Episode 30: Quarter One 2020 In Review
We are three months in for 2020 yet, so much has already happened. The Breaking Beliefs Podcast is nothing short of that with plenty of lessons and wisdom shared by various guests. We look back in this episode as host, Amy Vetter, shares the most poignant moments from the interviews during the first quarter of 2020 in breaking the beliefs and noticing patterns we carry in our lives. She focuses on three areas—community, curiosity, and mindset—for you to think about as you plan for what's next in your business and your personal life during these unprecedented times.
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Quarter One 2020 In Review
This episode is the first quarter review of our guests on the show. I love doing these wrap-up episodes because what I find is when I go back and review the different interviews that I've had, certain themes start popping out from those interviews. It's always great for us to step back and review some of the lessons that we've learned from each person and what we can make of it in our own lives, especially in this time of unprecedented change. There is much hope as well and opportunity when we step back and get away from the anxiety and the stress and realize that everybody has their own journey. Everybody has their own story. When people share them, we can be inspired by them. We can learn from them and realize that what somebody else learned along the way can also help us in making our best next decisions.
There were three themes that popped out to me from the guests that I had. One was about community and the importance of having people that you can depend on, that you can go to network with, and also find mentors as well. The second one was curiosity. A lot of times when things are hard, it's easier to go down the negative path with our thoughts rather than getting curious. Why are things happening the way they are? What impact can we have to change that going forward in the future? What can we learn as a researcher? The third one was facing our fears and mindset of determining what is that intention that we want to have rather than letting life take over. Even when things are hard, how are we going to set the mindset that we want, stay positive and make sure that we get the outcome in the end that we're working toward?
The Importance Of Community
The first one being community. Some of the people that talked about community, the first one was Melisa Galasso in my interview with her. She talked about her path of vulnerability and understanding that you can't always do things alone. As she started leaning on people or being more honest with the people around her, she noticed that she achieved more than less. That asking for help can create a multiplier versus when we don't ask for help and we start stressing ourselves out and maybe not achieving the goals that we want. Another interview that I had about this as well was Jana Axline. She talked about that in her life, she had been heads-down trying to get work done. She’s feeling like each person was a means to an end versus getting up and talking to people and creating that connection rather than bulldozing over people. I think now, as important as this is all the time but especially in this day and age, that this human connection piece is important in all of our health and our mindset. Making sure that we can achieve new things in our lives that maybe we didn't predict we were going to do before.
The other person that talked about this as well was Madeline Pratt. She had such an interesting journey of how her career has pivoted and fought through adversity. She was talking about how important it was for her to have mentors and be striving for the next best thing. We can look at our situations and feel sorry for ourselves. It's an easy thing to do. One of the things that is an important practice to have when we are feeling sorry for ourselves is to give ourselves a time limit on it. We all have the right to step back and go, “Things didn't work out the way that I wanted or the plans that I had,” but then putting a time limit to it and saying, “How am I going to move forward so that I look at it in a positive light?” With Madeline, she talked about how important it was of finding a model for leadership.
If you want to get to that next level, if you want to learn something new, it's important that you find people that you can model yourself after if you don't have those examples on your own. Maybe it's a different direction than you've ever gone before. It's okay to reach out to people or even watch them from afar and learn about the things that they are doing. Maybe choose which things can help you and the opportunities that you want. When I started my first business, it was an outsource bookkeeping services and controllership services. I had never been a bookkeeper. I went to school for Accounting. I was a CPA. I had done audit work. When I decided to do that, I didn't know from the bookkeeping side what a bookkeeper did.
If I was going to hire people to do it, I didn't even know how to describe it. I had to jump in and do the work myself. One of the things I did was seek out people that had successful businesses as well and put myself out there and say that I would work for them at a reduced rate to learn what they were doing. They understood that's what I was doing, but they were getting work done that they needed to be done, then we created referral relationships in the future. Knowing that there are people out there that can help you and you help them in finding especially in a mentor relationship, that how do you help the person that's mentoring you as well? That it is a two-way street so that it's worth it for people to create that relationship with you.
Kacee Johnson also talked about how important it is to find great mentors and to give back. A lot of us go into our careers and we look at people that may have been more successful or more experienced. We think that they are perfect and they know they've got everything. One of the things Kacee talked about was that no one is perfect and when you dive deep, you understand that everyone's got a story. Everyone has their issues that they're fighting through and their belief systems that they either have to overcome or that they utilize for positive.
