2019 is almost over, and while we look forward to its coming, we carry with it the lessons we learned in 2019. The Breaking Beliefs Podcast is nothing short of that. In this episode, host, Amy Vetter, shares moments from the show’s past interviews that were most poignant in breaking the beliefs and patterns we carry in our lives. She uncovers the great lessons from great guests on respecting and being authentic to yourself, giving way to shifts, and more. Amy covers key areas and guides how to implement some of these into your life for 2020. Don’t miss out as we look back on the great insights shared.

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2019 Year In Review: Mindful Moments

In this episode, it will just be me. The reason for that as I thought it would be a good time to reflect on some of the lessons from the guests that we've had. I’ll talk about how we can reflect as a broader community in order to look at how we set goals for our future in 2020 and beyond. What this is all about is how we disconnect from all of the stressors that we have in our daily lives and get back to and pause on the things that make us tick. A lot of times when we don't give ourselves silence or pause, we don't allow that process to happen for ourselves. Many of us walk around with belief systems, whether that be religious, political, something a friend told you when you were little, a coworker told you when you started your career and so forth. We believe them to be true without questioning that.

It's not about whether they're wrong or right. It's whether we make sure that our actions and words that we use each day are aligned with the person that we believe we are. In order to get to that authenticity of who we are, it's a process. There are many layers. We can think we've got it and then we don't because life happens. There's never a point in time in our lives where we can believe that we got this. What we need to be is more aware of how we affect the people around us and our internal state of happiness. As many of you know, my methodology is business plus balance equals bliss. The whole point of that formula is so that we can click into it easily in our work days, our careers, whatever that may be.

The business side of that methodology is the stressors that we have and that could be at work. That can be at home. That could be however we're feeling internally of change managements that's happening or business process change that is happening or technology change. All of these things can create stress inside of our bodies. What we are so fortunate to have when we tap into it are these internal tools that guide us. This is in yoga called the intuitive mind. We know what our truth is, but we allow the rational mind to override it. That rational mind can be thwarted if we take the time to get in touch with what we know in our gut or our intuitive mind to be true. A lot of times we make decisions in our careers or our lives that we know while we're making those decisions doesn't feel right. Instead, we keep moving forward because we believe we can overcome it and so forth.

It doesn't mean we won't learn from those experiences. However, when we don't listen to that intuitive mind of what is telling us our truth, then a lot of times we mute some of the most important information that we need to tap into. Many of our guests have given us great tips to be able to understand how that happens in our lives. What journey they've gone on in order to be okay with the decisions that they are making now once they realize that those decisions that they thought in the past were the right ones didn't serve them. That's when we get off from being authentic and being something that we think other people want us to be. When we start understanding that piece in the middle, that space in the middle between what we think we should be or what people think we should be versus who we are as an authentic person, that is when we can identify what is holding us back.

Those could be internal stories that we have in our own lives that create patterns in us throughout our life, into our adulthood. We can see show up or we can see that we are repeating patterns of the generations before us and then we need to make a decision. Is that pattern serving us or is it a pattern that we would like to break? In order to break a pattern, we have to work at it. We can want it, but if we don't work at breaking the pattern, what happens is we just keep repeating it. We can our life with intention when we decide to practice these things in our life. It's no different than when you go to workout and during that workout, you know that in order to get better, you have to practice in between different pieces of that.

Throughout my yoga practice, when I started, I remember thinking, “I’ll never get this. I’ll never touch my toes.” It wasn't even negative self-talk. It was just that I didn't think I was capable of it. The more and more practice that I put into it, the more I realized that it was important that I look at all the little idiosyncrasies of the poses, the breath and the movement in order to achieve different poses that I wanted. In my yoga classes, a lot of times when I'm teaching, I have new students come in and they look at the people around them that maybe have been practicing yoga 10, 15 and 20 years. I think I should be like that right now and get a feeling like they're not good enough or maybe I shouldn't come back because I can't achieve what that person next to me is doing instead of respecting the experience.

