Be Aware About the Stories You Tell Yourself!

Transcript

Be Aware About the Stories You Tell Yourself!

[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of the effective stat station. I very often say that this is a special episode and this is really actually a special episode because it’s also a pretty personal one because of my guest. My guest is not only a business coach, but it she’s actually also my business coach. And so I’m super happy to have Mirjam on the call today. How are you doing?

[00:00:34] Mirjam: Thank you, Alexander. I’m super happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I am really excited to be in your podcast today.

[00:00:43] Alexander: Very good. So you have a really, really great tagline on your LinkedIn profile. How to achieve your challenging professional goals and break your mental chains. And we will especially talk about some mental chains [00:01:00] today. But before we dive into this maybe you can introduce yourself.

[00:01:05] Mirjam: Yes. Thank you very much. Yes. Okay. As you know, my name is Mirjam. Mirjam Sandlos. I’m a business consultant and coach, and I have, I would say, conscious entrepreneurs and leaders who are, let’s say, in a challenge or face a challenge or in an economic or personal crisis.

[00:01:26] And want to change their selves and want to master their challenges and help them to master their challenges and seize opportunities and achieve their goals. I do this through really, I would say, customized, consulting and coaching services. So I look, have a deep look at each individual, how to help them and yeah, that’s my passion.

[00:01:51] Alexander: Awesome. Yeah. And I need to say I benefited from this passion already quite a lot. And so[00:02:00] today we want to talk about mental chains and everybody has these me included, Mirjam and myself talked already in our coaching about a couple of my personal ones. And this is, we, just before we actually started the episode, we talked a little bit about what is the correct translation of the German word, Glaubenssatz.

[00:02:30] And it’s actually we didn’t find a really, really nice English word, but it’s kind of, you know, this. You have this belief system, or you have this mental chain, or you have this kind of mental block, your kind of personal statement about yourself that very often is limiting. Does that actually, is that similar to what you understand?

[00:02:59] Mirjam: [00:03:00] Absolutely. I would also, maybe I can add something like you have kind of limiting beliefs at all has to do with your conscious and subconscious mind. And yeah, it’s a kind of patterns I would say, and they go hand in hand with some habits. So, but I understand it in the same way as you described it.

[00:03:25] Alexander: Yeah, so it’s actually just what you, what we tell ourselves is that it’s kind of there are certain statements that we kind of consciously or subconsciously tell ourselves all the time.

[00:03:40] Mirjam: It’s like, I would maybe bring me to another word. It’s like a code, which is, in us, kind of, and we were, we are not always aware of this, that we carry this sentence, because sometimes it’s really deep in our unconscious mind.

[00:03:59] And that [00:04:00] always in our conscious mind, the sooner it gets to our conscious mind, we can work with it, which is really helpful.

[00:04:08] Alexander: That is a good way to kind of think about it. It’s kind of a program that runs in our mind. Right. And Sometimes we are aware about it, and sometimes we are not. And of course, that is one of the biggest problems, especially when we are not aware about it.

[00:04:28] Mirjam: It brings me maybe I can explore a little bit about it. Yeah. So, when we are an infant, right, we came to this world, and we are totally open to receive whatever our parents telling us whatever our surroundings telling us so everything goes in our so called now subconscious mind. So there’s no barrier.

[00:04:57] There’s no nothing we would prove [00:05:00] because we are totally open and receive as an infant. And then we are getting older, right? And around the age, I would say around seven there comes kind of that the, the children would say, no, I don’t believe you. Did you ever experience this with your children?

[00:05:21] Yes. And then, so there’s a kind of like not a real barrier, but it is kind of barriers, like a checking system, I would say and Then we train our intellect and we train our conscious mind it will be developed through school or teachers or parents as well. And so we have, then we have two, we have our subconscious mind and we have our conscious mind.

[00:05:50] And in between, there is a kind of line, it’s a border. Area, right? So, and then you grow up [00:06:00] and you want to change. There’s a certain point you want to develop, you want to change, and then you realize, oh my God, that’s a sentence and won’t let me go over this or it won’t let me reach my goal. And I don’t know why.

[00:06:19] And this could be that there is a Belief sentence or statement of belief, which holds you back. Because you always, our system wants to always keep us very safe, okay? Want to protect us. So it’s a really, really good thing. But in order to reach our goals, we have to break through a certain, I would say, kind of a ceiling, right?

