Ep 49: Don’t Cover Up the Check Engine Light

Well, you know what that means it’s time to expose the money lies. Let’s get started. 

How often do you catch yourself judging yourself for how you feel or what you believe, as a coach, it feels like we should have it all figured out by now. But how does being a good coach mean suddenly that you’re no longer human, you are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are not your actions or results. Right? That’s not part of who you are. Yes, you can certainly become more skilled at choosing your beliefs. But you will always do something or not do another thing, you will always act based on how you feel. I mean, I remember lots of things that I’ve done in my past that I might be embarrassed by, or ashamed of, because it wasn’t something I’m proud of. 

But it all comes down to whatever I was believing at the time. It’s not because I was damaged or bad. But it was just what I was believing it was how I was responding to the situation at the time. It was based on whatever part of the motivational triad that my brain was responding to. That was my brain was being motivated by whether it was seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, or conserving resources. 

Now, there were times when I was seeking pleasure and that’s how I responded, or that’s how I acted. And there were other times I was avoiding pain. But and when I did this, my brain, of course, rewarded me with a neurotransmitter like dopamine, in order to encourage or reinforce that behavior. So if we want to purposefully direct our behavior, then we can use the same principles. You do the behavior that you want to do, reinforce that behavior to make your brain want to repeat that behavior. So you can work also on the belief driving the emotions that are fueling that behavior. I like to find a few emotions, that fuel behavior that leads to my positive results. My favorite emotion to fuel me to the results I want is what I call the feeling of being on fire, like I just get into this energy, that I can do whatever I’m doing productively all day long. And it’s awesome, because I feel like that is my best fuel, that is the energy that I have been into, that has produced some of my best work. 

Now the trick is to learn how to get into that energy on purpose and be able to generate that feeling of on fire whenever I want to. And I think part of this is being able to find some of the situations or some of the things that trigger that for you. So, if my feeling that fuels me best is on fire then what are some things that I can think that make me feel on fire. Now, the other thing that I think helps generate more growth, more positive results, is also celebrating your wins. And it’s not a win that doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive outcome. It can just be a positive result, and you can get a positive result without a positive outcome.

So the result might be, well, I showed up to that, whatever I needed to do, as my best self as the best person I could be at the time. And that might not result in a positive outcome, but it will result in positive growth that will result in forward movement. And that’s why fails contribute to success, because those are not necessarily positive outcomes, but they are positive results because they fuel your success. They fuel your growth toward that success. So I always recommend to my clients that they find a way to regularly celebrate any wins. 

So if i see my clients struggling you know week after week, then i will ask them to start posting their wins in the wins channel in our our slack channel where we communicate with each other and very quickly if they do that if they stick with that they notice their productivity going up, they notice their performance going up, they notice the things that stop them, the things that get them stuck decreasing and so you know get into the energy more often by celebrating your wins and remember wins don’t have to be only positive outcomes they can be just positive results which could be a productive fail. 

A productive fail can produce a positive result any behavior that moves you forward any behavior that you want to repeat even if it resulted in a less than desirable outcome you can celebrate for example let’s say you finally get to be a guest on a podcast that you’ve been wanting to get on and you go on there but you don’t feel like you did the best job or you don’t feel like you performed very well. 

Do you want to repeat the behavior of getting on a podcast yes because you want the exposure and you want the practice of talking about who you help and how you help them and you want to get on more and more podcasts right you want to get in front of more and more of your ideal clients so you’ll want to celebrate getting that guest spot, you want to celebrate showing up, you’ll want to celebrate what went well right and then of course you can discern what you might do differently next time to make it even better and you can also decide it was good enough it was B minus work and here’s how i can make it even better next time not because i need to but because i want to and i know i’m perfectly capable of doing so right not because it was a bad job and that’s a really different energy than what we tend to do which is believe that’s not good enough we beat ourselves up negative self talk and then as a result we dread doing it ever again and we avoid getting the next guest spot or we resist it and then go into it fueling that performance with that negative energy of like oh my gosh i don’t i hope i don’t do a bad job so just make sure that you’re focused on what it is that you actually want to grow would you want that opportunity again then celebrate that opportunity celebrate that you you know what you did do well and it’s not that you should avoid resist or hide the negative emotion of it should come up but that you acknowledge that then also bring up three times as much that you can celebrate be proud of and grateful for now my clients tend to avoid failure in in part of that is because they do beat themselves up about it so they resist celebrating anything that doesn’t have the outcome they want because they’re afraid that that will cause it to repeat itself they know that beating themselves up doesn’t work so some of them even avoid the evaluation altogether and they might dismiss the negative emotion altogether as well they don’t necessarily resist it they just move on very quickly so that they don’t get stuck in it a lot of them are afraid that if they acknowledge that or if they explore that then they’ll get stuck there.