I think there's a lack of that many times of just respecting the experience that other people have in order to better yourself. It’s not to feel competitive with it, not to feel competitive with other people's expertise, but how can their experience benefit you and teach you in order to be a better person yourself. What experiences and expertise that you have that you can teach others? Many of us grow up with belief systems that we hold on to. Some of my guests had talked about those belief systems that were holding them back. One in particular that I found fascinating was two of my interviews, one with Jeff Thompson and the other one with Lauren Mangan. They both have similar themes of being an introvert or shy and how that belief system affected them as they were growing up and into their careers. What they had to do to overcome it?

When I talk about respecting the experience or expertise, that also means when people are different from you. If you're an extrovert and you're in a room with other introverts, when we start coming to a place of compassion and understanding that person's experience, that person's life, we can better communicate with the people around us and help them thrive. One of the things that Laura talked about was not underestimating the introvert in the room or the person that is shy that they can't be a leader because of it. Their way of leading may be different, but it doesn't mean that it's less successful just because it's different. It's all about us taking those moments of understanding and how do we get the best out of people that have these belief systems that might pull them back.

For instance, one of the things Laura talked about was making sure you give space to people that are more introverted or shy, whether that be in meetings or in their preparation for meeting with other people as well. It could be time that they just need to take away in their own space when they're in a group of people because it's just too much for them. I thought those were good tips for us because it's not just about the introvert themselves or being shy, but also about the people around you, on your teams or in your personal lives that may be different from you. How could you think about going about that relationship differently? How could you help them to be successful? Maybe it wasn't the same way that you became successful but finding out what would help them to do that.

The other thing that Jeff talked about was how he had to push himself to be uncomfortable in order to succeed as a leader that he is now, running an international association. In order to break away from that shyness, he put himself in positions on purpose to make himself uncomfortable. He talked about learning to be in front of people and learning to be a teacher with middle schoolers so that he could break himself from feeling uncomfortable in a group of people. Also, how could you have a more challenging group, the middle schoolers, but understanding that there are ways for us to break these patterns as well? It might be predetermined by generational patterns or DNA and so forth. What can we do to just keep improving ourselves and making ourselves better?

As we go through our career, some of those things that you do early on may not still work based on new roles that you have or new change that you're up against. How can you go about and thinking about making those little changes as you go and observing? When I talk about that space, that transition between our belief and what we can be authentically, those are the moments of pause where start learning about ourselves and saying, “I was uncomfortable in that meeting or I didn't react the way that I had hoped to react. What could I do differently?” That space, that pause is our internal tool to link back to that intuitive mind of letting us know what our truth is. We'll go deeper. Why did that make us uncomfortable? What can we do differently the next time? 

Not Letting Opportunities Go

The other important lesson that I felt was brought out by a few of the interviews that I did was about not letting opportunities go. Many times, I have helped to mentor other staff people or people seeking advice. The biggest thing that I see is people get in their own way. They say they want certain things, but when those opportunities arise, they start the negative self-talk or telling themselves that they can't do it. There’s an opportunity that comes to them that they didn't realize that they would have. They turn it down because that wasn't the plan. One of the things Sandra Wiley talked about was not having this hard and fast plan. You need a framework. Those goals that you're going after. When I think about my own career, how could I have even imagined that this would be the work that I was doing when I started out working for a big four accounting firm and audit as a CPA?

The way that the framework has happened is I wanted to create success, but I also understood from an authentic standpoint who I was trying to serve. If we know from a personal standpoint of who we're trying to serve, as we make different business decisions, we can ensure that we are aligned with our personal purpose. For me, because of the different experiences that had happened in my life, I grew up as an entrepreneur in an entrepreneur family. My grandparents were entrepreneurs, my mother was an entrepreneur and I saw the struggle firsthand of entrepreneurs sustain business. The things that they could not control or even understand because maybe they didn't have an accounting background and needed that advice and help to stay in business.