[00:06:46] We have to break through. But we can only do this in this case, if we change the statement of belief, like, what could be a statement of beliefs like I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. [00:07:00] I’m not a leader like this, right? And we have to change it in order to get to our goal. And then there is in between, it’s, it is called terror barrier.

[00:07:14] So this holds us back because our system always, as I said, wants to keep us very safe, right? And the belief. statements are not ours, because we heard it as an infant from our parents, from aunts and grandmas and grandparents. So it’s not us. So we have to become aware about what are our statements.

[00:07:42] First, what are our statement of beliefs? And then as soon as we are aware, we can work with them and change them. And I hand over to you. I think I talked a lot.

[00:07:55] Alexander: Completely agree. These can come from all kinds of different places. [00:08:00] Yeah. Societal norms. Girls don’t do this. Or boys behave like that, and so on.

[00:08:06] We are also kind of, what you said, it makes us feel comfortable. Yeah. And as long as we stay with these beliefs, we are in our comfort zone. Right. And of course, stepping outside of that feels uncomfortable. And I think what is really problematic about these Limiting beliefs is that first, of course, we need to be aware about them.

[00:08:36] If we are not aware about them, then they limit us and we don’t even recognize why. The second is. We’ve, because it’s a belief, we don’t even think about that it’s possible to change that.

[00:08:53] Mirjam: Right. Absolutely true.

[00:08:56] Alexander: Yeah. So it’s, it’s not like a [00:09:00] border that we see and we see the possibility of stepping over it. It’s like a border that we see there’s nothing beyond it. Right. Yeah. And I think that makes it so, so powerful.

[00:09:14] Mirjam: It is. And as soon as we want to change it, fear kicks in, right? Fear always holds us back. So it’s always, oh no, right. Ah, I’m too afraid. So fear is one of the powerful, most powerful emotions to hold us back.

[00:09:32] It’s not very constructive. So, but the way is to go through this fear, to reach at the end, our present, our gift, because it always or from my experience, it always holds a really special gift for us if we go through this. And in order to go through this fear, we have to change ourselves, we [00:10:00] become different persons.

[00:10:01] So and also we have to change our belief system or the pattern. And, additionally, it brings me to another point. We also have to change our habits. Because they go hand in hand.

[00:10:17] Alexander: That is an interesting thing. So if we, let’s first maybe go back to belief systems or limiting beliefs. Couple of different examples you already mentioned, like I am not a leader.

[00:10:32] I can’t speak in public. I am not Assertive. Money is, is bad. I’m not worthy to ask for more money. I, I need to be perfect. I can’t do a mistake. I need to do it all by myself. I’m not allowed to ask for help. Yeah. I’ve seen that again and again, all of these kinds of different things in my career.

[00:10:58] And I’ve [00:11:00] had these myself. Yeah, and I’m for a couple of these. I’m still working on them in terms of speaking in public. I think I know what it is, but I definitely had that as well. Yeah. So these are all kind of the typical ones. So if you if you pick one of these, what is what are the kind of typical habits that go with these?

[00:11:25] Mirjam: let’s say for example, I’m not a leader or I’m not good enough to become a leader. This is also a common one. It goes hand in hand with a certain picture you made from yourself in your mind, right? Because when we think something, we always have a picture and an emotion. It goes hand in hand.

[00:11:50] And then there are certain patterns how we react and, and certain habits to go hand in which go hand in hand with it. Right. [00:12:00] But it all starts in your mind. So the key is really first change your thoughts. And of course, change your sentence. And second, change your picture or change the story you are telling yourself about you, right?

[00:12:19] There’s a story. We are always telling us a story, yeah? Did you experience it? Yes,

[00:12:27] Alexander: We, for example, tell us a story that if we do this, something bad will happen. Right. Like if I speak up in this meeting, people will laugh at me, people will call me crazy, people will say the things that I’m stupid. All these kind of typical things.

[00:12:49] Mirjam: Perfect. That’s a perfect example. So we can stay with this example. So the moment, what, what can you do for yourself? Yes. What can you do? You [00:13:00] start. by changing your picture in your mind, yeah? The first thing is, okay, why not thinking, why couldn’t you think that it could be positive? That people are excited when you’re talking, right?

[00:13:14] This is the first step. It might not be totally easy at the first beginning, but if you… It’s kind of a training, a mental training, I would say, you if you don’t get this picture, then look it up, look it up in the internet where you can see such, such a picture and work with this, then you have, then you can visualize it more easily.

