Hey friends, welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast.
This week I'm going to be sharing some of the tools that I'm learning. One of the things that I have done for quite some time is I invest in my mental mindset. I have coaches that help me understand why I'm thinking, what I'm thinking, and use that information on repeat to notice and decide if these are the thoughts that I want to be moving me forward to creating the results that are important to me.
And one of the things I've learned is really impacting the way I teach my three-step process of notice, decide and practice. So if you have a result that's important to you, the first thing you want to do is notice how are you feeling emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, how's your energy? And then we generally say, from that place of noticing where you are, we make a decision.
I think we want to add, now that I'm aware of it, one more step, and that is how can you get to neutral, aligned energy before you make a decision?
So today I'm going to be talking about the additional things that I am trying to add to my life in order to stay in a very healthy state as I create results that are important to me. So once we begin to notice, our life truly changes.
If you can take the time every day, whether it is with a journal or to have a conversation with somebody maybe you're using the notes app on your phone but every day to stop and to notice what are you thinking, how are you feeling? Anything you want to do that you're not doing, anything that you are doing that you'd like to stop doing? And, while you're noticing, see if there's any need to regulate your nervous system.
I've been working on my mindset and with life coaches since 2016, but it wasn't until I discovered my first somatic body-based coach that I even knew how important it was to regulate my own nervous system
In kickboxing, which I did for a little bit how you have to sort of make a firm foundation with your feet. You have one foot in the front, one in the back. You're nice and solid, you're rooted down. I realized that when people come and have a thought or a question for me that can trigger me and I'm not ready for it, I can almost get knocked offside. And the version of me that tends to walk through life and try to notice and decide from a place of self-love I can just so easily fall back into the version of me that existed for over 45 years -very unregulated, dysregulated nervous system making the decisions.
And so maybe you're like me and you notice that, that certain people's words, the energy of a room- it could be the smell that brings you back to childhood it's easy for you to also get dysregulated.
So after you take a few moments to notice, I'd love for you to just check in really quick and say how regulated and relaxed is my nervous system?
Are you aware that you're safe? And if you're not, one of the things I learned in my positive intelligence coaching was how to do some small practice steps to just bring ourselves back to the present tense. I'll just share one of them.
One of my favorite ones was you just take a little pinch of salt and drop it into your palm and you try to count it. It is amazing how many grains of sand are in one pinch of salt. But the work of doing that, of just concentrating and counting and looking at it, can help really bring you back to the present.
I've also heard people say try to find the sound that's furthest away and concentrate on that. So maybe it's the birds outside, maybe it's cars.
Do something so that your attention moves from your brain to the present tense of what's going on, so that your brain isn't able to bring you through time back to something that was very stressful and create that nervous system deregulation.
So that is what I'm offering right now is, after you take a few moments to notice the final thing you want to check in -how am I doing? Am I relaxed? Am I regulated? Do I know that I'm safe?
And if that's true, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what would the future version of me look like for me to decide today and I would say this from a place of love for future me.
If I take the time to go back through journals and see how far I've come, I'm always so amazed at the wisdom that this version of me could have brought to the past version of me. That's what I'm talking about today is noticing that the future version of you has already survived all the hard things, has learned with wisdom from all the lessons you've walked through. What would that version of you like you to decide today?
I don't think any of us want to on purpose create overwhelmed, exhausted, depleted lives, but when we are not paying attention, sometimes our nervous system gets dysregulated and we're not relaxed and we make decisions that are not best for both present and the future version of ourselves.
So just take a moment now, check in how are you doing? How's your energy? How are you feeling about this week? Is there anything that needs some calming breaths or some rooting of your energy, with those feet firmly planted and maybe some movement?
And then ask yourself what would be the most kind and loving decision you could make today for the future version of yourself.
If you notice something like I think it would be so great for the future version of me to do this thing that I've decided to do, then let's go do that.
But if you notice I think it'd be best for future version of me to take that nap because I'm starting to feel sick, or go to the store and get some healthy food. Let's listen to that voice and try to make decisions today when we breathe in and breathe out, we're feeling kind of regulated, we're feeling relaxed. That would be the ideal energy to make future decisions.
And again what we talk about all the time when you make that one decision, allow yourself to come up with such small practice steps that move you in that direction that it doesn't feel overwhelming, it feels easy.
