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Speaker 1: Hello, Legends, Welcome back to a special best of edition of Stepping Up.
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Speaker 2: This week, we're diving into one of the biggest things that.
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Speaker 1: Can hold us back from becoming the person we want to be, which is, unfortunately sometimes is our own self talk. Whether it's the unrelenting pressure we put on ourselves, our fear of failure, or simply getting stuck in the same negative thought loop. Sometimes I always that sabotaging us the most is the one inside our own head, and most of the time it is. And I've picked some of my favorite moments from past episodes and next week we'll be back with a brand new episode. Few we are eyeballs deep shooting planners right now. We are day four or five of shooting, and let's just say, I feel like my hair's going to snap off from hairspray. Honestly, you think, like doing shoots and stuff, like it's so much fun and I love it so so much, but you.
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Speaker 2: Do it's really tiring.
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Speaker 1: And I don't know how like proper models, and like I'm not comparing myself to a model, by the way, but how people that do this type of stuff full time would actually survive Because I'm struggling. I'm on struggle, but we have lots of fun and I cannot wait for you guys to see the planners. They are next level. But first up, let's start with a bit of a reality check. Have you ever stopped to think about whether you're actually being way too hard on yourself? The biggest red flag that you are an asshole to yourself is that you're constantly saying the word should. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I should have done it this way, I should have done it that way. I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have done that. I should go and do this. I should be here by now. If that is something you are saying constantly, your expectations on yourself are way too bloody high. And this is all because you, my friend. How can I say this in the nicest way possible. You're an asshole.
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Speaker 2: To yourself.
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Speaker 1: But the funny thing is, although you are an asshole, you are the most understanding, kindest, sympathetic person to those you love. Yet you won't meet yourself with the same kindness or understanding. All right, So now you know you've got a few red flags happening. Maybe you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. I guess how do you know that you truly have such ridiculous expectations? So I've made an asshole criteria for you. So I want to run through some questions that will help you determine where you sit on the asshole meter. Well, that sounds weird. The first question is when you make mistakes, do you get very hard on yourself or do you expect not to make any at all?
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Speaker 2: Do you always tend.
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Speaker 1: To focus on your imperfections and what you didn't do rather than what you did do? And you're always putting yourself down and you don't even realize you're doing it. And I'm the first to admit I am terrible with this, and I try really hard with myself talk, but I'm always calling myself an idiot always, I even say it out loud. And I'm constantly having friends and family saying Steph, like, don't talk to yourself like that. When you reach your goal, do you tend to think about what you should have done better or even worse? You chuck it to the side and move on to the next thing, and then the next thing, always seeking that validation, always seeking the next best thing for fulfillment. Are you someone that no matter what you do, and you could achieve the most amazing goal, but you just never feel good enough.
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Speaker 2: It just is never enough. Biggest one? This is one.
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Speaker 1: I know you're all going to say yes too, But do you try to be everything to everyone all of the time, putting everyone above yourself and all your own needs even though you saying yes to everything like it's out of your abilities or capabilities, like you literally cannot do it, but you will continuously say yes and people please.
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Speaker 2: I am the worse for this.
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Speaker 1: For me, I feel like because of my jobs and things, I'm just very passionate, so I will just say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and I won't even think about all the other things I've got to do. Are you someone you like you're always wanting and needing to be busy. You can't sit down. You need to be doing all the things, because, let's be honest, our self worth is tied to our productivity and our achievements.
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Speaker 2: And lastly, you.
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Speaker 1: Set goals on what you think they should be based off others and what they tell you or what you see on social media, and that's going to lead us into all the pressures that we feel in day to day life.
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Speaker 2: Now, I'm not here saying.
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Speaker 1: We've got to ditch the goals, We've got to ditch the expectations altogether. We all know I love a good goal. Now, usually the most passionate people are assholes to themselves. Do I want to say asshole guys? I mean, like to ourselves, Like, we're not actual assholes, We're awesome. But it is time for us to have a bit of a wake up call and to understand that yes, it is good to have goals, but they need to be realistic and have a realistic level of expectation so then we can move forward. We're not being stagnant, which again is okay to be stagnant for a while, But the keyword here is realistic, which apparently isn't in my vocabulary.
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Speaker 2: So how do we change this?
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Speaker 1: Well, here's the three steps to stop being an asshole to yourself. And one of these steps I want to be giving you an amazing, amazing episode next week on how to really take one of these steps and implement it daily and it is going to save your life.
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Speaker 2: But step number one, break down.
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Speaker 1: Your goals into smallest steps or even habits. Especially when for myself I do this. I was making the mistake of saying, Okay, do this project today. But the project that's thing, is literally ten plus hours work. So you need to be specific, set yourself time limits, be like, okay, I'm going to work on this for one hour. I am going to clean out the garage for one hour. So break everything into steps or just time frames. And just like I always say, you don't think of the whole house. You think of that cupboard, you think of that draw, you think of that bench, and it's the same. You don't think of the whole staircase. You think of the first step. A huge example with this, which I have told you guys before, is when I was always striving to hit ten k steps and I was never meeting them, Like by the afternoon, I was at like three k and I'd give up. So as soon as I dropped the bar lower to eight k steps a day, when the afternoon came, I was like, oh, if I just go for a walk, I'll hit it. So then I started hitting my daily step count. And it's cause I dropped.
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Speaker 2: The bar lower.
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Speaker 1: Because when you think about it, if you're an overachiever or you have high expectation. If we just lower our bar to what we think is low, that's other people's like medium to.
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Speaker 2: High, probably high.
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Speaker 1: You know, it's better to chip away at things slowly than not do them at all, or just sit there and hate yourself. And the best resource for this is my roadmap, so I will make sure I link you guys to that episode and the download below. The next step is be realistic. I want you to order your to do list, so everything, all the things that are circling in your brain, get them out. But I want you to actually look at what's actually urgent. You know, we're not saving lives unless you're a doctor, which I say all the time because it is the best thing. And also just remember their urgency is not your emergency. So yes, you might have to email Margaret from accounts, but she can wait a couple of days. I'm sure she'll be fine. She'll be fine. Just buy a drink at the Christmas party.
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Speaker 2: I don't know. So look at your ort to do list, give it a really good audit.
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Speaker 1: See what's urgent, what you can schedule later, what can be deleted or what can be delegated. And as I said in next week's episode, I want to give you the best planning hack, daily planning hack that is going to help you completely change your day, which I'm so excited to. That's why I like put these two episodes one after the other because it's just going to save you. Second thing and now, this is the hack that I spoke about at the start.
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Speaker 2: I want you to keep a list.
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Speaker 1: Now, this list is going to have actual time estimations that daily tasks take you to complete, because we all think something will take an hour, but it actually takes three. So when you're organized to do list, if you have to, like me, oh, write how long it actually takes me, and using things like your timer, and it's even a really good app called toggle and you can actually type in there what you're doing and then it just like will time you. And then you stop it and you keep a list of the actual amount of time it takes to do things. So then again you're not setting yourself up for failure. Having your list of task times is going to change your life, especially if you have ADHD or if you're just terrible time in general. The next step is when you're having judgmental thoughts, you're thinking should be doing this, should be doing that, I'm an idiot.
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Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Sally is so amazing. Ask yourself, if.