Breaking Beliefs 2020: Everyone has issues they're fighting through and has their belief systems that they either have to overcome or that they can utilize for something positive.
One of the things that's important is if you're going to find a mentor, you seek out how you can help them and ask them the question of, how can I help you back? How can I give back? Sometimes giving back means giving to the next person. There's a story that I tell a lot of my keynotes about Seane Corn, who is a yoga instructor that's nationally known for those of you that do yoga. I had read an article about her once where she was talking about meeting Kathryn Budig who is another well-known instructor, but at the time wasn't as well-known and was younger. Seane Corn started going to her classes and hiding in the back. Kathryn, the instructor, saw her coming and was amazed that she was coming to her class. Every time she tried to talk to her, she would disappear before the end of class.
Finally, at the end of one of her classes, she catches Seane before she walks out. She tells her how honored she is that she's coming to her classes. She says to her, “Will you mentor me?” Seane Corn tells the story that she paused at this moment and said back to her, "Only if you promise to give back when somebody wants you to mentor them in the future. You may feel threatened by them or their talent or whatever that is, that you will walk toward her rather than away from her.” I think that's important when we talk about mentorship to ask, “How do you pay it forward? How do you pay it back to the person that is mentoring you? How do you pay it forward so that the community support continues?”
Valuing Curiosity
The second theme that I talked about was curiosity. I had a number of guests talk about curiosity. One of my favorite interviews from this quarter was Dr. Keith Bernardo. There are many important messages in that interview about his journey and also the things along the way that were important to him about his relationship with his parents. One of the things that he talked about during his interview was a conversation that he had with his father when he was young. His father had gone through a near-death experience. When he got his health and life back, he completely changed his way of life. One of the things that his father did with Keith and his sibling was sat them down and asked them the question, “Who are you?” That took me back when we were having this interview because I think it's important for us to understand that we might have impressions of other people, people that we love, people that we care about. It's possible that we don't know who that person is or they haven't thought through that.
He talked about the process that he went through with his father. Originally, when his father asked him who he was, he named titles, sports, talents and so forth. His father kept asking, “Why do you like doing those things? How do those things feel?” When you got to the core of it, the core was that he was curious. When we understand what's in our core, it can start creating a guiding light for us of making decisions in our life and knowing why we do what we do and what career decisions are the right career decision for us. What personal decisions are the right personal decisions for us? When you can get down to that core purpose and passion inside of you, it can be that guiding light. For him, being curious is something that throughout his life, whether it's his relationships or work, that if it's around the fact of curiosity, which is what excites him and what keeps him going, then he knows he's in the right place. If that curiosity is being squashed, then it can have adverse effects on him.
The other person that talked about curiosity was Alison Reiff-Martin. She is a joy of light. Reading through her interview, you can't help but smile. One of the things that she talked about as a way of her pivoting in her career and starting her own accounting practice was getting over the fact of people talking about that accounting is boring. Accounting isn't boring if you get up and you start learning the business and you start getting curious about why things operate the way they do. Why do people interact the way they do? Why did that business even get created in the first place? It’s having that openness to meet new people and create that positive energy so that you can be curious and learn the things that you want to learn about and be open to all opportunities.
A lot of us throughout our career can get jaded as things don't work out. Certain things happen that we had hoped would happen differently. We might have issues with other people at work. When that happens, we start squashing our passions instead of being open to that next opportunity and realizing that every opportunity that we had before it, created the opportunities that we have now. If we step back as the researcher and get curious about our own career and our own passions, what we'll find is there are lots of opportunities out there and things for us to think about that are interesting about ourselves. We keep learning about ourselves, which then in turn, creates that next new thing that we're going to do because there's never a time we stop learning. I'm constantly learning about myself. I think I know and then something happens. I step back and I start researching why did that happen in my life. I start learning from that rather than looking at it as a frustration. We can have sadness and anger, but it's important for us to understand why those experiences happen and what we can learn from it to bring into the next new experience.
The other guest that talked about curiosity was Jason Crandell. For those of you that may not know who Jason is, he's a nationally known yoga instructor and definitely demonstrates curiosity in the way that he goes about his career and the way he works personally on himself as well. One of the things that he called himself was intellectually curious and relentless in the work that he does and a strong desire to do what he does and be a critical thinker. I think these are traits of curiosity and growth in ourselves that we need to remember. When things go wrong or right or whatever is happening in our lives, it's important to be relentless about having the desire to improve ourselves and to improve the experience that people have with us as well. To be constantly learning about our craft, about the professional things that we do, but also about how we affect people in a personal way as well.
