From Self-Sabotage to Self-Empowerment: Keita Williams on Mindset Changes

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Kita, welcome back to the show.

Well, thank you for having me, Kwame. Always a pleasure.

Yes.

So for the listeners who didn't hear.

Your first episode, can you tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Oh, my goodness. So I am Keita Williams. I am the founder and chief strategist of Success Bully. And, you know, we are a premier training and development organization, and we are passionate about building 10 million better bullies by 2035. And so we're helping people with their communication skills so that they can really impact their lives by using stronger communication skills and firm grace. Right. That you can have these boundaries and hold them and that. That communication starts. That better communication skills and being a better bully starts with the inside job, all of that. Communicate. You want to be a better communicator, you want to be a better negotiator, you want to be a better leader. It's the inside job first, and then it's returning to those fundamental skills. So more to come.

I love it. I love it. And, listeners, if you don't remember, Keita actually was my business coach, too. So I remember back in, like, what was it? That was Covid times, I want to.

Say, was that season one or two of COVID Like, yeah, that thing was.

Like space and time collapsed.

It's all the same.

Feels like a decade ago, but it.

Was probably like two years, right?

It feels like forever ago, but that your coaching was a catalyst to growth into the seven figure realm, you know, so this was great. So you listeners, you are. You are listening and learning from the best. And, Keita, you have a new methodology for communication. And it was funny. We. Before the episode started, we were vibing. I almost forgot to Press record. Because I got back into student mode. I'm like, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. So how about we start off by telling the listeners about the revelation that you recognized in your life, the patterns of people reaching out, and then your new certification.

So in going through this, this space and time, I found that I was actually experiencing compassion fatigue as a coach, where, like, my clients were experiencing all of these highs and lows, and I was holding all this space for them. And I realized that I've been doing this for seven years. And in all honesty, I never took a break. I'd be on vacation, taking coaching calls because it was easier to check in than to reschedule, right? And I didn't give myself a lot of opportunities to explore or to ask myself, what now? And so I am very grateful that this year, I. After talking with one of my mentors who was like, well, what do you actually want?

Like, she, like, challenged me to answer.

The question, what do you want? I took that to heart and really started thinking through, like, okay, what are things that I'm observing? What are the things that I enjoy doing? What are the things that people actually call me for? So kind of realizing that, like, something had to change for me, for me to stay in it, I had to do something different. And then stepping back and asking those. Those critical questions, I realized that I started seeing some real patterns. And some of those patterns were, like, this idea that transformation is hard. It's a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to. To change your life. And understanding that my job is not to change your life. My job is to help you change the way you think. That lightens the load, that lightens the burden, right? Because if you change the way you think, you will change the way you speak, and you will change the way you show up. You will change the actions that you take. But it starts in the big old supercomputer between your ears. There are three types of clients. There's three types of people in the world. There are people that want the transformation, and they're willing to do the work. There are the people that want the transformation, and they phone in the work. And then there are folks that are looking for somebody to blame. So that was an observation, but also, like, before you hit the goal, you can have these big, ambitious goals. It starts with your mindset. It starts there, right?

Because if you think you can't.

You'Re right. If you think you can, you're also right in this. This observation. So the observation of that, but also like observing what's happening around me in the sense of when I'm not in a coaching relationship where, like, we don't have a signed contract. You are my roster. You pay me to do this. What are people actually asking me for?

What I'm always being asked for is.

How do you say this?

This is happening.

What would you do? And it was this interesting cross sect around communication, right? And previous to being a professional butt kicker and yelling on the Internet, I'm a retired PR person. All of this comes together when I decide on a whim that I'm going to get certified as a hypnotherapist, right? And I like, well, I've identified what's happening, right? There's this. What's happening. I'm seeing really gifted, talented people self sabotage. And I'm seeing in a very intimate way, like I'm seeing it week to week, you know, I'm seeing it week to week. So what's the solution? What's the solution? And so that led me to hypnotherapy, which I thought would answer some questions for me, but also provide me with some really great party tricks for Christmas dinner.

I thought I couldn't wait to get my older sister's face and be like, go to sleep, you know, I was.

Looking forward.

To this experience only to.

Get the big reveal. I'm tying all these threads together, y'. All. Thanks for hanging in.

I'm tying it all together. I'm tying it all together. Guess what?

Hypnotherapy is about communication. Communication. One of the key pillars is that most issues are communication issues. And so there is how you communicate with yourself. The voice you hear the most is your own. Whatever your voices in your head sound like. I think there's only 2% of the population that don't have an internal dialogue. So we all have some form of it, right? And generally speaking, it's not very nice.