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Speaker 1: My friend was going through this right now, what would I tell her? How would I speak to her? And that leads me on to my next point. It's always just so good to have someone that you can trust to be your reality check. So there will be times I'll be so flustered and even with all my planning tips, my anxiety takes over. I can't think straight. So I will go to Ry and I'll be like, what makes sense to you? And he helps me see clearly. You know you can go to someone and they can tell you if you are being too hard on yourself, if you're expecting too much, and they can just be realistic with you and spoiler alert, you are being too hard on yourself. That was a bit of a look at how unrealistic expectations and negative self talk can quietly creep into our everyday lives. But even when we recognize those patterns, there's often something else that keeps us stuck, which is fear. Fear of getting it wrong, fear of looking silly, fear of what other people might think, In this next segment, I'm answering a listener question about how to get out of your own head and stop letting fear of failure hold you back.
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Speaker 2: Now, this might be a little bit confronting, but you do need to hear it.
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Speaker 1: So the question is, how do you get out of your own head and your own way to get out there and start something new. Then she wrote fear and failure. So obviously, as she said, she wants to get out there and do something new, but she's holding herself back. She's in her own head too much, she's overthinking it, which is pretty standard.
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Speaker 2: Practice for all of us, and she has a fear of failure.
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Speaker 1: Now, I resonate with this so so heavily in lots of different parts of my life, and all of us would resonate with this at one point or another. When I read that question, my mind straight away goes to when I started my blog and.
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Speaker 2: Everything online, which was eight years ago. Now.
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Speaker 1: Now, I've had a lot of other times where I had fear of starting things, like I had my makeup business, I went to UNI, and then I did PT. I did all the things, but there was always like a fear there. Now, I remember the fear I had when starting the blog was back when I had Harper, my first daughter, and I just felt so alone. As you guys know the story, I didn't have any one friends, I had really bad person anital depression. And I love writing. I've always loved writing. It's my outlet. And you know, I did journalism at UNI and things like that. And I remember sitting down with Ryan one time and I was feeding Harper, and I said, like she was just a newborn, and I just wanted to connect with some other mums. I just wanted to be really honest with my experience. I've always been a massive oversharer always, and I said to whatever I started a blog. There was definitely blogs and stuff around, and this was more of the beginning of the whole mummy blog era, Like it wasn't as huge as what it was now years later, and none of our friends or anyone we knew had ever done something like this, like started a blog or started like an online thing. And then I also was going to start an Instagram page to go with that, which is now the one I have, which is steph Pace Underscore. Thank god, it's not just another mummy blog anymore. And you know, Ryan was always like from the start, just do it, Just do it, And I kept thinking, but what are people going to say?
00:11:31
Speaker 2: What if I make a fool of myself?
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Speaker 1: And this thought stopped me from starting the blog for probably about two months. Isn't actually that long when you think about it, because there's a lot of people out there that want to do something, and the fear of them looking silly or making full of themselves, they sit on that for years. Those people never start, they never go out and do what they want. And that's what we hear of these people who are going deeper.
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Speaker 2: People on their.
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Speaker 1: Deathbed, the biggest regret they had is not doing the things that they truly wanted. They always were doing things that made other people happy and putting other people first and not following their dreams, you know, and it's really sad. So when you think about that, two months in comparison is nothing. And that was honestly because of Ryan. He's always been that supportive person for me no matter what I wanted to do.
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Speaker 2: So I did.
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Speaker 1: I opened up a WordPress website and started posting, opened up an Instagram page. And when I first started, because you got to remember, this was after I had been running a really successful makeup ardistry of business for a couple of years, like I was booked out for years in advance, but the one thing I didn't really love, and I did go back to it after half I was born for a little while while I was doing the blog on the side, because the blog was always a hobby, like I didn't know you could make money. I didn't know influence the stuff. I didn't know any of that shit. I just wanted to share my story with people and talk to people, and I did, and the connections I made online during that time it saved me from my post named depression.
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Speaker 2: It really did.
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Speaker 1: You know, people were reading my blogs and I started having people reaching out to me saying like this is really helpful. And obviously things don't take off quick straight away, like I've been doing this for eight years now, and there was a lot of people who just didn't understand why I would leave makeup. They saw the success that I had with the makeup artistry business. And by this point this had been a few months now, I started getting you know, brands reaching out and stuff like that, and I wasn't making any income yet, but you know, we could start to see something brewing there, and eventually when the blog and Instagram and that did turn into something that actually was an income and eventually being a better income than what the makeup ardiship business was so it could support my family. People still didn't get it, you know what I mean. And I remember people giving me their opinions all the time, and I thought to myself, it was not hurting anyone. But the problem is, especially in Australia with like tall Poppy syndrome. Not saying I was killing it or anything, but we're so so quick to give judgment to other people as soon as people do.
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Speaker 2: Well for some reason. And I'm not saying ah Oussi's obviously love us Ozzi's are the best, but.
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Speaker 1: It's just this culture that we have here in Australia where we have to put them back in their box and put them down, like get them off their own little pedestal and get back down in the dungeon, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 2: And it's just really sad. And I know, for me, when I.
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Speaker 1: See other people doing well and doing something different, I actually love that. I love that, like that makes me feel really motivated to do more shit, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 2: And I do remember this one conversation.
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Speaker 1: It was with one of my old girlfriends then still love it to death, but I do remember her saying, you know, like why are you doing this? Like I just don't get it, Like why don't you just go back and do makeup? And I said to her, well, you know, I want to spend the weekends with Ryan and Harper where new parents who want to be together, and it makes me happy. I love writing, I love sharing my life, and I love these new connections I'm making online. And those type opinions did come in quite often of why are you doing this?
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Speaker 2: I don't get it?
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Speaker 1: And I even had some people like there was a couple of close friends I just refused to follow me in general. And I tried not to take it personally, because you know, it is just social media when you think about it. But I think there was a bigger message there. And could you imagine if I had let my fear of looking like an idiot, which I did look like an idiot, my fear of failure and the opinions of others stop me from doing what I wanted, I would not be talking in this microphone right now. I would probably still be doing makeup and not spending the weekends with my family. You know, none of these opportunities would have come up if I had listened to other people. When you think about it, you get one life. We live once, and to be honest, I was very naive.
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Speaker 2: To the fact. I obviously was aware of the fact that.
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Speaker 1: We live once, but I was very naive to the reality of it until I lost Dad and Nan. And I think until you experience a close loved one or someone passed away, I feel like you don't actually understand how.
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Speaker 2: Huge that is.
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Speaker 1: There's just one time, like you get one go, that's it. Why the hell are we letting other people's opinions dictate how we live our lives and if we pursue our passions or not. And granted, those people now a lot of them are the ones now coming to me asking me for advice on how to grow and run a business and things like that, which again I'm totally winging, by the way, And that was the same with the staff based planner's business. Granted, when I started Staft based Planners platform was well established and you know, that was my full time job, but I still had people with doubts, those people who just didn't understand, Like, why would you go to all that effort and make your own product when you can just get paid to show other people's products.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: And it's just for me. I've never done any of this for the money. And that's the thing.
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Speaker 1: If you have a goal or something you want to do, your why, as I've said, I talked about this in that routine video, but your why has to be deep. It cannot be surface level. So if you are wanting to like start a podcast or start a social media channel to make money and that's the only reason is money, mate, you're not going to last because I tell you what, anything you decide to pursue is going to be a lot of work. And if that passion and drive isn't there, and like you knowing this deep purpose of why you need to be doing it, if that's not there, as soon as it gets hard, you're going to bow. You're like, I'm fucking out, you know.
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Speaker 2: What I mean?
