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Self Imposed Limits

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Starting the conversation:

How do we find our self imposed limits?

Host: Jessica Dewell
Guests: Jen Coken, JW Rayhons, Michelle Shakti Anne

What You Will Hear:

There is an inside game and an outside game.

What we believe influences our adaptability.

Limiting beliefs come from the struggle for acceptance, attention, and love.

The way (and how much) we talk to ourselves is what can change our beliefs.

When we are afraid, we have a go – to action.

We have the choice to reprogram what we believe.

The hard reality of what our self imposed limits do to us – JW shares a story.

How we use our strengths to show up to difficult situations.

The a-ha moments of awareness – Jen shares a story.

The power of knowing what we want.

Each of us leads with our example.

You can always fall back to the facts.

We have multiple generational DNA.

Combine strengths into roles and responsibilities.

Our values matter – it’s what we know doesn’t change when everything else does.

We can embrace what we can do and more of what others can do.

Experiences shape how we think.

Four steps to create deep rooted confidence.

Know the measure of success for your organization.

It’s BOLD to seek out and change your own self-imposed limits.

Notable and Quotable:

Jen Coken - p243 - Self Imposed Limits

- p243 - Self Imposed Limits

Michelle Shakti Anne - p243 - Self Imposed Limits

Jess-Dewell - p243 - Self Imposed Limits

Transcript

ANNOUNCER
Welcome. This is the Bold Business Podcast. We want to thank our listener supporters who keep this podcast ad free. Find out more at Red Direction dot com forward slash listener supported. Your business has many directions you can travel. The one true direction of your company creates the journey for you to move toward a new, exciting level. We call this the Red Direction. In today’s program, we delve into one idea. This idea is for you to apply to the opportunities and challenges you face. The idea will support you as you work on ever present situations, including how to stay competitive in a changing market, how to break through the business plateau, and how to anticipate the changing expectations of your stakeholders. This podcast will provoke ideas and will give you insights to be inspired. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20 year track record of business excellence with strategy and operations overlap. Your path comes from consistently working from the special place, your unique true north. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell
Welcome. I’m glad you’re here today. We’re talking about self imposed limits. And this is a big deal today. It’s a big deal because it impacts our confidence. It allows us to have other information and insights that give us some sense of dimensionality, our relationship to where we are in the moment, and the relationship that somebody else has to us, as well as to the moment that we are sharing. Within this program, we have three amazing guests JW Rayhons, Jen Coken, and Michelle Shakti Anne. All three share great stories and insights about where self limiting beliefs come from, how they handle them, how they’ve learned about handling them, and some personal stories. As we go through, we’re going to find out why it’s so important today. Cambridge neuroscience teams are uncovering new information about the way that dopamine is tied to the way we learn from our mistakes as well as what drives our motivating behaviors. There are experts like Michael Shermer, who wrote The Believing Brain, and he talks about the fact that first we decide what to believe, and then we explain the reasons behind it. And Gallup in their extensive research also has amazing statistics that impact what we’re doing and how we show up to our self imposed limits. And the reason we’re talking about this, and what you can do with this information today, is to recognize how and where your limiting beliefs may be showing up, and put some attention and focus on it which will change not only your relationship to both stressful and joyful situations, it will also change your relationship with yourself to increase confidence and be sure when you’re showing up and really showing up. To jump right in and start off this conversation about this inside game, what’s going on in our head, how we’re showing up, the confidence we have or don’t have, the joy we have or don’t have. So there are some elements in leadership to take into account. And Jen Coken,, a life coach of 20 years, a comedian, and a best selling author helps CEOs overcome their self made limitations and reach new levels in their business and their personal lives. She’s setting up the conversation right here.

Jen Coken
Who we’re showing up as a leader, in our home, and in our work life with our friends, who are we being as a leader, that’s the inside game. That’s your capacity to show up in a way that you want to show up in the world. And that’s me-to-me, that’s my relationship to myself, and that had to thine own self be true. It’s so important, because if we’re not being true to ourselves, there’s no way we can be true to anyone else. And that’s what Shakespeare was talking about when he had that phrase. That is always the inside game and that game has always going to be played. It’s not like it’s just inside and then it’s outside. We always want to be working on growing. Exactly developing. What’s that next expression of who I am? Am I adapting to the changes around me? Or am I resisting?

Jess Dewell
Right, right from the get go, are we adapting? Or are we resisting? That’s interesting because the fact that our thinking brain weighs so much in our life, that our ego, what helps keep us protected, is deciding what to do with all the information we have. And in fact, Michael Shermer in his book, The Believing Brain, sets this up. And the big idea from him is that first we decide what to believe. And then we decide how to explain it. The reasons that we have for believing what we believe,. And so are we really adapting? That is a very good question. Jen shares a story with us about adapting.

Jen Coken
There’s a great story between a coyote and a murrelet. A murrelet is a type of bird. And they’re endangered. And they live in old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. And the murrelet refuse to adapt to the changing world around it as they were tearing down trees and all that kind of stuff. And it’s on the extinct list. There’s very few left. But then you have the coyote, and you and I know — having lived in Colorado and you living there — your coyote is like, Hey, I’m just checking the trash can just do what you had for dinner to see if there’s anything for me. Coyotes have adapted. There’s actually 19 subspecies, including some dogs that were bred with coyotes. We see that. So there’s 19 subspecies of coyotes, but here’s what’s distinct about that. The coyote itself has never changed. Always being true to its coyote nature. It’s always going to be a predator, but there are subspecies, meaning there’s still a species called coyote, there’s just different expressions of coyote based on the situation. And we as leaders want to always be looking at what are the different situations I’m in because our career could change, our home life could change. Friendships could change, podcasting, speaking, writing, being an artist, all that kind of stuff will shift and change, not only that it can. It will. And how are we adapting to that? So that’s all the inside game and that’s for a lifetime. As we’re working on that relationship to yourself, I feel we get more and more grounded in who we are. We feel more and more confident about who we are. We begin to true ourselves up to what our North Star is and who we truly are. Which makes that outside game that you spoke of, me-to-one-other, could be your partner in life, could be your manager, looks like a one-to-one, you and one other person. Me-to-team. How am I showing up for my team? What’s a team It could be your families is your team. How am I showing up for my family? Your friend tribe could be your team. And then me-to-many, me-to-my-community, spiritual community, yoga community, work community. So there’s me-to-me, that’s the inside game. That’s ongoing. Alway. There’s me-to-one, me-to-team, me-to-many.

