Welcome to the Ambitious Introvert Podcast, created especially for introverts, empaths, and highly sensitive entrepreneurs to help you build, grow, and scale a successful, sustainable business. I'm your host, Emma Louise Parks business and mindset coach for ambitious introverts. After 17 years working as an air traffic controller, the ultimate fast-paced high stimulus, extrovert-friendly role. My mission now is to show introverts that they too can create big results and success because of who they are, not in spite of it. I focus on introvert friendly business and marketing strategy to help you switch overwhelm for clarity, confidence, and clients.
Hello, welcome to the Ambitious Introvert Podcast. Happy new Year. Happy 2023. And over the next few weeks, We are taking a little break from guest episodes and I am gonna be sharing this very special series with you called How I Think About Dot, dot, dot. And this was Born Out of me realizing that so much of my own growth and so much of how I've changed and evolved over four years in business.
Has not been by the things that I've done or the things that someone else has taught me, but by how I've changed the way that I think about things. So, These are very loose, unscripted episodes that I just basically wanted to empty my brain and share with you how I think about certain things. So hopefully some of it will resonate.
Hopefully there might be ways of thinking that I have that you could find useful. As always, you know, take what resonates and leave. Leave What doesn't? None of this is to say, this is the only way to think about things or the right way to think about. Because obviously that's not the case. We're all unique and there are so many different viewpoints, but this is the way I think about.
This is the way I talk to clients about things. So I want us to be able to share that in the hope that you'll be able to just take maybe the odd golden nugget that can really help you. And I want to start off with how I think about mindset, because mindset can feel really loaded. It's something that's everywhere in the online space.
It's something that is vitally important to us growing our own. It's also something that I know can feel very overwhelming, and I've had many clients who are. Newer to mindset work, they, they feel very confused by it because it feels really intangible. They're like, but what does it mean? What is a mindset?
And I wanna break down a couple of basics around the subject and then tell you my own thoughts about it, my own experiences, what I've seen to be true for myself and my clients. And like I say, this is very much like stream of consciousness, . I'm just gonna share what comes up and trust that it will be helpful to.
So how I think about mindset, I think about mindset as non-negotiable. I think about the my mindset practice as being part of my business, and I always strive to have a growth mindset Now. The word mindset itself comes from the book by Carol. We, she is a Stanford professor and she was the first person to actually coin the term and talk about the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.
So we talk about growth mindset, that's people. Who believe that their success depends upon their own time and effort. They recognize that they've got skills and talents and intelligence, but they think that if they consistently and persistently aim to improve those, that that will be the case. So, They generally have more resilience.
They embrace challenges, you know, they work past obstacles. They learn from feedback and they look to others for inspiration. So it, it's very much an energy of possibility and believing that they can overcome things, they can change things and take in that personal power. A fixed mindset. On the other side is people that see themselves as very rigidly fixed and can't change.
So, If we take that, that we have our own skills and talents, someone with a fixed mindset would be like, well, I'm good at that and I'm not good at that. And that would be it. Like there's no room for maybe improvement or to overcome a challenge and grow from something. It is very much like you are born with it or you're born with this amount of skill or intelligence, or this is the way I think and that cannot be changed.
It's a much more black and white thinking like we good and or bad at something. And a fixed mindset means that we are more likely to give up easily or be less responsive to feedback because we might take it as a negative and go, oh, someone told me that I did that badly, so there's no point in me doing it.
So. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea about the difference between the two and that you can see the, obviously cultivating a growth mindset is the most helpful when we are running our own business. So while these are great descriptions, the word itself, the word mindset, I think can be a little bit misleading.
And I think it's because of the set at the end of it, because it does feel very fixed and very rigid, and it feels like a mindset is one. and it's permanent. And I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that. So rather than saying like, you have this mindset and it's bad or good, I like to think of it more about, are our thoughts helpful for what we want to achieve?