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Speaker 1: If you want to know what makes me different than other people when it comes to getting out of your own way and just starting and not letting the opinions of others stop me. I think at that time I valued my vision and passion over the opinions of others. So when you're letting other people's opinions physically stop you from doing things that you want to do, you are showing that you value the opinions of other people above your own. You don't value your own vision and opinion and passions as much as you value the judgment from other people. And a lot of the time those opinions that you are letting override your own, they're not people you would even take advice from. The only people you should ever listen to is those who have done it before and who are where you want to be. And even then, everyone takes a different path. So I want you to think about it. And that leads into the next topic, which is fear of failure. When I first started staff face planners, I had never made a product in my bloody life. I didn't even know what to do. I literally googled how to make a planner. And yes, granted I had more ownsmall business before that, but it was nothing like I'd ever done before, absolutely nothing like. I had to talk to manufacturers, I had to design it with my ographic designer, I had to figure out how to outline it like just so much went into it, and the weight of failing this new venture was much bigger than me starting a blog. I saved up for so long to be able to have the money to you know, get samples and everything like that and then pay the deposit for the first batch that I had made. But if this failed, then it was the livelihood of my family was attached to it.
00:18:31
Speaker 2: This time. It wasn't just me.
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Speaker 1: What if people didn't like it? Ones of people didn't buy it? And I had a thousand planets sitting in my garage for years. They were huge thoughts I had. But Ryan said to me, what is the worst that could happen? And that is what you really need to think about. Okay, sure, you go out and you start this business you want to start, or you start your own page online, or you go back to UNI.
00:18:52
Speaker 2: You say to yourself, I'm too old for that. Now, what's the worst that could happen?
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Speaker 1: The worst thing that could happen is it didn't work out and you go back to living life the way you were before. And that's when you realize, Because I know right now, when I say that you're still scared of it, you're not actually afraid of failing you're afraid of the opinions of others have of you failing. That's what you're scared of. I know, it's like, oh fuck, isn't it? And look when I talk about the opinions of others. Look, we are literally built this way where humans when we were cave men and women, we had to be in groups or we literally die. We'd get eaten by a saber tooth tiger. You had to be likable, you had to let everyone else, let you into the groups you don't die. But unfortunately, our psychology hasn't really caught up with the times.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: So now when bloody oh no, we're not going to say Susie, we're not going to say Susie.
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Speaker 1: Now when bloody Bethany, sorry Bethany, it's close to Stephanie's all say Bethany. So when Bethany now writes a mean comment to you, our brain then signals to our body that we are in danger. We have to make Bethany like us, because if she doesn't, we're going to get kicked out of the group and then we're going to end up as breakfast with a sabertooth tiger. And we don't want that. So instead of actually thinking, Bethany is this girl. I haven't seen her for ten years. She went to my school. I'm never going to see her again. Who gives a shit? We think, oh my.
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Speaker 2: God, what she wrote is right? Is that what I'm like?
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Speaker 1: And then you need to try and make her like you or you just end up going in a full on social media battle on Facebook, which I know a lot of people love to watch because.
00:20:18
Speaker 2: It's very entertaining. But that's what happens.
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Speaker 1: I think it's being brave enough to feel the fear and do it anyways. And that's exactly what I did, and I do it every single day. I have to say, I'm constantly fearful, and I know that sounds like a horrible way to live, but I'd rather have some amount of fear than be bored. You don't want to end up getting to eighty years old and always be wondering what if what if I did this? What if I did that? You know, I even said this to one of my staff members. She's wanted to start her own business in social media, and of course, you know, she's been working for me for years and I love her to death, and she came to me and said that yeah, she wants to start her own her own social media business, and now I know a lot of bosses would be not happy with that. Obviously, I was devastated because I love her. But when she was talking about her starting her own business and going out on this new venture and being scared, I said, well, you know, you can't always wonder what if, because it's better to go and do the thing and see what happens and give it a bloody good hot go then be wondering for the rest of your life what if?
00:21:20
Speaker 2: What if I.
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Speaker 1: Didn't do that and go and start my own business? And I know I would much rather take a chance, deal with some shitty opinions along the way, and know for myself when it comes to pursuing your dreams, you have to be very, very careful who you seek validation from. It's like, soon as you become a mom, how many opinions do you get? Bloody Betty's saying breastfeed to their fifteen Next bloody Bob over there saying, use your placenta to make your bloody vagina come back to life.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: I don't know, talking shit now.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: You can't listen to all of them because if your mom and you're listening to this, you would know how intense it is when you have your first kid and every bloody man and their dog have an opinion on what you should be doing. I had to learn that not every decision deserves a place in my decision making process.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: Like come on, decisions are hard enough. You have to trust in.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: Your own gut and your own decision making ability and only seek opinions from those who have walked to the walk and talk the talk themselves, and they are where you want to be. And that is the only thing, my friend, that makes me with a successful business any different from the next person. Is I valued my own opinions above the opinions of others.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: That's it.
00:22:27
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about moving through this, because it's one thing for me to sit here and talk in your ear, but it's another to actually move through it for yourself. But I do hope you have had some light bulb moments, because there's nothing more freeing than throwing the weight of everyone else's expectations and opinions and even sometimes your own if you have high expectations off your shoulders. So how do you get out of your own way and get out of your own head and actually do the things that you've been wanting to do.
00:22:53
Speaker 2: Trust your vision, trust in yourself.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: For once, I'm the first person to say, and I really ruggle to make decisions. I never know what I should be having for lunch if I haven't meal prepped it. It could be the smallest thing for me. It's funny the little decisions I struggle with, but the big important ones I always just know because I've learnt before. There was like a year with Planner covers and I knew I had to do this special like the limited edition design. I wanted it to be across all the planners and the teams, what it was safe for, just to test it out first, and then it's sold in one night like all the Planners with that limited edition print sold out in literally one to two nights. And then I promised myself from that day forward, I need to trust my vision. I need to trust my gut when it comes to things, especially that I'm passionate about. And ever since then, especially for this year, I've done huge risks. I've made a huge risk with the planners, but I know that they're going to be twenty times better and I don't need anyone else to try and talk me out of that. But when it comes to other things, there's still a lot of times where I seek the opinion of others, whether that's for feedback on a social media post or maybe like a marketing strategy of my really good friend Stacy. She owns Last Minerals, so she's the CEO of Lust and we talk most days, and she's done what I've done. She's walked the walk, she's talk the talk, and she's where I want to be, and her values line up with my own as a person. So I do take her opinion on but in a good way, in a way that's constructive, which leads me onto the second thing that you can do, which is be able to divide opinions into constructive feedback and unsolicited advice. So unsolicited advice would be from people who maybe they don't have the same values as you. They don't live the life that you feel like aligns with your own. They aren't doing the things that you're doing. And I'm not saying that. For example, you know, I see opinion of my friend who runs another type of business. Just because they're not running an e commerce brand like me doesn't mean I warrant take on their opinion. But if that person holds the same values as me and lives a life in a similar alignment as me, as in, like, you know, she puts her family first, she's creative, she's driven, likes to take a risk. So obviously, if you're someone who wants to start your own business, I would say you should be listening to those who have started their own businesses over those who have been in the same nine to five job for decades and a very risk adverse because that's very different than what you are.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: Like, that doesn't line up, you know what I mean.
00:25:18
Speaker 1: That's where you can divide the opinions into constructive feedback and unsolicited advice. So unsolicited advice is also those who just like to tell you their opinion without you asking for it.
00:25:29
Speaker 2: You know, those people that are just happy to tell you what they.
00:25:32
Speaker 1: Think even though you're like, I didn't ask. They're everywhere, and I had a lot of that at the very very start. Now, the third thing is reframing failure. I have dramatically changed my view on failing something, especially over the last couple of years, and I keep using SPP because it's like the stakes are high there, and I've had mistakes that have cost me a lot of money and have cost me a lot of stress and sleepless nights, Like the stakes are higher, So that's why I like to use it as an example. But over the years, I've had my fair share of failures. And I remember Ryan asked me.
