Change Your Mindset & Change Your Life With Michael Hyatt

In this episode, Michael explains the inner narrator we all have, a part of us that seeks to make meaning of our lives by interpreting and telling stories about the things that happen to us. The problem? These stories are often untrue or rooted in fear, which creates limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Listen to discover:
Why mindset affects everything about our lives
How to reframe our stories and choose more empowering thoughts
Michael's three steps to challenging our inner narrator
How adversity can open up new possibilities in our lives
Understanding intuition vs. fear
What triggers are and how not to get sidetracked by them
The power of taking breaks
Choosing imagination over worry
Why failure can be our greatest teacher

Transcript

Hello to all of my Insight Timer friends.

My name is Michelle Schelfant and I'm delighted that you're here with me today.

Welcome to my latest talk.

And as always,

After the show,

I love to hear your comments.

So make sure you leave a comment so I know how you liked it.

We'll talk soon.

And here we go with the latest episode.

So let me,

Let me tell you a little bit about Michael Hyatt,

And then we're going to jump right into the show.

So he is the founder and chairman of Full Focus.

He has scaled multiple companies over the years,

Including a $250 million publishing with over 700 employees and his own goal achievement company that has grown over 60% year over year for the past four years.

Under his leadership,

Full Focus has been featured in the Inc.

5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America.

And in 2020 and 2021,

The company was named two Inc's best work places lists.

Yes,

Indeed.

And if you listen to everything that he talks about,

He teaches you how to do that.

He's the author of several New York Times,

Wall Street Journal,

And USA Today,

Bestselling books including Living Forward,

Your Best Life Ever,

Free to Focus,

And his newest book,

Mind Your Mindset.

He's been married for over 40 years to his wife,

Gail,

And his five daughters and 10 grandchildren.

It is a great,

Great pleasure to welcome on to the show,

Michael Hyatt.

So welcome to the adult chair podcast,

Mr.

The one and only Michael Hyatt.

Hey,

Michelle,

How you doing?

I'm wonderful.

It's so exciting to have you on the show today.

Well,

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited about being with you.

I have to tell you,

This book is so in line with the adult chair.

I loved your book.

Today we're talking about,

For those of you watching us on YouTube today,

We're talking about Mind Your Mindset.

It's by Michael Hyatt and his daughter,

Megan Hyatt Miller.

But oh my goodness,

Phenomenal show.

I can't think of anybody on the planet that does not need to mind their mindset.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's talk about this.

So for the people on the show that may not know who you are,

Why don't you tell us a little bit about a little bit more about who you are?

Well,

I've spent almost my entire career in the book publishing arena.

So I worked in every field of book publishing from sales and marketing to editorial to ultimately management.

Before I left that industry,

I was the chairman and the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers,

Seventh largest book publisher in the country.

And we sold the company to HarperCollins in 2011.

And I decided I was going to do what I'd always dreamed about doing,

Which was to start my own company and be a speaker and a writer.

So I did that.

And I thought that I would just be a solo entrepreneur initially.

And that lasted about three months.

And then I started building a team.

So today we've got about 35 employees.

And we're located in Franklin,

Tennessee.

We have two major product lines,

The full focus planner,

Which is a tool,

An analog tool,

Just a physical planner that enables people to achieve their goals and be more productive.

And we've sold about a million point two copies of that.

And then in addition to that,

We have a large,

Robust business coaching business,

Which,

As you know,

Michelle,

Because we are in a coaching relationship.

I love that.

I there's nothing I would rather do the coach.

Yeah.

You're an incredible coach for sure.

You have definitely you have,

You know,

When I lived in Nashville for so many years,

I of course had heard about your name.

I don't know of anyone in Nashville that doesn't know you,

But anyone worldwide at this point that doesn't know your name,

But specifically in Nashville,

You know,

Your name is around town and and then moving here to Charlotte.

I don't know.

It was like divine timing how this all came together.

But I've had the pleasure of working with you almost a year now.

And it's just been life changing for me.

So thank you.

Yeah.

I'm curious.

So you started your company in 2011.

Wow.

It has grown exponentially in the last.

What is that?

Like,

That's not very long.

Twelve years.

I was gonna say that's not even 15 years and you've got 30 some employees and wow.

And I have to say the full focus planner is phenomenal.

Anyone and they can get this on Amazon,

Correct?

They can,

But you get it cheaper from our store.

So you go to full focus dot co CEO,

Then there'll be a link to the store there and you can get it there.

So the ones that are on Amazon,

We don't actually directly sell there.

Those are people that are buying them from us and reselling them.

Got it.

Got it.

OK.

Yeah.

And it really is like for somebody that is wanting to organize their life and really get some goals on and accomplish goals because it's one thing to get your goals down.

Another thing is accomplishing them.

And that's what that planner really helps you do.

So cannot recommend that enough.

Thank you.

So I'm also curious.

You also said so you've written all of these books.

Is it 12 books?

I've lost count.

I think it may be more like 15.

OK.

Since 2011?

Yeah.

Wow.

A lot of books.

OK.

That's it's basically a book a year,

But we've done about six self-published books for our clients and those are a whole lot less work.