So rather than putting it as like our whole mind or our whole brain looking at it as individual thoughts and are they helpful for where we want to? So science has proven over and over again that the brain is malleable. Our brain can change, does change over time, but that we can actually control those changes, which is amazing.
So when we think a thought over and over again, we create what's called a neural pathway, which is essentially a shortcut in the brain. And this is created by neurons and they send signals from one part of the brain to the. and these neural pathways are what enables certain things to become a. So it's why you can make coffee or drive your car or brush your teeth or do these things with relative ease probably while you're doing something else and you're not really actively thinking about it.
Because if our brain had to do that, it would use so much energy each day if we had to like consciously and methodically think about every step of these things that we do on repeat over and over. So it creates these neural pathways and they're almost like a subconscious shortcut and it's just energy preservation.
That's just survival. So when these neural pathways are created by thoughts that don't service. And go up against what it is that we want to create. This is where we get stuck in this fixed mindset. So most of these are from our formative years around up to the age of seven, when the brain is incredibly malleable, but also we don't have the cognition of an adult to be able to.
Have a frame of reference against things. So maybe you see your parents arguing about money when you are, you know, five and you surmize that money is bad, which, you know, you don't, you, you can't go deeper than that. You, you don't have the adult understanding and depth to give it some nuance and complexity.
It's just like we're arguing about money. So money is bad. And now if you are an entrepreneur and you are charging for your services and you are asking for sales and you're having to set your own prices, then you can see how this programming that you've carried for so long subconsciously can work against you.
And this is where we can make the decision to create a more empowering thought that's more useful to where we wanna be and overwrite that set neural pathway with a new one. So all change. Starts with a change in our thoughts, and then it gains traction when we continue to change our thoughts on a regular basis.
So for this to happen, we need to be aware of our thoughts to start off. , and that might sound kind of weird, but there's a technical term for it in coaching called metacognition, and it is the ability to recognize our own thoughts. So we need to recognize them before we can assess if they're useful or not.
Now, a lot of people just go through life on autopilot, thinking their thoughts and taking them as fact and believing them, taking them as part of their identity and not really question. Whether they're helpful or not, not really questioning whether they could change them or whether it would benefit them to change them.
So I always think about this with curiosity. Like, can you notice your thoughts rather than judge them? Or rather than just believe them? Can you, can you abstractly take them and notice, so maybe I do something and my thought is, oh, but that's gonna be. Like, rather than make myself wrong for that, or rather than deciding that that's the truth, then I could go, Hmm, okay.
I th my brain's just told me that that's gonna be hard. Why does it think it's gonna be hard? Where has that come from? How is it helping me thinking it's gonna be hard? It's actually true. Is it gonna be hard? Hmm. Let me investigate this a little bit more. So that's how I think about those things that come up is with curiosity rather than just accepting them or rather than judging myself or judging the thoughts.
It is a very open curiosity. So lots of stuff online is about instant in commerce, mindset fixes, and there are many modalities out there, like different energy modalities, R T T, hypnotherapy, N L P, of which I am a practitioner. I 1000% believe that these modalities have merit, and I really think that they can be helpful, especially to kickstart change.
But what I have seen in my own experience and what I've seen over and over again with clients is that it's actually the unsexy daily mindset work that has the biggest effect on our lives. As much as we are in that instant gratification society and we want the instant fix, it's very appealing. That's why people pay thousands for it, but ultimately they work really well in tandem.
So when you can access these modalities that get very quickly into the subconscious or create like this instant change, and then you can do that in tandem with daily journaling or daily E F T or affirmations or whatever it is that works for you. , that blend of maybe a boost or a, or a quick start, but then solidifying this.
in a daily mindset practice for an extended period of time, that's when the big shifts happen. Think of it a little more like, I don't why I always use exercise analogies, like I'm not the biggest exerciser, but it makes sense. So imagine someone goes on like fitness bootcamp, so they go away for like two weeks and it's Fitz Bootcamp and they're working out three times a day and they're only eating really healthy food and all of this.