Breaking Beliefs 2020: Whatever is happening in our lives, it's important to be relentless about having the desire to improve ourselves.
Jason talked about the beginnings of yoga teachers when there weren’t certifications and the way that he learned and came up through the ranks as far as being known as one of the most expert yoga instructors there is. He talked about how important it is to have a strong drive to be able to make it through the ups and downs of whatever is going on in your life and to do the work on yourself. When we're curious about ourselves, it's important that we aren't just looking to the outside, that blaming people maybe for the experiences that we're having or maybe the things that are going wrong. In this day and age with the virus and how things are happening in the world, we could focus on the fact that this is horrible and that this virus is creating the issues that we have in our business or our personal life or so forth.
Some of the things that we're experiencing are things that we didn't make time for prior to that. It makes us re-prioritize and step back from the things that we do and make sure that we're focused on the right things. Looking for that opportunity and also making sure that we're using our critical thinking skills to ensure that we make the best choices going forward. What can we learn from this? What can we learn that maybe we would do differently next time or in the future? When this passes and the world starts operating again, have you thought about planning for what will this look like? How will you change your operations in the things that you do in your career, in the way that you spend time with your family and your friends? It’s understanding what's important to you. Being curious couldn't be a more important trait now than ever of taking the time that we have to learn about our past, what's happening in the present, but plan for the future by being open to what the opportunities could be.
Fear And Mindset
What do we need to change to have a better outcome or plan for things such as this or even things on a much smaller scale in the future? The last area that was a theme for the first quarter was facing our fears and mindset. I saved this for last because I think this is one of the most important things we need to focus on. It's our mindset and fear. Fear is many times driven by the unknown. What can happen in our brains as we start making up stories is we start looking into the future and creating fear that doesn't exist. When we step back and watch our thoughts, we realize we're spending all of this time letting our mind churn on things that haven't happened. It's important to figure out how do we focus on the right mindset during this time.
One of the interviews that I had, which he was inspirational, was Gino Blefari. He was talking about mindset and the way that you go about this, especially with salespeople. I think salespeople are such an important field to watch when you're trying to talk about staying in a positive mindset. When your job, whether in sales or an entrepreneur, is not salary-based and it's commission-based, if you let your head go in the negative space, it's going to be impossible for you to achieve the goals that you want. In this time, we can learn from some of the skillsets of salespeople to create that positive mindset.
He was talking about how he studied this most of his life. He was curious, but how positivity could impact an outcome. He was talking about starting out sales, about how he had a mentor and had said, “It takes six noes to get a yes.” At this time, we have more noes coming out at us than yeses. Things are falling apart with the economy, your business or your career. You're seeing your friends or clients suffer. It's a hard thing to deal with. If we can turn into that mindset that this might be bad, but something good has to happen. We stay focused on what will be the yes and what will be the opportunity. We can start flipping our mindset rather than letting ourselves drive down.
Part of that is making sure that how we surround ourselves with people whether that be on social media, the people that we work with or that are friends personally or family, that they're not drawing our mindset down as well. It's important that we surround ourselves with the energy that we want to create as well. One of the things that he talked about was this mindset of abundance versus scarcity. We are definitely in this world of scarcity. How could we expand our mind to abundance? What are the great things that are happening? Are you connecting with people that you haven't connected with for a long time? Are you able to find new ways of operating and doing business that you never thought possible? Maybe you put it off for a long time and now is the time that you're doing it because we were forced to do it. Are you finding new services or skillsets because of doing this that you have to learn? Maybe it seems hard, but because you're learning, you'll be better than you ever were before. How can you look at things from an abundance standpoint?
He also talked about the daily practice of having this fearless mindset. Whatever you do in your daily life, there are people that have a gratitude practice. Throughout the day, they look for at least five things to be grateful for, for every one thing that maybe is negative. Because you're training your brain to look for the good, you can change that energy internally. Maybe it is a meditation or affirmations that you want to do at the beginning of each day, which is something that Gino talked about, in order to start your day in a positive way and feel good rather than letting yourself be dragged down. When you notice yourself being dragged down, how can you step back, observe, see it happening, then do the natural things that we have internally to flip that?
Breaking Beliefs 2020: Focus on what you can control and what you can put out in the world so that you can make it better not only for yourself but for the people around you.
