The Human Brain: How Neurotransmitters Impact Negotiation Behavior

As a negotiation geek, I love thinking about how the brain impacts our negotiating behaviors. The brain is a fascinating organ. It's the human computer that can process a trillion bits per second. Yet scientists say we've only barely begun to understand how the brain works. 

We know a few basic things, like how the brain evolved over millions of years and how some chemical messengers (or neurotransmitters) relay information that trigger thoughts and emotions that drive our behavior. In this episode, I talk about three neurotransmitters: serotonin, oxytocin, and cortisol. 

My intention is to raise our awareness about our brains and the impact of these neurotransmitters so we can understand: 

Our own impulses at the negotiating table, The why behind how other people react to your ask, and How to create better strategies for success with all this in mind.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! This is Episode 57 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your coach and host, Jamie Lee.

How are you?

I believe that we are all born to thrive. Not just survive, not just get by, but really thrive on our own terms, live the life of our dreams.

And I believe that asking for what we want, negotiating, or engaging in collaborative value creating conversations is the practice of conscious leadership. And that means, as a leadership and negotiation coach, I work with human brains.

Take for example, what expectation does your brain hold when you want to ask for what you want?

And in the last episode, 56, I talked about how success comes from asking for what you want with a positive expectation that you will get a yes.

In other words, you want to hold the intentional thought in your brain that you will get a yes.

But we all know that’s not so easy because there’s a part of our brains that will immediately assume we’ll get a no. It will assume the worst-case scenario. It will bring up doubt. It will bring up fear. It will bring up worry and even shame for wanting what we truly want.

The brain will make us feel like we’re gonna die for taking courageous action and for asking for what we want.

And so the work of asking while expecting to win, even when your brain is tempted to assume we’ll get a no, is all about managing our minds. And we can all do this because we are not our brains. We are not the reactive or knee-jerk reaction thoughts that come up in our brains. We’re more than that. We have the capacity to watch our brains. We are the watcher, not the brain. We’re the watcher of the brain.

We have the capacity to manage our brains and show up to the negotiation table with self-composure, self-management, and self-confidence.

I’m a negotiation geek and I love thinking about how the brain impacts our negotiation behaviors but in any case, the brain itself is a fascinating organ. It’s a human computer that can process a trillion bits per second. Did you know that? And yet, scientists say that we’ve only barely begun to understand how the brain really works.

And we know just a few basic things and those are the things I want to share with you today. Like how the brain evolved over millions of years and how some chemical messengers which are called neurotransmitters relay information that can trigger thoughts and these thoughts can trigger emotion that can drive our behavior. That’s why it’s so important to understand how neurotransmitters impact negotiation behavior.

This is a replay of a webinar that I gave last month and I talk about three neurotransmitters:

1. Serotonin

2. Oxytocin

3. Cortisol

And my intention for sharing this content with you is so that we can raise our awareness about our brain so that we can understand, first, our own impulses at the negotiation table - and some of those impulses, if we followed them, we would undermine ourselves, so it’s really important to understand how we’re going to want to react so that we can manage our reactions - and number two, the why behind how other people react to your ask.

And I got feedback from somebody who attended the webinar live that attending this webinar really helped her understand why and how people react the way they do in her workplace conflict situations and this helped her gain a better understanding, bring some compassion, understanding, and wisdom.

And, finally, how to create better strategies for success with all of this in mind. So I cover all of this in this webinar, so I really hope you enjoy and if you like this content, come check out jamieleecoach.com for more webinars and more awesome content coming your way.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy!

Let’s get started. Hello! My name is Jamie Lee. I’m a leadership and negotiation coach and this is The Human Brain: How Neurotransmitters Impact Negotiation Behavior.

I have prepared a slide presentation for you, so let me share that.

Alright, so again, we’re gonna talk about the human brain and how neurotransmitters impact negotiation behavior.

I work as a leadership and negotiation coach and my mission is to help high performers like you become bolder, braver, and better paid through powerful mindset shifts.

So, why mindset? Why do I focus on this mindset? It’s because success is 90% mindset and mindset is how we think in our brains, how we feel in our hearts and in our bodies, and how we act from those emotions.

And when I talk about mindset, I talk about how there are only five things in the Universe. There are five things:

• Circumstances that are neutral and provable.

• How we interpret those circumstances, which are our thoughts, which are 100% optional.

• How we think influences how we feel.

• How we feel influences how we act.

• How we act creates our results.

And so, when you see this, you might think, “But wait. Is that right? Because I feel like there’s something wrong with my circumstances.”