So instead they don’t learn how to discern instead of judge and they don’t learn how to shift out of judgment or skillfully navigate that negative emotion because they’re afraid of it so what that might look like is oh hey i’m feeling frustrated again I wonder what i’m frustrated by so it’s just a matter of casually and  from curiosity exploring that emotion yes you’ve addressed the feeling of frustration perhaps and maybe you’ve addressed it many many times but in every situation and with application to every thought pattern and what are you afraid will happen if you stop and explore it again? Some of my clients are afraid that they’ll get stuck there like you know stepping in quicksand, they won’t be able to get out and what will you lose by exploring. And when you think about what will you gain by exploring, now, I don’t stop you know, my day, I don’t stop what I’m doing every time I have a negative emotion. 

But what I do is when I notice that I’m avoiding or resisting that emotion, or if I can’t connect to the source of that emotion, I see that as a sign that there’s more to be explored there. Or if it keeps coming back in the same way, a lot of different times. You know, a lot of times, you’re, it’s just like muscle memory, you have that default, and so sure, you have to address that. But if you just move past it without addressing it, then it never becomes not the default, right, you have to shift it somehow, in order for it to not continue being the default. 

Now, if it’s a feeling that’s a default, there are different ways that you can address that. Now, I’m not going to talk about that particular thing on this podcast. But, you know, I know, there are things like tapping that helps with that, and different, different other types of techniques that can help when it has just become the default from more of a physical perspective than just your brain, just naturally going to that every time. So there’s a way there are ways that you can, can retrain or rewire your brain so that that’s not the default. So that is something that can, can be explored.

So you know, but when we’re not willing to explore that is usually a red flag when we’re not willing to stand in that discomfort to allow that discomfort enough to explore to see what, what the next step is, or to see why it’s the default. So imagine if you were doing an audit of a company’s accounting records, and they were being very transparent. That is, you know, they were showing you what’s behind every emotion, that is, until you come to a certain set of accounts. Then suddenly, they ask, they act like, oh, there’s, there’s nothing to see here, move along, move along. And this is just like all the other accounts.

Now, if you were doing that audit, and they suddenly didn’t want you to see something, wouldn’t you be a little suspicious, you might have pretty good reason to believe they’re trying to hide something they don’t want you to explore further. And so you want to wonder, Hmm, I wonder why all of a sudden, they don’t want me to look into these particular books. So when you find yourself saying or thinking, okay, there’s that negative emotion, I’ve already worked on that that’s not useful. I’ll just shift over here to my positive thinking, my feeling better, there’s nothing to see here move on along, then, you know, that might be a really good time to do a little bit more exploration into those accounting records those emotions. 

So and it’s an opportunity to create even more awareness and more comfort level around that particular emotion. Because a lot of times we have certain emotions. Now, for me, it’s resistance. So, you know, exploring that and creating even more awareness around that makes resistance less of a problem, it makes it more of a known quantity. A lot of times, we resist certain emotions, because we don’t know what that will lead to. So when we’re willing to explore that, and when we’re willing to build that awareness around it, we can drop those fears around what will happen when we feel that way. And we can just allow it. So yes, I believe that emotions are not a problem to solve, but there’s also no harm in exploring them and allowing them and processing them. 

One thing I don’t want to do, at least personally, is to train or wire my brain to hide it from me. Because there’s some negative consequence to me exploring it, and when I avoid it, or when I’m put too quickly moving on from it, I feel like it’s almost giving my brain permission to keep hiding it from me like it’s nothing you don’t need to bring this to my attention. It can just fester below the surface.

That’s what I don’t want is to not be aware of it. It’s almost like covering up the check engine light with a piece of tape. You know, instead of fixing the reason that the check engine light is on, then you just cover it up with a piece of tape so that you don’t have to look at it. Well, how then is your check engine light going to alert you when you really do need to check the engine. So the check engine light comes on, you check the engine, maybe even you take it to the shop for them to run diagnostics. And you see that everything is fine, it’s not a problem, you can conclude that there must just be a faulty check engine light and say, Oh, well, there’s just something wrong with the check engine light, I’ll just cover it up. But instead of getting the check engine light fixed, or figuring out why it stays on with there’s nothing wrong, you just cover it up then you’ve effectively rendered that alert system useless. Yes, it could alert you with a false positive if you leave the tape off. But by never looking at it, you now don’t know when there is a problem that needs to be explored in potentially address. 