The other sales conversation I had was with Brannon Poe. He was talking about how important it is that everything you learn along the way in your life matters. If you look at any place that you are in your life, even in the worst of times, you usually take something positive. You take some experience or some learning that helps you in the next relationship, next career position or your business because you have that experience. Rather than looking at what we're going through now as a negative, what are we going to learn from this time period that is going to help us in our career going forward? Brannon in his interview has some great tips on how he went about that when he was starting his business, looking for opportunities that maybe you didn't realize. He’s even gone sideways in his career to get the skillset he needed to get to that next step. It’s a hard thing to do sometimes that you want to keep jumping from step-to-step, but there's another skillset that you may need to get there. Being okay to back up to get the skillset that you need is important.
Dania Buchanan was a fascinating interview on this. She talked about how important it was to make sure that no matter what you go through in your life, that you're looking for the good things. She told a story about her father never being found in Vietnam. She's got a great story for you to read in her interview. One of the things that she talked about was, "Are you blessed or are you cursed?” It's like the glass-half-empty or half-full conversation. Which part are you going to focus on? Many of us have these hardship stories or things that we had to overcome to be able to create the lives that we have now. It's a choice of what we choose to look for and learn about to overcome the experiences that we have.
We can either fall into the negative of those experiences and use those as excuses in our life or we can take those experiences and say, “We're going to be better because of them.” She was talking about there's no playbook. For many of us, there is no playbook for what we want to do in the world. I can even say about my career. If I graduated from college and saw the things that I'm doing now, I would never think this is where my career was going to go. It was being open to those opportunities and watching the things that could grow me in order to find the things that I'm most passionate about. We create our own playbook along the way. When we talk about mentors and community, it’s good to look for the examples and grab for those. We can make sure that we can see from other people's experiences what's worked for them and how we utilize that in our own playbook to achieve the things that we want to achieve too.
The last interview I want to talk about is Ginger White. This also was a huge mindset interview and also facing her fears and overcoming them. I'm not even sure she defined them as fears, but she understood things that she had no example for. Ginger talked about how she had grown up with a family in Appalachia and none of them had even graduated past high school. She was the first one to go to college. She found her way to college and then found her way now to being a Global Chair of the Institute of Management Accountants. These are huge milestones to not have those examples. It was all about facing her fears and making sure that she didn't go down the path because of not having that example in her life. She couldn't live and be a little bit uncomfortable in the learning process, but not take herself down or think that she's less than because she didn't have that experience in the past or that example.
Her whole point was that you could do more and you have more value than you think you have. A lot of times, people perceive you differently than you think of yourself on the inside because you know all the stories, the negatives, where your weaknesses are. Sometimes you don't focus on the positives. When other people look to you from the outside, they see the positives. It’s being okay with feeling that you have positives to put out in the world. Making sure you focus more on that than maybe the negative feelings or the feelings where you start tearing down your self-worth because of the background that you have and being okay to be uncomfortable. That's the crux of all of the situations that we're in. It's uncomfortable. We don't know what the future looks like. We have no idea in our situations if we will maintain those situations, if they will change or if they will get better because of this.
Everybody is in a different situation. What we do know is the present moment. We know what we can control. We know what we do have and what we don't have. We know the people that we care about the most and to hold them tight. What I want to leave you with are these three areas to go back and maybe assess in your own life of understanding who your community is. Who can you be vulnerable to? Who can you reach out to when you're feeling scared, having fear and know that they will give you a positive response back or be critical enough in the conversation without going in a negative route but be helpful? Who can you reach out to today, tomorrow, next week? It’s having that feeling of curiosity.
We are in this situation where we can't control it but how can we be curious about what has happened and what we see in the world? How can we look for new opportunities to change the paradigm that we're in? The way we do that is through our mindset. What practices and tools will you put in place so that you're not focusing on the fear, but instead making sure that you create a positive mindset for yourself each day? It doesn't mean we're not going to have those negative moments, but limit them. Allow them to let go and focus on what you can control and what you can put out in the world so that you can make it better not only for yourself but for the people around you.
Important Links:
Melisa Galasso – previous episode
Jana Axline - previous episode
Madeline Pratt – previous episode
Kacee Johnson - previous episode
Dr. Keith Bernardo - previous episode
Alison Reiff-Martin - previous episode
Jason Crandell - previous episode
Gino Blefari - previous episode
Brannon Poe - previous episode
Dania Buchanan - previous episode
Ginger White - previous episode
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