Your internal dialogue is. Is not always the most supportive voice in the room.

It's actually your biggest bully. If. If someone on the street stopped me and said a third of the things that I have thought about myself, we'd be fighting.

It would be a brawl in the.

Middle of Main street, right? So. So that realization that this is. This is about communication, okay, so now, now that I'm armed with this information, what do I do with it? What do I do with it? And what does this have to do with. With. With success? Bully. What does this have to do with my pathway forward? What is this? What, what, what do all of These realizations and this, this permission to be curious and to explore and to ask myself some tough questions. Where is all this going, where I've landed and what I've been slowly rolling out and, you know, kind of getting a lot of momentum around is addressing these two areas of your inside bully, which is how we communicate with yourself and providing people with tools on that. Right, providing people with tools on that. And then there's the outside bully.

After you've handled the inside work, there.

Is still some fundamental communication skills that will make your personal and professional relationships go a lot easier. Right. And I do think that we're in this really interesting time in the sense of we could have up to four generations in the workplace at one company. We have increased the modalities of communication, but not the actual skills. So we got slack, we got text message, we got email, we got meetings. That could have been an email. We got emojis. What an emoji means to me as a 45 year old versus what an emoji means to a 25 year old, it's very different.

That's prayer hands.

To me.

That'S a high five. To somebody else, the shrug emoji means I don't care, but to someone else.

It means I don't know.

Wait, okay, I'm following everything, but now I'm just realizing when I, when I give the, the prayer hands emoji, I'm.

I'm saying thank you.

That I'm like, thank you very much.

People think that's a high five. Is that a high five to people?

Some people think that's a high five. And some people think that pray for me. Some people mean think gratitude. So now we gotta disconnect.

Because, like.

If you're on slack and somebody goes, gives you the, well, do you need.

More information or you're not gonna do your job?

Like, I don't know.

So before we could even get to the slam dunk of negotiation, we gotta.

Get back to base the, the chess.

Pass.

The chest pass, the bounce pass.

And the pivot around communication.

Wow.

Wow.

This is mind blowing. I, I, because Keita, first thing, the first thing that came to mind just completely selfishly, is like, I, I need to create a document that explains all of my emotion emojis. This is gratitude.

Okay, so, well, even just, you know, it ain't hard to use your words. You know, we think we're saving time by sending an emoji or we think we're sending time, we're spending, we're saving time by going, okay, that's left to. That's left open to interpretation. And God forbid someone's having a bad day.

But, but something else that you mentioned that was really powerful. When you talk about that internal communication that somebody has with themselves, we have to recognize that every stimulus, every piece of communication we get from somebody else is going to be filtered through our own story, through our own lens, through our own patterns of thought, Right?

Absolutely. And what they said to you is.

Filtered through their own lens and their own thought patterns. And so sometimes we're actually battling each other's internal bullies. We're not even listening to what's being said. Where whatever your hang up is, is.

Fighting that hang up. And that's where the battle is.

It's not the actual issue, right? And I think that when we think about this inside bully track, the voice you hear the most is your own, right? And when we think about the brain, you're. You have this beautiful, sophisticated supercomputer. The most interesting and exclusive, exquisite part of you is your brain. That's the sexiest part of you, right? But it's also designed to keep you safe. And so that negativity, that talk track, at some point in your life, you receive some programming, whether it was from. We don't have to dig up your childhood trauma. We don't. We can observe it with an open hand. We don't have to dig it up.

We don't have to invite it in.

For tea and relive everything. But at some point, somebody in authority told you something negative or you had this experience that was so uncomfortable that you never want to experience it again. And so that is, that's what's creating these talk tracks. And they're, they're, you know, we can create neural, new neural pathways at any time. We can swap out that. So first we have to have our brain appreciation. We have to appreciate that we have these supercomputers and what they're able to do. You have to understand them and appreciate that your subconscious mind, you have never thought about breathing.

You've never thought about it.

You never once said, oh, shit, I forgot to let my heart beat.

You never once said that. You've never forgotten to digest your food. So there's a whole lot going on.

That science hasn't even even scratched the surface on the capabilities of the human brain, right? And I think the more that we study and the more that we appreciate it, we can understand that you have limitless opportunities and limitless spaces. You can take your brain because your subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between real and imagination. So have you ever had that thing, that one bad thing, Something uncomfortable happens, a challenge, and then you have spiraled all the way out of control. Where like my spiral and I'm gonna.

Be homeless with my dog in a shopping cart, living under the Fremont Bridge. We gonna be eating cat food. That ain't gonna happen. That ain't gonna happen. It ain't gonna happen like that.

