BRAIN CROPS - with Chelsea Myers

In order to change how you feel in your life you have to change the way you think about the steps along the way. You must change the way you think about your experiences. How you think about your journey. Part of your journey is noticing that other people are on a journey too. When you cross paths with a given person you might have thoughts or opinions about what that person is saying or doing. It is at this point that a lot of us get sucked into a pitfall of Shame.  Our brains naturally seem to think ahead and determine a worse case scenario and decide that it is probable and if it does happen the experience will be unbearable.  In a nutshell, our brain jumps to a conclusion and trys to project us from any discomfort. We then begin to experience  Shame... in advance of the experience.  Many times we start off feeling confident and comfortable in our decisions but as we begin to think about how we might be viewed by others; we begin to feel Shame. We think about how others might view us.  Shame holds us back from progress and enjoying life. Shame causes us to enter a holding pattern with decisions and goals. We simply stop moving forward. 

Comparing ourselves to ourselves is a common thing and it can be a bit of a grey area, because there are times that comparing our growth or our production from one week to the next can be helpful to gauge where we’re at - what we’re doing well, and what we need to do differently. But then there’s this other facet of comparison to ourselves that isn’t useful. It’s where you take something you’ve done well or are capable of doing well and you take that good thing or that potential to do good and use it as a weapon against a less productive, or less successful experience. Stimuli comes in, the brain figures out where to put it, makes connections to other pieces of similar information, and before you realize it you’ve made a comparison - drawn a conclusion - about yourself or someone else in relation to yourself or someone else. So if you notice that happening, you notice yourself observing and then thinking on something that smells like comparison, you can - if you want to - simply acknowledge the thought and then direct your brain to do another activity. It will respond to your direction. 

I want you to imagine that there’s a fountain flowing with water that you want - you’re thirsty - You’re holding a bucket that you want to fill with the crystal clear liquid coming out of the fountain BUT!! Instead of getting right underneath the fountain - instead of positioning yourself with direct access to the liquid you want - You’re holding your bucket underneath the bucket of someone else who is thirsty - someone else who wants water - someone who you want to have water, too So you hold your bucket out, right underneath theirs, and you watch their face with anticipation as their bucket begins to fill And you have some ideas...

Like many other things we get better at, making choices is a skill. And making good choices quickly is incredibly valuable! A hurdle I see in many of my clients, and its not just my observation, a lot of you tell me that you are aware… that you put things off, avoid making decisions on things, or decide and then second guess yourselves… a lot. There are two areas you can look at when you’re trying to get to the bottom of a pattern of indecision. The first is to clarify your goals - your dreams - your desired results. The more clear you are about what you’re after, the easier it will be to make a plan to get there. Now the other thing I coach on a lot is reasonableness. Some of you do have a clear idea of what you want and you do have a clear plan to achieve it. But... Your plan is unreasonable. It doesn’t agree with the other parts of you and of your life. This leads to what I coach on most and that is Getting Rid of Overwhelm and Avoiding Burnout. If you’re done with feeling overwhelmed, if you refuse to burnout and you’re ready to make the necessary changes, then we need to talk.

Are you bringing more of a common cold to the group, or are you the poster Child for positive energy? If someone else was saying the things you are saying, and doing the thing you are doing, do you think you’d be attracted to being around them more, or would they sort of repel you? Would you feel the need to re-energize after that person left? Would you need to dust off or metaphorically sanitize that person’s energy off of you? Attitudes can be contagious!

Procrastination and a Table for Three: What happens to a lot of you, even those of you who have been preplanning your weeks for a long time now, is that you get to the time and date that you had decided you were going to do something... and you don’t do it! And you didn’t forget, you consciously avoided doing the thing that you planned to do. You put it off. You delay it. You procrastinate it! Which, really, is a disservice to yourself. Some of you get so frustrated with patient no-shows, or last minute cancellations... yet you do the same thing to yourself... Let's imagine a table for three with you, you, and you. You as you currently are - in this moment and on this day, you from a point in the past, and you in the future. You must honor your past self’s efforts, be an active and productive current self, and provide the highest probability of success and growth to your future self.

Owning Your Leadership: You are only ever going to be you. I want you to think about that. Think about how often and in what ways you limit yourself based on other people… Adjust Your Posture Now! Each day take steps to become more of the type of leader that you see yourself being in 5 years so that when 5 years have passed, and your 5 year older self has another goal - a further goal - that you’re at least part of the way there because you’ve been working toward it since now. Practice being the more confident leader that you want to become - Right Now. c2LEjzNGGgGoMxjsx5l6

How Honoring Your Calendar Brings the Results You Want.  When you don’t schedule things in available blocks of time, the time gets filled with things. Good things, bad things, things you enjoy, things you don’t... the time passes one way or another and when it’s gone are you, more often than not, energized and impressed with how you spent it? Or did you fill your time cart with a bunch of junk that looked good in the moment... but offered little to put a dent in the health of your mind, body, soul, business, family… Is your current practice of time management providing the results you truly desire?

How Planning and Spontaneity Impact Your Results The primitive brain resist the option of planning. Because it’s work and the brain’s default is to gravitate toward ease - to avoid things that seem “laborious.” Not planning is easy. What the primitive brain doesn’t provide you with is the reality check that while not planning may conserve effort and energy, it can cost you tons. Your lack of planning leads you to a whirlwind of things you have to do, scattered and disorganized. I’d much rather choose to put the effort into pre-planning my week than hope I have the energy for the countless fire drills of unplanned events that I’m signing up for by not scheduling for things. Planning brings freedom and lifts restrictions. Planning delivers meaningful results. The results that you want most. 

How aware are you of your time? What does your time mean to you? If you’re not intentional about how you use your time... you are electing to let it pass by you. Deciding where and how you spend it is where you get to create and direct. Honor that! Value that! Use it to become more of who you want to become, use it to design your life to be the way you want it to be. It all starts with an awareness.