It’s a very common misconception that many people have that, under the right circumstances, then we will have the right feelings, then we will have the right thoughts, then we will take the right actions to create the results we want.

For the most part, we feel like there is something wrong. Do you feel like there is something wrong in the world? With you? With the people with whom you negotiate at your work and in your life?

And I’m gonna guess that for most of you, the answer is, “Yeah. I feel like there is something wrong with the world, with me, with other people. There’s definitely something wrong.”

And if that is the case, I just want to reassure you that there is nothing wrong with you for thinking that way. And I hope that the content I will share with you will show you that there’s a really good reason why, which is that we have a human brain that has been programmed by design, by evolution, to make us think that there is something wrong. And when we think that there is something wrong, in fact there is nothing wrong with us.

And because we think there is something wrong, these are the common reactions to negotiating:

We either put up a fight, we try to dominate the conversation, we try to turn it into a debate and win at all costs, at the expense of collaboration, cooperation, and better reputation, better results.

Or we fold too early. We give up. We give in to other people’s demands and we feel defeated.

Or we take flight. We avoid the conversation altogether because the concept of dealing, of engaging in conflict is too uncomfortable for us.

So we either fight, we fold, or we take flight.

And again, there’s a good reason why. It’s because we have a human brain.

So, let’s talk about the human brain.

I’m not a scientist. I’m a coach. So, I’m just gonna talk about really, really basic things. The basic things that we all understand and know about the human brain. And, according to research I found on Google.com, there are 100 billion neurons or nerve cells, brain cells, in the brain. 100 billion. And these nerve cells don’t actually touch each other. They are connected by synapses.

What they do is they emit, the nerve cells emit neurotransmitters. So neurotransmitters are basically the chemical messengers of the brain that enable the nerve cells to talk to each other. And neurotransmitters can trigger thought processes. Neurotransmitters can trigger feelings and, therefore, neurotransmitters can trigger certain behaviors.

Take, for example, when we feel stress inside our body, it sets off 1400 different chemical reactions and more than 30 hormones and neurotransmitters. This is something that I learned from reading the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza, which I highly recommend. The book really goes into the science of how the brain works and how, actually, when the brain thinks, the emotions that are triggered by our thoughts are not just immaterial, they’re actually material because they do set off chemical reactions in our body. There is a real chemical reaction that happens when we feel a certain emotion and those chemical reactions trigger a desire to take certain actions.

And so understanding our brain is super important to understanding our mindset so that we can create the results that we want.

Another thing I found out about the brain is that there are a quadrillion synaptic connections. In other words, there are a thousand trillion - a quadrillion is a thousand trillion. There is just a mind-boggling number of synaptic connections that can happen in the brain, how nerve cells can connect with each other.

And, according to one research I read, the human brain is like a supercomputer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor. So that’s kind of really cool to think about how we have the most advanced machine, the world’s fastest supercomputer, in our heads: the brain.

So a lot of brain scientists at first, earlier in the twentieth century, thought that we are born with a certain number of brain cells and that’s it. So our capacity, our brain capacity, is determined at birth. That was what a lot of people thought but that thinking has evolved now and now neuroplasticity, which, basically, is another way to say that you can change your brain throughout your life - you can do that throughout your adulthood, well into your adulthood because we can change the neural pathway or how nerve cells connect with each other. The way our brain works can be changed and can evolve throughout our life.

So, that’s amazing news. It’s really great news.

And so, having said that, in the frame of neuroplasticity, I think it really helps us to understand the root of our impulses by understanding our human brain, understanding the role neurotransmitters or the chemical messengers play in our brains, so that we can understand our own impulses, our own impulses, particularly, around negotiating, which I said earlier was to fight, put up a fight, dominate and debate and to win at all costs, or to give up, to fold to early or to undermine ourselves, and finally to avoid negotiating altogether, which is something that I used to do because I felt too much anxiety about negotiating or asking for what I wanted.

Then it also helps us to understand the counterpart, our negotiation counterpart’s reactions. Why do they react the way they react?

We feel frustrated and feel a lot of stress because we don’t understand the root of other people’s behaviors and I think understanding the brain and neurotransmitters really helps us understand their reactions from a compassionate place, from a non-judgmental place.

And from there, we can learn how to negotiate better, how to create better results for ourselves. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today at this webinar.

So, the human brain evolved over 7 million years. That’s a long time. In summary, the brain is old.

According to the evolutionary model, we evolved from single cells to mammals and then to our current human form and according to this research that I read, the human brain evolved over seven million years. It tripled in size, but the most development of the human brain happened only over the last two million years.