Jess Dewell
Yes, yes, our relationship to each other, yet still being true to ourselves. So being adaptable and having this adaptiveness within us comes from, are we true to ourselves, so we know how to best show up? Otherwise our brain is taking over. Our brain is taking over and saying, whatever it’s saying to us to explain what we’re believing in this moment. So let’s feed it. Let’s feed it from a place of being true to self. Cambridge Neuroscience actually has been doing some amazing research about how dopamine, which is a part of who we are and what our chemistry is as human beings, interplays between what we learn and what motivates us. Specifically, that prediction error. Did we learn from our mistakes and will we do the same mistake again? Or have we learned enough to avoid it next time? Combined with what’s called motivational salient, and that’s our motivating behavior. Why do we do what we do? What’s driving the choice in that moment? And dopamine actually ties the two together so closely that they’re still trying to figure out the full implications of what that means. Really, though, what it means for our podcast today, what it means for you being here, listening and joining in the conversation in all the thoughts that are bubbling up in your brain, as you’re hearing what’s shared, could be a great place to star. This is a concept of practicing awareness around the projection that we have of ourselves. And to share a little bit more about that is Michelle Shakti Anne, She’s your secret weapon. She specializes in the art of relationships, leadership and human transformation. She brings 30 years of corporate experience and training specifically in neuroscience from Harvard University to us today.

Michelle Shakti Anne
We set limits based on our projection of ourselves. From a scientific perspective, there’s internal external demands that we impose on ourselves. So there’s internal ones, how I feel about myself and external people, I kind of feel they don’t like me, or there’s something coming from them. So both of these we impose on ourselves, and it creates more of an ongoing competition inside ourselves, which creates a struggle for acceptance, attention, and love. Those are the three basic things that we need. And those are the things that we see the brain respond to. So it’s these internal and external conflicts. We’re seeing how we feel about ourselves in front of others, and we see how others make us feel. It creates a story that we have about yourself is kind of really what I’m saying. A lot of people tell stories about themselves. And people can relate to that word instead of a neuroscience word. But this story is where the limits start to come in.

Jess Dewell
Ah, yes. Digging in a little deeper, understanding that where our reasoning takes over, tus. hat automatic pilot we have in us, can be reprogrammed. Starts with recognizing that we have an autopilot. That we have something that is generating reasons for what we believe all the time, and that we have a chance to influence what the reasons are that we choose to believe. And the thing is, that takes courage. And it is bold to do it. It’s why we’re talking about it here today. And JW Rayhons says it very well. He’s the president of Rayhons Financial Solutions, and he’s a Gallup certified strength coach. He pursues a mission of helping organizations go after their most significant opportunities. Here’s what he’s saying about what it takes to face our limiting beliefs.

JW Rayhons
You talk about being bold, bold in business. If we think about it, to be bold takes courage. A conversation like that takes courage. It has to do with what are we going to do to get out of the extent of the effort that we put into something. There’s this phrase that I share with our team I share with other people from time to time, which is: We need to talk to ourselves more than we listen to ourselves. That’s how we set in motion the change in belief boundaries.

Jess Dewell
What a great phrase, belief boundaries. I’m telling you, there’s something to be said for what that means. And how do we take that first step? What does that look like? In fact, I’m going to even use an unexpected example, around positivity. When we practice gratitude, and we practice positive beliefs. When that becomes our default, it seems great. Yet, sometimes showing up to a difficult situation and only having gratitude and positivity becomes a shell, it becomes a protective mechanism. And then in and of itself, it could become a limiting belief. I can’t be in this situation, because it’s not positive. Well guess what? Life is filled with a gamut, with a range of situations from extremely hard to extremely in the flow. And we also have another range in there on a different axis. And that would be extremely negative or bad feelings, two extremely positive and good feelings. And there’s so many feelings in there that were what our default go to is could end up being a limiting belief that doesn’t allow us to fully show up and pull out of a situation what we could really pull out of that situation by being more attentive to where we have some limits. And to take that a little bit further, each of our guests brought a story, Michelle is going to start,

Michelle Shakti Anne
Self esteem is central in our emotional life, how we relate to the world for social integration and rejection. Low self esteem is linked to struggle, fear of failure. Self esteem is a sensitivity to challenges. It’s a critical function that we have in it affects many things, from mood, to anxiety, to personality disorders, even. There’s a certain amount of suffering, I’m going to take it from there, there’s a certain amount of suffering that comes from that because there’s unhappiness and an emptiness inside herself when we’re in that state. And that’s what we’re afraid to go to when we stick our head in the sand. When we’re doing that there’s a certain type of fear.

Jess Dewell
Oh, okay, right to the point. Fear. We all experience fear. It is a part of who we are, because it can show up as actually needing to be afraid, or being afraid of the unknown, or not understanding what’s going on. So we withdraw a little.

Michelle Shakti Anne
At one point, you get tired of it. I have gotten tired of my own stories. I have gotten tired of how I act things out. I am getting tired of how I interrelate with a certain type of person makes me feel not good about myself, or a different kind of person makes me feel great about myself. So if I’m staying in a relationship, and my behavior is the same with this type of person all the time, I can choose to reprogram that. I work with a lot of executives, but I work with a lot of just people, regular community people.

Jess Dewell
Michelle is telling us we have a choice. And we must make that choice for ourselves. We must say we are ready to reprogram how we show up to this type of person, this type of situation, this type of opportunity, this type of joy, whatever it may be. And now she’s going to share specifically what she’s doing when she’s working with people like you and me in leadership positions within organizations.

