167. The Powerful Program of Self-Talk

Foreign Kenny Chapman here, your host of leadership in a nutshell. Let me be the first. All right? Let me be the only. Welcoming you back to the show. This is episode 167, the powerful program of self talk, baby. Oh, my gosh. When you talk about power, you talk about what you're saying. I believe that words matter. I believe words are life. And what we say to ourselves absolutely manifests in our world, in our physical world, in our mental world, in our health, in our body, right? So there's a huge, huge importance that I want to place on self talk and in leadership. This is big because we all know that we're talking to ourselves more than anybody else. This is super clear. And you know this. And one of the reasons I'm so honored that you join me here weekly is that we get a chance to talk to each other, right? So I'm talking to myself right now, and I'm projecting it at you. You get to hear me talk to you, and then what happens? Then you create a dialogue to yourself about what I just said to you. Are you with me? Yes or no? And so you kind of go, okay, well, let's see. What does that mean to me? Well, I don't know. Do I talk to myself? I'd say you do. And, you know, it's fascinating. Fascinating because we. We think, oh, we ought to. We ought to be locked up. If we talk to ourselves or whatever. Well, then you're going to lock up everybody because we're all freaking crazy. We're all probably somewhat certifiably crazy. If you look at how we live our lives. We're in the wealthiest countries. Whether you're listening in the United States, Canada or Australia. We're in the wealthiest countries in the world. We have more access to every bit of information than we've ever had. And we walk around on the daily destroying our minds, destroying our bodies, destroying our relationships, destroying our finances, destroying our planet. Like, it's just incredible, right? And we do this because we're trying to solve something inside of us by playing a game outside of us. And so if I get my self talk right, and if I think like, okay, let's say. Let's take the infamous quote, difficult conversation. Let's say I've got a coach, a team member. Let's say I've got to write. God forbid, I've got to write up a team member, right? I've got to have this difficult. And I put it in air quotes because the world calls it a difficult conversation. I call it a conversation for Clarity. It doesn't have to be difficult. We're just going to have a conversation because evidently we're missing some clarity. We agreed when you took this role or responsibility that you were going to do these certain things. I'm not seeing you're doing it either. I'm missing something, you're missing something. We're both missing something. But we need to find some clarity. That's all Right. So we don't have to make it this big thing, but our egos want to make it a big thing because then once we accomplish it, it's like, oh, my God. And I'm speaking on my own behalf. In the past when I would do these things, I had a, you know, a buddy of mine who's. Who's no longer with us. He died several years back. But I'll call him Depot was his. Was his nickname. And I'd be like, I'd hit him up at, you know, four in the after. Oh, Depot, let's go. Let's hit up Boston's. We got to go hit Boston's. Let's have a few beers, man. You're not going to believe what happened to me today. Give me a head nod if you are in the same boat or you've been in the same boat, right? Oh, it was so hard today. I had this, such a difficult conversation and that now I'm not minimizing that, that it can be challenging for you right now. What I'm saying is that what makes it more difficult than it needs to be is all the self talk that you have leading up to this conversation that needs to be had. Okay? So that's what I really want you to lean into today is look at their self talk in the moment and then their self talk about the previous moment or the past and then their self talk about the future moment. And it's like, oh, my God. No wonder I'm running around freaking stressed out if I'm talking to myself about what I should have said in an interaction that happened an hour a week, a month ago. I wish I would have said this. I wish hand raise. Anybody with me, right? Oh, man. If I only had said it this way and I knew I was going to say it that way. Okay, well, I'm now I'm in the moment and I'm going to write this list and I'm going to make sure that I go into this meeting and check all my boxes and have everything ready and I'm going to replay into my mind and I'm not going to sleep for Three nights. Because I'm stressing about this. And I'm going to replay it. I'm going to replay it. I'm going to think, well, I'm going to say this and what if they say that? What if I say this and they say this and what if I say this and that and they say that this and the other. Oh, my God. Right? And then what happens? Then we get to the moment that we're supposed to have this said difficult conversation. We have the conversation. It either goes the way we thought it went or it didn't. And then we get done and we get a flux of chemical that flows through our brain, usually some form of dopamine and adrenaline, and it feels better. We feel a release, we feel a sense of freedom. Because all of this that we built up to this thing, now it's over, regardless of how it went. And now the ego kicks in and goes, dude, you're such a badass. Look at what you just did. Let's call Depot and let's go have a beer. Tell me we're not nuts, man. Is that not crazy? I love it. I just, I love learning about the human experience and what a great way to learn about ourselves when we're in leadership roles. And so I just want to spend a couple minutes on, you know, we're running a program of self talk. And I. And I'm a. I'm a living, breathing example of how much you can change. And I'm not saying I'm the example, I'm saying I'm an example. Meaning I used to have incredibly low self esteem. Now I'm not going to tell you that I don't ever struggle with it now or I don't have flashes of, am I enough for this? Am I worthy of this? As I continue to elevate my own