But the same imagination that gives you that much detail about something negative, you can use that same imagination to create these positive experiences and new neural pathways.

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You are in control and you ain't broken.

That's both very empowering and also very scary because it's empowering because we say, okay, cool, I can create these neural pathways. I recognize there's been a lot of negative self talk. I recognize that I'm filtering the world through a negative or problematic type of way and I can put in the work and, and make these changes. But at the same time it's also scary because we have to accept ownership and responsibility for how it is that we see things and what it is that we're doing.

And you have to take accountability.

So for you as a coach, when you're, you're having these conversations with people, how do you break through that resistance?

Because let's say we're talking about the three different kinds of people and one person, the person you're talking to right now, hey, I'm in a blaming mood right now. It's their fault. Is their fault. Is their fault. Is their fault. How can you get them to, to shift their mindset to be at least be open to another possibility?

There's power in the questions, you know, like the, the more curious I am, right, the more open ended questions I ask and you know, accept the fact that it's not my job to change your life. If you want to be funky and be negative and, and you, you want to blame the world.

If you are always the victim and every environment you're in is toxic, the.

Common denominator is you. You take your whole self with you. You don't want to change, that's on you. My job is to help you think a little differently. All right, So I can ask them, okay, well, tell me more about that. Where is that showing up for you? So if it's not this, if we took all those things out of the off the table, if we took so and so that said this to you and so and they push my button, well, why did that bother you? What about that actually upset you? Was it that it was the truth because the truth will hurt your little feelings because it was the truth, or was it because it had a little semblance of truth? You know, we are in control of our thoughts, but we're also in control of our emotions. Then nobody hurt your feelings. You let them hurt your feelings.

This is so good because I think about times where I've coached people in negotiations or had conversations with people after a training, and they would talk about people who trigger them, people who upset them and everything like that. But in these conversations, they always seem to struggle because somebody else is doing something to them. And what I'm recognizing now during this conversation is that even before we get into the skills of what it is that we need to do, we to need, we have to recognize that everything is being filtered through our own perspective. And when we think about the ability to negotiate effectively and navigate difficult conversations, we need to be able to make good reads. And we are not making good reads if we are filtering things inappropriately because somebody might be doing something to you or having a conversation with you and they might do something. And for 90% of the other the population, what they did was completely fine, wasn't triggering at all.

But for you, for some reason it was, is that a problem with them.

Or is that a problem with you? And is the negotiation solution to change your your to actually do something strategically or say something differently?

Or is the strategy to say, you.

Know what, tonight I'm going to do a little bit of introspection and figuring out and figure out what made me respond that way. And then maybe by doing that, I'm taking more power and control. I'm reclaiming my power. Because I think at the end of the day, a lot of times we're just outsourcing our power to other people.

If things go well, then it's.

If they allowed it to go well.

If things go poorly, it's because they treated me poorly. If I'm happy, it's because they didn't mess up. If I'm sad, it's because they did. And so we're giving the power to our outcomes and emotional state to people who may not have our best interest.

In mind, who also you may never see again.

So I think that one of the trends that I was talking about on my, my last webinar is the idea of like we're especially in the workplace that we're going to continue to see this investment in wellness and in that wellness space, we're going to continue to see conversations about mental health. But I think it's going to be this cope and hope model that we're going to be teaching and facilitating more around helping people cope and keep positive attitudes, coping, hope you can. I made it up. And so like, I think the, the more that we can self regulate, even in these high stakes conversations that hold that with an open palm, you know, like, this is not personal. Like I have never been in a business meeting and somebody walked up to me and punched me in the face. Right?

Like, I've never had to defend myself physically. There was no physical threat to my.

Well being in any of these meetings.

That's powerful. And you know, Keita, it was funny because, you know, I journal every day, all the time. And I was, I was thinking about some things that happened this morning that would have generally in the past, like, really, really upset me, you know, and, and then today what happened was I made the read and then I made an adjustment. You know, I came home, I was on the phone with Kobe, my brother, it's his birthday. And so I was saying, happy birthday. Whitney is taking a couple months off to, to, to, to work. She quit her job and now she's starting another job. So she's just chilling, she's enjoying her freedom. So I was like, oh, this is great. When you'll take the boys to school, when you'll take Dominic to school, I'll be chill, I'll be able to start working early. This will be good. And then I heard Whitney was having a tough time with Dominic and I said, you know what, I see where this is going. I am going to take over. I'm going to make sure Dominic eats, he gets dressed and I will take him to school. And in the past I would have.

Been like, this is your fault. This is why I'm unproductive. I'd be more, no.