[00:13:40] And the second is it always, if you have a picture that comes always an emotion with it. Yes. So your first picture was fear based, right? You had fear in this picture and everything went bad. So, we want to have a positive [00:14:00] emotion now, which pushes your body and your whole system upwards. Yeah. So we want to have joy, right?

[00:14:10] We see ourselves having fun in a presentation, and then we are looking at, at the, the people around us and they are smiling like this. So every detail would be very important to change our picture. And And also our emotions. We want to not only have this picture in our mind and the sentence, what we’re thinking, but we also want to feel a positive emotion.

[00:14:37] That’s the most powerful combination, a fee working on this part. And of course, I’m here to help as well with this, right?

[00:14:45] Alexander: That is also what I recommend very often. Instead of thinking about yourself. And thinking like, oh, you need to, you know, you’re not worthy, you’re not [00:15:00] intelligent enough think about, you know, the others, they are interested in your thoughts.

[00:15:10] And you have something special to bring to the group, to the meeting. As a statistician, you very often come with logical thinking, you know, the data, you know. When you take a certain decision, what that will mean in terms of the design of the study, in terms of what data you can collect, what kind of claims you can do what it means in terms of the precision of your data, all these kind of different things.

[00:15:38] You understand. But many of the others, probably most of the others, maybe all of the others in the meeting don’t understand it. Especially if you’re the only one that is a quantitative scientist. You’re the only statistician in the room. Not speaking up is actually a [00:16:00] disservice. Yeah, and so I think changing your mind from thinking about yourself to thinking about the others, what you can do for the others.

[00:16:12] why they need your help. This is also what I always say to people when it’s, when they kind of fear of presentations, don’t think about yourself, think about the others. Yeah. Think about how you will help them, what they need to understand from you.

[00:16:31] Mirjam: That’s absolutely true. The, so you can ask yourself in your mind, how can I serve today? Yeah. How can I help? How can I support people? And most of the times we have. really high expectations, right? And sometimes it’s so easy just to be there, be present, and be, go all in to support. So. Yeah.

[00:16:58] Alexander: Yeah. [00:17:00] There are a couple of ones that I find especially limiting. And especially for our kind of for whole, our whole function of statisticians.

[00:17:14] Yeah. One of the, the big ones is we are inferior to certain other functions, especially medical. Yeah, I see that all the time. Yeah. Like, yeah. That’s the physician sets. And yeah, but the physician is more important. And of course, kind of, you know, the physician needs to take the lead. And I know the physician needs to be the first author. I know the physician needs to do the presentation, all these kind of different things.

[00:17:49] For me, this is the very, very common limiting belief. From my point of view, we have at least the same [00:18:00] amount of impact in the industry as the physicians. likely even more. However, if you look into kind of when, when it’s about salary, when it’s about pay increase, when it’s about travel budget, whether, when it’s about training budget, all these kinds of different things.

[00:18:23] Yeah. We have as a function, this limiting belief that we are not Worth it. That we don’t deserve as much money as the physicians.

[00:18:37] And that is so ingrained that it materializes in lower salaries, lower opportunities for for jobs and all the kind of different other things, yeah?

[00:18:52] Mirjam: It seems for me very logical that this happens because what you think becomes [00:19:00] a word becomes the material or the material, yeah, it becomes true.

[00:19:05] Because you always want to prove to yourself that what you think becomes true. You always want to be right, right?

[00:19:14] Alexander: You want to be consistent. Yeah. Right.

[00:19:16] Mirjam: So it starts if you want to change it also here, it starts by changing your thought patterns. And it feels also, it feels like this is kind of a cultural thing because it seems to be common in a way I’m right.

[00:19:34] So, but it’s also with every thought, every thought goes with a frequency. And it will connect with the other frequency, right? So, and the vibration you have in your body then, it might be low. So you,

[00:19:54] you come together with another low vibration, which could be low salary, [00:20:00] whatever, right? It always tries to match. Does it make sense? Okay. Let me start again. So the thought pattern goes with a low frequency, right?

[00:20:13] Alexander: What do you mean by low frequency?

[00:20:15] Mirjam: Every thought has a frequency. If you think negative thoughts, right?

[00:20:19] Alexander: How often you think it basically?

[00:20:21] Mirjam: And also how often you think it you vibrate in a really low frequency, right? If you think joyful thoughts. The vibration would be higher and you probably, yeah, you have more energy and you would probably meet more people who are in the same frequency, right? It’s like a it’s like the radio frequency you only listen, you only can hear a certain frequency because you are used to hear this frequency, right?