consciousness, my own spirituality, my own leadership growth, my own learnings, I'm not walking around like, oh, everything's always easy all the time. No, what I'm walking around going, is, that's hard. That feels like it sucks. That's difficult. That's a challenge. I've got a tool for that. Let me go in my toolbox and see how I can deal with this now. And so as I do that, I've reprogrammed my brain. I've reprogrammed my brain from a lot of addictions. Now I'm doing different things. I'm focused on my physical health more than I've been in many years. I focused on my mind, I focused on my spirituality. Now I'm focusing on my physical fitness. Then I'll move to a place where I'm, you know, balancing all three and all like. And then I'll check back in with you as it continues to evolve and change, and I'll. I'll continue to learn and focus on whatever is present at that moment in time. But what I know changed my game the most, that I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm in more joy. I'm peaceful. I have people on my team tell me, like, man, we don't even remember the guy that you were, like, even just on blue collar, just in the. You know, Christy and I have had this business 11 years now or something like that. And yeah, 11, maybe 12 now since we founded it, but we've only really had team and really scaled for about the last six years. And I was an incredibly different person six years ago than I am today. Give me a head shake. If you were entirely different six years ago than you are right now. Right. And if you're not, then I want you to challenge yourself a little bit. And that's one of the things that's interesting to me that I see with family relationships, with close friends, especially those that we might have grown up with or had a phase of our lives with, maybe went through high school with. Maybe you're in the military, maybe you were at college. And now sometimes they're like, you've changed, right? Well, you're damn right I better have changed. Matter of fact, I better have changed more than you think I've changed. If I'm. If I'm playing this game of life, right? Because I'm learning, I'm changing, I'm adopting, adapting, applying, applying different things in my life. And I'm a student of the game of life, the greatest game. Like, you know, Jack Stack wrote a great book called the Great Game of Business. I don't know, maybe I'll write a book called the Great Game of Life. Maybe there's one that already exists, right? But I just think, like, this is the greatest game, this life and leadership and learning game, you know, and so. But our program really matters. And there's a few areas when I'm talking to myself, when. Where I've really been able to shift from certain conversations going on in my mind to other conversations. And so where does self talk affect me? Well, first, self talk affects emotions, right? So how I speak to myself absolutely impacts whether I feel anxious, whether I feel fear, whether I feel anxiety, whether I feel stress that comes from how I talk. To myself. It doesn't come from the event or the thing that I'm dealing with. It comes from how I'm talking to myself about it. So let's say I have turnover in the business. Okay, guess what? The turnover in the business is not where all of the pain, the stress and the anxiety comes from. It comes from the meaning that I associate with it and, and then the conversation I have. So if you're selling, let's take you as an example. Oh, I have this turnover. Oh, crap. You can't hire anybody right now. I remember we ran an ad and I didn't get anybody. Oh, this sucks. Oh my God. I'm gonna have to run some calls myself now. What are we gonna do? We're not gonna hit budget. That's what's gonna create your anxiety, fear, stress, and pain. However, if you go, okay, there's been an event in my business. We had some turnover. There's a huge lesson I've got because either I had the turnover that I desired or expected, or it completely caught me off guard and I did not want to lose this person. There's lessons with all within that. Right. But if I have different conversations with myself, is it not possible that if I'm like, okay, wouldn't have chose this, but here we go. Game on. Let's do this. I've got this. I'm up for the challenge. I'm a winner. I don't know how this is going to play out, but I'm going to give it everything that I've got. Every moment of every day dealing with a situation, I'm going to bring my best to it. Do you think I might find some emotions of self confidence? Perhaps I feel a little more peace and happiness. Maybe I feel a little more motivated. Right. So it's not about the event as much as it is what I tell myself about the event. So let's be mindful there. So first we hit emotions. Second, my self talk influences my behavior. Right. So emotions influence behavior. So now I can talk myself into, ah, well, procrastination. I'm not going to run the ad. I'm not going to. Maybe it's time for us to scale back. Maybe I can't do this. Maybe, you know, I, I check it out. Here's a good example. Back in 20, let's see, 2016, 2017, maybe even as late as 2018. We are, you know, we had gone through. No, it was, I take that back. It was as recent as Covid. That's right. So after Covid, we had you know, like we're at, you know, the blue collar. We're a coaching training, best practices organization. All of a sudden, everything went virtual. Well, during COVID everybody had to show up virtually. And then it was like, okay, we're going live again and are people going to show up for academies and stuff? And I'm like, I don't know, man. They, they didn't always want to show up before things. Now we can do things online. Maybe we just need to be an online training organization. I don't know, maybe we don't need to do in person training. And I was talking to myself into, I don't know, it's just probably easier. Let's just do this virtual. Let's not do it. And fortunate for me, I've got strong leaders around me that challenge, that line of thinking are like, no, we're going to keep doing this. And they run the day to day. Christy and I create the vision. They run the day to day. They're responsible and