Michelle Shakti Anne
When I’m working with executives, I find they don’t have the ability to connect sometimes to the staff, and they don’t know how to make those connections and build that loyalty and trust. I find a lot of high power executives and lawyers. They’re very successful at work, but they come back home and they don’t understand how to relate in that different situation. So if there’s something that you’re unhappy with, there has to be some kind of emotional play involved. Emotions drive every decision that we make. When there’s something emotional, like pain that we’re suffering, that’s what’s really the precursor for making that change. When you feel there’s some kind of suffering. Because if you think about it, when everything’s going great, I don’t want to change. There’s no place for me to make anything better. It’s just a flow. Only when we’re in do we really want to change,and sometimes it takes that pain to build to a pretty high level?

Jess Dewell
It sure does. In fact, I was at a two day retreat, and I was sharing with somebody about some of the technology we use here at Red Direction. And it was an example for a variety of reasons. And it’s pertinent right here too. We have a piece of technology that does an amazing amount of holding our business administrative tasks and data and processes around interfacing with you and other customers that we have. I don’t like it. It’s hard, it’s clunky. And it’s really expensive. The thing is, we spent so much time and energy as a team learning how to use that software that we’re tied to it now. It’s not that we’re limited in the fact that we know there’s nothing better, because we know there’s a lot better. But the pain that it is bringing us whether it’s through the expenses not high enough, the time that it takes is not big enough. There are a lot of other factors in there. That is like you know what, it is easy. year to deal than it is to move. And I’m talking about technology. We all have stuff like that. What if you thought about that in terms of a relationship? It’s easier to let it go than it is to make a change. And so my question to you would be, what is the extra cost of that that you might not be seeing? How does that actually reduce the amount of connection you have with them? And how much might it actually reduce the ability to get to your end goal as a team or something along those same lines? Here’s what JW says specifically how he feels in situations like this.

JW Rayhons
The first time I remember having a recall of this, it actually came through the feeling of guilt. What we recognize is sometimes these belief boundaries, they’ll show up based on an event that happens in our life that brings that array of awareness or it may show up because sometimes other people will see things in us before we see them in ourselves. For me, this feeling of guilt about the amount of income I had accomplished was because I didn’t really I had a subconscious belief boundary about how much I was capable of earning. And here’s why. My dad worked extremely hard to raise my brothers and I as a carpenter, which means he worked very, very hard, didn’t have much income. And we were always barely making it by, and it usually depended on job to job. In my own life., as I built companies and built teams, I hit a point where I was working really hard. And all of a sudden, I had high income. And I had this realization where all of a sudden, in a month, I had made more than my dad ever made in a year. And I had this great feeling of guilt. And what happened was, is my income went down the next few months after that. And then it’s all of a sudden go, Wait, what happened? Nothing has changed. I’m still doing all the same activity as before. So what happened? So through reflection, that I was able to figure out, why did the results change?

Jess Dewell
Oh, I’m telling you. This is where our heart really can be tender, when we can show up with tenderness that’s needed to our own heart. We can make a big change. Because as JW was saying, in the beginning, it takes courage to look at things that are uncomfortable. And he just shared a story not only of success, but then the resulting sabotage of success because of the tenderness he hadn’t given his heart yet. And when he decided to reflect on that, he decided to look at it, he decided to take a timeout and see what was really going on, this is what he found.

JW Rayhons
It was difficult because then I had to really begin to understand where was that sense of guilt coming from? Why was I feeling it? And then what was I going to do to get beyond it? Because high level of love, high level respect for my dad, I certainly didn’t want to ever make him feel like what he earned was never adequate. We build up all these false thoughts in our heads sometime. Eventually, when I talked to my dad about it, he was proud. He was proud of what I had been able to accomplish. And here in my head, I’ve been thinking, what if he feels inadequate or what if, you know, I make him feel a certain way, or I make him feel better. guilty because what I get to experience or do I even deserve this? Because have I even worked as hard as he ever worked? So we build up all these different thoughts that we create in our head. And then when I actually talked to him, he’s like, “Are you kidding? I’m ecstatic about your success.”

Jess Dewell
Right now I know in your heart of hearts, and you might even have a smile on your face because you can relate. I know I’ve been in a situation, just like JW, where when I showed up, and I said something, the response was like, Who are you? What are you talking about? It is so important that you have this success because it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or you have this experience, even though I never got to have that experience. So our beliefs and where they could be limiting us could show up anytime, anywhere in an unexpected way. And here’s the thing, it could even come from our own past experiences that we have come up with these different ways to cope in the world. It goes back to what I was talking about in relationships. The Cambridge Neuroscience team. Do we learn from our mistakes and what do we learn from them? Talk about this story that Jen shares.

Jen Coken
When I was a teenager, I got into a lot of trouble for it. Got arrested a couple times and probatio. Never went to juvie, but really dealt with that piece of me that was trying to rebel against something. And the funny part was, I was this middle class Jewish kid from the suburbs of Cleveland. So, maa, what I had to rebel against? Like Lord only knows. The Torah is what I’m telling you, No, I don’t know, you know, I was just ticked off at the world. My parents had gone through a divorce, etc. But, rebelliousness, the willingness to think outside the box has certainly gotten me a lot of results in life.

Jess Dewell
Aha, our strength. The skills we rely on when situations get tricky or dicey or difficult, and sometimes when they get too intense, when they’re joyful and positive and exciting. Those reactions that you have are indicators of how you’ve chosen to show up in the world.

Jen Coken
This perspective that you picked up on of being open to whatever comes, I will tell you the moment that I chose that was 15 years ago, and I was sitting in Theodore Roosevelt Island Park, in the middle of the Potomac and Washington DC. And my friend Mike was sitting next to me. And he had brought me there on purpose because I had chosen to sell everything and moved to Colorado, to be with my then boyfriend. And it was the first time I’d ever moved for a man. And I thought any woman that would do something for a man like that was weak or for any partner, man, woman, whoever you’re into, was weak.