For me, when I look at my bigger framework and personal purpose, it has always been to ensure that those people that are in business don't suffer. They're able to keep doing their passion and their lives so that the people that benefit from them also get the advantages of what they put out into the world. It's a level deeper than just thinking about our business goals or I want a certain promotion and so forth. When we silo ourselves into one opportunity or one guiding light, the problem with that is that we miss the opportunities that are just sitting around us because we're not noticing. Instead when we create a framework of what is our personal purpose and what do we want to achieve and as opportunities come our way, rather than immediately rejecting them. Being open to those possibilities of what that can mean in our lives and does it align with who we are and the value that we want to create for others.

If it aligns with that personal purpose and we take those moments of transition and pause and we see that it is our truth, that we feel good about that decision, pivots can be made in our lives without feeling like we have to be perfect right away. Sharon Bryson had talked about that she had had different job offers come to her that she kept turning down because it wasn't exactly what she thought was going to happen in her career. It wasn't until a friend of hers says, “If not now, when?” That is an important question to ask ourselves is what are we waiting for? Life is in the present moment. We can have all of these goals and future opportunities that we want to grab, but if we don't stay in the present moment and look around us and be aware of what opportunities and possibilities there are, we can miss so many things that might be our next best self to keep improving.

Not everything is perfect. As we go through our careers, there's going to be failures. There's going to be decisions that we make that we can't predict that wasn't going to go our way. Jody Padar talked about this. The only way to know what you want to do is to know what you don't want to do as well. This comes with experience when we talk about respecting the experiences, respecting your own experience and making sure that the moves that you make are not for others, but you're being true to yourself, which is that intuitive mind, that space between the rational mind and that authentic self. When we take those moments to pause and we look at our lives, is it aligned with our personal purpose and who we want to be? If it's not, it's important to identify what things do not align with us.

Being Your Authentic Self

If they don't align with us, what we can do different. is to pivot, still utilize the experience that we have, not quit everything we do. Take what's great about something and be intentional with how you're going to move forward. It's a framework. Rather than being hard and fast on a plan, how do you pivot and shape your career and your personal life in a way that will feel more authentic to you? When we talk about authenticity, we had a couple of guests talk about sales and a lot of times in sales, we feel it can be not authentic when we're dealing with a salesperson that's just in it for themselves. It's important that we identify if we are in a sales position why we are doing what we're doing to make sure that we are doing it for the right reasons. When I talked to Grace Horvath, she had talked about sales is not selling.

It is about helping to build better relationships. It's also about understanding that other person and serving them. Jennifer Wilson had similar comments along with this. If you're selling for your own personal reasons or how someone else is pushing you to sell that might be not aligned with who you are, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. We sell to serve and if it doesn't fulfill a pain point, then why are we doing it? If we are doing it purely for the win and the money, then we should know that that's why we're doing it. Let's not pretend in our life that that isn't why we're doing it. We want it to be authentic and there's nothing wrong with that. If you are a revenue-focused person in your personal purpose, you're like, “I love the win and the value I create by winning makes me feel good and makes people feel good around me and I'm a good leader.”

That helps other people win and so forth. If it's not always about money, we also need to consider when you look in the mirror, which is what Jennifer talked about, are you okay with who you are? Do you feel good about the actions that you've taken, the belief systems, the words that you utilize and how they are affecting others? It is a good time to review. Take that space between our authentic self and our rational mind to get into that intuitive mind and understand is it our truth. Pause, be silent and allow yourself to think about, “Am I living the authentic way that I want to live that aligns with my personal purpose? Are my belief systems around the work that I do  with my personal purpose?”

Taking 100% Responsibility For Our Lives

This is all important stuff when we talk about how we ensure that we are living our best life. We are doing the work that we always want to do. It doesn't mean work is perfect. We're never going to like 100% of what we do. However, it is important that the majority of what we do fulfills us and makes us happy. If it's not, rather than letting our minds go to a negative place, how do we allow our mind to go to a positive place instead? Understand rather than blaming the outside world or the stories that we have in our bodies that we hold with us as we move into adulthood rather than using those excuses. When I talked to Samantha Moe and Tye Moe, one of their big takeaways was taking 100% responsibility for our lives and for our actions.