00:26:06
Speaker 2: Literally the other week, if you could go back, what would you.
00:26:09
Speaker 1: Change, And even the ones where I'm just like, I just wish I knew this sooner, or I wish i'd changed this before this happened, I don't regret a single one of them because I wouldn't know what I know now. Each of those failures were really important lessons that I had to learn. Even though they sucked, they fucking sucked. And it's the same with things that happen in personal life and life. Sometimes people break your heart and make you see their real colors, but it's just saving you from more heartache further down the track. So as much as it is shit, anything that you feel like you have failed has taught you the biggest lesson, And I want you to decide is it a setback or a comeback. You're listening to a special best of edition of Stepping Up We've talked about being kinder to ourselves, and we've talked about not letting fear of failures stop us from taking action. But what it's the way we think is shaping far more of our lives than we actually realize. Now I'm going to be diving into exploring the connection between our thoughts, our habits, and the stories we tell ourselves every single day. How am I meant to change my brain and how it's been wired because we are now hardwired to act and think this way and emotionally react this way. But there is hope and there is ways that you can rewire your brain.
00:27:25
Speaker 2: Now.
00:27:25
Speaker 1: The first thing is mental rehearsal. And I didn't realize this, but I actually used to do this a lot when I first launched my planners again, because I was doing some really big, bold moves back then and I'm still doing them, but on a different level. Back then something I've never done before, you know, going out giving money to these manufacturers and like putting myself out there even more. I had a lot of self doubt. So what I would do is every morning I would sit down and I would mentally rehearse how the day was going to go and I remember I did this also on my very first event when I launched the planner. I remember waking up and I mentally rehearsed how it was going to go, even down to what I was having for breakfast, or maybe I was listening to music. Like you need to be so so clear. And again, like I mentioned before, your brain doesn't know if it's just a thought or if it's reality. And that's also why things like vision boards are actually scientifically proven. If you look at them and actually mentally rehearse you achieving those goals, because then your brain actually creates new neural pathways and behaviors so you can actually achieve that goal because it thinks you've already done it. Now before you think this is all bullshit, because it's not. I've got the science. I've got some experiments that they did, and they shared this in the book as well. So in this experiment, there was a group of people who had to physically practice a song on the piano, and they had to do this over a certain amount of weeks, and then another group just had to imagine themselves doing it so they didn't touch the piano every day, had to do the same amount of practice but mentally as the people actually playing the piano. Now, at the end of the experiment, they scanned both sets of brain so both groups, the group that imagined doing the piano they didn't touch it, had grown the same neural connections in their brain as those who had actually played the instrument. So this just proves that by thought alone, they are literally rewiring their brain the same as those who actually practice doing the thing, and they didn't even touch the piano. Now, what if I told you you can not only just change the way your brain is wired by thought, but you can actually physically change your body. Now an article published in nineteen ninety two the Journal of Neurophysiology, the subjects were divided into three groups. The first group were asked to exercise by contracting and relaxing one finger on their left hand for five one hour training sessions per week for four weeks. The second group mentally rehearsed the same exercise on the same timetable without physically activating any muscles in the finger. Now, and then there was people in a control group who exercised neither their fingers or their mind, so they did nothing. At the end of the study, the scientists compared the finding. So the first set of participants who had their finger strength tested against the control group a no brainer. Obviously, the group who actually did the exercise showed thirty percent greater finger strength than those in the control group who did nothing.
00:30:25
Speaker 2: Now we all know, you know, when.
00:30:26
Speaker 1: You repeatedly do the same movement and load up a muscle, it gets stronger. But what you probably wouldn't expect is that people who mentally rehearsed the exercises showed a twenty two percent increase in muscle strength. So that just shows the mind produced an actual physical effect on the body. And they've also done this in so many other studies. They did the same with bicep curls, and again the people who just thought about it gained muscle mass in their biceps simply from thinking about it.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: And they didn't even lift up a dumbbell.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying with all of this is if you can sit there every morning, and mornings and nights are the best time to do things like meditation, journal and mental rehearsal is because it is when your brain is more primed subconsciously to create changes. So you go into certain brain waves, which one is theater. I can't remember the other one, sorry, but yeah, your brain is basically more moldable at morning and night, and obviously when you're asleep because you are really tapped into your subconscious and your brain waves are literally at a different level.
00:31:29
Speaker 2: It's literally science, guys. I'm not full of shit.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: So if you can wake up every single morning and be so clear in your mind and mentally rehearse how your day's going to go, how you are going to react to certain situations, and just how you're going to conduct yourself as a human, how you're going to think, how you're going to feel and just really feel it, your brain will then start to create those pathways. So then you actually are able to turn up and do those things, and you can actually rewire our everyday normal. We can stop living in our past experiences and stop reacting as though we are in the past, and create a new reality in a new future. It's just insane and it really makes so so much sense. So I want you to start practicing your own mental rehearsals, and that's going to obviously prep you and prime your brain to start doing those actual behaviors.
00:32:22
Speaker 2: Now, the next thing you can do is journaling.
00:32:24
Speaker 1: This is really about awareness because firstly, the first thing to do any of this is to have awareness. I'm sure so many of you listening now before this episode didn't realize that most of these things that you do yourself. So now you've got the awareness, that's step one tick you guys pass that class. So journaling is so much more than writing dear diary, dear diary. Today, Susan in accounts was an asshole. It's about being aware of your day and your behavior and how you want to show up that day. So for me, a journaling practice I've done for years and I've talked about it before is I will literally in the morning, right about my day as if it's already happened. So again that's like a form of mental rehearsal. And I also will write down, you know, maybe about the day before about maybe there's a way I reacted that I didn't like, or maybe I felt like I wasn't present, and I'll actually pinpoint what it was. And the thing is, if we're not being aware, and you know, sitting down journaling or not, if you're not being aware of your life and what's going on and why you're feeling the way you're feeling things aren't going to change because it comes down to the awareness and actually being able to sit down and reflect. And if we don't do these things, we're just existing in our lives. We're not living, we're existing, and we're an autopilot and we're all programmed into the past negative behaviors that we've always known. Yes, we're not perfect, and you're not meant to be perfect, but there is just so much power that we have and we don't even realize it. And then, of course the other thing to do is meditation. Again, this is the activity that literally can tap into your subconscious because it gets your brain waves at that level where you can really tap into that and make new experiences. So literally rewire now. I will do you a full episode of meditation, because I feel like people think it's about again like sitting on a bloody rock for four hours, you're not allowed to have any thoughts, and that's not what it is at all. I have the busiest mind known to men, like gods, I have adhd okay, no joke. Meditation It changes my day instantly, I can't even tell you. And doing these things like mental rehearsal journaling and meditation will change your life, and it will really help you get out of those past behaviors and past thoughts. You know, It's just like all the times when we have that narrative we tell ourselves that we're not good enough, we're not smart enough. That will be because and I can bet you ninety percent of the time that is because ninety nine percent of the time that is because when you were younger, something happened where you felt that way. And that's the thing and the story and the narrative that your brain and body has told you ever since. So now you think that's what you are, what you think you become. It really is so true. That's it for today's special best of edition of Stepping Up. I hope these conversations have reminded you to be a little kinder to yourself, trust yourself a little bit more, and pay attention to the stories you're telling yourself every single day. Thank you so much for listening, and remember what you think about consistently has far more power than you actually realize. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, Bye,
Speaker 1: Hello, Legends, Welcome back to a special best of edition of Stepping Up.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: This week, we're diving into one of the biggest things that.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: Can hold us back from becoming the person we want to be, which is, unfortunately sometimes is our own self talk. Whether it's the unrelenting pressure we put on ourselves, our fear of failure, or simply getting stuck in the same negative thought loop. Sometimes I always that sabotaging us the most is the one inside our own head, and most of the time it is. And I've picked some of my favorite moments from past episodes and next week we'll be back with a brand new episode. Few we are eyeballs deep shooting planners right now. We are day four or five of shooting, and let's just say, I feel like my hair's going to snap off from hairspray. Honestly, you think, like doing shoots and stuff, like it's so much fun and I love it so so much, but you.
