Change Your Mindset: Self-Talk is a Choice

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at JLC Media, part of the everyday leadership conversation programs that we've had. And they're also connected to the In Learning series. So grateful that you're here and took some time to be with us. Today will be a very much an adult conversation. So you may hear some language. So if there are children around or you're offended by strange language or language, put us on mute. Other than that, we hope you're going to enjoy this one. It's really about mindsets, mental models. We use the phrase mental models a lot. They're really the same as a mindset or a belief. But we'll come to that in a minute. We're going to take a quick journey down a couple of stories so that people are able to identify a different way to deal with something significant in their life. We'll develop a common understanding about these mindsets or mental models, mind states that live out in us. So that each of you can choose if you want to. It's an invitation. We make invitations. You make decisions. Choose on how you could respond differently to a situation that might unfold or occur. Vince, what are you hearing me say we're working on today?

Yeah, so what I heard you say, man, is we're going to talk a little bit about mindsets, the state of mind and self talk that you have as a leader and how you see yourself and how you choose to respond. I'm hearing we're going to have some great conversations about how that may or may not positively or negatively impact the people that you work with.

Yeah, because it can do either. And we always talk about leadership presence and leadership awareness. Right. And so when we think about leadership presence, the way you are talking to yourself about a situation will produce your talk, your focus and your stance. So we're going to really hear some language today that you can choose to use. As we think about these interesting, interesting life experiences, this is not about just anything that might have happened or an esoteric goal. This is about real life experiences. Excellent. Thank you, Vince. So, Nicole, what were you hearing in that opening cpl?

I heard that we're going to have maybe a different way to move forward, like this invitation to maybe analyze some of our mindsets and our beliefs in a way that would help us to make maybe different decisions moving forward.

I love it. We have talked at many times about our self. Talk is so strong. Like now I slow it down when I'm talking. It speeds up as soon as I stop like that, all of a sudden I'M what is he going to say now? So your self talk is really powerful and your self talk creates beliefs, mindsets, mental models. So we will come to that as we go through this particular podcast today. Colleen, what are you thinking about in terms of what you heard so far?

Yeah, I really like what I'm hearing so far and I think what really rose up for me when listening to my colleagues close the loop with you was this. I mean, because my self talk was going right, it was la la la la la, talking, thinking about what Vince is saying. And to your point, right, it's going a mile a minute. And it one of those things when we're talking about self talk and I'm listening to my own self talk and it was going on simultaneously. So I think the one thing that really resonated with me is wow. I mean it's constantly going on. There's this constant narrative in your mind. And so I'm looking forward to learning about what are some ways I can perhaps, you know, think about myself, talk in a different way to ensure I'm really getting what I want out of conversations and with my team.

Oh, that's really powerful too, to think about. What do I want out of this conversation? Some of the best leaders that I've seen, after you guys have worked with them, will actually ask the team they're leading, what do you want to get out of this meeting? I mean, so often people just show up with their own idea about what the meeting should be about, then they did it. If you ever stop and say to somebody, so if this meeting was really worth your time, what's one or two things that you would get out of it? What's one or two things that you would like to act upon? So right away that those of you that are listening, there's one very powerful distinction where I have self talk about how this meeting should go and when I shift it to if this meeting really met your expectations, what would you get out of it? We just changed everything in a heartbeat. And if you have done the things we've chatted about in the other podcast to build safe space, people will tell you what they're thinking about. What does that do for you right now? What are you thinking right this second, Nicole?

Oh, I was thinking for a second that a train went by and it was really loud on a recorded podcast. I didn't hear anything, so I put myself on mute pretty quickly. But I love what you said, Ray, about if you have created the space, people will tell you what they're thinking. I think that's such a key element of our self talk. Do we have a space where we can say what we're actually thinking, where the self talk can be transparent, or are we constantly in a space where we're having one conversation in our head and saying something entirely different out loud?

Oh, how good is that? It's almost like I really can't say this to Vince because he got upset last time. So my self talk is I got to be careful about how I talk to Vince or Colleen. She's always telling us the same stories all the time and bugging me. And so I got to be careful not to give her too much space to talk. Or if she does, I've got to figure out how to gently cut her off so I can go to. All of that is us showing up with a leadership presence that is confirmed by our self talk. So our mental models mind state is all being produced by our chat with ourselves as we step into a meeting or as a participant or as the leader of the meeting. So very, very nice. Vince, what are you thinking right now?