And in terms of what's called trade book publishing books that are going to appear in retail stores and all that,

You know,

It's been much fewer than that.

Eight,

Nine,

Nine of those books.

So that's incredible.

Incredible.

Incredible.

So I want to talk to you about this book of yours,

Which I absolutely loved.

It's very much in line with the adult share.

As I was reading it,

I was like,

Oh,

My gosh.

First of all,

It's such a great book because I love how you wove through the whole book so many stories.

Anyone on the planet will relate to your stories.

Like it was a really fun read.

And I like that it's,

Of course,

Research backed.

So tell us a little bit about because I like the subtitle,

The Science That Shows Success Starts With Your Thinking.

Well,

Yeah.

Talk to us about years ago.

I've had a coach for 20 years and one of the best coaches I ever had,

I hired in 2003 all the way through the Great Recession.

And one of the things that she taught me was that success begins with your thinking.

She said,

You know,

If you don't like the results you're getting,

Then you probably need to take different actions.

But the problem is our actions are informed by our thinking.

And so if we have limiting beliefs,

If we have some other kind of snafu in our thinking,

It's going to show up in our actions and ultimately show up in our results.

So in many ways,

This book,

Mind Your Mindset,

The Science That Shows Success Starts With Your Thinking,

Is kind of the prequel to everything else we've done.

Because we always,

Whether it's goal achievement or productivity or vision casting or whatever else we teach and write and coach to,

That all begins with the mindset component.

Because getting your thinking right is about 90% of anything.

If you have the right thinking,

You'll eventually take the right actions that lead to better results.

But if your thinking is screwed up,

That's not going to happen.

Yeah,

This is something that I firmly agree with you on.

I believe in this and I also share this a lot,

Is that if you don't like your reality,

You have to look at your thinking.

Like what are you thinking?

What are your beliefs?

What are your limiting beliefs specifically?

I think we live in a world where we look outside of self instead of looking inside of self for changing our reality.

We want to blame others a lot of times.

My reality is like this because of that person out there,

That thing happened to me.

I was one of those people.

I think I carried around the fact that I was codependent because of my mother for most of my life until I was in my 30s.

And then I realized like,

I got to stop telling that story because it's keeping me stuck.

And it's not that it wasn't true.

It was that it was inhibiting me from moving forward.

And what I liken it to,

I used to use this with my clients actually,

What I realized was is I was carrying around what I call a cement suitcase.

It was like I was dragging it around with me.

That story was not helping me at all.

Why am I carrying this around?

I was stuck in victim and I was stuck in the state of blame.

It doesn't help me.

And the moment that I changed my thinking around that,

My life started to change,

Like immediately started to change.

And it's hard to do,

Right?

Because our thinking,

We just think that what we think is reality.

And so to become self-aware about our thinking is really challenging.

And that's why the first step,

And we have three steps in the book,

The first step is to identify the story.

So back when I had this coach,

Eileen,

I dedicated the book to her and in the middle of the Great Recession,

It was like September of 2009.

And she flew into Nashville and met for an entire day with me once a month.

And so we were in our meeting.

And as we usually started,

She said,

So how did you do financially last month?

And I said,

Well,

We missed our budget.

She said,

By how much?

And I said,

I can't remember what it was like 11 or 12% on the top line.

And it was worse on the bottom line.

And she said,

Well,

I'm just kind of surprised because when I was here last month,

You were so confident that you were going to hit the budget and you had a good shot of exceeding it.

So what happened?

And I was a little bit irritated by the question,

Frankly,

Because,

And I felt defensive,

But I said,

Well,

Eileen.

I said,

First of all,

We're in the middle of a big recession and foot traffic at retail in the bookstores has been greatly diminished.

Consumer confidence is at an all time low and people just aren't buying stuff.

I said,

And added to that,

The whole social media thing,

None of the marketing that used to work is still working and we haven't quite figured out the social media marketing thing.

So marketing is kind of goofed up.

And then I said,

And if that's not enough,

You know,

We've got the Amazon,

Kindle and digital publishing and what that might mean,

You know,

For us in our industry to contend with and we're trying to find our way there.

So,

So yeah,

She said,

Okay,

Well,

I get that.

But then she asked me this question.

She said,

What was it about your leadership that led to these results?

And she was not afraid to ask tough questions.

Oh,

That's,

That's good.

And it was a great kindness for her to ask that question.

So I,

Of course,

Got defensive and I said,

Eileen,

This had,

I mean,

Really,

This had nothing to do with my leadership.

This has everything to do with the macro environment,

All this stuff I'm pointing to.

Because of course I was playing the victim,

Right?

Right.

She said,

Look,

I get that the recession is a factor.

Everybody's contending with that.

I get that,

That this whole marketing thing,

A lot of people are contending with that,

Digital publishing,

Everybody in your space is contending with that.

But what was it about your leadership?

And so I went back through the thing again.

So she says to me,

She says,

Look,

Clearly you're not getting it.

She said,

Let me ask it a different way.

She said,

If you could go back 30 days into the past,

Is there anything you would do differently in terms of the way you led?

Well,

I totally took the bait.

I said,

Well,

Of course.

You said,

Like what?

And I said,

Well,

First of all,

I would have met with the sales staff every day to make sure that we were on track to meet or exceed the budget by the end of the month.