What's something that feels easy and light for you to decide today? It may be that you've never even asked yourself that question. You're so used to doing the hard things. So if we just put our hands on our heart, close our eyes, do a few of those four, seven, eight breaths where we breathe in for four, hold for seven, breathe out for eight. We do that a few times till we're feeling calm.
Notice the decision that's important to you. You know what it is that you would like to do and what you'd like to stop doing. Choose one area to focus on and find the small practice steps that move you forward. For the next few months, I'm going to be sharing with you a tool that makes this so much easier.
07:06
It's called the Working Genius and it was created by Pat Lencioni, who is the leader of the Table Group. He has so many great books out there, but this, I think, is the pinnacle of his work to date, and it helps you know that there are six steps to getting work done. None of us can do all of them with the best energy, because some of the areas are our actual genius. We're so good at it. We should do it on repeat because it energizes us.
Some of the steps are exhausting and there is working frustration and, if possible, we want to delegate those work with communities that can serve us. It's so much easier for us to do things on our own, but we will go further, faster, when we work on teams.
So maybe you'll start to notice, over the next series, one area, two areas that just fill you up with life and energy, and those are the things you should be doing on repeat.
You might notice that right around you, in your family, your group of friends, there are people who can compliment the areas that you find frustrating. So that's where we're going for the next few weeks we're going to be talking about the working genius. I'll be sharing some of the episodes I've recorded and a couple of new ones that help you hear other people talk about their genius.
08:13
Sometimes it's the way someone else says it that helps us to really land on what is a best fit for us. But in regards to notice, decide, practice one of the things you might notice is you're on step three of the working genius process and that's where you get really tired and frustrated.
And from a place of love for future, you, you're noticing that you want to spend five minutes a day for the next five days and if you could make a decision from a place of love for the future, you, you're not going to become so overwhelmed and exhausted that you don't complete the things that are important.
The reason some of the important things in our life get pushed to the side is we just run out of energy. Nothing's gone wrong. How human of us.
08:56
But what if we could notice in advance where our energy rises, where we get depleted, when we are on a place where we feel nice and regulated and where, for the reasons of just being human, someone has said something or done something and it's kind of moved us away from healthy, aligned energy, back to a pattern that has been in place for so many decades that it feels right.
It feels like wearing that old, comfortable sweatshirt that's full of holes and it's not serving you. But once you notice it, you get to make a new decision, and that's what I tried to do today is realize, okay, these were thoughts that I had and actions that I took that I wouldn't have taken if I had been prepared.
My natural state is to go over here and be someone who tends to worry, I can catastrophize very easily. I wasn't ready and prepared, you know, in that fight position when the thought came to me and now that I've noticed it, I can recognize that in the future, when my phone rings or there's a text sent to me, I might need to just take a breath, check in with myself.
Am I in a good place to answer? And if not, what do I need? Do I just need some breath work? Do I need a conversation? Do I need to remember my power thought and maybe write it out so that it starts to become a little bit deeper in that neural pathway.
10:15
So let's summarize again, starting today what would it look like for you to decide in advance you're going to take five minutes a day, or one minute five times a day to just check in with yourself, notice how you're doing.
If you feel dysregulated, do whatever it is that brings you back to the present safe, loved, valued energy.
When you're there, make one small decision that moves you forward into the results that are important to you by taking one, two, three small steps in the right direction.
And as you're taking those steps, you'll start to realize, through our next series, where it is that you get energy, where it is that you can do it but it's a little bit draining, and which steps are actually exhausting, and we can come up with some tools to help you through those harder steps.
One of my favorite authors is named Susie Moore. She has a book called Let it Be Easy. Wouldn't that be a fun phrase for the next few weeks? Let it be easy. What would be the easy, aligned next step?
11:24
I hope that this time together serves you. If you would like to have a community while you're learning more about yourself, why you think, feel and do life the way you do.
I'd love to invite you into my next group coaching series. You can head over to kellytibbitts.com, send me a message on Facebook or Instagram and I'll be back for the next few weeks with some tools around the Working Genius.
You can also go to Pat Lencioni's podcast called The Working Genius Podcast and hear all about it. He has about two years worth of content. It's one of my favorite podcasts to listen to on repeat. And, friend, thank you so much for being here today.
I'm so thankful that you choose to spend time listening. If there's someone you can think of that could benefit from this podcast, would you send it over to them or take a moment to subscribe and leave a review? I would truly appreciate it. I'll see you soon.