going to provide

[00:46:45] but your job in this life is to make up for last time is to provide for you that you were put on this planet to learn how to be provided for and if no one else can do it

[00:46:55] you're going to do it and that's your mission and so your little boy and you're like wow I'm going to be provided for by me so I'll provide for my family and I'll do those things

[00:47:04] but I'm going to make up for last time I'm going to spend the rest of my life feeling that whole and really providing for me what would that have felt like? Hmm there is very different because of course

[00:47:18] you know I was providing for my mom and my sister you know even financially and in other ways emotionally and other things at a very young age and a teenage age and on and then you know everybody gets into adulthood where you have to provide for yourself

[00:47:32] and then you're partner and and children and so you know I think it's just fast forward and then you know I've been working for all of these years until was a teenager and um I'm never

[00:47:44] look back and I'm definitely not I've learned to reframe it as a gift that shaped me into who I am instead of you know victim view of like well woe as me but I love your frame of like what if I

[00:48:00] give that gift to myself that you know I can make up for last time and be provide. Yeah and the more you feel into that what happens is your focus shifts it's not that you stop

[00:48:11] providing you still need to provide for others but the focus is different it's an overflowing it's I am providing so much for myself that now I'm spilling out onto the people around me verse I'm providing for everyone else and I'm empty right?

[00:48:25] Mm-hmm yes and I'm not saying that I'm empty but I definitely see that as an adult you know you're in especially when you're kids you have to provide and and so that

[00:48:39] is normal this age she was not normal at 14 and so there's those but like you said you I can relate to feeling lonely we'd talked about lonely earlier because you know the things

[00:48:51] I was doing at 14 16 were not what other kids that age were doing and so um so I just hadn't reframe that as like oh I should give that gift to myself because it's just been like okay the bar is

[00:49:04] achieving you know providing for my family and you need to be providing for my mother and all this you know other things so it's a lot of work and then that's where I'm glad and then

[00:49:16] for the the second one and this one obviously has more complexity but just for like a v1 if you had really gotten that when you were in poverty the overperforming was a beacon of hope

[00:49:30] for something else so when you're at the bottom you need a ray of sunshine you need a guiding light you need to know that there's light at the end of the tunnel but when you're hanging out in the

[00:49:40] sun do you need a candle do you need a flashlight no so as a kid you would really gotten when you're in the dark you better be a candle right but when you're hanging out in the sun you don't need to be

[00:49:52] a candle you can hang out it's a little bit different you would have had a very different world view of getting you have to overdo everything to know that something is possible but once you know

[00:50:02] it's possible once you're the sun now all of a sudden you get to play a very different game what would that have felt like yeah that's a huge difference because I can relate towards your saying

[00:50:12] which is you know you need that hope that there's going to be a different outcome the different future so you have like I said when you're in the dark you have to be the candle I love that metaphor

[00:50:22] it seems to be a gift you have um that are really good at and but yeah you you know you I mean this in the best way I can but there was in Detroit she had to be a candle

[00:50:33] and so I love the optionality that your or reefer amcree yeah and so it really brings back the feeling of choice so if you now look at this feeling of if I'm going to do it I have to overdo it

[00:50:47] how does that feel now if you don't need to be a candle you're the sun right it's like you're hanging out in the sun you don't need to be a candle and you can see that I'm really focused on

[00:50:57] providing for myself yes I'm still going to provide for my family I'm going to do all I can do that but I'm really my focus is what it feels like to fill that void to make up for last time to be

[00:51:08] the hero in my own story just you know swoop up that little boy that no one could provide for and be like don't worry dude I got you right like with all of that new feeling now this idea

[00:51:19] that if I'm going to do it I have to overdo it how does that feel now yeah it feels like I'm going to see where it comes from and it feels like yeah right it feels like too much so

[00:51:30] you can even loosen a story that quickly and again obviously there's you know more to do but what you can see is there's times when overdoing it is the move and there's times when it's