And she said,

Okay,

Great.

What else?

I said,

Honestly,

I think I would have gone on that sales call to Walmart because I think having the presence of the CEO there,

And I said,

I'm pretty good at selling.

And I said,

I really think I could have influenced them to buy more of our product than they ended up buying.

She said,

Well,

What else?

And so I gave her like,

I don't know,

Three to five things.

And she said,

Okay,

So what you're saying is that it was about your leadership.

And I said,

Oh,

I said,

You're right.

It was about my leadership.

But here's the cool thing.

As long as I was the victim,

I was powerless and that didn't feel good.

And once I could stop being defensive and accept the fact that I had agency in the midst of this situation,

Yes,

There were other influences,

But I still had agency.

Once I could accept that,

All the power came back and it gave me a whole range of options for affecting the outcome of the future,

Which we did.

You know,

We were able to pivot and that next month was fantastic.

Great story.

And you know,

I have so many things I want to say right now.

You mentioned victim and I mentioned victim too.

What do you say to somebody that is stuck in that place?

Because we do go there.

Wait,

Let's back up to that.

How would someone know that they're stuck in victim?

Because what I realized is sometimes we don't,

I didn't know I was there because I was very invested in my story and my point of view.

How would someone know?

How does someone know they're even stuck in victim?

Well,

I think,

And this goes to this first point in the book,

Mind Your Mindset,

And that is you have to identify the story.

So that's critically important in recognizing that there's this narrator,

We call it in the book,

That lives inside all of our heads.

And the narrator is constantly trying to interpret what things mean.

That's just how our brain works.

Our brains are meaning-seeking machines.

We can't live without meaning.

And our brain's there to try to protect us.

So we have to assess threats,

First of all,

You know,

It's kind of the primitive brain's job.

And then we have to process that.

So the helpful thing is to identify the story and then to begin to differentiate between what's fact and what's narration.

What is the fact and what is the meaning that we're assigning to the fact?

So this is where we have to be very careful because we can get all different kinds of meanings and I'll give you another example.

So last August,

As you know,

I had a heart attack.

Came totally out of the blue.

I wasn't expecting it.

I felt like I was at the healthiest I'd ever been.

I was working with a nutritionist.

I was working with a trainer,

You know,

And I had been for years and years and years.

But this was a genetic thing that got me.

I had a heart attack,

Ended up having bypass surgery.

Fast forward,

I'm in cardiac rehab.

And in the very first session after we exercised,

I'm sitting with the fellow patients,

There were about 10 of us,

We're sitting around a table and the nurse is about to start teaching us on some aspect of helping us,

You know,

Improve going forward,

Whether it's nutrition or exercise or whatever.

So she starts with this question,

Which I thought was brilliant.

She says,

What does your heart attack mean to you?

That was a great question.

So the guy right across from me,

And I can see him like it was happening today,

Sitting right across from me,

Begins to tear up.

And he was probably in his early 70s.

And he says,

He says,

Well,

I'll tell you what it means for me.

He said,

It means my life is basically over.

And he said,

I suspected this for a long time.

And now it's just kind of a downhill slide till I die.

And that's the end.

I'm thinking to myself,

Wow.

So I had the good fortune of when I was in the hospital after my bypass surgery,

My doctor,

I have a doctor in Los Angeles,

Have a couple doctors,

But I have him.

And so he calls me.

And he says,

Hey,

I want to talk to you about your heart attack.

And he checks in on me,

How you doing,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And he says,

I want to talk to you about your mindset.

And I thought,

OK.

He didn't know that I was,

Had finished a book on mindset.

But he says to me,

He says,

Everything that's happened to you is in the past.

You can't change any of it.

All you can change is how you interpret it.

And he said,

Let me tell you,

I'm just going to give you a little bit of a leg up on how you need to interpret this.

He said,

It's going to be easy to go down the path of coulda,

Woulda,

Shoulda.

If you'd only done this differently,

If you'd only done that.

Forget all that.

All that's in the past.

He said,

Here's how I interpret it.

You just gotten a reboot.

There must be something really significant in your future for God to give you this reboot so that you can kind of start fresh with more energy than you've ever had.

So you're not done yet.

You're far from done.

You've got a great big future in front of you.

And you need to embrace this and see this as a catalytic event that is leading to this bigger,

Better future.

So anyway,

I shared that with the group in my cardiac rehab.

I said,

Well,

Here's what my doctor said to me.

And that's honestly what I think.

This is a great opportunity.

It's a gift.

It's really a beautiful spin that you'd put on that.

What did the guy say?

Did he say anything?

The guy that thought his life was over?

Well,

He just listened.

He started coming around a little bit,

You know,

As we went on.

And,

You know,

I don't want to be too hard on people because it's natural when you have any kind of surgery,

But particular heart surgery,

You could get discouraged or maybe even a little depressed.

And that's normal.

And I think that for most people,

Like in your case where you were codependent upon your mom,

I grew up in an alcoholic home where my dad was an alcoholic.

And there was some trauma associated with that.

And sometimes you just have to go through the process of grieving the loss and processing all that to get through it.

But at some point,

You have to turn the corner.