I was thinking about what you laid out, a primer, what was important. And Nicole mentioned the word trust. And so I was thinking about the importance of that trust. And the primary laid out was you'd ask people at the beginning, what are the one or two things you want to get out of this meeting at the beginning. But I went to another place. I'm like, okay, not even that point. But if I'm talking about something, the importance of listening and responding respectfully, right? Where you just kind of ask them, what did you hear me say and what did that mean to you? And you've asked each of us that as we started this conversation. So as you guys were talking, that's what I was thinking on how important it is. If you are not listening to what people have to say, it's going to take them that long to figure it out. And that's when they start shutting down and turning the channel. They're waiting for you to stop talking because you're not listening. So anyway, that's where I was at that event.

If you're not listening to what people have to say, they already know.

They know.

Well, you know, damned if I say it, damned if I don't, it leaks out anyway. You know, you're going to let them know you don't really care what they're thinking about. So that was really, really, really good. Thank you. Thank you. Well, for sake of time, let me move into a space. I'm going to do an easy one. First of all, I want you to think about a time when you felt stressed about something, a stressful situation. Real quick, what was it? And then I'm going to ask you a couple of questions once, once I hear from all three of you what's a stressful situation you've been in as recent as possible is useful. Who's got one?

Oh, I do. I mean, I think it just putting stress on myself, but I'm just gonna say because it was yesterday and my son Connor, he has a job and he works at a raft rental company. And let's just say he worked two 12 hour shifts in a row. So guess what? Being a holiday Monday, they had him signed up for another 12 hour shift. And guess what he did? He texted in that he wasn't going to go to work. So he decided not to go. So I, being a good mom, got up, made him a breakfast burrito, made him some food. And I go in there and he tells me he's not going to go. And instantly I was like, oh my God. Oh my God. Ok. Are you kidding me? You know, and so I took a step back, but I'm thinking, what are you doing? You just got this job, you can't do that. You need to go. And I felt instantly the pressure that I needed to put on him to make him get the hell out of bed and get up and go work that 12 hour shift. And that was my stressful situation yesterday morning.

That's really great. And I mean, how many times have we all done that with our kids where like, you don't get it. You don't get it. You know, Let me help you get it. You know, that's really just excellent. Thank you. Vince, you got one?

Yeah, man. Mine is pretty personal too. So my daughter's graduating from high school, right. And has decided to go to college in Japan. And so, you know, with COVID you know, the whole family can't go to get the kids settled into college. So my wife is gonna go and man, they driving me nuts because I'm trying to get them to buy these airline tickets. The airline tickets each and every day, they don't make a. It's just going through the roof. And so I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna get this tuition paid. Man, I gotta pay these airline tickets, I gotta get them overseas. And so my college transitional experience, my stress level financially, man, is about as high as it could probably be. So anyway, that's what I'm.

And the price of the Ticket goes up every day. Yes. It isn't like it's gonna stabilize.

Pick a date, man.

And everybody knows that, Vince. I mean, come on. Everybody knows the later you wait, the more expensive it is.

Except my family, since they not buy.

Tickets, somehow they're missing that point. Is that what you're telling me? So that's really good. Thank you. Nicole, what do you got?

I'm going to stick with the family theme and give an example. So my son, it's been Covid, right? They go now back to school two days a week, two afternoons, basically per week. And one of my sons is constantly running late and it stresses me out that he's not on time for school. Like only go two days a week. And then, you know, for me, the self talk is the how are people like the teachers, like, they're making interpretations about you based on you being not on time for school. And so, you know, people make meaning of being late. Like, I'm sure that it's not true that he doesn't care about school. It's not true that he's disrespectful of his teacher's time, but that is what is exploding in my head. Like your teachers are going to think these things about you. So that is an example of a stressful situation that will probably actually occur again after we get done recording this call.

Yeah, my life is late for everything, so I end up getting. I used to get stressed out over that. But let's kind of take a little spin here. So stress generally, and the way we think about stress is filled with negativity problems, right? That's a mental model. Stress problems. What if we shifted it from stress, opportunity, energy? What if we switched it into a whole different way of thinking about stress? How would you react differently if this was an opportunity to help somebody move to another level? How would you use each of your situations and notice it simply is a mental model. It's a mindset. This is how I versus oh, this is interesting. How could I use this as an opportunity to enable learning? What would you say now, Vince?