Yeah.

Then I'd come and I would go and, and dump on you. My coach and say, the world is conspiring against me instead of saying, everybody's out.

Forget me.

I'm Jason Bourne. There's a right.

Everybody's coming at me.

Right.

No, I was like, okay, cool, cool.

I. I made the read.

I'll.

I give Whitney a break, and I'll take Dominic to school. It'll be okay. And I'll get to work, and everything will be fine. And the day has gone on. It's been a great day.

And again, it's the exact same thing.

That would have been triggering. And now it's fine. And so it's.

It's.

I think it's. And I think it's really empowering once you start to. You test it. Right. I encourage everybody to just test this.

This.

Because, again, it's scary to say, to look back. I think about all those times where I've been upset or I blame somebody else for my outcomes or said a conversation went poorly. And it's really frustrating to think, oh, my gosh, I lived a life where I had unnecessarily high levels of misery just because of my mindset. There's, like, a part of you that does not want that to be true. And it's like, if I accept this new message, does it invalidate the experience of my previous life?

But it doesn't.

It's empowering. It's just a mindset shift, right. That was real to me at that time, and now this is real to me now. And now I can live my life in this more empowered way. And so let me tell you, listeners, there's. There's life on the other side. And when you start to.

Absolutely.

When you start to embody this, like.

You said, Kita, it makes you unflappable. It makes you unflappable because emotion management is a massive part of negotiation. And people are always asking how to manage your emotions. But you have to ask yourself, what stories are you telling yourself? And what do you choose to believe? And if you choose to believe that this stuff is going to bother you and upset you and trigger you, then it will.

And if you choose to say, listen.

I'm strong enough to handle this, this might be inconvenience. I might prefer that it not occur.

But at the same time, I'll still be fine.

There's no physical threat or somebody punching me.

Right. Nobody's punchy. Five.

Right.

And just shifting your mindset can really make you a lot more resilient in these tough conversations.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think that one of the things that I learned in Hypnotherapy. And that when we walk through our bully framework is the idea of, like, once you've identified that. That narrative, that underlying narrative, understanding your narratives, understanding that negative talk track, whatever that is, wherever it came from, understanding it, and then letting go of those lies. So if you have previously been. If you're afraid of something, what is the affirmative and opposite of that in through your lens? And we were talking about this earlier. So the opposite of fear for me is adventure. And you said the opposite of fear for you is confidence for somebody else. Maybe it's courage. Right. And so when we have these new, new ways of thinking, we're creating new neural pathways. Right?

And like this. The brain is a supercomputer. And I will wax poetically about this.

You can reprogram it at any time. It also requires work that you may think you got it. I am positive thinking I have arrived. I have my emotions in check. I got it all under control. And then life, or life of life, some new challenge that you didn't expect. And you have to redo a lot of that work because it's that negative stimulus.

It pulls that old programming back up.

And your brain is actually more comfortable with the. The norm. Your brain is actually more. It keeps you safe by not allowing you to change. It's actually less of a cognitive load. Right.

So this takes work.

You might have it in one meeting. Doesn't mean you're gonna have it in the next one.

You might have it.

And I think that it's. It's ongoing work. It's going to be ongoing work. It's gonna. And. And as you mature in the work, it changes. And you'll start seeing the world around you change because you change your mindset. And not everybody's ready for your new mindset.

That is a good place to. Let's wrap up on that point, Kita, because that's powerful, too. Because what often happens is that you can adopt this new mindset and from this new thought pattern that you develop, it will lead to new actions. You will speak differently. You will act. And sometimes people don't like that. Sometimes people liked the old version of you, especially if the old version of you was interpreting the world with the victim mentality, and your response was not to fight back, but to stay quiet and accept it. And once you start to speak up for yourself and let people know how you really feel and what you really need, some people don't like that. And so how do you navigate the situation where you are intentionally changing your mindset? To change your life. And then the people who were your allies before seem to be working against this change that you're making.

Ah, yes. That also comes back to emotional regulation. Right. That. It's almost sound like my mama right now. But minding your business actually is quite freaking. It's not my job to understand how you think and feel about me. And if. If you love me, if we're in close, if we're in community, you gonna love me whether I'm positive or negative. Because that's part of friendship and community is being able to love people like they are. Right. And you know, I can share some observations and you can share some observations. As someone that does this for a living, I ask permission. Hey, do you want to know what I think? I have thoughts. Would you care. Care to hear what I think? It's not my job to try to change them or try to bring them.

Along to get to my level.

No. I'm a lighthouse.