That is a hard exercise when you think about it. We need to be responsible for the decisions that we make, the words that we use and how we interact with others without blaming somebody else, which is hard because that is just our natural way to self-deceive ourselves. What happens with deception is we probably know the right thing to do, but if we don't want to do something, it's hard for us to take 100% responsibility for not doing it. We'd rather look to the outside and see there must be some reason I don't want to do it instead of taking responsibility for actions. One of the ways that they talked about doing this was leading with an open heart and understanding that we're not bad people. Nobody's a bad person because we made certain decisions. When we’re taking responsibility, this goes back to the premise of non-judgment. We don't want to judge these observations that we have about ourselves.

When we take those moments of pause and that transition between the rational mind and understanding who we are authentically, what we don't want to do is judge ourselves and be hard on ourselves for decisions we've made when we're being truthful. This is the study of our self. How we go about thinking from a third-party perspective, why did I make those decisions, why did I react in that way so that I don't do it again? What strategies would I need to put in place to ensure that I don't? Going back to an introvert, if I feel like I didn't show up in that meeting like I needed to show up in that meeting. The next time, I need to make sure that I set some time aside to create an agenda, to talk to people in advance, to make sure that there's space on agenda for me to explain my viewpoint rather than letting the room take over me be drowned out.

We can't just hope for things to happen. We need to put those tools in place and make action plans to change the habit, the pattern that we see that shows up in us when we're taking responsibility for that. Jeremy Jones talked about how he did it with a live 360 feedback. If you haven't heard the term of a 360 feedback, what that is having people underneath you, around you that you report to all give you feedback on your performance and how you are in the workplace or with customers or as a leader. He decided to do this face to face. Typically, these are done through anonymous surveys, but he organized a meeting where he was in a room and allowed that feedback to come back. To me, that is such a big example of leading with an open heart and taking 100% responsibility that you're not defending, you're not blaming, you're listening and you're seeking to understand.

What's important about the exercise that Jeremy did, as hard as it must have been to do it, is that when you get feedback a lot of times that are anonymous, you can't go one level deeper and try to understand why someone is feeling that way. All you can lean on that page is the feeling itself or the outcome itself, not what drove that outcome. By having that meeting that he did, he was able to go deeper to understand what shifts he would need to make. There were decisions that he said I wouldn't change and I know why I did those things and the outcome is the outcome. We have the right to hold on to certain ways that we react and behave and go about our days because those are the right things. We also should understand the things that we need to improve and the why behind it and so that we can get to the how. We're not just looking on the surface that we keep seeking to understand.

Change: Giving Yourself Permission For Shifts

Richard Francis had a great line in his interview with me when he said, “You can't expect different results when you keep doing the same thing that you've always done.” I always say like I just keep walking into the window. If we keep doing the same thing over and over again, we're not going to change. We have to do the hard work to be a little bit uncomfortable and see that you know what, some things are not going to feel so good until they feel fine, but it takes that repetitive motion in order to change a pattern in ourselves. Once we identify that there's a certain pattern of behavior, then what happens is we need to go back and look at what little thing could we do each day in order to change that pattern?

Paula Rizzo, when I spoke to her and talked about staying curious, that being open to giving yourself permission for the shifts in your life that are going to happen. We can't just expect that our life is on a straight line, that there are things that we cannot control. Rather than judging it, how do we stay curious and open to understanding those changes and how they're affecting us internally and then making those little changes so we show up in the way that we want. We're very intentional about the way we show up in our life by staying curious, by observing ourselves, by doing the research just about us to understand what our personal purpose is, to make sure our work aligns with that. We stay with an open heart to understand the people around us and the experience that they have.