And this is a question we ask in the book.

And my wife asks this question all the time.

What does this make possible?

What does this adversity make possible?

Because the truth is,

The greatest advances in my life have been on the heels of some adversity.

I had to have a breakdown to have a breakthrough.

And usually most of us don't want that.

And I mean,

I myself,

Even to this day,

I don't want that.

But yet when it happens,

It's awesome what can happen out of that.

You can really go to the next level if you embrace it and stop playing the victim.

So true.

And another thing that you said was that when we step out of victim,

We actually take our power back.

And man,

Does that feel good.

That's fantastic.

It's a game changer,

Isn't it?

And all of a sudden we realize like,

Wow,

My life is my my life is my responsibility and I can move forward.

It feels so good yet sometimes to let go of that victim,

It takes a lot.

But once you get over that hump,

It's like,

Oof,

That feels amazing.

Let's talk more about stories.

And I love this because one thing that we do in the adult chair,

This has been a game changer.

I remember when I used to see individual clients,

The thing that we say when we are in the adult is in order to break stories and assumptions is what's fact and truth.

Is this fact and truth?

And people will say,

Well,

Yeah,

It's fact and truth.

No,

No.

Is it a hundred percent?

So fact and truth in this moment today,

When we ask ourself that question,

Boom,

It changes everything because quite often that that that can bust the story and really change again the outcome in the course of our life if we're honest with ourself.

So tell us a little bit about that.

I love the idea of this narrator.

And the stories that it builds for us.

But that fact and truth is such a big it's a question that we have to get honest with ourselves about because I don't think a lot of us want to be that honest.

Well,

I think I think a lot of it is because we don't differentiate between the fact and the story or we think the story is the truth.

My version of what happened is the truth we think to ourselves.

No,

It's just one version among many.

So people can have different spin a different story that they build out of a negative thing.

So I've got a good friend of mine,

Dan Miller,

Tells the story of growing up men and night in the Midwest and men and nights kind of like Amish,

Not quite that extreme,

But very similar.

And he said,

You know,

He says,

I'd heard him say this from stage.

He said,

I grew up in this very oppressive religious environment where we weren't allowed to associate with the outside community.

We didn't have a TV or a radio in the home.

We certainly didn't have any even phones in the home.

You know,

It was just we didn't have anything to do.

He said,

Or I grew up in this amazing tight knit community where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my parents loved each other and they loved us.

And instead of being sidetracked by media and other kind of frivolous things,

We had these amazing conversations in the evening.

We played games.

Our family was everything and the community was everything.

And when we needed something,

Our neighbors showed up to help us.

And when they needed something,

We showed up to help them.

I can't imagine a better background for going into this next phase of my life as an adult.

Well,

Those are two different versions,

But the exact same fact set.

Right?

And you get to choose what story you're going to tell yourself,

Because the story you're telling yourself maybe has a little bit of truth mixed in with it.

But what you're looking for,

And we have a whole self-coacher worksheet that's in the book and we work you through it in the book.

But basically it's identifying those facts first.

Okay,

What happened?

And this would be like,

What's in a police report or what's in some kind of,

You know,

Reports you'd get from your accountant.

What are the facts?

Now you can ask the question,

What does it mean?

And that will be that voice in your head that will usually be doom and gloom because again,

Your brain's job is to protect you.

And so if it's a possible threat,

They don't want to downplay it.

The narrator doesn't want to downplay it.

And so we'll dial it up.

And sometimes you have to just take a deep breath and go,

Okay,

That's not the end of the world.

That's not the end of my life.

You know,

That's just,

This is just a fact and I can handle it,

Especially if I own it and can take responsibility and not be the victim.

And again,

It feels so good when we go there and we choose those thoughts.

And sometimes it's hard,

You know,

It's so hard because we want to stay invested in that story,

But holy moly,

Does it feel so good?

Someone that works with us that you know,

You know,

That someone that you know was renting a home and her landlord had,

It was like a,

The girl next door had,

Had said something about her and the landlord found out.

And then the landlord said,

You have to be out of your home,

Of this home in 30 days.

And it was the worst thing ever.

Or when we were,

When we were talking about it,

I said,

What a gift.

It's time for you to go buy a house.

Let's go.

Like it's time.

And we ended up going and buying a house in Franklin and it turned out beautifully,

But yeah,

Like we have to take,

We have to be willing to take that right turn with our mind.

We've got to pick the story or the truth that feels best.

It's like,

I'm going this way.

This,

This is,

There's a blessing in disguise and we've got to look for it.

We've got to look for it.

And that's,

That's where in,

In step two in the book,

You know,

We identify the story.

Okay.

This is a story.

Probably some of it's fact,

Some of it's my interpretation of the facts.

And step two is we're going to interrogate the story.

So we're going to really decide,

Okay,

What is that?

And let's,

Let's literally write that down and then ask ourself the question is,

Is that the best,

Most empowering interpretation of what happened?

Or is there something else?

Like I think even,

You know,

Growing up in an alcoholic home,

I was angry and bitter and resentful for much of my life about that.

And I just didn't have a lot of respect for my father.

And I was frustrated by my dad.

And I,

You know,

Came to the point where I didn't really want to see him.