Jess Dewell
Oh, here’s another one at a know where. She’s having this amazing situation. And Jen realizes, I have a bias against another group. I have a bias against a certain kind of situation. I can’t do certain things myself because it’s bad for me to do them, and I don’t like it, or I’ve been taught that it’s not acceptable in the world. See how this fits into the rest of her story.

Jen Coken
And I chose it because I was crystal clear. I didn’t want to have regrets when I was 90. And it was a moment in my life when I had been laid off from my job, and he had just moved to Colorado, and we’ve been dating a year and a half, and it was clear he wasn’t going to move anytime soon. In fact, he said to me one time. “Darlin,” he looks kind of like Kris Kristofferson. He was like, “Darlin, I’m never going to move east of the Mississippi.” He was so handsome, so handsome. He’s still is. We don’t stay in touch or anything, but a handsome guy. A Park Ranger, law enforcement Park Ranger, so war uniform and carried a gun, which I found appealing.

Jess Dewell
It’s amazing. When we know what we like, when we know what we don’t like, when we react the way that we were brought up, when we make judgments — which by the way, is our brain helping us out — are they the right ones right now and do they still serve us? Big questions that evolve and come from our reflections around what we might find limiting today, or what might be holding us back today from getting to where we know we must go. I mean, here’s the deal. Jen said it at the beginning. She talked about your true north, who are you? Well, that true north is going to be the cornerstone, the Keystone, maybe even more aptly would be the legend of your ma. This thing that tells you how to read what’s in front of you, as you’re deciding where you’ve been, where you’re at, what you have to go forward, and how and where you want to go forward to. That true north, that red tip on the compass. And so our state of being is tied to how well we know ourselves. How do we show up? And can we see more and go deeper into whatever the situation is to create a win win win as an outcome? There’s some neuroscience behind that.

Michelle Shakti Anne
Neuroscience shows that the employees follow the leaders behavior, whether it’s empathy, whether it’s giving back, it’s stress, anxiety, whatever it is. That’s one thing. So all the people are going to be acting like the leader. If the leader is somebody who gives back and shows empathy and has an open door policy and really cares, that’s going to come through the entire organization. When things are more attracted to you versus you get something. So I teach a lot of sales people in sales, people always want something from you. And what I first teach them is, when they want something from me, it makes me hold back because I can feel that energy. And I teach them about that. Because if somebody tells them something, they feel defensive. And I’m teaching them then around what the brain is doing, because it’s receiving something as a stress, like I’m not sure I can trust you,

Jess Dewell
Right? You know what it’s like not to trust. Michelle hit the nail on the head. And since we have to come internal to look external and how we show up, Jen is sharing a couple of questions that we could use right away right now, while we’re listening to the rest of this program together to help us dig deeper.

Jen Coken
It’s all part of the Human Condition. Neuroscience can explain we have 50 to 60,000 thoughts a day. 80 to 85% are negative. Why? Well, because we our brain, its intention is to keep the thing it’s a brain of alive. And our brains still have that reptilian part called the amygdala. That’s our fight, flight or freeze. We still need that, but we needed that as cave people, otherwise we wouldn’t have survived through the ages. We had to adapt. As soon as you have an experience of being threatened, and it might not even be happening, it’s what I call the distinction between authentic fear and authentic fear. Authentic fear is snowplow coming right at you or your kids are out playing and you know, they just buried themselves in a snowdrift and you see the snowplow coming and you go running out to rescue them. That is authentic fear because life’s in danger. Your life’s in danger, somebody else is. Inauthentic fear is when we’re afraid something’s about to happen that isn’t happening right now. The key thing for the brain and the consciousness that’s layered on top of that, we need that ability to determine danger. But what we forget is we always have a perception about everything.

ANNOUNCER
You’re listening to the ad free listener supported bold business podcast. We’ll return to the show soon, but first, we’d like to take you behind the scenes to give you a peek into what goes into the production of each episode. Again, here’s your host, Jess Dewell.

Jess Dewell
I’d like to take a few minutes and tell you why we do not run ads on the Bold Business Podcast. We’ve chosen to rely solely on you, our listeners, for support. If you’re listening to this, you probably already know what I care about most. I care about the space between you and me, and you and your colleagues. And I care about the work that you do together and the impact that it makes for your business and for your community.

Jess Dewell
The work I do comes from a deep curiosity about what makes businesses work, what makes high functioning teams and what elements truly shapes success. I’ve seen firsthand how information can help people make better decisions and change their results. Curating and presenting this information though is not easy. The vast amounts of information out there, and the overwhelming amount of stuff that demands our attention and time, makes finding useful information, firsthand experience that is actually inspiring, that can help you with the big problems that you’re grappling with, it’s really hard. We do the due diligence for you. I am fortunate to have a great team to help me research and to share this information. And one example is the preparation that it’s done for each program. We choose a question to explore, we look for people with the relevant information and experience. We do research for what the current trends are. And then we put it all together into a well produced program. And then we repeat, and then we repeat. The production of the show notes and supporting information is also comprehensive. This shows in the positive response that we’ve received. People like to see are notable and quotables. They like to see the links that we have to the transcripts, and they like to have links and research to resources and we bet I bet you do too.

ANNOUNCER
And now, let’s return to the Bold Business Podcast for the rest of the show.

Jen Coken
Is my perception real? Usually not? What’s going on with us internally is made up of our mental state, meaning our attitude. Our emotional state, meaning our feelings. Our bodily state, where am I feeling in my body. Our thoughts, including memories. And finally, our perception of things. Perceptions are just that. You’re perceiving something through the lenses of your own eyes and your own experience. So in those moments, when we realize we need to make a decision, or we’re about to screw up, and we know it, I think number one is to stop and be able to determine what are the facts of the situation.

Jess Dewell
What is our perception, and what are the facts in the situation? Jen goes on to tell us more about this.