Of course they're gonna like have my energy, they feel better. They're gonna lose weight, they're gonna build muscle, you know, whatever it is that they get from the end of it. But then if they go home and carry on with their just normal routine that they did before, of course, that they're gonna get back to the place that they were.
Now, that's not to say that the, the bootcamp is bad, but. What works best is having the bootcamp and then going back to their daily life with enhanced or improved habits that is gonna serve them to continue on the right track. So we're not gonna do bootcamp for the rest of our life day in, day out, but we're gonna adapt and make changes and create new habits that support the change.
And that's really the way I see these, like quick fix modalities along with the longer term consistent, like daily. So one example that I use a lot with clients is the gap versus the gain and collecting their achievements and wins and celebrations. So our brain will quickly wanna go to, you haven't done enough, you haven't hit your goal, you haven't done this.
But we are really quick to discount all the things that we have done. So what I have found is that clients who religiously share their wins, like however small it could be. Like, I got an amazing cup of coffee today. Like that is a win. I have clients that share these things every day with me in Slack or you know, damn near every day.
And I have seen these clients have much more resilient because they are literally focusing their brain on what they've achieved. Okay? That in and of itself is a mindset practice. So rather than thinking they haven't done enough, they spend time each day focusing on everything that they have achieved.
This then creates that new neural pathway, and then as that gets established, the brain automatically starts to seek out the good, right, because it's familiar and our brains love familiarity. . And I think where we can get tripped up is, and I know this is something that I have been told in the past by a coach, is that I had a bad mindset.
So, you know, very common practice is people to be told when you've just got a bad mindset and you just need to change it and get over it. But that's very kind of shame in that's almost like we're somehow wrong or need to be fixed or like it's our own fault that we are not getting results. What's actually happening is we're probably thinking some thoughts that aren't aligned with what we want to achieve.
Those thoughts were probably relevant when we were young or at some point, but now that our goals have changed, now ambitions change, they're not necessarily relevant anymore. It's important to remember that we have power to change those thoughts, like it's completely within us, but it's not as easy as like, oh, I decide not to think that anymore.
Absolutely. That is a great starting place and ma setting that intention and making that decision is gonna be huge. But then it's the ongoing habits. That we do on a regular basis that create those new neural pathways. And that's why it's a mindset practice, right? That's why it's not just like mindset.
Once it's a practice, it's like yoga. Another another exercise analogy, but like most people don't go to their first yoga class and are able to do a headstand or the splits or you know, whatever, or get into some weird con. Position, it's the same thing. It's like building a mu say building a muscle at the gym, right?
You're physically shaping your brain. You are your thoughts that you notice, and then choose to create practices to create different ones. Physically change your brain. They actually change the tissue in your brain. But just like, you know, we don't get a six pack from doing two sits and then like not doing anymore.
It needs that repetition and the focus of the daily practices to be able to get results. So where I think. Like I say, the term can be a bit all encompassing and maybe a little bit either intangible or scary because you feel like, oh, I have to change my entire brain, which is not true at all. But I like to think about mindset as the way we think and make decisions when we are in our natural.
State. So on a day-to-day basis, so when we're driving the car, when we're making the coffee, when we are brushing our teeth or whatever, that, that to me is our natural state, not how we make decisions when we're on sales call or how we make decisions when we're under pressure at work or any of those things.
It's like this, what? What are our thoughts and how do we decide things on a day-to-day basis? Some of those thoughts and decisions will be, and some won't. But if we are willing to commit that time and energy to consciously change in the ones. We notice, don't support us in reaching our goals. Like know that it will pay off.
It's not instant. And like any type of exercise, it feels like way harder at the beginning. But then as you use that muscle more, it starts to become easier. So how else I think of mindset is I think of it as. Part of my business, just like recording this podcast is part of my business, or marketing is part of my business, or get on calls with clients like it is a task in my business.