00:00:48
Speaker 2: Do it's really tiring.
00:00:50
Speaker 1: And I don't know how like proper models, and like I'm not comparing myself to a model, by the way, but how people that do this type of stuff full time would actually survive Because I'm struggling. I'm on struggle, but we have lots of fun and I cannot wait for you guys to see the planners. They are next level. But first up, let's start with a bit of a reality check. Have you ever stopped to think about whether you're actually being way too hard on yourself? The biggest red flag that you are an asshole to yourself is that you're constantly saying the word should. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I should have done it this way, I should have done it that way. I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have done that. I should go and do this. I should be here by now. If that is something you are saying constantly, your expectations on yourself are way too bloody high. And this is all because you, my friend. How can I say this in the nicest way possible. You're an asshole.
00:01:46
Speaker 2: To yourself.
00:01:48
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is, although you are an asshole, you are the most understanding, kindest, sympathetic person to those you love. Yet you won't meet yourself with the same kindness or understanding. All right, So now you know you've got a few red flags happening. Maybe you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. I guess how do you know that you truly have such ridiculous expectations? So I've made an asshole criteria for you. So I want to run through some questions that will help you determine where you sit on the asshole meter. Well, that sounds weird. The first question is when you make mistakes, do you get very hard on yourself or do you expect not to make any at all?
00:02:34
Speaker 2: Do you always tend.
00:02:35
Speaker 1: To focus on your imperfections and what you didn't do rather than what you did do? And you're always putting yourself down and you don't even realize you're doing it. And I'm the first to admit I am terrible with this, and I try really hard with myself talk, but I'm always calling myself an idiot always, I even say it out loud. And I'm constantly having friends and family saying Steph, like, don't talk to yourself like that. When you reach your goal, do you tend to think about what you should have done better or even worse? You chuck it to the side and move on to the next thing, and then the next thing, always seeking that validation, always seeking the next best thing for fulfillment. Are you someone that no matter what you do, and you could achieve the most amazing goal, but you just never feel good enough.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: It just is never enough. Biggest one? This is one.
00:03:22
Speaker 1: I know you're all going to say yes too, But do you try to be everything to everyone all of the time, putting everyone above yourself and all your own needs even though you saying yes to everything like it's out of your abilities or capabilities, like you literally cannot do it, but you will continuously say yes and people please.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: I am the worse for this.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: For me, I feel like because of my jobs and things, I'm just very passionate, so I will just say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and I won't even think about all the other things I've got to do. Are you someone you like you're always wanting and needing to be busy. You can't sit down. You need to be doing all the things, because, let's be honest, our self worth is tied to our productivity and our achievements.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: And lastly, you.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: Set goals on what you think they should be based off others and what they tell you or what you see on social media, and that's going to lead us into all the pressures that we feel in day to day life.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not here saying.
00:04:21
Speaker 1: We've got to ditch the goals, We've got to ditch the expectations altogether. We all know I love a good goal. Now, usually the most passionate people are assholes to themselves. Do I want to say asshole guys? I mean, like to ourselves, Like, we're not actual assholes, We're awesome. But it is time for us to have a bit of a wake up call and to understand that yes, it is good to have goals, but they need to be realistic and have a realistic level of expectation so then we can move forward. We're not being stagnant, which again is okay to be stagnant for a while, But the keyword here is realistic, which apparently isn't in my vocabulary.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: So how do we change this?
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Well, here's the three steps to stop being an asshole to yourself. And one of these steps I want to be giving you an amazing, amazing episode next week on how to really take one of these steps and implement it daily and it is going to save your life.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: But step number one, break down.
00:05:22
Speaker 1: Your goals into smallest steps or even habits. Especially when for myself I do this. I was making the mistake of saying, Okay, do this project today. But the project that's thing, is literally ten plus hours work. So you need to be specific, set yourself time limits, be like, okay, I'm going to work on this for one hour. I am going to clean out the garage for one hour. So break everything into steps or just time frames. And just like I always say, you don't think of the whole house. You think of that cupboard, you think of that draw, you think of that bench, and it's the same. You don't think of the whole staircase. You think of the first step. A huge example with this, which I have told you guys before, is when I was always striving to hit ten k steps and I was never meeting them, Like by the afternoon, I was at like three k and I'd give up. So as soon as I dropped the bar lower to eight k steps a day, when the afternoon came, I was like, oh, if I just go for a walk, I'll hit it. So then I started hitting my daily step count. And it's cause I dropped.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: The bar lower.
00:06:24
Speaker 1: Because when you think about it, if you're an overachiever or you have high expectation. If we just lower our bar to what we think is low, that's other people's like medium to.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: High, probably high.
00:06:36
Speaker 1: You know, it's better to chip away at things slowly than not do them at all, or just sit there and hate yourself. And the best resource for this is my roadmap, so I will make sure I link you guys to that episode and the download below. The next step is be realistic. I want you to order your to do list, so everything, all the things that are circling in your brain, get them out. But I want you to actually look at what's actually urgent. You know, we're not saving lives unless you're a doctor, which I say all the time because it is the best thing. And also just remember their urgency is not your emergency. So yes, you might have to email Margaret from accounts, but she can wait a couple of days. I'm sure she'll be fine. She'll be fine. Just buy a drink at the Christmas party.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: I don't know. So look at your ort to do list, give it a really good audit.
00:07:22
Speaker 1: See what's urgent, what you can schedule later, what can be deleted or what can be delegated. And as I said in next week's episode, I want to give you the best planning hack, daily planning hack that is going to help you completely change your day, which I'm so excited to. That's why I like put these two episodes one after the other because it's just going to save you. Second thing and now, this is the hack that I spoke about at the start.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: I want you to keep a list.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: Now, this list is going to have actual time estimations that daily tasks take you to complete, because we all think something will take an hour, but it actually takes three. So when you're organized to do list, if you have to, like me, oh, write how long it actually takes me, and using things like your timer, and it's even a really good app called toggle and you can actually type in there what you're doing and then it just like will time you. And then you stop it and you keep a list of the actual amount of time it takes to do things. So then again you're not setting yourself up for failure. Having your list of task times is going to change your life, especially if you have ADHD or if you're just terrible time in general. The next step is when you're having judgmental thoughts, you're thinking should be doing this, should be doing that, I'm an idiot.
00:08:35
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Sally is so amazing. Ask yourself, if.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: My friend was going through this right now, what would I tell her? How would I speak to her? And that leads me on to my next point. It's always just so good to have someone that you can trust to be your reality check. So there will be times I'll be so flustered and even with all my planning tips, my anxiety takes over. I can't think straight. So I will go to Ry and I'll be like, what makes sense to you? And he helps me see clearly. You know you can go to someone and they can tell you if you are being too hard on yourself, if you're expecting too much, and they can just be realistic with you and spoiler alert, you are being too hard on yourself. That was a bit of a look at how unrealistic expectations and negative self talk can quietly creep into our everyday lives. But even when we recognize those patterns, there's often something else that keeps us stuck, which is fear. Fear of getting it wrong, fear of looking silly, fear of what other people might think, In this next segment, I'm answering a listener question about how to get out of your own head and stop letting fear of failure hold you back.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: Now, this might be a little bit confronting, but you do need to hear it.