And,

But then I got to the point where I said,

You know what?

God didn't give me the dad I need,

Or excuse me,

God didn't give me the dad I wanted.

God gave me the dad I needed.

And because the,

The truth is I would not have the drive that I have today.

And I would not have some of the key attributes that I needed to succeed if I hadn't had the adversity of growing up in that kind of home.

And I,

I'm not trying to trivialize the trauma or make it smaller than what it is,

But I'm just saying nothing is wasted.

Everything is intended for our good.

And I,

And I kind of think of it like almost like,

You know,

When an airplane encounters wind resistance,

And that's actually what is being created as it goes down the runway.

That's the very thing that gives the airplane the ability to fly.

It creates lift.

And that's what all these adversities are designed to do.

But we've got to,

We've got to be able to disassemble or interrogate that story so we can ask ourselves,

Okay,

This story that I've chosen to believe up until this point,

There may be other alternatives.

I've got a sign in my kitchen,

Hanging in the house that says,

Don't believe everything you think.

Oh,

That's good.

Here.

That's really good.

And I agree with you on our history.

I grew up again,

Codependent,

Italian family in upstate New York and had,

You know,

So it was like,

It wasn't just my mom,

Dad,

Sister.

It was like mom,

Dad,

Sister,

Aunt,

Uncle,

Grandma,

You know,

It was everybody,

A lot of alcohol abuse in the family.

And so of course I grew up,

I didn't understand why I was so anxious and depressed in high school and college.

And I couldn't understand these things,

But I've worked through in my life so much.

And I realized when I became a therapist and then of course a coach,

Man,

I could see things so quickly.

I can identify things immediately because of the experience that I had.

And I have been there and my empathy for people can run so deep because I've walked in similar shoes if you know what I mean.

Right.

And yeah,

But I,

You know,

I went from being a victim to that and then I flipped it and I'm like,

I'm so grateful for it.

And yeah,

I see it as,

As a blessing.

I really do see it as a blessing.

So you talk a lot about in the book,

Intuition.

Let's talk about that for a minute.

So tell me where does intuition come from?

Well intuition is basically a very sophisticated form of pattern recognition.

And so it seems mysterious because the processing time in our brain is so fast.

It almost seems as if it's magical,

But it's not magical.

It's again,

The ability of our brain to quickly recognize and process patterns and then decide what those patterns mean.

Now again,

The problem with intuition is that it can misinterpret the pattern.

If I'm walking down the hall at work,

Let's say,

And you know,

There's somebody that I've been pretty friendly with and they don't even look up at me.

I might come to the conclusion because I see that pattern and I've seen it before.

And that person's angry at me.

Well,

Is that true?

Or maybe they're preoccupied.

You know,

Stephen Covey tells this story in the seven habits of highly effective people where he says there was this man,

I think this story happened in London or New York City,

But he had his two kids.

They get on a subway train and the kids are out of control.

You know,

They're running and jumping and being loud and really disrupting the other passengers.

And finally,

One of the passengers,

An adult comes to the man who was very quiet and seemingly oblivious to the havoc his kids were wreaking in the subway car.

He comes to him and he says,

Sir,

He said,

Forgive me for this,

But I wonder if you could kind of get control of your kids because they're,

They're kind of making everybody else crazy.

And the man says,

Oh,

I am so sorry.

Their mother just died.

We're just coming from the funeral and the kids don't know what to do with themselves.

They don't know what to make of it.

Well,

You talk about it.

In fact,

Dr.

Covey talks about this.

This used to be a term,

A paradigm shift because this guy who was watching this unfold assigned one story to it.

Like this is a really bad dad who's completely disengaged and the kids are out of control,

Unruly,

Bad kids.

No,

It wasn't that at all.

It was something else,

But that's where his intuition was off.

And so intuition could be a really,

Really powerful thing,

But we just have to realize its limitations because the pattern recognition is not always a hundred percent and use it when we can use it.

But I like to say,

You know,

Use your intuition,

But verify with some other things.

So you make sure that you got the pattern recognition,

Right?

You know,

People ask me,

How do you know if it's fear that's guiding you or your intuition?

What is the difference in your opinion?

Well sometimes they can work together.

You know,

Fear is there for a reason,

But the truth is,

You know,

We evolved with this acute ability to sense fear because that's what kept us alive.

So we tended to the people that survived were the people that paid attention to the fear.

And so,

You know,

You get more of that,

But most of us don't live in a world where we have to worry about,

You know,

Some big tiger or something jumping on us.

And so it can really be out of range for what's required.

You know,

We don't need that kind of fear.

Yes,

It can help us in a life threatening situation,

But when you go to the mailbox and there's,

You know,

A letter from the IRS and you freak out,

Like you feel like you're existentially at threat,

That's an overreaction.

That's not intuition.

That's just your primitive brain that's trying to keep you safe.

And the proper response to that is,

Thank you for trying to keep me safe,

But this isn't life threatening.

You know,

I'd rather not have to deal with this situation with the IRS,

But it's not life threatening.

Some people have that,

And I had this for years,

This kind of trigger with money.

And whenever it was something that had to do with money,

It would trigger an entire range of emotions until I realized that nothing can trigger me.