Jen Coken
And facts are just that. Who, what, where and when. There’s a distinction between your reactive state and your creativity. state. So reactive state is the Oh my god, this is happening. Oh my gosh, that’s happening. It’s that moment when you’re at work and your boss stops by, his passing by on his way to his desk. He’s like, Hey, I’m heading to my office, can you come in in 15 minutes? And all the sudden you’re like, What just happened? What does he want to see me? What did I do? It might be giving you a promotion, you don’t know. But immediately there’s a threat. So, being able to distinguish in that moment. Okay, what’s real? And what’s my perception? Most all of it is perception. How to get to reality is okay, what happened? My boss stopped by. When? just now. What did he say? Coming to my office in 15 minutes. That’s all that happened. That’s it. All right. Great.

Jess Dewell
And the second question is, how will I choose to show up. And Jen digs in to how that choice is our right now.

Jen Coken
So now I can be choicefull in that moment. I can choose how am I going to show up. Am I going to show up defensive, wondering what he wants with me?. Am I going to show up curious? I wonder what he wants? My going to show up excited to find out about the opportunity? Am I going to show up proactive, meaning live, but I want to talk to him about a razor recently, or I’ve been wanting to point out this project that I’d really like to be a part of? So he has his agenda, but I’m going to go in with part of mine. It’s that pause. It’s really important for that moment of that pause to determine what’s real, what’s my perception, so then you can be choosing who you’re going to be. Choosing how you’re going to show up as a leader in that moment.

Jess Dewell
Ah, the choice. Who are we going to be in this moment? How do we want to be in this moment? Now let’s put some context around that. Michelle describes how each and every one of us sees the world, regardless of our training, regardless of where we are in our spiritual path, our professional path, our career path, our life path, we all have something in common. And she’s going to share with us why that’s relevant.

Michelle Shakti Anne
I can still see the world I’m always seeing the world through my past. It’s impossible not to. In addition to the study I’ve done at Harvard and at the American Institute of Stress, I’ve worked with a guru for five years intensely in seven years overall. And so I integrated philosophy, an Eastern philosophy to this. And through the Eastern philosophy, I agree with the fact in the east, they believe that we see the world through our past. Our brain is a computer. And so our hippocampus is the long term memory. We keep all of our experiences in there. And in fact, scientifically, it’s proven. There’s a multi generational DNA that we have. So we are storing stories from our grandmothers, our great grandmother’s, my grandmother immigrated over here and her story was “I have to work hard to survive.” The story I have of my grandparents that they were in a field digging, I don’t know that that was ever true. But I live what I have to work hard to survive. It’s not something that I have so much experienced, thankfully in my life, but I’m still living that in my head. Now we can reprogram those. This is to help people, what to do to try to get beyond their limits and overcome those obstacles.

Jess Dewell
And to do that, there are many ways. JW is going to talk about one specifically around the Strengths Finder Tests, which you may be familiar with. He uses it heavily within his organization and finds great success. And in fact, there was a stat that I shared at the beginning from Gallup, and it’s pertinent and I’m going to share it with us again right now, so that we have this place in space to reference back to. They found that when people come to work and exercise their strength, that there is an 8% increase in productivity. There’s also a six times increase in engagement from us when we have that. So knowing our strengths help us navigate and be productive and feel good and fulfilled, and maybe a way to give ourselves grace and support as we look for things that are a little scary and take courage to reflect on and do something about.

JW Rayhons
We don’t necessarily define a position. We take a look at our team’s strengths and basically define that person’s role around their strengths. I’m going to use a sports analogy again, if we look at how often teams either change players or reposition players or sometimes they’re a starter, and sometimes they come in off the bench, there’s a reason for that. When you are in a position when you’re in a profession, when you’re in an industry where your organization has to perform at a high level, you need to keep a competitive edge to stay relevant to stay sustainable, to stay successful. That means that people are going to have to move from time to time, and as your company grows, you go from one phase of an organization to another, then that also means that means that people are going to have to probably reposition or retool. This strengthsfinder assessment allows us to say okay, let’s look at what their natural strengths are. And as we need to reposition, or as we add people to our team, and we need to shift people around, how do we as best we can still keep them in an environment, in a role, one, they’re going to enjoy. IF they’re going to love, it’s not going to feel like work because they just enjoy doing it. They’re passionate about it. And we know they have a high probability of succeeding. For us, we’ve used that tool in many different ways. But it’s a central force in making sure that we get the greatest performance we possibly can out of each person.

Jess Dewell
Productivity increases, enjoyment and fulfillment increases. And when you put those together, the outcomes of each amplify and they build off of each other. And it comes back to ourselves. Are we strong enough and knowledgeable enough about ourselves so that we can show up and help another see what they are strong at and what brings them joy? I know it always comes back to the center, right? It comes back to this concept of this North Star. That’s true north. Where have you been and where are you going? What tools are you going to use to get there? Well, self knowledge is a great starting point every single time, because that individual awareness gives us a confidence in who we are, which means we can see more clearly and understand what’s going on in the situations we show up in. And so when we’re looking at our organization, our teammates, the resources we have, maybe how do we shift and allocate existing resources through people’s interest in strength, or where we have holes and we need to get other people’s strengths and places that they get excited and skills that they have that we don’t have in our organization today, we can apply much more clearly thinking to our organizational ecosystem, when we are very solid in ourselves and we can separate ourselves from the situation. I mean, JW shares more about that.

JW Rayhons
Do we have a clear identification of what our values are or virtues, however one language that? Are we clear about our focus? And are we clear about what we want to achieve? As an individual, do I have a clear understanding of that for myself? Or as a company or an organization, do we have a clear understanding of those organizational values or behaviors or focuses or goals if you will. That being our starting point, now we can determine where we need to go.

Jess Dewell
A map that has where we’ve come from, where we are now, and where we’re going from the true north perspective of the organization. That’s such a big, big fish to fry, or whale to eat. It’s funny that all of those things that we think about our fish or animals of the sea instead of something else. Anyway, total aside,. This concept of reflecting on the questions that JW just shared with us, is incredibly important to the success of our company, not only today, but how we’re setting our company up for success. down the road, when we roll up our map, we pull in our resources, and we start out on that journey in the direction that we’ve decided to go, that we’ve decided to lead this company. We can design it that way.