[00:20:56] Alexander: Okay. So basically you, you connect [00:21:00] with people that have the same source. It’s the same belief systems because they reinforce what you say. Yeah, they tell you, yes, you’re right.

[00:21:12] Mirjam: It’s like a magnet, right? You’re on the same, you’re playing on the same frequency, or you’re playing on the same field, you understand each other.

[00:21:24] Kind of this, you could also do it, put it in very simple words. You understand ours. You would say, people would say, Oh, this person, I like this person. I don’t know why, but it’s because the frequency match and it’s interesting, right? You don’t see it. The person might not have spoken one word, but it’s how this field works around you.

[00:21:49] Because if you think in, think in frequencies, if you think a thought, right? And then you vibrate, your body vibrates. [00:22:00] You have a fiat around you, right? And it all… One’s always to match with the same with the same field from another person. I mean, maybe we attract,

[00:22:11] Alexander: we attract kind of, we get attracted by similar people.

[00:22:16] Yeah, you have said very often said people hire another self. Yeah, we group together with people that are like minded, that are kind of have the same beliefs that have the same backgrounds. All these kind of different things. And yeah, and, and from that, it completely makes sense that, you know, these, your personal beliefs, your personal limiting beliefs become group limiting beliefs, more and more.

[00:22:45] And it really reinforces each other. And also, I guess, If then someone comes and says, no, this is wrong. This is not true. It’s really, really hard to change [00:23:00] it because all the others believe in it. It’s not kind of logical or fact based or whatever. It’s a belief.

[00:23:09] Mirjam: It’s just belief. And this goes hand in hand with your attitude. So how you look at things, kind of, are you more open to receive new information? I, would you be open to listen to someone who has an opposite, meaning of something or would you not be open for it? This goes hand in hand with your attitude, right? It’s also important. Do I have a learning attitude or not?

[00:23:40] Alexander: This is this to have a growth mindset, isn’t it?

[00:23:44] Mirjam: A growth mindset. Yeah, that’s absolutely right.

[00:23:47] Alexander: Yeah. And not a limiting mindset in terms of I can’t do that. I can’t change.

[00:23:54] Mirjam: Right. It starts with the moment you are aware of it. Okay. What kind [00:24:00] of beliefs, the belief system do I have or what kind of mind do I have? Do I want to change? This is a decision you have to make. Do I want to change? Do I want to learn? And if you say yes, this is the moment where you get this growth mindset where you say, okay, okay, maybe I have to change. Maybe it hurts a little bit. Yeah, maybe I have to do things in a different way. Maybe I have to change my habits, but I really, really, really want to explore it.

[00:24:33] This goal, right? I want to reach this goal. So just show me how to do it. This, this would be perfect to reach your goal. Yeah.

[00:24:45] Alexander: Yeah. For that, of course, it is really important that you have a very, very good goal. And as we are kind of, you know, around the time of moving from [00:25:00] 2023 to 2024, it’s really important.

[00:25:04] To work on your goals, on your personal goals, on your long term personal vision. Mirjam and myself talk quite a lot about this. If you don’t have something that is attractive for you as a goal, where do you want to get the power from? Where do you want to get the energy from? Where do you want to get the motivation from?

[00:25:26] If you don’t have something that is worthy of stepping into your Uncomfortable to overcome your fears to challenge your limited beliefs. Thanks so much, Mirjam. We talked quite a lot about the mental chains that kind of hold you back. Some of which you’re maybe not even aware about. Some of which you just have as a belief.

[00:25:56] And therefore, you don’t even know that. [00:26:00] They could be wrong, and we talked a lot about how they are limiting yourself, how they are limiting our overall function and also a little bit where they are coming from, and that they come from many, many different sources. If there would be one thing that… You would like the listener to take away from this episode. What would that be?

[00:26:29] Mirjam: I would say be aware, watch your thoughts, right? Become aware of your thoughts and be open to the change.

[00:26:43] Alexander: Yes. Watch what you’re telling yourself. Right. There’s an important person listening to it.

[00:26:49] Mirjam: Right. So, what kind of story are you telling yourself today? And do you want to tell the story or do you want to change the story? [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Alexander: Thanks so much for this awesome discussion.

[00:27:03] Mirjam: Thank you so much, Alex, for having me. I wish you and also the listeners all the very, very best. And I’m looking forward to the seminar.