[00:51:42] not because if I'm focused on filling my own cup and I'm focused on being the sun and not being the candle now I get to decide when do I want to overdo it and when do I want to just sweep the floor

[00:51:54] I don't need to be a beacon of hope when I'm sleeping before right it's like I don't need that so as you start to see that right it's like you can see how that energy in that mindset

[00:52:02] start to shift right I love that yeah that is a really interesting way to reframe so for all those are listening where do you go from there where do I go from here how do I keep

[00:52:17] unpacking this how do I I guess what I mean is how do I go to the next level how do I create a V2 what what question should have you asking so an exercise that I do with clients and I think

[00:52:29] is really valuable is look for a limiting story right a limiting story like um everything has to be overdone or it's gonna take a really long time or I don't have the resources or um I haven't

[00:52:44] hired the right person yet and so I can't do it or I have to work all those hours whatever it is and you have a limiting story and then you have an expansive story right the limiting stories

[00:52:56] it has to be this way and the expansive story is what you want so let's imagine we'll use your example the limiting story is if I'm gonna do it I have to overdo it the expansive story is

[00:53:08] I get to decide if I want to overdo it or not and there are three three questions that you ask yourself once you come to the expansive story if the expansive story were true where would I begin

[00:53:22] what would I do differently and who would I ask for help so let's use a different example let's say that I am like I'm in a position where I'm I'm hitting a revenue cap I'm making a million a month and

[00:53:35] I want to double that and I'm like oh god that's gonna be so much work if what I'm doing now is a lot of work it's gonna be twice as much work that's the limiting story it's gonna be twice as much work

[00:53:45] let's imagine that what I want is for it to be easy I want it to be less work so if the other story is if I double my revenue and I go from one to two million a month if it was going to be the easiest thing

[00:53:56] if it was gonna be easier if I knew for sure that it was gonna be easy and less work where would I begin right what would I do first where would I begin what would I do differently and who would I ask for help

[00:54:09] if you ask those three questions you will make real the expansive story every time you will make it real when you act as though something's true you create it being true and so I have seen

[00:54:22] especially I and you know with one on one clients I'll just more work through it we'll do the exercise we'll work through it but when I don't have an opportunity to work with somebody in

[00:54:30] that capacity so if like if I'm keynote speaking or if I'm at an event or if I'm doing you know a workshop or something I will take people through this and I'll do some examples live and it is unbelievable

[00:54:41] what it unlocks I want to go back to this idea of nuance just a shift and how you think about something if you have internal conflict because part of you wants to hit two million a month but part of

[00:54:51] you feels like it's gonna be really hard right your GPS system has a glitch it's going to be taking left right not all over the place you're not gonna be clear you're not gonna have a blueprint for how

[00:55:00] to get there you're gonna create all of these obstacles because you actually don't want to get to where you're going so that internal conflict creates huge problems all you need is one tiny little

[00:55:12] mindset shift to get a clear GPS right if I said I find new with certainty it was gonna be easy where would I begin what would I do differently and who would ask for help if I knew

[00:55:23] that I didn't need to hire another employee in order to get it done what would I do first where would I begin how would I think about it differently what would I do differently and who would

[00:55:31] I ask for help you can do this with any limiting story and it is so powerful I was I was leading an event once and there was someone there was really big in real estate and he was

[00:55:42] feeling this kind of internal conflict about moving into kind of a different segment we'll say there was a huge business opportunity probably five hundred million dollar business opportunity over time right that was a trajectory if he expanded his business but he was saying

[00:55:59] I don't know what to do and so because I don't know what to do I don't know if I I don't know if I want to go there feel like it's gonna be hard it's a little bit out of my comfort zone

[00:56:06] is a little bit overwhelming so I said great if you knew that it was going to be the easiest thing that you had ever done that it was going to be easy that you were going to be able to utilize

[00:56:16] all of the skills and tools and knowledge that you had up until this point that you were going to be able to do it your way where would you begin how would you start what would you do differently