JW Rayhons
A lot of times the organization is going to reflect that of leadership. Whether we designed it that way, or it just happens that way, the organization is going to tend to reflect the leadership. Earlier, we commented about the change, and there’s constant innovation and things are just moving. And so in that if we really think about it, that makes it even more important that we truly understand what the values are. What are we not willing to change? What has to hold true, no matter what’s changing around us? And so the powerful question in that for whether it’s individuals within an organization, the executives or the organization itself is, “How do you talk about and highlight the values and behaviors that mean the most your organization?”

Jess Dewell
I can’t believe that JW said this when I talked to him. Because I felt like he had gotten in my head pulled words out and said what was on my heart at that moment in the conversation? What was in my head at that moment in the conversation, and what was in my gut at that moment in the conversation. So let’s point out really quick what he talked about in relationship to values. What do we not want to change within our organization, regardless of the amount or speed of the change that is happening around us? That is incredibly key. What holds us together? What keeps us connected as an organization will be those values and the way we do work together.

JW Rayhons
By way of example, I’ll share with you that in our weekly team meeting that we discussed earlier, every agenda item has linked next to it exactly which value and behavior of the organization gets aligned with. So that we know even in our weekly team meetings, regardless of the topic, that it aligns one of those values and behaviors right away. I share that because that’s how then we go about expanding these belief boundaries that we’re talking about. Because we start there, and we know what we’re going to hold true. Now we know what to work on : :

Jess Dewell
Will we prioritize taking the time to work on it becomes the question. Because it’s not tied to productivity and the bottom line activities every day. It’s tied to the fact that it might be clunky at first. But dealing with the space, being in the space, shaping the space that we are in each day, and our connection to the people around us that we are leading, that we are asking to follow, that sometimes we are following. We know what’s true and based off of how clear the truth is that we’ve decided what’s true, the stronger we can be with each action. There’s less adjustment, there’s definitely less pivot, and there’s much more cohesiveness. And that high functioning team is the difference between optimizing systems for productivity and having people that are optimized to work together.

ANNOUNCER
Earlier, we talked about some of the work that goes into producing the Bold Business Podcast. But why? Why is it so important to Jess and the rest of the team to make these podcasts ad free and listener supported? Once again, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell
So this brings me to the question that’s been contemplated. How do we fund the necessary work to support our effort and continue this work? Well, paid advertising and sponsorship thoughts are common. It doesn’t fit our model here. And here are just a few reasons why. The first, quality programs are important to us. I want you to know to really know that I’m telling you the whole story. When money is exchanged to talk about a product or service, I feel there may be some miscommunication and the quality of our content could be diluted. The second reason is being an advocate is who I am. I’m an advocate for your success, for your team success and for your business’s success. If I’m focused on numbers and listeners and ways to generate more views that generate ad income, my attention is split between you and great content, and tactics to increase our ad revenue. And then I would not be doing my job as an advocate. The third reason is to fuel my own curiosity continuously. My eagerness to do this work is here, it’s ready. Yet, it is dulled when I’m doing something that I don’t like as much or really, that I’m not excited about and that I don’t think is exciting for you to know about. So this led me to choose the path less traveled. Listener supported programming has been proven to work overtime, and it allows me to keep my focus on the content. And it allows me to have a relationship with you that is direct and straightforward. Listener supported is a clear answer to the question we’ve been pondering. How do we fund the necessary work to support our effort and continue providing quality content to you? The simplicity of a listener supported model ensures clarity for you and for me. I value honesty, and honesty is a two way street. So if you get something out of what I’m doing, you can become a supporter and contribute at whatever level works best for you. In exchange, you’ll get benefits above and beyond what is available for free right now. It’s my goal to ensure that you get more than you give, no matter what level you support at.

ANNOUNCER
And now, let’s return to the Bold Business Podcast for the rest of the show.

Michelle Shakti Anne
I have a strength and I’m bringing that strength with me. There’s a lot of things I don’t know how to do. But those people that meet, I could tell them how to reduce their stress. It’s almost like the different areas of the brain. We have to actually be able to plan with prefrontal cortex. We have to be able to have memories. We have to be able to have emotions. When we use all those areas together, it works so synchronicity but in such a flow. But what research has shown is that it takes 30% of a group to make a culture change. If you have three out of 10 people on board., that energy is enough to shift everybody in a very short amount of time, not three hours, but it is several months. With that energy, the whole team will change.

Jess Dewell
They’re not consciously making decisions. And that happens when we’ve got enough work in ourselves. We know ourselves enough that when we show up to others who’ve also been actively doing some of this work, things just click, because there really is no path to become a high functioning cohesive team. There are actions that we can take to promote that. And they’re all about connection. And so taking a pause and saying, hey, how do we make change? The great news is, it doesn’t have to be everybody. It has to be 30% of everybody to shift that. And so maybe the change makers in our organization, are each and every one of us. Maybe it’s you today, and maybe it’s one of your partners tomorrow. That’s an amazing concept to think about. Because as we’re going into this, we’re looking at it not only from the individual and the importance of the work for us alone, but then also comes back to that confidence. Do we have enough confidence in ourselves that we can start to see any limiting beliefs that might exist at our organizational level inside the company, the company’s limiting beliefs? So here are some steps to not only apply to ourselves, but also to apply to the ecosystem within our organization to find organizational limiting beliefs.

Michelle Shakti Anne
This first step is just to become more self aware. The self awareness about how we respond in different relationships? It’s determined by any kind of social interactions we have with our family and our friends and our boss. The self awareness around relationship is what strongly determines our story. It’s developed over different stages in our life. So when we’re young, and we’re in the crib, or we’re just a young toddler, especially if we have siblings, we’re fighting for attention. It’s almost a way of learning how to self market ourselves for attention, acceptance and love. And so we’re learning in different stages of our life as we go through school, with our friends when we have like a tribe of friends, and then we get out of school and we’re on our own. There’s another learning process. And when we get married, there’s another learning process and when we have kids. So as we age, there’s different stages of development where we actually see ourselves differently because we’re fitting into the society in a different way.