00:09:43
Speaker 1: So the question is, how do you get out of your own head and your own way to get out there and start something new. Then she wrote fear and failure. So obviously, as she said, she wants to get out there and do something new, but she's holding herself back. She's in her own head too much, she's overthinking it, which is pretty standard.
00:09:58
Speaker 2: Practice for all of us, and she has a fear of failure.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: Now, I resonate with this so so heavily in lots of different parts of my life, and all of us would resonate with this at one point or another. When I read that question, my mind straight away goes to when I started my blog and.
00:10:15
Speaker 2: Everything online, which was eight years ago. Now.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: Now, I've had a lot of other times where I had fear of starting things, like I had my makeup business, I went to UNI, and then I did PT. I did all the things, but there was always like a fear there. Now, I remember the fear I had when starting the blog was back when I had Harper, my first daughter, and I just felt so alone. As you guys know the story, I didn't have any one friends, I had really bad person anital depression. And I love writing. I've always loved writing. It's my outlet. And you know, I did journalism at UNI and things like that. And I remember sitting down with Ryan one time and I was feeding Harper, and I said, like she was just a newborn, and I just wanted to connect with some other mums. I just wanted to be really honest with my experience. I've always been a massive oversharer always, and I said to whatever I started a blog. There was definitely blogs and stuff around, and this was more of the beginning of the whole mummy blog era, Like it wasn't as huge as what it was now years later, and none of our friends or anyone we knew had ever done something like this, like started a blog or started like an online thing. And then I also was going to start an Instagram page to go with that, which is now the one I have, which is steph Pace Underscore. Thank god, it's not just another mummy blog anymore. And you know, Ryan was always like from the start, just do it, Just do it, And I kept thinking, but what are people going to say?
00:11:31
Speaker 2: What if I make a fool of myself?
00:11:32
Speaker 1: And this thought stopped me from starting the blog for probably about two months. Isn't actually that long when you think about it, because there's a lot of people out there that want to do something, and the fear of them looking silly or making full of themselves, they sit on that for years. Those people never start, they never go out and do what they want. And that's what we hear of these people who are going deeper.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: People on their.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: Deathbed, the biggest regret they had is not doing the things that they truly wanted. They always were doing things that made other people happy and putting other people first and not following their dreams, you know, and it's really sad. So when you think about that, two months in comparison is nothing. And that was honestly because of Ryan. He's always been that supportive person for me no matter what I wanted to do.
00:12:13
Speaker 2: So I did.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: I opened up a WordPress website and started posting, opened up an Instagram page. And when I first started, because you got to remember, this was after I had been running a really successful makeup ardistry of business for a couple of years, like I was booked out for years in advance, but the one thing I didn't really love, and I did go back to it after half I was born for a little while while I was doing the blog on the side, because the blog was always a hobby, like I didn't know you could make money. I didn't know influence the stuff. I didn't know any of that shit. I just wanted to share my story with people and talk to people, and I did, and the connections I made online during that time it saved me from my post named depression.
00:12:49
Speaker 2: It really did.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: You know, people were reading my blogs and I started having people reaching out to me saying like this is really helpful. And obviously things don't take off quick straight away, like I've been doing this for eight years now, and there was a lot of people who just didn't understand why I would leave makeup. They saw the success that I had with the makeup artistry business. And by this point this had been a few months now, I started getting you know, brands reaching out and stuff like that, and I wasn't making any income yet, but you know, we could start to see something brewing there, and eventually when the blog and Instagram and that did turn into something that actually was an income and eventually being a better income than what the makeup ardiship business was so it could support my family. People still didn't get it, you know what I mean. And I remember people giving me their opinions all the time, and I thought to myself, it was not hurting anyone. But the problem is, especially in Australia with like tall Poppy syndrome. Not saying I was killing it or anything, but we're so so quick to give judgment to other people as soon as people do.
00:13:48
Speaker 2: Well for some reason. And I'm not saying ah Oussi's obviously love us Ozzi's are the best, but.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: It's just this culture that we have here in Australia where we have to put them back in their box and put them down, like get them off their own little pedestal and get back down in the dungeon, you know what I mean.
00:14:01
Speaker 2: And it's just really sad. And I know, for me, when I.
00:14:05
Speaker 1: See other people doing well and doing something different, I actually love that. I love that, like that makes me feel really motivated to do more shit, you know what I mean.
00:14:14
Speaker 2: And I do remember this one conversation.
00:14:15
Speaker 1: It was with one of my old girlfriends then still love it to death, but I do remember her saying, you know, like why are you doing this? Like I just don't get it, Like why don't you just go back and do makeup? And I said to her, well, you know, I want to spend the weekends with Ryan and Harper where new parents who want to be together, and it makes me happy. I love writing, I love sharing my life, and I love these new connections I'm making online. And those type opinions did come in quite often of why are you doing this?
00:14:39
Speaker 2: I don't get it?
00:14:40
Speaker 1: And I even had some people like there was a couple of close friends I just refused to follow me in general. And I tried not to take it personally, because you know, it is just social media when you think about it. But I think there was a bigger message there. And could you imagine if I had let my fear of looking like an idiot, which I did look like an idiot, my fear of failure and the opinions of others stop me from doing what I wanted, I would not be talking in this microphone right now. I would probably still be doing makeup and not spending the weekends with my family. You know, none of these opportunities would have come up if I had listened to other people. When you think about it, you get one life. We live once, and to be honest, I was very naive.
00:15:18
Speaker 2: To the fact. I obviously was aware of the fact that.
00:15:21
Speaker 1: We live once, but I was very naive to the reality of it until I lost Dad and Nan. And I think until you experience a close loved one or someone passed away, I feel like you don't actually understand how.
00:15:33
Speaker 2: Huge that is.
00:15:34
Speaker 1: There's just one time, like you get one go, that's it. Why the hell are we letting other people's opinions dictate how we live our lives and if we pursue our passions or not. And granted, those people now a lot of them are the ones now coming to me asking me for advice on how to grow and run a business and things like that, which again I'm totally winging, by the way, And that was the same with the staff based planner's business. Granted, when I started Staft based Planners platform was well established and you know, that was my full time job, but I still had people with doubts, those people who just didn't understand, Like, why would you go to all that effort and make your own product when you can just get paid to show other people's products.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: And it's just for me. I've never done any of this for the money. And that's the thing.
00:16:17
Speaker 1: If you have a goal or something you want to do, your why, as I've said, I talked about this in that routine video, but your why has to be deep. It cannot be surface level. So if you are wanting to like start a podcast or start a social media channel to make money and that's the only reason is money, mate, you're not going to last because I tell you what, anything you decide to pursue is going to be a lot of work. And if that passion and drive isn't there, and like you knowing this deep purpose of why you need to be doing it, if that's not there, as soon as it gets hard, you're going to bow. You're like, I'm fucking out, you know.
00:16:49
Speaker 2: What I mean?