[00:56:26] who would you ask for help I took him through that exercise and what he was able to realize by answering those questions is he's been going into new things his entire career he does that all the time

[00:56:37] that he actually has a process for managing the discomfort of doing new things just like we all do right so I helped him to define his process for managing doing new things which he was then able

[00:56:49] to see in this new context instantly the internal conflict was gone who was like oh yeah guess I do do wow that actually does feel really easy that's $500 million it's on the table

[00:57:00] that wasn't on the table before it was not this big life changing it was a subtle shift that unlock $500 million of business down the line so sometimes it really is just this tiny

[00:57:12] subtle little shift in how we think about something that if you say if I knew that what I wanted was possible if I knew I could have it where would I begin that one question alone has you start looking

[00:57:24] and thinking creatively in alignment with this desire that's what we do we're entrepreneurs we think creatively but we block off creative thinking when we are in resistance when we're in conflict it's gonna be hard or I can't we do not engage our prefrontal cortex we do not ignite

[00:57:40] our highest levels of thinking in order to ignite those highest levels of thinking you need to ask better questions and so what I would do from here for all of your listeners is when you hit

[00:57:49] the limiting story ask yourself what is the expansive story what do I want what is the infinite possibility option right within the context of a minute possibility what what I want most

[00:57:57] if I knew that that was possible if I knew in fact that it was certain ask those three questions and you will begin the process hmm what level so need to ask those three questions I need

[00:58:11] dig in that's awesome thank you for that at what level do I need to get clear on if I know it is possible or what it looks like you know what is that you know what I want to achieve

[00:58:26] whatever that is you know I want to lose 20 pounds or I want to gain 20 million number of new or I want to get you know whatever this outcome is that is limiting belief and now I'm

[00:58:36] reframing and I'm starting ask questions and say I want to get there what level of clarity because I know the third one was who do I need to get involved and and I'd love to talk about that but

[00:58:47] I'm just kind of curious how deep do I need to go kind of in that clarity so I think those three questions are how you gain the clarity right if it feels really fuzzy I want to gain 20 million

[00:58:59] and revenue I want to lose 20 pounds right it's like God how would I do that but as soon as I ask the question if I knew with certainty that I was going to gain 20 million and revenue this year

[00:59:08] where would I begin you start asking that question and you sit with that question it will kick start the highest levels and do you ever see the movie limitless you like takes the pill right we use

[00:59:21] such a tiny fraction of a percentage right of the brain power that we have if you ask better questions you will unlock higher levels of thinking you will and so the clarity is not

[00:59:33] something you create in advance the clarity happens when you ask the question as soon as you ask where would I begin you start coming up with answers right if your brain

[00:59:43] hates an open loop what does that mean it means your brain hates unanswered questions if you ask a question your brain will find an answer if you ask why am I not good enough your brain will find an answer

[00:59:54] if you ask how do I get to 20 million this year your brain will start to come up with answers so the clarity happens through the exercise of asking the question so you really spend time sitting with and

[01:00:04] time not months 15 minutes right you really spend 15 minute saying where would I begin what what I do you start brainstorming you're going to start coming up with ideas that's going to give you direction that's going to pull you into something right what would I do differently the other

[01:00:19] question you can ask is how would I think about it differently so if I knew with certainty that my revenue this year was going to be 20 million and not 10 million how would I be thinking

[01:00:28] about this differently what I might say is you know what I actually have an arm of my business where my revenue is so low in that arm of my business yet I'm bleeding out so much energy if I was at 20

[01:00:39] million I wouldn't even have that arm of my business right or I have these specific clients that are are representing so much of my annual income why am I not better utilizing these types of

[01:00:53] clients are why am I looking for lower level offers when these higher level offers or why do I keep trying to do these high ticket things when my audience is expanding at this you know exponential

[01:01:03] rate so if I knew I was going to have a 20 million dollar business on 10 million dollars how would I think about my business differently right so these questions are the thing that give you the