Yeah, I was momentarily distracted for a minute with your video, but watch this, watch this. So for me, I use it as a learning opportunity for my daughter, right? I told her just before we started this, I said, listen, here's what's going on with this ticket. I explained the situation and I said, I want you to have a wonderful experience, but we have to move forward. And so what I'm going to do is give you to the end of the day to take the credit card that I've given to you. And if you like this ticket price, then I need you to execute today and buy a ticket. Because if you don't, then tomorrow I will make a decision that I know that works best for me financially. So I tried to explain and educate. I wanted to give her some opportunities, some room to make her own decision. And I had to give her some tools in which to do that. And then I have to be patient and wait for her to see what she's going to do and then let her know, here's some boundaries or here's what we're going to do. So in my personal situation, that's how I chose to educate and take this stressful situation and to share a successful or potentially successful outcome.

Potentially successful outcome. Notice his language. He chose to do that. This is about choice. Mental models and self talk are all about choice. So you actually changed your internal dialogue and shifted it to an opportunity to. To chat with your daughter and to give her the necessary resources to make a good decision moving forward. Did I get you right, Vince?

That is absolutely correct, yes.

Notice that shift though. And we could have just stayed here today and spent the entire half hour on podcast commiserating about, holy shit, why did she do that? Why are they not taking care of our. And we begin to commiserate and build more of the negative side of stress rather than, wait a minute, I'm feeling stressed. How do I shift into a new space? And I love the fact that you use the word chose because it is a choice to make that distinction between this mind state, the impact of this mind state, if I think of it as negative, and the impact of this mindset is if I think about it as potentially positive and an opportunity. That's powerful stuff, Vince. Thank you. Colleen, how about you tell us about your story and how that shift can occur.

Sure. Well, I think one of the self talk mantras that I have is not my problem. So that one pops into my brain. Because I already have a job, I'm not worried about getting myself fired. So I quickly moved to not my problem and I took myself a mommy timeout and I went for a walk. And because I'm a big fan of life choices and life consequences and he's not gonna die, it's not gonna impact his. His future. So he made the choice. And as the mom, I'm also choosing to let him handle the life consequence. He doesn't need me standing over him, beating on him, telling him what to do. It is in his swim lane. He's a, you know, he's learning his way, and the natural consequences of that decision, which have not unfolded quite yet, he will find out next time he goes back in. But I made a choice to step back, to remind myself that it's not my problem to go for a walk and let him make the choice. And then he will also suffer those consequences, whatever they happen to be.

That's really good, Colleen. So those of you that are listening, notice, notice a shift to giving herself some time and space so that she could provide an opportunity for her young man to make a decision. She chose to go for a walk, give this whole situation time and space. Now, she could have continued to harangue him, tell him to write I'm sorry notes and call people up and do all kinds of other things, which would have been the negative side of stress, to try and deal with this from a negative perspective rather than, no, not my circus, not my elephant. Therefore, you need to be able to work on this yourself. How do you shift yourself into a space of learning from the fact that you didn't want to go to work and you chose not to? What's there? What are the possibilities? That's magnificent. Thank you. Nicole, your turn.

Very, very similar to Colleen. I remind myself that this is not my problem. Like, I am not going to be late. It's not me showing up and walking into a classroom late and really just separating myself from taking ownership of the fact that he's going to be late for school. So that is what I try and practice and do. And I'll usually say a few things like, is there anything that I can do to help you to be on time today? And sometimes the answer is, yeah, can you fill me up a water bottle or help me get something to eat real quick? And I will support him in those ways. And then I just try and release it and let it go. Like, he is in charge of showing up on time. He will have the consequences of not showing up on time, and that'll be his own lived experience.