Only I can trigger me,

Or should I say,

Allow myself to be triggered.

And the trick is,

And again,

To refer to Dr.

Stephen Covey,

You know,

He says we need to put a pause between the stimulus and the response.

That's hard to do because most of us react in the moment.

And usually that first reaction is not a good one.

So if we can buy ourselves some time and put a pause between that stimulus,

Whatever it is,

And the response,

Like for example,

If I,

You know,

For my business,

If we've got some sales program that didn't go the way that I hoped,

You know,

My tendency might be to jump to conclusion that,

Well,

This is just proof.

You know,

I don't know what I'm doing with money.

The whole business is collapsing.

I'm going to be living out of a refrigerator box under a bypass,

You know,

Before this is over.

Now,

If I can say,

Okay,

This is just data.

There's just a fact.

We had a sales shortfall last month.

It's not the end of the world.

I'm going to take a deep breath.

And Michelle,

This is a key for me.

I don't work best on those kinds of problems at night.

Right.

If I can just say,

And Gail,

My wife will remind me we've been married 45 years.

She'll just say,

Honey,

Why don't you go to bed?

Because you're going to be refreshed in the morning.

You're not your most resourceful self right now.

And she's right a hundred percent of the time.

Like that problem seems much less big the next morning than it does at night when it's dark and you know,

I mean,

It's just all kinds of things happen at night that sometimes aren't positive.

So true.

The other thing that I love about triggers,

I just speak on the show a lot about triggers and I agree with you.

There are times when we just pause and we take a break from that trigger and then we can look,

Then things look very different the next day.

The other thing I love about,

I love triggers actually.

I call true.

I say that triggers are a gift and here's why.

I don't think that you know this about me.

Triggers are a gift because when we're triggered,

It's a way for us to uncover an unconscious limiting belief that we have about ourselves.

Oh,

I love that.

Right.

Normally we project anger on someone else.

Like you did this to me.

It's like,

Hold on.

Because have you ever been in a room with a group of people and a few people are triggered,

But like you're not,

It's like,

Wait,

Why am I not triggered?

It's not your,

It's not your belief.

That's right.

And,

And they're,

And they're usually not reacting to the thing at hand.

They're reacting to the whole bundle of things that have accumulated over their,

Over their life or the original trauma,

You know,

That gave rise to that.

Exactly.

It's,

If we're,

If we're triggered,

It's our stuff.

It's not out there.

It's in here.

That's right.

And,

But,

But again,

Once again,

The beautiful thing about that,

Cause some people may say,

No,

No,

No,

They,

They triggered me or that's too harsh.

No,

This is kind because we want to give ourselves and we want to give other people their power back because they can deal with this.

They can make it a different choice.

And one of the things we learned about the brain science and you know,

This being a psychotherapist is that,

That you cut these neural pathways in your brain through your habitual thinking and your habitual actions.

And so that trigger is nothing more than a neural pathway that your brain by default runs down when you encounter that stimulus.

But guess what?

That neural pathway can be cut in a different groove.

You can create a new neural pathway and it takes a lot of work at the beginning.

You know,

Sometimes neural feedback is good for this.

There's a lot of things that can help with this,

But you need a neural pathway,

New neural pathway,

Hard to say.

And over time that can become your default reaction.

And that's what we're after.

So true.

In my twenties,

I was very trigger happy.

I was triggered,

Trigger,

You know,

My emotions were like,

And I don't,

That's not my life anymore,

But I have looked so hard at my triggers.

And now,

Now when I,

When something comes up,

I'm able to do what you're talking about,

Which is I invite in a pause.

I'll go,

Hold on,

Slow down.

And that's the thing too.

It's about slowing down.

I think when we're in our mind,

It's so quick and I go,

Wait,

Slow down.

What's going on?

What's coming up?

What's happening?

And then I take a pause and then I can examine that.

And that's rewiring the brain.

Like you're saying,

I love that.

I love that.

You also talk about in the book,

Taking breaks to help with that.

And there's a quote,

I love it.

The last supper quote from,

Excuse me,

From,

From Leonardo da Vinci,

When you talk about,

Cause I love the default mode network and the executive functioning.

I love talking about that as well,

But you talk about,

And I know this for me because I tend to fall into like working,

Working,

Working,

Working,

Working.

And I love what I do.

So it's hard to stop what I'm doing.

But sometimes when I'm trying so hard to accomplish something,

It's kind of like the energy just starts to narrow in and I take that break.

It's like stops everything.

And then I go out and I live on the lake.

So I'll go sit by the lake.

I go walk in nature.

And it's like my whole perspective starts to shift.

But the quote that you put in your book,

Which I absolutely loved was in the last supper when Leonardo da Vinci was quite,

Let me read it.

Oh,

The quote is the greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.

And the quote that you would put in there when he was working on the last supper,

He would sometimes spend half a day doing nothing,

Lost in his own thoughts.

And the patron wasn't thrilled with that.

But when we do this,

It is rewiring the brain.

Like we are actually rewiring the brain and then we gain new perspectives.

Can you talk at all about that?

Cause that was,

That was powerful for me.

I love that.

Well,

Stress is antithetical to good,

To good creative thinking.