And so it gets prioritized and scheduled as such. Like I don't get to the end of the day and go, oh, I'd a lot in my business today, so I'm too tired to do my mindset work because few days of doing that and I know that I'm not gonna feel good and we don't want that. It's always prioritized and scheduled as such, usually at the start of my day, because then it's a non-negotiable and then nothing else gets done until it gets done.
And I like to think of it, you know, we call it mindset work in a lot of places, which work doesn't always, you know, have the best connotation, but I do like to think of it as a practice so it feels less like work and more like fun. Now. I love growth. In general anyway, so, you know, for the most mindset work is enjoyable for me.
Okay. It's not so much fun when like sticky things come up or I'm trying to, you know, jump a barrier or get over a thought that's been been holding me back. That can feel pretty uncomfortable. But for the most, I enjoy the growth and I enjoy to see. How far I've come, but I like to have options. So maybe that's journaling.
Maybe it's E f T. Maybe it's writing out my goals or desires. It could be meditation. I do. To be magnetic work. I do their pathway membership, which I think I've talked about before. I'll link that in the show notes. It could be reading expansive books or listen to podcasts or gratitude practice or relaxing without feeling guilty.
I mean, that has been a journey for me in and of itself to get to that point where I can relax and, and feel good about it and not like I should be doing something else. Obviously, I work with coaches, you know, that helps with my mindset practice. Sometimes affirmations not so much. They're not like the biggest thing for me, I, I do fear inventories around certain things.
I've got vision boards on my phone, on my laptop. Like those are just some of the things like off the top of my head that I have to dip in and out of. So I'm not doing the structured like work every day of the same three. But it's knowing that I have these different options and they're, they're things that work for me.
They're things that make me feel good. They're things that I see results from. So making sure that I'm incorporating those, that is one way that I think about my mindset practice. And with clients, we often look to see if there's a belief that's not congruent with what they want to achieve. So like the money is bad thing.
Okay? If they wanna make money and they've got this belief of money is bad, then there's. It's not great. So in that case, we kind of look and decide a new belief that we want to install instead, and then we look at ways that we can integrate that on a consistent daily basis. So not just a couple of days of journaling and then, you know, not bothering anymore or doing e f T for a week and then being too busy and go, yeah, I, I forgot, like, but incorporating elements that they can do day in, day out for the long term until that new belief is solidified.
So, Maybe that sounds daunting or it sounds like, ugh, can't I just go and. Be hypnotized and it's all killed and fixed. But really in my experience, like I say, and I've been trained in a lot of these modalities and I have a a lot of respect for them, but from what I've seen in practice over and over again, it is really this mix of that if that floats your boat, But with the long-term commitment to building that muscle and that practice, you know, when people talk about the work, do the mindset work, I always think of that.
I think it's that long-term commitment is actually the work. So to conclude in how I think about mindset, that's pretty much it. I think that we have more. than we often give ourselves credit for, and that the ability to change our mindset absolutely comes from within us. It's not an external thing that we can go and purchase or make happen.
We can only make it happen internally. So all of those tools that I mentioned, you know, that I incorporate into my practice other than the coaching, are either free or extremely like financially accessible. I think with. Other than coaching and to be magnetic, I think everything else is you can access for free, which you know is amazing.
Of course, working with a coach who can hold space for you, provide reflections, accountability, help you cultivate a practice, and that is extremely useful. And I do that myself and of course I support my clients in that way, but, If you're thinking about mindset at all, and that isn't an option for you right now, the thought I would love you to take away is that you can absolutely create change within yourself and by yourself.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ambitious Introvert Podcast with me, Emma Louise Parks, if you enjoy this show, please, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review on iTunes. As a thank you, one liquor reviewer each month will. 60 minute one-on-one coaching session with me where you'll get the clarity and confidence to attract your ideal clients.
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