accountable for the results. And they said, give us some leeway. We want to go do this now. It's one of the most impactful areas of our business. We run seven academies multiple times a year. We run a budget and planning blueprint multiple times a year. We, we have our, our, you know, call by call clinics that we're running now. Like all these things because people want to get engaged and get. I was talking myself out of something that's absolutely incredible. Changing people's lives at the highest level, which is part of my primary purpose on the planet. But my self talk was walking me out of it with my behavior. Follow me on this, okay? Be mindful. Self talk emotions, self talk behaviors. Now I mentioned it earlier, self talk affects my physical health too. It affects my physiology, it affects my well being, you know, because if I'm talking myself into stress now, I'm triggering the stress responders in my body. I'm on edge. I'm making my heart run. I've got, you know, I can elevate my blood pressure. I can do those different types of things or I can self talk that. Okay, this is a pain in the ass. I wouldn't have chose it. But hey, we're gonna, we're gonna get through it. It's not the end of the world. We still wake up tomorrow and we play the game of life. Like, hey, it's all good. Like, different physiological responses. And last and absolutely not least, I want you to think about self talk when it comes to, to goal setting, right? So when we, when we Think about goals. It's the, you know, it's the I can do it or I can't do it or I'm not sure if I can do it or I can definitely do it or whatever, you know. And, and I've talked in recent episodes how my, my goal setting has shifted and evolved over time. I know I can do it as long as God and the divine are in alignment with me, or I should say I'm alignment with them, that, that we can go in this direction. So I set massive goals for myself and my team in business and then I just start taking massive action, doing the best I can in the moment while surrendering to the fact that things could shift or change a little bit. But if I'm telling myself like, how many of us have had this happen? Let's set a 10 times goal, right? Let's 10 times, let's 10 times our business, okay, I'm going to create 10 times growth and I set the goal. I write the goal. Even I do all the stuff. I'm going to write it. It's going to happen by this time. Okay, perfect. I just did the proper goal setting process, right? But then there's this self talk in the back of my mind going, dude, what are you, are you freaking nuts? Like, you can't 10 times the business. You don't have the right business model. There's not enough technicians out there. You can't, you can't find the right salespeople. Buyers are slowing down. There's different, you know, manufacturers. Oh, the big, big boxes. I can think about it like, like literally you can set the goal, but then it's like, no, can't do it. Or you can set it and go, okay, here we go. I set it as a stretch goal. What does that mean? I really want to accomplish this goal because I want to see who I need to become in the process. Who do I get to become in the process to manifest this thing and become this thing or do this thing, or accomplish this thing, or influe this thing, or be this to these people, whatever the goals are. I'm just fascinated by that, right? When I, and I for myself, I'm fascinated by the goals I set for, for my physical fitness, for my spiritual fitness, for my mental fitness, for, you know, like the, the different things that, that I'm able to learn. It's about me becoming who I need to become to accomplish the goal. It's not about the goal. And you've probably heard this in different ways. This is just on my heart because the more I study language to the mind and language to the brain and what we're doing in programs and if this is okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go deeper on some of these topics moving forward because what we say matters, the programs that we run, the default loops that matter. If I, if I'm running a program I used to run a program that I'm not worthy, I need external validation to feel better. So what did that do? That meant I went out and I did all kinds of I got to be self made and I got to build this. I got to do that now. Okay. Yeah. The lovely Christie are building the most incredible home that we've ever, that we've ever built before. It's going to be incredible. But here's the deal. I'm not doing it for anybody other than Christie. And I, I mean, sure, I may have some client dinners there eventually. I might do even a small retreat there because of the trick backyard we're going to have. But I'm not doing it for validation. Like I've built homes in the past where like, okay, God, look at this. Now I'm successful, I built a home and I have this. Or look at this amount of money that I have, or look at this car that I drive. I like nice things. I'm not going to apologize for that. But it doesn't fuel me or feed me anymore. I just do it because it's something that I enjoy. And if it goes away tomorrow, then it goes away tomorrow. That's the key. I'm going to continue to learn and grow. And that's the self talk that I have. And what's wild is it just keeps on manifesting more and more because I'm not attached. What is the self talk program loop you're running? Is it a positive loop? Is it a negative loop? It goes back to law number one in the blue collar success law is authentic abundance. When you come from a place of abundance rather than a place of scarcity, the world changes. When you have abundant conversations with yourself, the world changes. If you have scarcity conversations with yourself, the world changes, but not probably the way you want it to. It's simple science, it's math, it's an algorithm and it works either way. It's your choice. I'm your host. I'm so honored to be with you. Kick this to somebody. Give us a rating review. Share it with somebody. Share it on a forum that you're in. Just let's grow this audience until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week. And I'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody. Sam.