And I liken it,

We didn't talk about this in the book,

But I liken it to golf.

You golf?

I used to,

I don't right now.

No.

Okay.

Well,

You know,

Stress is the enemy of performance.

And so when you get stressed out,

When you get tense and you're trying to golf,

I guarantee you you're not going to have a good game.

Because golf,

As somebody wrote,

Golf is a game of confidence and golf.

You play the best golf when you're the most relaxed,

You play the best,

Any sport when you're the most relaxed,

You do the best in business when you're relaxed.

But when you start grinding and you keep working on the same problem,

You know,

For hours on end and you're making virtually no progress,

It's just unproductive.

And that's why all the science shows that when you're trying to work on a problem like that or something really creative,

First of all,

Get lots of sleep.

The more sleep you have,

The more creative,

The more focused,

The more productive you're going to be.

So the average adult needs between seven to nine hours.

So I try to get eight hours every night.

I would say probably on average,

I guess,

Seven hours and 45 minutes.

I track it.

But that's,

It's that important to me,

But also taking breaks.

Like I,

You know,

I little thing,

But I've taken a nap 20 minutes,

Sometimes 30 minutes every day since I was in college.

And I don't care even if I was working at a big corporation long before I had a business of my own,

I found a way to take a nap because it was like a reset for my brain.

And then I would come back even more creative than I was when I started the day.

So yeah,

Breaks are really important.

You know,

It's like so counterintuitive because I think about humans in general,

We have so much to do.

I don't care if you're working and you're,

You know,

A mom or a dad and you're just,

And you're watching kids all day,

Or you are working a full-time job or what you're doing or what your day looks like.

We are busy,

Busy,

Busy,

Busy,

Busy.

And to take a break can be life-changing.

I mean,

The ideas that come from a time of break from a break are just,

It's crazy.

I mean,

My mind just,

It's like,

I start downloading like ideas when I'm out looking at the lake for 15 minutes.

It's like,

It's so crazy.

So crazy.

We have a lake house too.

And when I walk on the property,

You know,

My blood pressure goes down.

I feel so relaxed.

And I know that I'm about to have a big creative spurt because I've relaxed.

And that facilitates that kind of creative,

Productive thinking.

It's so important.

And I think that at least,

Especially in the United States,

Like we live in that go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go mentality.

Like the more you do the better.

And you've actually taught us a lot about that.

So you're not going to agree with me because in your company,

You don't do this.

You don't believe in this,

But this is something that I remember in the beginning,

Even of this company,

We would laugh about it.

Like,

Oh,

You know,

One of the girls that works with me would say,

Oh,

It's three o'clock.

I guess I better eat breakfast.

I'm going to go make myself a smoothie.

I'm like,

Please stop.

Please stop.

And you know,

We were priding ourselves on working so hard instead of hold on a second.

We got to flip that around.

And that was a really great mindset that you taught me.

So thank you for that.

It's really changed.

That has been a game changer.

So first of all,

I have two more questions for you,

But what is number three?

I think you've only mentioned the two.

What's three?

Okay.

So the first one,

Again,

Just by way of review is to identify,

Recognize the narrator,

That there's a difference between facts and the narration or the meaning.

Number two,

Interrogate the story,

Challenge your narrator.

And then number three,

Imagine a better story.

So this is where you can train your narrator to ask questions like,

What does this make possible?

Or is there another interpretation to this?

Is there something more empowering that I could believe at this moment?

So to really take that story and say,

Is this story really serving me?

Or is the way that I could either reconstruct it or throw it out and start over and have a totally different story that'll be more empowering.

So that imagination process,

That's really why God gave us imagination.

Now think about this though,

Michelle,

Worry is basically a distortion of imagination.

You know,

It's taken this God-given faculty of imagination and it's using it to a destructive end.

Imagination is the other side of worry.

So instead of kind of ruminating or compulsively thinking about all the negative outcomes,

How can we set our thinking on a positive path?

And so that's where I think this question,

What does this make possible is so powerful.

Some adversity hits us.

And again,

You know,

Sometimes we have to,

You know,

Recover from the hit and it takes a minute,

But then we can start saying,

Okay,

How can I use this to my advantage?

How is this going to serve me going forward?

So like back in the early nineties,

I had started a publishing company with a business partner and that publishing company did great for five years.

In fact,

It did phenomenal right up until it didn't.

And it crashed and burned in year five and we lost everything.

So much so that we didn't even have enough money to go bankrupt.

So like you to go bankrupt,

You have to be able to sell your assets and pay off your creditors while all of our assets were pledged.

So we couldn't even go bankrupt.

It was humiliating.

You know,

It was,

It was a terrible experience.

We had people from our church bringing us groceries and you know,

It's like one of those things that like I would never want to repeat again,

But I also wouldn't trade it for anything in the world because I learned some of the most important lessons that I would ever learn.

I couldn't see it initially,

But over time and particularly looking back on it now,

That was kind of the beginning of my business education.

I did some things that I shouldn't have done,

Just stupid decisions in business that I learned from.

And that's kind of how all progress happens.

You know,

You go forward,

You fail,

And then you pick yourself up and you go forward some more.

And that's just the nature of how we learn and how we grow.

But we've got to imagine a bigger,

Better future.