00:16:50
Speaker 1: If you want to know what makes me different than other people when it comes to getting out of your own way and just starting and not letting the opinions of others stop me. I think at that time I valued my vision and passion over the opinions of others. So when you're letting other people's opinions physically stop you from doing things that you want to do, you are showing that you value the opinions of other people above your own. You don't value your own vision and opinion and passions as much as you value the judgment from other people. And a lot of the time those opinions that you are letting override your own, they're not people you would even take advice from. The only people you should ever listen to is those who have done it before and who are where you want to be. And even then, everyone takes a different path. So I want you to think about it. And that leads into the next topic, which is fear of failure. When I first started staff face planners, I had never made a product in my bloody life. I didn't even know what to do. I literally googled how to make a planner. And yes, granted I had more ownsmall business before that, but it was nothing like I'd ever done before, absolutely nothing like. I had to talk to manufacturers, I had to design it with my ographic designer, I had to figure out how to outline it like just so much went into it, and the weight of failing this new venture was much bigger than me starting a blog. I saved up for so long to be able to have the money to you know, get samples and everything like that and then pay the deposit for the first batch that I had made. But if this failed, then it was the livelihood of my family was attached to it.
00:18:31
Speaker 2: This time. It wasn't just me.
00:18:32
Speaker 1: What if people didn't like it? Ones of people didn't buy it? And I had a thousand planets sitting in my garage for years. They were huge thoughts I had. But Ryan said to me, what is the worst that could happen? And that is what you really need to think about. Okay, sure, you go out and you start this business you want to start, or you start your own page online, or you go back to UNI.
00:18:52
Speaker 2: You say to yourself, I'm too old for that. Now, what's the worst that could happen?
00:18:55
Speaker 1: The worst thing that could happen is it didn't work out and you go back to living life the way you were before. And that's when you realize, Because I know right now, when I say that you're still scared of it, you're not actually afraid of failing you're afraid of the opinions of others have of you failing. That's what you're scared of. I know, it's like, oh fuck, isn't it? And look when I talk about the opinions of others. Look, we are literally built this way where humans when we were cave men and women, we had to be in groups or we literally die. We'd get eaten by a saber tooth tiger. You had to be likable, you had to let everyone else, let you into the groups you don't die. But unfortunately, our psychology hasn't really caught up with the times.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: So now when bloody oh no, we're not going to say Susie, we're not going to say Susie.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: Now when bloody Bethany, sorry Bethany, it's close to Stephanie's all say Bethany. So when Bethany now writes a mean comment to you, our brain then signals to our body that we are in danger. We have to make Bethany like us, because if she doesn't, we're going to get kicked out of the group and then we're going to end up as breakfast with a sabertooth tiger. And we don't want that. So instead of actually thinking, Bethany is this girl. I haven't seen her for ten years. She went to my school. I'm never going to see her again. Who gives a shit? We think, oh my.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: God, what she wrote is right? Is that what I'm like?
00:20:10
Speaker 1: And then you need to try and make her like you or you just end up going in a full on social media battle on Facebook, which I know a lot of people love to watch because.
00:20:18
Speaker 2: It's very entertaining. But that's what happens.
00:20:20
Speaker 1: I think it's being brave enough to feel the fear and do it anyways. And that's exactly what I did, and I do it every single day. I have to say, I'm constantly fearful, and I know that sounds like a horrible way to live, but I'd rather have some amount of fear than be bored. You don't want to end up getting to eighty years old and always be wondering what if what if I did this? What if I did that? You know, I even said this to one of my staff members. She's wanted to start her own business in social media, and of course, you know, she's been working for me for years and I love her to death, and she came to me and said that yeah, she wants to start her own her own social media business, and now I know a lot of bosses would be not happy with that. Obviously, I was devastated because I love her. But when she was talking about her starting her own business and going out on this new venture and being scared, I said, well, you know, you can't always wonder what if, because it's better to go and do the thing and see what happens and give it a bloody good hot go then be wondering for the rest of your life what if?
00:21:20
Speaker 2: What if I.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: Didn't do that and go and start my own business? And I know I would much rather take a chance, deal with some shitty opinions along the way, and know for myself when it comes to pursuing your dreams, you have to be very, very careful who you seek validation from. It's like, soon as you become a mom, how many opinions do you get? Bloody Betty's saying breastfeed to their fifteen Next bloody Bob over there saying, use your placenta to make your bloody vagina come back to life.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: I don't know, talking shit now.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: You can't listen to all of them because if your mom and you're listening to this, you would know how intense it is when you have your first kid and every bloody man and their dog have an opinion on what you should be doing. I had to learn that not every decision deserves a place in my decision making process.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: Like come on, decisions are hard enough. You have to trust in.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: Your own gut and your own decision making ability and only seek opinions from those who have walked to the walk and talk the talk themselves, and they are where you want to be. And that is the only thing, my friend, that makes me with a successful business any different from the next person. Is I valued my own opinions above the opinions of others.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: That's it.
00:22:27
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about moving through this, because it's one thing for me to sit here and talk in your ear, but it's another to actually move through it for yourself. But I do hope you have had some light bulb moments, because there's nothing more freeing than throwing the weight of everyone else's expectations and opinions and even sometimes your own if you have high expectations off your shoulders. So how do you get out of your own way and get out of your own head and actually do the things that you've been wanting to do.
00:22:53
Speaker 2: Trust your vision, trust in yourself.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: For once, I'm the first person to say, and I really ruggle to make decisions. I never know what I should be having for lunch if I haven't meal prepped it. It could be the smallest thing for me. It's funny the little decisions I struggle with, but the big important ones I always just know because I've learnt before. There was like a year with Planner covers and I knew I had to do this special like the limited edition design. I wanted it to be across all the planners and the teams, what it was safe for, just to test it out first, and then it's sold in one night like all the Planners with that limited edition print sold out in literally one to two nights. And then I promised myself from that day forward, I need to trust my vision. I need to trust my gut when it comes to things, especially that I'm passionate about. And ever since then, especially for this year, I've done huge risks. I've made a huge risk with the planners, but I know that they're going to be twenty times better and I don't need anyone else to try and talk me out of that. But when it comes to other things, there's still a lot of times where I seek the opinion of others, whether that's for feedback on a social media post or maybe like a marketing strategy of my really good friend Stacy. She owns Last Minerals, so she's the CEO of Lust and we talk most days, and she's done what I've done. She's walked the walk, she's talk the talk, and she's where I want to be, and her values line up with my own as a person. So I do take her opinion on but in a good way, in a way that's constructive, which leads me onto the second thing that you can do, which is be able to divide opinions into constructive feedback and unsolicited advice. So unsolicited advice would be from people who maybe they don't have the same values as you. They don't live the life that you feel like aligns with your own. They aren't doing the things that you're doing. And I'm not saying that. For example, you know, I see opinion of my friend who runs another type of business. Just because they're not running an e commerce brand like me doesn't mean I warrant take on their opinion. But if that person holds the same values as me and lives a life in a similar alignment as me, as in, like, you know, she puts her family first, she's creative, she's driven, likes to take a risk. So obviously, if you're someone who wants to start your own business, I would say you should be listening to those who have started their own businesses over those who have been in the same nine to five job for decades and a very risk adverse because that's very different than what you are.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: Like, that doesn't line up, you know what I mean.
00:25:18
Speaker 1: That's where you can divide the opinions into constructive feedback and unsolicited advice. So unsolicited advice is also those who just like to tell you their opinion without you asking for it.
00:25:29
Speaker 2: You know, those people that are just happy to tell you what they.
00:25:32
Speaker 1: Think even though you're like, I didn't ask. They're everywhere, and I had a lot of that at the very very start. Now, the third thing is reframing failure. I have dramatically changed my view on failing something, especially over the last couple of years, and I keep using SPP because it's like the stakes are high there, and I've had mistakes that have cost me a lot of money and have cost me a lot of stress and sleepless nights, Like the stakes are higher, So that's why I like to use it as an example. But over the years, I've had my fair share of failures. And I remember Ryan asked me.