[01:01:12] clarity they give you the direction they start to give you the ideas and then the who would ask for help sometimes who would ask for help is I would call my mentor sometimes I would ask my wife

[01:01:22] right if if she can help me with x, y and z I realize I'm actually really you know there's a lot of stressful energy around this one thing I would completely cut it out of my life so there's so many

[01:01:34] different things that will come up from this from this clarity exercise of the three questions and the who would ask for help sometimes it's who would I delegate it to sometimes I would call a friend

[01:01:45] and say hey can you brainstorm this with me for a minute I've got this idea sometimes it's I would bring it to my mastermind again sometimes it's I would I would vision it out with my partner sometimes

[01:01:55] it's I would ask an investor sometimes it's I'd ask a client sometimes all you need is a testimonial so there's so many different directions this can go but it will become very clear through the

[01:02:07] clarifying exercise of asking the questions okay and then tying this back into what we were saying these will help create the clarity these questions which is amazing because that's

[01:02:18] the part that can be the most frustrating I find and then and then I to say what you said earlier it's not that I'm saying this is some future version I'm trying to be it is uncovering these

[01:02:33] things will help me uncover who I really am all the extra layers should the should the false hood shed the other layers that I don't need yeah I've got two things that also are I think

[01:02:46] adjacent to the clarity piece that I want to say for what you just brought up the first one is the person that we truly are has their own way of doing things and we have our entire life I know

[01:03:00] when I was a kid I had my way but our way is not very important when we're a kid right things need to happen your parents way my way was I wanted to throw my spaghetti on the floor right my parents

[01:03:09] way is that might be getting goes in my mouth so we learn from a very young age that there's a right and a wrong way to do things and so we abandon our way which impacts our genious zone it impacts

[01:03:19] our values it impacts our business one of the ways that we create clarity is by asking not what's the right way to do this but what is my way the more we focus on our unique way of doing things

[01:03:31] the more space we open up so part of the clarity as well is asking not what's right and wrong but what's my way what is my unique way what is the way that lights me up I'll give an example

[01:03:41] I have a a lack of interest in social media right any good business needs a strong social media right I don't why because it's not my way I like to talk to people like I love to talk to people

[01:03:56] so if I'm gonna make a course I have to do a live course and film it me sitting behind a computer talking to myself not gonna happen that's how I feel about social media so if I have something to say

[01:04:05] I'll make a post but you need a really big audience right of course that's what you need in order to do a business that's the right way to do it well I will tell you that is not my way my way is

[01:04:16] I utilize the relationships I have for all sorts of javies and partnerships I've had you know feels like falling out of the sky people that I have served say hey this was so valuable for me

[01:04:29] like would you be open to doing you know of course with me and I'll sell it to my audience or would you be open to doing a webinar that I can sell to my audience or would you be open to

[01:04:40] so there are people who have audiences that are 15 times the size I could ever have imagined building myself and then all of a sudden I have access to their entire audience I did a webinar that went out to a mailing list of a hundred thousand people

[01:04:57] that I never had to talk to on Instagram in order to have right so there was a hundred thousand people that I just got access to and I didn't have to do a thing other than be myself my way is

[01:05:08] relationships why except the core value I value relationships they are above all one of the most important things to me and naturally by doing things my way these partnerships arose I didn't

[01:05:20] do it on purpose I didn't realize that was going to be how my business was going to expand but through these relationships I've been introduced to people and then they've asked hey will you do this

[01:05:29] you know for my executive leadership team and through these introductions my business has has walked into rooms that I never in a million years would have known how to get into on my own

[01:05:39] and so part of the authenticity is getting what is your way what is your natural inclination what are the things that you are naturally gifted at what are the things that give you energy

[01:05:48] and make you come alive if you can do things that way you'll cut the line every time right you'll cut the line every time and so I think that that's a really important piece of the puzzle