I'm a lighthouse. My job is to shine brightly and be unwavering.

Either you with it or you notice.

It's powerful.

I hope that inspires somebody.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Because.

Because I think about it too.

Again, a lot of times I would think about a conversation that didn't go well or a time where I let somebody bother me or something like that. And I recognize that a lot of times it came from me seeking validation and approval. And so I would have a change or a mindset. I would think about a certain situation one way or I have a different worldview and I would share that and.

Then the person would disagree and it.

Would cut me to the core. Kita.

Like, how dare you not think like I do?

This is absurd. I'm clearly correct.

And I will not rest until you understand that. And so that's problematic, slightly toxic. And so I think it was a little bit of. It was insecurity, but it was also ego. Hey, if I'm this negotiation guy, there's a little piece of my mind that said I can convince anybody of anything. I know I can, but I don't need to.

And what I'm doing is a lot of times I'm outsourcing my power again.

Because I'm saying what would make me feel good, what would make me feel complete. If this person agrees with me and says I'm smart. And so it's kind of like it doesn't matter what the other person's perspective is. My son Dominic is three. He disagrees with me all the time. Am I going to put my wealth being in his mind.

I'm saying I need him to understand the depth.

Are you arguing with a three?

This is silly.

And so I love, I love the.

Way that you said it too.

Because you're saying, hey, I'm, I'm sharing my observation.

This is me sharing my observation. Take it or leave it.

You're sharing your observation. Thanks for sharing your observation. I, I, I choose to leave it. Or sometimes I might put it in.

Your handbag and, and, and revisit it later, put it in your pocket, think about it later.

I also think like I had this realization because like I, I also, you know, I, I don't have low self esteem. I got the other problem.

Heightened sense of self, big ego, whatever.

And you know, like, why don't you see my way? Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I'd rather be happy. If you want to tell me two plus two is five.

Roger that.

Whatever you say, boss.

And I, and I think it's funny, even though it's kind of a joke, but there's a lot of truth in it. The two plus two is five answer. Because a lot of times when we're negotiating or having difficult conversations, let me focus more on just general difficult conversations. It's a competing worldviews. It's like, what is your truth? What is my truth? And there's a lot of times no objective way for us to reconcile these things. It's just the stories that we choose to believe. Right? And it is as silly for me to try to impose my worldview on somebody as it is for me to try to convince somebody who is hell bent on believing that two plus two is five. Right? It's like, why would I waste my time? This is, I would be far happier to not engage with this particular conversation. And I think in the, the world of negotiation and difficult conversations in general, one of the things that is not talked about enough is what conversation is worthy of having. And we talk about how to engage, but we don't talk about when and how to disengage enough.

You can always put a pin in it. You can opt out.

You don't have to. Everybody that, that wants to engage with.

You is not worthy of your thoughts. You know, and I'm the queen of we don't need to talk about that right now. And you talk about that right now.

Is that what you want to talk about?

That's, Is that how you want to spend your time with me?

That's such a good point. There's so many other things we could do so many other things we could.

Talk about rather than fixating on the minority of beliefs where we are contrary, where we disagree.

And if we're spending time with each other and we're sharing space, that means.

That we have to agree on the majority of things. Have to. But we become fixated on these things and, you know, insecurity, ego, whatever it happens to be, we just dwell on that. And something that. That is truly something so small becomes so big. Why? Because we choose to make it big and we're choosing to be unhappy.

And that creates a lot of toxic environments. That creates some workplace violence, you know, that creates these. These micro moments like we're all bullying one another. There's these micro moments where just that little shift could change the. Change the atmospheric pressure in a room. Right. And yeah, I think that we need to be more diligent in these days to come in how we're interacting and connecting and communicating with one another.

I listen, I love it. I know I've got. I gotta get back to reality at some point.

This is great.

Kita, I really appreciate you coming back on the show today. And again for. For the listeners who want to learn more about what it is you do and your company, make sure to give them a good pitch here.

Here's a good pitch. You can find me on@successfully.com. you find me on all the socials. We're on brand. We're all at SuccessBully. And here's two different ways you can work with me. You can work with me one on one. We do have some spots on my roster for hypnotherapy for leaders and visionaries. So kind of working on those mindset pieces as we go into expanding your skill set.

Or you can have me come to your job.

We offer two trainings on inside bully and outside bully. So working on that inside talk track, giving you actionable, actionable steps to shift that narrative, but also working on some of those fundamental communication skills. I feel like negotiation is black belt level.

Let's get back to. Let's. Let's work on our fundamentals.

So you can reach out@successbully.com and get in touch with us there.

Love it. Keita, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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