Jess Dewell
I know you can look at this and feel it and experience and go, “Oh, yeah, I remember when I did that.” And here’s the thing we can fit in in different ways and still be true to ourselves. And still make sure that we have our compass set, and our true north identified. And in fact, Michelle talked earlier about the three things that every single human really wants to have. They are acceptance, attention, and love. Jen shares a story that encompasses these, that just happened to her.

Jen Coken
Maybe notice some virtual reactive tendencies that you have> Mine is all about belonging. I was just talking to my coach about it two nights ago, I said to her I’ve been so excited. I just got back from London on Saturday. We were due for a call, and I said to myself, “I’m like, All right, I’m exhausted. I’m jet lag. I want to talk with her on Sunday.” Her only time was 11:15 at night, my time. So I sent her a note and I said, Can you do anything earlier cuz she’s actually in Australia. Yeah, yeah. So we talked at seven o’clock Sunday night, and I was in tears with her, I’ll be honest, like, all these thoughts are going through my head. And I know it’s stupid. And I know that it’s da da da, and she actually we actually got it back to and I said, I know it’s all about belonging. And we were able to unpack that to take the energy out of it. Some people it’s creating distance, some people at shutting down, some people it’s pleasing, other people just do what other people say. Mine is for sure all about belonging and feeling accepted, and doing what I think other people want me to do. So they can like me because as a child, I had moments where I felt like I wasn’t liked or loved. And so it’s my seeking that out again, but it’s catching myself every time.

Jess Dewell
It’s the key thing. Do we know what triggers us? Maybe we don’t know everything. And maybe we don’t need to know. But we might need to know the situations that we find ourselves in today that trigger us. Regardless of the reason why, and really take stock and own it. We don’t necessarily have to change everything. Here’s the other thing. We’re talking about limiting beliefs and recognizing limiting beliefs. I mean, this program is just called, “Self Imposed Limits.” So while we might have started out and said, “Yes, we’ve got to look at ourselves. And yes, we have to work on this.” What if we just took a step back and a pause right here, took a deep breath, and said, “For everything that’s going on right now, maybe it’s enough to just notice.” Because they are everywhere. Maybe it’s just enough to notice. I have limiting beliefs, even if I can’t name them one two three four five. My organization has places where they bump up against things, and I like the output, or I get a little frustrated, or I feel resistance. And maybe it’s enough to notice, because sometimes that notice is as powerful if not more than actually stopping right then and doing work. Because we can always do work on herself constantly and forever. And sometimes, we just need to notice what’s with us so that we can use it as a tool in our awareness, as we’re just getting the work done, as we live in our life, as we are all in to the situation that we’re finding ourselves in, in this moment.

Michelle Shakti Anne
In order to gain this kind of confidence in yourself, there’s a four step process that I give people. The first one is to do nothing, because that’s there to increase your awareness. That’s the only way you’re going to stop a behavior as you stop what you’re doing and just observe. You’re making more of a conscious choice. And you can see a lot of things that you couldn’t see before. But if have a reaction, your brain has shut down, you can’t make a choice. If you’re in some kind of stress response, the prefrontal cortex shuts down, so planning, all kinds of things start to go away. You don’t have access. The second one is when you have an intention for who you are and you stay with it. The third one is concentration.

Jess Dewell
We’ve heard three of the four steps of how to increase that deep down rooted confidence in ourselves. By the way, I’ve been practicing step one now for a few weeks, and I haven’t gotten two steps two, three, or four. And it may take me a long time to get to those next steps. But here’s the thing. There’s no journey, we don’t have to do all the steps all at once. Because we’re going to be recognizing and responding to and catching and seeing things we haven’t seen before. So we can notice more of what’s around us in these self limiting beliefs.

Michelle Shakti Anne
Even if somebody makes me feel a certain way about myself, this person feel not so good. They rub me the wrong way. It takes knowledge and experience both together to know that that person is coming from fear. When somebody doesn’t make you feel good, there is a fear inside them. There’s an insecure inside them that they’re trying to rub on you, and we know this from past experience. Most people know this. What that competence, this ease and effortlessness to get to that level of confidence, as you know who you are, you are defining yourself. No matter who questions you, I have even had my parents question me almost my whole life, not believing in me. I’m never going to amount to anything was one of the stories that I grew up with. Now, they’re very different. They have a different story because I just didn’t believe their story. At one point, I was like, I’m done with even their story. I don’t care if somebody calls me intelligent or somebody calls me not worth it. I know who I am. And that’s the key. It’s sticking with your story and concentrating on it. When you concentrate on that, it wipes away all the fear and doubt that you have in yourself.

Jess Dewell
So the first step is to do nothing to increase awareness. The second step is to have an intention for who you are and stay with it. The third step is to have concentration Now, here’s the Fourth step of Michelle’s tool set right here

Michelle Shakti Anne
The fourth tool there is, when we are in a stressful situation, what happens is the amygdala triggers? And we can become overwhelmed with emotion, in a way paralyzed. And one of the ways to get out of it that I’d like to share is I call it inward focus. When we move from thinking, to feelin. How does my heart feel? If you’re in bed, how does my body feel laying in the bed? Like I have my head around the pillows, it’s my side? How does this feel? And just start to absorb yourself in the feelings? If you’re at work, and somebody at work a whole different scenario, right? Somebody is raising their voice or quote unquote yelling, they’re upset, but not necessarily me. More than likely something else happened, and now they’re taking it out on somebody else. When I had five kids, they would ask for money and I would just start to search for different feelings in my body. Like my stomach, how does it feel? How’s my throat feel? How’s my shoulder feel? How does my foot feel? My little toe kind of hurts. And then it would give them space to ask her what they wanted. I wouldn’t attach or connect my story to it. Because when you’re feeling you can’t be thinking. It’s a key. Moving from thinking to feeling and really concentrating on feeling in our body, it makes you skip the story about how that person makes you feel. So you’re out of it. And then you go back to how you defined yourself, and who you are, and how you want to show up.