[01:06:00] I think the other thing in the the kind of becoming is the more that you do this exercise of clarity from the expansive stories and the more you lean into your way the more you find

[01:06:17] that things will kind of unfold naturally and I think as an entrepreneur we've been taught if you don't do it it's not going to happen you got to make it happen so there's a lot of trying

[01:06:25] to be three stems ahead of yourself you're always trying to figure out where am I going and how's it going to look and so we're used to clarity actually being a little bit more like

[01:06:33] control and the more we untangle clarity in control the easier things become there's a difference between I need to be able to vision and dream and actually saying I don't need to understand

[01:06:45] every goal and how it's going to work out I don't need to know that all I need to know is how do I want to feel what are my values do I want to create a business that feels like freedom

[01:06:56] that feels like creativity that feels like curiosity that feels like connection that feels like novelty and when you follow that instead of these are the goals and these are what it needs to

[01:07:07] look like that's control and control doesn't make you come alive right when you move out of that and you move into these expansive stories and you move into my way and you move into how do I

[01:07:17] want to feel the clarity will be very natural and you won't be able to map it out the way that you're used to and so that might feel like it's not clarity it's a different type of clarity

[01:07:29] right it's an internal clarity rather than an external clarity and that internal clarity will shine a flashlight on a path that will lead to so much more fulfillment and such a different

[01:07:40] and more creative way of growing inside of your business I love that internal clarity right because I think being kind of a learn it all you know learn so many things so many different speakers coaches advisors

[01:07:55] books and it's just every you know every time you turn around there's a different way to do goals there's there's the zone of genius and Patrick and the only six types of work in genius

[01:08:04] and unique ability from Dan Sullivan and I feel like in just being curious and it's like well I want to see what each of them says about me and but this is external not internal

[01:08:15] and so I love that because I don't have to pull all those you know the vivid vision and all those other things into this to really say what does this really mean and and I think you

[01:08:26] hit something that I see a lot which is control right there's I know it's an illusion but I you know even at this age I still realize I'm aware of my emotions how I feel but at the end of

[01:08:41] the day when my day went as planned I mean generally like it and even if it's just a meeting I rescheduled you know it's like even if you just sit in a instead of ham sick I still

[01:08:54] under the podcast with you can we reschedule like how just like oh my date it you know like there's this real like you know under current of like I'm trying to control even though like I have no control

[01:09:05] over you know the fact that you came down with the sniffles or you know or something else or somebody else has some issue that needs to change and so I think that's freeing what you're saying

[01:09:17] and also hard personally it's like I just crave the and I don't think it's from like I don't want to control people you know I don't want to be controlling I don't want to be a micro manager

[01:09:28] those are not my nature but I think it's kind of this I need to perform then I have these expectations and those look like this and that means that you know I had to get this many things done today

[01:09:42] or accomplish this many tasks or write this much towards a new book or whatever that milestone is. I love the internal training. I'd also love to talk about control for a minute and if it's okay

[01:09:54] I'll just use what you shared as an example so what we think we want is control right we think we want control we don't want control we want safety if you knew with certainty that you were

[01:10:05] going to be safe and everything was going to be okay you would not want control you'd want adventure you would want fun you would want joy what you think you want is control no one ever wants control

[01:10:14] so what happened you see when you say that I get it like when you say that I totally agree with you like I say I want control and then you tell me that you know you want adventure and you want

[01:10:23] novelty and you want curiosity I'm like yeah I actually want that so like a five seconds later I'm agreeing disagreeing with self and agreeing with you so go ahead but it's just it's just

[01:10:33] such an interesting frame. Yeah well the so there's two pieces one of them is getting that we think we want control when you get that you don't want control you want safety you reframe

[01:10:41] right it's like oh I really want to be in control and they're like wait a minute if I knew I was safe I would not want to be in control control actually is not that interesting or fun I would want these

[01:10:50] other things that's the first step but the second thing is taking care of safety because if you still don't feel safe you can want those things all day long but you are still going to be oriented