00:26:06
Speaker 2: Literally the other week, if you could go back, what would you.
00:26:09
Speaker 1: Change, And even the ones where I'm just like, I just wish I knew this sooner, or I wish i'd changed this before this happened, I don't regret a single one of them because I wouldn't know what I know now. Each of those failures were really important lessons that I had to learn. Even though they sucked, they fucking sucked. And it's the same with things that happen in personal life and life. Sometimes people break your heart and make you see their real colors, but it's just saving you from more heartache further down the track. So as much as it is shit, anything that you feel like you have failed has taught you the biggest lesson, And I want you to decide is it a setback or a comeback. You're listening to a special best of edition of Stepping Up We've talked about being kinder to ourselves, and we've talked about not letting fear of failures stop us from taking action. But what it's the way we think is shaping far more of our lives than we actually realize. Now I'm going to be diving into exploring the connection between our thoughts, our habits, and the stories we tell ourselves every single day. How am I meant to change my brain and how it's been wired because we are now hardwired to act and think this way and emotionally react this way. But there is hope and there is ways that you can rewire your brain.
00:27:25
Speaker 2: Now.
00:27:25
Speaker 1: The first thing is mental rehearsal. And I didn't realize this, but I actually used to do this a lot when I first launched my planners again, because I was doing some really big, bold moves back then and I'm still doing them, but on a different level. Back then something I've never done before, you know, going out giving money to these manufacturers and like putting myself out there even more. I had a lot of self doubt. So what I would do is every morning I would sit down and I would mentally rehearse how the day was going to go and I remember I did this also on my very first event when I launched the planner. I remember waking up and I mentally rehearsed how it was going to go, even down to what I was having for breakfast, or maybe I was listening to music. Like you need to be so so clear. And again, like I mentioned before, your brain doesn't know if it's just a thought or if it's reality. And that's also why things like vision boards are actually scientifically proven. If you look at them and actually mentally rehearse you achieving those goals, because then your brain actually creates new neural pathways and behaviors so you can actually achieve that goal because it thinks you've already done it. Now before you think this is all bullshit, because it's not. I've got the science. I've got some experiments that they did, and they shared this in the book as well. So in this experiment, there was a group of people who had to physically practice a song on the piano, and they had to do this over a certain amount of weeks, and then another group just had to imagine themselves doing it so they didn't touch the piano every day, had to do the same amount of practice but mentally as the people actually playing the piano. Now, at the end of the experiment, they scanned both sets of brain so both groups, the group that imagined doing the piano they didn't touch it, had grown the same neural connections in their brain as those who had actually played the instrument. So this just proves that by thought alone, they are literally rewiring their brain the same as those who actually practice doing the thing, and they didn't even touch the piano. Now, what if I told you you can not only just change the way your brain is wired by thought, but you can actually physically change your body. Now an article published in nineteen ninety two the Journal of Neurophysiology, the subjects were divided into three groups. The first group were asked to exercise by contracting and relaxing one finger on their left hand for five one hour training sessions per week for four weeks. The second group mentally rehearsed the same exercise on the same timetable without physically activating any muscles in the finger. Now, and then there was people in a control group who exercised neither their fingers or their mind, so they did nothing. At the end of the study, the scientists compared the finding. So the first set of participants who had their finger strength tested against the control group a no brainer. Obviously, the group who actually did the exercise showed thirty percent greater finger strength than those in the control group who did nothing.
00:30:25
Speaker 2: Now we all know, you know, when.
00:30:26
Speaker 1: You repeatedly do the same movement and load up a muscle, it gets stronger. But what you probably wouldn't expect is that people who mentally rehearsed the exercises showed a twenty two percent increase in muscle strength. So that just shows the mind produced an actual physical effect on the body. And they've also done this in so many other studies. They did the same with bicep curls, and again the people who just thought about it gained muscle mass in their biceps simply from thinking about it.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: And they didn't even lift up a dumbbell.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying with all of this is if you can sit there every morning, and mornings and nights are the best time to do things like meditation, journal and mental rehearsal is because it is when your brain is more primed subconsciously to create changes. So you go into certain brain waves, which one is theater. I can't remember the other one, sorry, but yeah, your brain is basically more moldable at morning and night, and obviously when you're asleep because you are really tapped into your subconscious and your brain waves are literally at a different level.
00:31:29
Speaker 2: It's literally science, guys. I'm not full of shit.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: So if you can wake up every single morning and be so clear in your mind and mentally rehearse how your day's going to go, how you are going to react to certain situations, and just how you're going to conduct yourself as a human, how you're going to think, how you're going to feel and just really feel it, your brain will then start to create those pathways. So then you actually are able to turn up and do those things, and you can actually rewire our everyday normal. We can stop living in our past experiences and stop reacting as though we are in the past, and create a new reality in a new future. It's just insane and it really makes so so much sense. So I want you to start practicing your own mental rehearsals, and that's going to obviously prep you and prime your brain to start doing those actual behaviors.
00:32:22
Speaker 2: Now, the next thing you can do is journaling.
00:32:24
Speaker 1: This is really about awareness because firstly, the first thing to do any of this is to have awareness. I'm sure so many of you listening now before this episode didn't realize that most of these things that you do yourself. So now you've got the awareness, that's step one tick you guys pass that class. So journaling is so much more than writing dear diary, dear diary. Today, Susan in accounts was an asshole. It's about being aware of your day and your behavior and how you want to show up that day. So for me, a journaling practice I've done for years and I've talked about it before is I will literally in the morning, right about my day as if it's already happened. So again that's like a form of mental rehearsal. And I also will write down, you know, maybe about the day before about maybe there's a way I reacted that I didn't like, or maybe I felt like I wasn't present, and I'll actually pinpoint what it was. And the thing is, if we're not being aware, and you know, sitting down journaling or not, if you're not being aware of your life and what's going on and why you're feeling the way you're feeling things aren't going to change because it comes down to the awareness and actually being able to sit down and reflect. And if we don't do these things, we're just existing in our lives. We're not living, we're existing, and we're an autopilot and we're all programmed into the past negative behaviors that we've always known. Yes, we're not perfect, and you're not meant to be perfect, but there is just so much power that we have and we don't even realize it. And then, of course the other thing to do is meditation. Again, this is the activity that literally can tap into your subconscious because it gets your brain waves at that level where you can really tap into that and make new experiences. So literally rewire now. I will do you a full episode of meditation, because I feel like people think it's about again like sitting on a bloody rock for four hours, you're not allowed to have any thoughts, and that's not what it is at all. I have the busiest mind known to men, like gods, I have adhd okay, no joke. Meditation It changes my day instantly, I can't even tell you. And doing these things like mental rehearsal journaling and meditation will change your life, and it will really help you get out of those past behaviors and past thoughts. You know, It's just like all the times when we have that narrative we tell ourselves that we're not good enough, we're not smart enough. That will be because and I can bet you ninety percent of the time that is because ninety nine percent of the time that is because when you were younger, something happened where you felt that way. And that's the thing and the story and the narrative that your brain and body has told you ever since. So now you think that's what you are, what you think you become. It really is so true. That's it for today's special best of edition of Stepping Up. I hope these conversations have reminded you to be a little kinder to yourself, trust yourself a little bit more, and pay attention to the stories you're telling yourself every single day. Thank you so much for listening, and remember what you think about consistently has far more power than you actually realize. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, Bye,