Jess Dewell
All this is good, right? All of this is amazing. You now have a tool, in addition to some stories of how others are feeling as they’re going through this journey, on different levels of awareness and different abilities to connect. Yet, this is the Bold Business Podcast. So how do we actually measure that? How do we actually see some of that change? JW gives us some insight.

JW Rayhons
So that leads to then, what is the measure of success for your organization? So those are kind of your two starting points when it comes to accountability, because now everyone can know: Here’s our foundation. If we know the foundation now we know what to hold each other accountable to. From there, where that leads is, we have to also remember that every person and every organization is going to perform consistent with the habits that they have. Then the question becomes, what either organizational habits do we have? Or what personal habits do we have? And how do we go about adjusting those? Because when it comes to high performance organizations, then we have to have high performing people. If you want high performing people, you have to have high performing habits. That leads us down the path of how do you create those.

Jess Dewell
So the measurement is in consistency. Measure consistency for the habits that you have, the habits that you want to have, and where you are on that change process. Now, the question for you frankly is, are you willing to take action?

ANNOUNCER
It’s time to take another brief break from our program. Earlier you may recall, we talked about what goes into each podcast and why we feel it’s so important to be and pre and listener supported. But why? Why should you consider becoming a supporter listener? With an answer to that question, here again is your host Jess Dewell.

Jess Dewell
As a supporter, you receive full access to expanded show notes, including formatted transcripts, links to all the resources, full uncut interviews with each guest, by the way, which also have their own transcripts, and email notifications of new resources as they become available to you as a supporter. Supporters also receive exclusive access to a platform where you can ask your specific business questions to me, and you will receive a link to the Bold Business Supporter Podcast, which does not have a support a call out. Any other content that we decide to publish in that channel as a value add, as well as access to carefully cultivated playlists that focus on key business and leadership topics. The Bold business Podcast is a resource that helps you and will remain free to you and to all. I do hope you find enough value in the podcast itself and the additional exclusive benefits are worth it to become a supporter at a level that reflects its worth to you as an investment to your personal and your professional growth. The value you receive from our podcast is how we fund the necessary work and continue this work.

ANNOUNCER
And now, let’s return to the Bold Business Podcast for the rest of the show.

Jen Coken
Here’s the muscle that really needs to be exercised, is identifying the things that really worked about what we’re up to, and we rarely take time for that. We’re so good at picking ourselves apart when we’ve screwed up, when the project didn’t work, but rarely do we spend time looking at how we achieve something and then celebrating that.

Michelle Shakti Anne
When you’re working at your core of who you are and going beyond your ego, and going beyond fear. Now that’s bold, that is seriously bold. Letting go of your story, it creates change and who you are and how you see the world. That’s bold. So if people can go beyond their story and their fears and their doubts, that’s Bold. You’re taking responsibility for who you are at the core and you’re making changes consciously. When you choose you accept yourself, there’s nothing that you really can’t do.

JW Rayhons
Anything you do that to be bold, take some courage. And a lot of what we talked about takes courage. It takes courage to have some of these conversations. It takes courage to take the time out of our busy schedules to really look at what do we value? What’s important to us? How do we measure success? All of these require courage because it’s easier to just go about our day, and do all the daily activities, all the daily tasks that we have to get done. It is bold. It takes some courage to carve out valuable time to go, “You know what, we’re going to rise above what has to be done daily to really focus on what is important and what matters.” When it comes to believe boundaries, the bold part of that is saying, “Are we going to make that a priority?” Are we going to make it a priority to grow and expand what we believe is possible for us? That would be what I would share is, are you going to do it? What are you going to do with the information and what you’ve just learned and heard? And how are you going to apply it in your own life for you and your organization?

Jess Dewell
It’s important today because when we understand just a little bit more about how our brain works, and how we’re showing up, and the things that we do unconsciously, allows us to just have more awareness to notice. And then to make a change from that. What do we want to do, if anything. now or later? And to pause, to reflect. To pause and to reflect. And revisit what has been noticed. And is it time to do anything about what we’re noticing? What limiting beliefs are around? What are the self imposed limits that we have as an individual, or that we have as a group of individuals within an organization, and how do we want to go about that? Listening and incorporating the stories and the insights and the tips shared by JW Rayhons,, Jen Coken and Michelle Shakti Anne: , are going to be tools and tips that you can use to increase your awareness today. My three takeaways from these conversations and sharing this information with you here today, is that when we practice recognizing the good work, we can uncover habits that we can have reinforced because they’re already things that we like their strengths that we have, or they’re things that we might not realize our our strength, and that can become a bigger part of who we are to increase our confidence. And also recognize that we have a story. And that story may or may not apply to the situation that we find ourselves in, a conversation we happen to be in the middle of, and can we let go of our story to really hear and be with and be present with another person. And the third thing, is dig deep and get that courage when you need, it in active reflection, facing some of these belief boundaries, or even having the courage to just notice they exist. You can find all the program notes at Red direction, slash p243. And I look forward to you checking out the resources there, and then sharing using hashtag #boldbusinesspodcast to add to the story. What are tips that you have? How can you determine and find and share about these self limiting beliefs, so that together we can move forward with more awareness.

ANNOUNCER
The Bold Business Podcast is brought to you by Red Direction. Jess Dewell dug into one idea in this program. Her goal is to ignite your creativity and spark different thinking with the presented material. How you apply this to your current priorities is up to you. We want to know what actions you take. Use hashtag #boldbusinesspodcast and add your voice to this important conversation. Jess Dewell can bring the missing voice back into your company. With you, Jess will solidify your company’s true north, your unique Red Direction. Provided you are ready to work with Jess, email her at Radio at Red direction dot com. Special thanks to the SCOTT Treatment for technical production.

Visit reddirection.com. Remember, preparedness and the right perspective.

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