[01:10:59] around safety so using you as an example of as a kid you felt like right we're poor if things don't get taken care of then we're not going to be okay what do I need I need control right

[01:11:10] I need to be able to control everything and one way to look at it is you needed control and another way to look at it is you didn't need control you need a direction

[01:11:18] you didn't need control you needed a direction if your childhood you would said well there's no way I'm going to be in control but I need to know I have direction I need to know that there's a

[01:11:26] light at the end of the tunnel I always need to know I have direction I need to know that the trajectory is up I need to know that the trajectory is toward the light you would have been completely

[01:11:36] dissenterous that in control and you would have been obsessed with knowing your direction and so that shift instead of safety being associated with control safety would have been associated with direction right you see the difference hmm yeah so as long as I know the

[01:11:55] direction to go having our star I have a plane I have a job whatever that is then that's the direction I don't need the control all the variables work like understand all the and you can really actually feel that like truly feel that that feeling of being like

[01:12:13] wait a minute I don't want to be in control I need to know I have direction I need to know that there's light at the end of the tunnel for me and for my family so I am obsessed with always

[01:12:21] finding the light I'm obsessed with knowing my direction having that internal compass where I know where I'm going your whole life you would stand in that direction you wouldn't care about control hmm so does this stem from the the different parts between the pre-frontal cortex and

[01:12:42] the amygdala having to do a different like between the emotion and the in the lots yeah so logically we all understand that controls an illusion but emotionally we all tie control

[01:12:53] not all most of us tie control to safety and so you have to actually work through that in order to let it go it doesn't matter if you know something is good for you or bad for you it's a

[01:13:03] relevant right because if we all did what we know we had all be you know seven percent one like what would my favorite quotes of all time as Derek Sivert she said if knowing if knowing more information was the answer we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs

[01:13:19] right or he says they said if more information was the answer we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs so your prefrontal cortex understands that controls an illusion the work that you have to

[01:13:27] do is getting your amygdala to untangle control and safety and so if as a kid whatever your unique situation was right for whoever's listening whatever your situation was if as a kid you

[01:13:38] had gotten that what you wanted was not controlled it was actually something else then you would have oriented around that thing and you can pick something healthy like direction right if you had said

[01:13:47] I didn't actually want to be in control I wanted a feeling of purpose or I didn't want a feeling of control I wanted independence right if you grew up in a chaotic environment what you feel

[01:13:58] like what you wanted was controlled what you wanted was not controlled what you wanted was to get out what you wanted was a lack of chaos what you wanted was independence what you wanted was something else

[01:14:08] and so when you get that you can reorient around that thing and what you will find is the desire for control will just disappear and it really is that simple and it happens that quickly because

[01:14:17] we are that neuroplastic and so there's a super highway right there's a super highway as long as that super highway exists you're going to drive on it there's a reason 10,000 hours if you want to move an

[01:14:27] existing neuro pathway changing behavior that's 10,000 hours but if that neuro pathways broken where you realize that control was never valuable you'll no longer seek it so there's two ways to change 10,000 hours or you can interrupt an existing neuro pathway by getting that the thing that you thought

[01:14:43] was valuable was never valuable as soon as you see it differently it will disappear and so that's where change can be really really fast because the super highways now gone right so do you see

[01:14:54] right is that makes sense yeah exactly you know you don't ask your GPS what just fast you know you can't take the super exactly yeah I just I can't help but relate being a parent

[01:15:10] you know I can see where if you if my children feel protected if they if the things that we be out in half they have they can go and they can explore and they can feel more comfortable

[01:15:26] and then before was before we're going to have kids we decided to get a dog and see if that's arrived and and it did and you know just there's a lot to learn there and and like we were

[01:15:39] in a big fans of like Caesar Milan and just you know learning all the right ways to really really do things well and just with his children but either even in like what Caesar Milan teaches