There is a piece here for those of you that are listening, that I think is so important for us as leaders or participants or whatever role we're playing in a family or in an organization. And that is equanimity. I recognize this is happening. I see it. And it's just here. How can I use this situation as an enabler now? We just talked about two sides of stress. One side. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Stress. Bad, bad, bad. Look at this bad stuff going on. Deep breath. Equanimity. This is happening. I didn't necessarily want it to happen, but it is happening. How do I embrace that in such a way that can use this experience to help this human being, young man, young lady, understand how to move forward? Great stuff, guys. Great stuff. Those of you that are listening, you can take any emotion that pops up. Regret, stress, anxiety, pick it. There is a way of creating a mindset that says, this is a problem versus this is an opportunity. And when you're dealing in the construct of change, this is all about change. How do we help ourselves deal with what unfolds for us and also in our interactions, in our conversations? Remember, conversational leadership. If we are interested in influencing a situation or a human being, how do we give them the time and space so they can recognize how this is unfolding? That was magnificent. God. So let's do a quick checkout. What resonated most with you today in this conversation? Because you are, the three of you, absolutely magnificent. You got it instantly with, no, we didn't do anything ahead of time, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't pay them extra money to do this. Okay. We just showed up to chat with you about frames of mind and how a mindset is really. It's up to me. My mindset and how I talk to myself about it, that creates the mindset I'm going to use in any situation, especially in your next everyday leadership conversation or your next meeting. What resonated most with you guys today? I'll start with you, Vince.

So, yeah, man, with me. So, a. I've been. I feel like I've been away forever. I was gone for a week, and just to come back and to have this open dialogue, it just kind of recharges your batteries, so to speak, and get me thinking about the things every day that I should be thinking about. This is a journey, and this learning and leadership and all the things we're talking about, these are just things that we have to do repeatedly and exercise regularly. And so what resonated with me was just a topic in general, the sustainability and their importance. We didn't talk a lot about jobs and the impacts of our jobs. All of us today talked about these very personal examples. And so it doesn't matter. It can be personal, it can be professional, but it's all relevant. And I just greatly appreciate that time. And with that, I'm out.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Nicole, what got you today?

Yeah, I don't think we said it explicitly, but what keeps running through my mind is the practice of recognizing. So recognizing what is happening to me right now? And for me, it shows up in my body. Like, I can tell when I'm getting stressed or having a stress reaction or, like, feeling, you know, like something's not going right. I feel that in my body. And so for me, it's, you know, recognizing that it's happening, reflecting on it a little bit, like, okay, is this. Is this true? Is this real? Is this happening to me? Is it someone else's stress that I'm taking, you know, someone else's problem that I'm trying to solve or take on for myself? And then the reframe. All right, how. How do I want to move forward in this situation in a way that is productive for me and for that other person? And I'm out.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Colleen.

I think what surfaced up when I was listening to my colleagues was judgment and how each one of us, how quickly we could go to judgment, get out of bed. Are you kidding me? You're gonna lose your job. Get up. You should be doing this, and you should be doing that, and we could been shooting all over our kids. And just how it is. It is so critical that in your mind, you recognize, what am I going to be bringing to the situation if I stay in that space of negativity and choose not to flip it and somehow support this person, whether it is somebody in your family or someone in your team? How can we make that choice? To help them, perhaps, and to support them and influence them. And influence doesn't really come when you're shooting on people.

Oh, that's magnificent. Shooting on people, time and space. All the material you've given our listeners today is magnificent. So the biggest piece I want to leave you with is the next time you sense an emotion coming from a situation, and you go, oh, I regret this, or this is sad, or those are all choices about the mindset you intend to bring forward into the conversation with whomever you're having it with, with yourself to begin with, and then with those that are around you. This idea of mindset is about my belief that I create through my self talk. The more vivid the mindset, and you notice how vividly they describe their situations. The more vivid the mindset, the more vivid I make that picture, and it has great emotion, the more it becomes reality. The last thing I leave you with, listeners is the deep difference between noticing and acknowledging a feeling, a thought, an idea, rather than judging it. Oh, I shouldn't be thinking like this. Oh, and I love that Nicole offered you an opportunity to notice how you feel in your body in a given situation. That's a signal. And your self talk can say first, acknowledge, recognize. Wonder what this would look like if I didn't talk to myself this way about this kid, about this situation, about this team member, about this meeting, about this change that's unfolding in my business. Self talk produces beliefs. Beliefs are states of mind, mental models, mindsets. We can control them. Thank you so so much for being with us today and take a few minutes when we're done here. If you're driving, great. Keep driving and think about what is your self talk right now and is it leading you toward a successful end, or is it keeping you hostage in your current reality? Once again, thank you for being with us. My name's Ray. You just heard from Colleen, Vince and Nicole, part of the JLC team. Be well. We'll see you next time. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode.

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