Thinking About What We Are Grateful For

Lastly, one of the big themes that came out and some of my interviews was about gratitude. I think this is a perfect time to be thinking about what we are grateful for. Our minds are wired to think to the negative. Those are the things that we come home and talk to our spouse or our friends about all the bad things that happened that day or just to share and get it off our chest. When we think about that what happens is that negative energy starts being put out and that negative energy is contagious. It doesn't help us overcome that negative feeling if we're holding onto it. Instead, if we can be training our brain to look for the positive or the things that we are grateful for, it's a skill and a practice that we have to cultivate in our lives.

When I talked to Eric Green, he had talked about the struggle that he had had and how depressed and sad and stressed he was getting because he was feeling so negative about his business and his life, rather than feeling gratitude for the things that he did want in his life. It was a poignant conversation when we talked about this. He was so open about the way that he identified it with himself and understanding that when you talk about taking 100% responsibility, he looked at how he was affecting others and he didn't like the energy that he was putting out there. If we go back and identify what is positive in our life, what are the things that we love to do, then we can shift the work that we are doing to make sure that the majority of our time is spent on that. The things that we don't love to do, maybe there are other people that we work with that could do those tasks because they enjoy doing it. Maybe there are things that we need to do and let go of and not feel like we need to do everything. We decide which things are the most important to put our time towards so that we feel better on the inside and feel grateful for the work that we're doing as well.

Melissa Monte, when I spoke to her, had talked about her past and how she had to get over the shame of that past self in order to move forward. A lot of times when we look at our past or different things that have happened, whether that be in our career or a personal life, we can feel shame. I know that for many years I had that same problem because I had many things that had happened growing up that I thought if people knew that, that they may think differently of me or not respect me, even though of course that's not true. Everyone holds those internal stories and we all have our stories. It helped me in yoga to understand all of these different stories that people come in with to my classes and to classes of other teachers of mine as well, where we see all of these stories and what people are holding in their bodies. You realize everyone has this individual experience. Instead of thinking it's just me or it's just you, it's better to understand that we all have this human experience and condition that we want to be better. If we keep having the negative self-talk or thinking that we will never be better, there's no way to change that paradigm.

It's important to cultivate those feelings of gratitude within us for what we have right now. This all links to what I was talking about in the beginning. Having this framework of what we want, but not getting so far past the current moment that we aren't grateful for the accomplishments that we already have, big or small. They don't have to be huge. Those are the things that we forget, to thank the people around us each day. We don't have an audience when we're done to clap. How do we celebrate ourselves? It can be the littlest things that we set an intention for our day to get one or two things done and we got them done and feeling gratitude for getting those things done in the day. Rather than feeling like everything is bad, turning that around to understand that we are grateful for whatever we have right now, there has to be at least one thing that we can find in our day or our life that we are grateful for. Even if it's that we woke up in the morning and we breathed. As we move on, we have some great interviews coming up.

I want us all to think about over this time of the holidays where things slow down at work. The emails slow down. The texts slow down and people go to their personal lives, whether that's alone or with family or friends. We take those moments of pause and allow ourselves to be silent, allow ourselves to review our year, our way that we've gone about or the way that we are striving for things that maybe don't align with who we are and question everything. Be curious. As we go through that process, help yourself set those goals for the coming year in order to figure out what little changes could I make in my daily life to break some of those belief systems that might be holding me back so then I can achieve and design the life that I desire.

Important Links:

• Jeff Thompson – Episode 2

• Lauren Mangan – Episode 10

• Sandra Wiley – Episode 12

• Sharon Bryson – Episode 15

• Jody Padar – Episode 11

• Grace Horvath – Episode 8

• Jennifer Wilson – Episode 7

• Samantha Moe – Episode 6

• Tye Moe – Episode 6

• Jeremy Jones – Episode 4

• Richard Francis – Episode 3

• Paula Rizzo – Episode 16

• Eric Green – Episode 13

• Melissa Monte – Episode 14

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