[01:15:48] with dogs like if you if they become the pack leader like they're aggressive and they're dangerous and you know we had a large dog so we wanted to train really well and but if you were

[01:15:59] essentially what he called the pack leader if you're in control if you set up things they can relax think of lay down and you know you could see it where he does it I've seen it in our kids when

[01:16:10] when they know that we have things under control they can just go be kids and do their own thing and I think that's far out back to my story is a needed direction and probably more

[01:16:22] a purpose maybe more accurately and there was no there was the adult wasn't there saying I've got don't worry about it you know so then that was the illusion of I need to control these things

[01:16:33] because they're not being controlled and so there was no going back to the seasonal honor but so it was no pack leader I have to be that but when you're not ready for that you're not

[01:16:42] you know kind of qualified to do that yet then that creates just this nervous aggressive you know the wrong type of energy for lack of a better way but when there's clear rules

[01:16:53] and a clear direction and and especially if there was just hate here's here's so it didn't even have to be that we weren't in poverty or these things that suddenly happened it could have just been

[01:17:02] you know my job is worried about that you know your job is to provide some income or do something like you still have to do that then okay at least it would be more clear like here's here's a purpose here's something I can't control yeah and you know

[01:17:15] it's it's the idea that freedom without constraints is not freedom right that we need constraints and I think that there's two elements to what you're saying and the first one is really getting

[01:17:25] that if you had had that perspective of my superpower is to be able to find purpose and create purpose from inside no matter where I am or what I'm doing and I'm a purpose oriented you know

[01:17:39] individual then again your life really would be about purpose instead of being about control and I think in so many ways we do that right it's like you are a purpose driven I can tell

[01:17:49] of knowing for you know an hour and change and I think that you are a purpose driven but really to see that your superpower is purpose over control and to really have that story of I am somebody who

[01:18:01] I don't need to control things right I wasn't able to control things as a kid and yet here I am I'm purpose oriented I'm not controlled oriented so it's a really beautiful story but I think the

[01:18:09] other thing that's really great is we become the person that that kid needed right we become that and so now you do provide structure not just for your family but also for yourself

[01:18:24] and so now that young boy gets to the young boy kind of inside of you it's like gets to have this really different experience where you get to hold that for yourself and so going back to the idea of

[01:18:37] like making up for last time by providing for yourself you also get to provide yourself that structure and to say wow that's so nice that now I get to have freedom within the constraints and so

[01:18:46] instead of you know the old paradigm of control it's I've got two things going for me one I'm purpose oriented and two I create structure for myself to make that easier and I think that

[01:18:56] identity really serves you in a way that the control one never could have. Wow that really came full circle they're great that was I just feel like you know you just have this master plan

[01:19:09] or how you talk and how to how to tie all those things together that's just amazing it makes me feel like you know it's the analogy of like are you more comfortable on the top of a

[01:19:19] skyscraper with or without railings right you know because people are like I don't want constraints I don't want limits and I'm like I think we really do you know I think we do want some

[01:19:29] constraints. Yeah I mean that's in a lot of ways what committed relationship is it's within the constraint of choosing you I get to explore levels of intimacy and vulnerability and family and alignment that I wouldn't if I didn't have a single partner right within this container

[01:19:49] I get to experience being a parent if I want to. I get to experience what it feels like to really share all of me right I remember I had this moment with my husband where I

[01:20:03] you know I was very aware that there was a level of me that he was gonna see and I remember the fear I was struggling with health issues and I had really been trying to hold it together and I knew that like if I broke

[01:20:16] it was like it was all gonna come spilling out and I remember crying on the kitchen floor and being like I hope he still loves me you know and him sitting down on the floor with me and holding me and that being

[01:20:27] such a pivotal moment in my marriage to understand that there's a level of feeling held and love that I had never experienced in my life that I experienced in that moment and even though you know it came

[01:20:40] through a hard thing of me struggling with my health that if I had not had that constraint of a committed relationship I wouldn't have shown that to someone I was dating right it was like I

