We’ve been sold a lie.
Yes we have!
The self-help, personal-development industry has told us we sabotage ourselves.
As a result, we’ve come to believe we do it on purpose and could stop if we did all the right things.
Even though it’s not true, we believed it. We did all the things, we journaled, we affirmed.
When nothing changed or we didn’t get the results we wanted we did more and we felt guilt and shame for not doing enough. As women we carry enough of that anyway.
Additionally, it added to the sense of not-enoughness that’s prevalent in our society.
It’s time to toss that lie out the window as the load of garbage that it is.
Here’s what is true…
We are hard-wired as humans to go to the negative first.
It’s all about survival – fight or flight – sabretooth tiger’s coming to get us, what are we going to do! We automatically go to “how am I going to keep myself safe, what am I going to do, he’s going to eat me alive”. That’s our go-to, our default.
That’s how we’re hard wired – all the neuro-circuits we have in our brain, we go to the negative first.
The negative response is in one part of our brain – our limbic, our lizard brain, our fear response, our panic button.
We have another side to our brain which is where the positive response lives, our wise self.
Your brain is a muscle.
We all know what happens with our physical muscles and fitness. If you go to run a marathon and you’ve never run before or you’re not trained for it you’re probably not going to make it.
When we train for that same marathon, we can run it successfully.
The muscles you don’t use atrophy – they literally wither away through disuse as they deem themselves obsolete.
When they removed the cast from my broken wrist, I almost fainted – it looked like a 90-year-old arm and I was in total shock. I never expected my arm to atrophy in just six short weeks.
Muscles atrophy when you don’t use them.
Let’s apply that to our brains. When we consciously, proactively hone our positive mental muscles, our negative mental muscles atrophy because we’re not using them as often.
We have neural pathways in our brain. A neural pathway is a series of connected neurons that send signals from one part of the brain to another.
These connected neurons process the information we receive. It is these that enable us to interact, as well as experience emotions and sensations.
Science tells us there’s only a certain number of neural pathways that can be active at any time.
You get to choose which ones are active.
As you strengthen new ones and build that positive mental muscle, the others die off and they’re no longer your automatic go-to.
Mental fitness is the x-factor.
It will literally change everything for you.
When you’re not mentally fit, you feel mental stress such as anxiety, frustration or unhappiness as you handle work and relationship challenges.
Mental fitness is the measure of the strength of your positive mental muscle compared with your negative mental muscle.
Your mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life’s challenges positively rather than negatively.
Three core muscles are at the root of mental fitness – saboteur interceptor, sage and self-command – they all live inside your brain.
In the negative part of our brain we have a whole tribe of saboteurs – 10 of them to be precise. They speak in different voices and respond in different ways.
In the positive part of your brain lives the wise you – you have 5 different ways that part of you can respond.
When you change the balance in your brain and in the way your brain muscles fire, you change everything.
Saboteurs react to challenges in ways that generate negative emotions such as stress, self-doubt, disappointment, regret, anger, shame, guilt or worry.
Your saboteurs are in fact the shitty committee inside your head, those mean girl voices that tear you down when you least expect it – that stop you literally in your tracks time and time again.
Your sage handles challenges through positive emotions like empathy, gratitude, curiosity, creativity, self-confidence, and calm, clear-headed, laser-focused action.
As you strengthen your self-command muscle you learn to run your brain, rather than allow your saboteur-hijacked brain to run you.
Then you get to be in control of you rather than letting your shitty committee run the show.
Strengthening your self-command muscle is a huge piece of the work we do together in Extraordinary Leaders Circle where we come together as a group and improve our mental fitness.
Getting out of negativity when it does rear its ugly head becomes quicker and easier as you improve your mental fitness.
At the same time, you dramatically increase your productivity and your sense of peace and ease.
The magick happens when you create new habits and systemic change through mental muscle building.
We know this has had a huge impact for past participants who report:
- Teams perform 31% better
- Sales people sell 37% more
- People live 10 years longer
- And are 3 times more creative and happier
Purposefully strengthening your positive mental muscles significantly impacts your success.
If you’d like to be in control of your brain, rather than your shitty committee running the show, message me.
I’ll ask you a few questions to see if Extraordinary Leaders Circle is aligned to get the best results for you. And if so, I’ll invite you in.
No pressure from my end; I’ll only invite you in if I’m utterly convinced that you’re an energetically aligned fit.
I look forward to your message 💜