We got to imagine something different than what the facts would merely tell us.

That's really good.

What a story.

I did not know that.

That's a beautiful story.

Yeah,

Because it's so true.

You can read something in a book,

But experience is our greatest teacher.

Absolutely.

Our greatest teacher.

But we have to have,

I was just saying to some clients today in a coaching session,

That we've got to have a way to metabolize failure.

And until you have the ability to powerfully metabolize failure and turn it into something stronger,

You're going to be the victim of failure.

Failure is going to keep knocking you down.

So,

Once you can take a hit and emerge more powerful,

You become unstoppable.

And that's the game.

So,

We've got to have a process for doing that.

And much of that is the story we tell ourselves about that failure.

That's why I've always said to my kids,

And why do I say it to myself,

There is no failure,

There's only feedback.

And all that feedback gives us the opportunity to grow and develop and become unstoppable.

I like that.

How do you metabolize failure?

Would you say that your three-step process is that process?

I do.

Or is there something else?

Yeah.

I like that a lot.

I think it's a way to metabolize failure so that you become successful.

And that's really what this book,

Mind Your Mindset,

Is about.

How can I use the way that my brain naturally works,

And what does the science say,

So that I can not just metabolize failure,

But so that I can take the raw material that can lead to a sense of failure,

And actually use that to my advantage,

So that I become even more successful in my personal life and in my business life.

My next question was,

Was that the end goal of why you even wrote this book?

What are you wanting readers to get out of your book?

Thank you.

Great question.

I really think to see that,

Kind of what the subtitle says,

Success starts with our thinking.

If we can kind of get inside of our own heads and begin to affect our thinking,

Anything becomes possible.

I mean,

Think of the greatest entrepreneurs,

The greatest coaches,

The greatest therapists,

The greatest artists,

The greatest people in any field.

Is it because they have more experience?

Maybe.

Is it because they're smarter than we are?

They have more natural intelligence?

Maybe.

Is it because they have better contacts?

Maybe.

Is it because they have more capital?

Maybe.

No,

I would say that 90% of it is they think differently than the rest of us.

I agree.

That is beautiful.

I really,

Really agree with you.

It doesn't matter.

All those other things don't matter.

It really comes down to our mindset.

It does.

It really comes down to mindset.

Actually,

I'm going to add one question,

Because you brought it up.

Okay.

You didn't find money.

Money is such a trigger for people.

Is there anything you can say about how we can change our money mindset,

Or is it the three steps?

Well,

It is the three steps,

But part of that,

And this is really step two,

Is to interrogate it.

Like,

For example,

After that business failure that I had,

About two years after that,

I was on a plane with a really good friend.

And my really good friend said to me,

He said,

He's kind of hearing all the details of this story,

And he says,

You're not very good with money,

Are you?

Well,

I took that as gospel.

I said,

Well,

He said out loud what I feared my entire life,

That I'm not very good with money.

And so anything that I would encounter where I had a money failure,

I would just say to myself,

Well,

I'm not very good with money,

Which only reinforced my sense that I wasn't very good with money.

And it wasn't until I started thinking,

And it was really because I developed a friendship with Dave Ramsey back before he was famous.

He's still one of my good friends to this day.

But he helped me to see,

You know,

You may not be very good with money,

But you can learn to be very good with money.

And so that was kind of about as far as my thinking could go,

Is that this is something I can learn.

And so I began to study it.

You know,

I mean,

I didn't like take classes or any of that,

But I just started to read books about it.

I started to hang out with people that thought differently about money.

Key thing,

We talk about that in the end of the book.

But hang around people that think the way that you want to think.

And then I finally have gotten to the place where I can say,

You know what,

I'm actually great with money.

Now that's not me just trying to kid myself into something that's not true.

But say as much as you can say,

And still do it with integrity.

And certainly,

You know,

You may not be very good with relationships,

But you can learn how to be better at relationships.

These things,

Almost 98% of these things are skills that anybody can learn.

So you know,

We just have to,

Again,

Tell ourselves a different story.

Love that.

Okay,

Where can people go to find you buy the book again?

Why don't you go ahead and mention that?

Well,

The book is available on Amazon or at Better Books,

Sellers everywhere.

You could also go to the website,

Mind your mindset book.

Com.

And if you buy the book,

You can go to one of the retailers that we recommend,

Save your receipt,

Come back,

Enter that in there and get access to some of the some of the free bonuses,

Including the audio book for free,

If you buy the book,

And also the self coacher tool,

Which is an amazing tool to kind of walk you through this process.

And it's very laid out very simple way,

But you can train your brain to begin to think this way,

And to coach yourself.

So and everything else related to me,

You can find it full focus.

Co CEO,

That's the name of our company full focus.

Thank you so much.

This was incredible.

Thank you,

Michelle,

You are definitely a wealth of information and knowledge and wisdom.

So thank you so much for joining us today on the show.

This has been great.

Thanks for having me on.

Transcribed by https://otter.

Ai Thank you so much for joining me today.

I wish you a beautiful week and I'll see you next week for the next show.

Reviews

So happy you are back on insight timer!

I really enjoyed this. Such a wonderful talk. Lots of wisdom and great points and so motivational.