[01:20:51] wouldn't I wasn't ready to show that to other people in my life so within these constraints there are these freedoms that open up it's the freedom to be with someone whose values aligned right my husband

[01:21:03] was absolutely commitment phobic before we got together he didn't want anybody to take away his freedom and what he found with me is that we were very values a lot we want a lot of the same things so

[01:21:14] he was like wait a minute I can still be the person I want to be but I get to do that with you like I don't have to sacrifice those and so it was such a cool thing to watch you know with him

[01:21:24] for him to be like wait a minute I feel more free than I've ever felt in my life because I want to go on these adventures but now I get to do them with you because you want to go on the

[01:21:31] same adventures right and you you are really good at the things I'm not good at and I'm good at the thing right so we bet we get to compliment one another so I do think that these constraints it's

[01:21:41] like creating the environment of appropriate constraints will help us to feel comfortable in expressing whatever parts of ourself we want to express. I love that yes I think if you if you're if you're not in a community relationship you have your single you know you might think

[01:21:59] it is restrictive right to choose one person but as somebody that's been married for over 18 years now I'm very thankful that I am in that community relationship and you get that deeper level and I

[01:22:13] know that sometimes it's taken like used at health issues and other things that we've had or just to bring you to your knees and you feel more vulnerable than you ever would and that

[01:22:26] may sound like I love that you share that because I think a lot of people don't want to say that they don't want to admit that even to their own partner they don't want to they want to appear

[01:22:34] great they want to appear polished you know super and I think that's the kind of vulnerability that makes that journey together so much better than a lot. Yeah yeah 100% I mean even just having

[01:22:47] a singular business right the constraints of your business give you the freedom to build something right if you're trying to build 15 businesses and this is one of the challenges I see with people

[01:22:57] who are at a kind of lower level and haven't reached those higher levels it's because that that inability to commit they want the freedom they want the space to they've 15 side hustles if you 15 side hustles your business is not getting the attention that it needs right it's like

[01:23:14] you sometimes need to create those constraints and I think for a lot of people they see other businesses as a backup plan they're not a backup plan they are stealing the energy and focus

[01:23:24] an attention that you're primary business needs and I'm not saying you can't have more than one business but if you're going to have more than one business it needs to be strategic you need to be

[01:23:31] at a place in your development as an entrepreneur where you can manage that it can't be that you've three businesses because two of them are backup plan it has to be you have three businesses

[01:23:40] because you can effectively run and manage three businesses and you have the right people in place to be able to do that or the structure of the business is such that that is achievable so I think

[01:23:51] yeah I think that freedom within constraints is really important well Britt I I just love this this has been such a gift thank you for being on MSP mindset how can folks connect with you how

[01:24:01] can they get more of this how they can how can they get connected to you find you even if it's on social or website or wherever yeah I've enjoyed this so much too thank you so my website is just

[01:24:13] BritLeftgo.com be our ITTLEF K O E BritLeftgo.com plug in the show notes if you're interested in one-on-one coaching definitely book a call I've only got like one or two slots I'm not available

[01:24:28] right now but I but definitely book a call I would love to connect with anybody also if anybody's interested in you know Pyram speaker anything like that go ahead and book a call and if you want to

[01:24:40] follow me on social media my Instagram is a bunch of beautiful mountain pictures I highly recommended it's a lot more personal than professional but it's just Brit Adventures one word BRIT adventures

[01:24:50] but definitely check out my website I have some upcoming things that I will be offering for a while it was really just kind of the more corporate and the one-on-one but I've been doing a little bit

[01:25:00] more group stuff and courses and things that are at a lower price point because one-on-one coaching is definitely a significant investment and so um other ways to to work with me but please uh book

[01:25:11] a call if you're interested in connecting more and again thank you so much for having me I really enjoyed this. Well definitely have that in the show notes thank you so much for the gift of your time

[01:25:20] I have loved this thank you so much for being here Brit.