So when you move on from those emotions, you could be just changing, you could be rendering that check engine light, useless, that alert system. So that’s the problem with assuming that a negative emotion we’ve addressed is always there for the same reason. And then not being willing to explore it further when it comes up in the future. And not only that, but we’re changing our brain every single day. And by covering up that alert system, we identify new thought patterns emerging from new circumstances, new versions of who we’re becoming. So yes, that that could have been the reason it came up before. 

But now we are somebody different. Now it could be coming up for a different reason, it could be a different, it could be indicating a different thing that we need to be alerted to. So the thought patterns I have now are the same and also different from those I experienced as a brand new entrepreneur in a lot of ways they’re the same, I can see the same thought patterns coming up. But I can see that they’re in response to different triggers, or in response to different circumstances, or in a different way, producing a different result. 

So they still, I still like to explore them at least to understand where they’re coming from. Because they’re similar, but they’re different versions. And it’s based on how my brain is changed. And it’s really good for me to see new versions of those old patterns. Because the more different versions I address, the more I reinforced what I truly want to believe. And the more I reduce the impact of what I don’t want to believe. And I do this all consciously, all while maintaining and strengthening that awareness muscle, I can’t address anything that I’m not aware of. 

So I’m always strengthening that awareness muscle, even if I choose not to do anything about it, I don’t want to stop at least being aware of it because being aware of it doesn’t hurt me. I acknowledge the frustration, but I don’t have to react to it. And I don’t also have to eliminate it, I can just notice it, acknowledge it, understand it, discern if it’s useful, but still allow it to be there without it causing a problem. 

Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean I’ll get stuck, even if that is what has happened. When I felt that way in the past, yes, I got stuck in that negative emotion. I can see this in my business, where in the beginning of my business or you know, kind of after the honeymoon phase works off towards the beginning, I would feel frustrated or I would feel discouraged or defeated and it might take me a month to get over it. But now I can feel defeated and discouraged and it might take me an afternoon to get over it. It might take me a day to get over it. Right doesn’t take me a month or three months to get over that feeling because I have built awareness around that and I have exercised the muscle of discerning and understanding it and getting through it. 

So this is how we stopped relying so much on the high highs to sustain our interest or motivation or attention or excitement to fuel us. And we stopped reading the low lows where we used to get so stuck and get stuck for so long. So we want to be we want to start to be more capable of truly experiencing any emotion without it impacting so deeply and for so long and that’s what creates emotional invincibility so that’s why it sends up a red flag for me whenever I’m coaching someone who is generally very skilled at accessing their emotion but for some reason now can’t access a particular emotion or what’s causing it or what’s triggering it even so I see that as an indicator of something that might deserve to be explored in order to get to a new level of growth or understanding now I know when my coach hits a nerve and when I resist going further when I stop making eye contact when i start squirming in my seat when I want to escape when i want to change the subject I might get irritated I might get agitated all of those are indicators that there’s something more there to be explored so how can i hold space for that and still move forward how can i meet myself where i’m at and still love myself enough to push further and and grow through that experience meeting myself where I’m at doesn’t mean pulling back or stop pushing myself so that i can feel more comfortable right i’m always in a safe space when I’m with my coach especially but I’m always in a safe space and meeting myself where i’m at and holding space for myself loving myself might mean not making out a problem that i’m uncomfortable might mean that i keep going to explore and understand that so that it doesn’t hold me back so that it doesn’t keep making me uncomfortable. I don’t want to coach that every time i start to squirm pulls back and stop you know stops that exploring process yes there are times when you need to just dial it back and that you need to take a rest, right but that’s different from just okay this is this is not useful or this is not productive you know because my brain can pull back in and want to convince me to stop exploring and stop growing and stop understanding that that can do all that all by itself I want a coach that will keep pushing me because the deep parts I feel are where the growth is yeah, feels like hell but that’s how I know that I’m on the right track because i’m going to come out stronger more agile and better equipped to become that version of emotionally invincible that that I aspire to be so if I’m not willing to go there how do I even learn that I’m capable of going there.

Hey, Jill The Money Coach here. If you aren’t currently subscribed to my email list, go there now. Go to go to Jill Wright Coaching .com. Get your free pdf copy of my book Money Lies The Sneaky Way Your Brain Sabotages Your Success In Your Business and read the book see which of the 10 lies that I describe in the book that you might be believing. When you sign up for my email list you’ll get lots of free tools that you can access and that you can use to detect your money lies to un-limit your Money Mindset. The women on my list get almost as much great stuff as the people who work with me, the people who pay me so I look forward to seeing you in your inbox and don’t forget if there’s one truth you practice be sure to practice believing that YOU ARE MADE FOR MORE.