And when you think about the fact that we now live in modern society with cutting-edge technology, the changes that our society has gone through happened within a blip of time when you think about the full spectrum of human evolution over millions and millions of years.

It’s old.

And so I’m gonna talk about how the brain has evolved over those long times and how that evolution is still impacting us today.

And so, because the brain is old, it hasn’t completely evolved past those patterns of the past. So the brain favors survival, by which I mean we evolved from a time when we lived as mammals in the wild. And so the brain favors survival or ways to avoid harm, physical harm, emotional harm, imagined harm, perceived harm, any sort of harm, any sort of pain, really because our brain perceives threat to any sort of harm or perceived, imagined, threat as a threat to our survival, to living in the wild and being able to pass on our gene pool, basically.

And the brain also favors belonging because over time we have evolved to become social animals and we’ve found safety in numbers.

And so the brain also favors repetition because when we repeat the patterns of the past that ensured our survival, ensured our belonging, then we know we can continue to survive. So the brain favors repetition of things that we’ve done in the past. It favors efficiency and that is because, when this pathway is formed, when this synapse is created, it is strengthened by repetition.

So, I’m gonna talk about three chemicals, brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters: serotonin, oxytocin and cortisol. As I said, I’m really gonna talk about really, really basic things and I’m going to talk about how these chemicals impact our behavior at the negotiation table and how we can improve our results from having understood the impact of these chemicals on ourselves and in our behavior.

So, the first chemical is serotonin. Serotonin is a happy chemical, like when there is serotonin fired in our brain, we feel good. And serotonin is associated with when we have gained social advantage or when we feel that we’re getting the respect of others and we feel pride.

Now, I know a lot of us don’t like to think of ourselves as animals that seek social advantage. We want to think that we naturally want to be equal with everyone, that everyone should be equal but the reality is that we evolved from having been these pack animals.

And on the right here is a picture of a meerkat. They look warm and fuzzy and cuddly but, in reality, they’re really fierce and aggressive. I was just reading research that says that even though they like to play a lot, even with their play they display a lot of aggressive behavior and that is driven by serotonin.

And one thing that I read that I found so fascinating is that “Natural selection built a brain that compares itself to others as if your life depended on it.” And this is a quote from Dr. Loretta Breuning.

And so our brains are wired to compare ourselves to others and to always size up the situation and see what is the hierarchy here, who’s on top, how do I compare with others, how do I one-up myself, how do I gain a social advantage? And that’s just baked into our mammalian brains and I find it really interesting that our brains are built to do that as if our life depended on it.

According to Dr. Breuning, our desire for social advantage is more primal than our desire for food or sex, which makes sense when you think about the fact that we evolved from having survived in the wilderness and having a top of the hierarchy ensure that we would be able to pass on our gene pool.

Now we don’t live that way but still these ways of thinking, the way that our brain is wired, impacts our behavior because serotonin drives us to one-up each other. And it drives us to want to fight to be right at all costs and to rage against power.

Now this may seem counterintuitive, right?

You may think that the people who are in power experience serotonin, people who don’t have power feel depleted of serotonin and so they feel sad, depressed, which makes sense when you think about the fact that serotonin, or the lack of serotonin is thought to be association with depression.

But also serotonin drives us to want to seek moral superiority and makes us want to feel special within a group of people and so how does this play out in our interaction with people, especially at the negotiation table?

So, when others try to one-up, when they try to say “Oh, I’m better than so-and-so because I have the better car or I have more money in my bank account,” or whatever, we judge them. We judge people like that. We find them really annoying. We call them arrogant, right? We dismiss them.

But see what your brain is doing there. By dismissing those people, by calling those people arrogant, we have found ourselves to be at a moral high ground. So by judging people, we find a way to one-up them. See how that impulse to one-up others is so deeply ingrained in us?

And when we try to defend our position, it feels like our very survival is at risk. It feels like there’s this innate desire to be right, to be proven right and this desire can undermine our negotiation outcomes because when we lose sight of our long-term goal and just try to fight people, we lose their trust, we can put the relationship at risk, and we can undermine our result.

And so I think it’s really important to remember that negotiation is not about one-ups and put-downs.

I used to think this way. I used to think “Oh, when you negotiate for what you want, you go in there, you make demands and you huff and puff and show yourself to be right and better than everyone else.” It’s about one-ups and put-downs. When people try to put you down, you come up with the better one-up.

So, this was a really game-changer for me, it really changed my life when I realized that negotiation is not about one-ups and put-downs but it’s simply a conversation with the intention of reaching agreement. That’s it. We can lose the drama.

And so, what are some things that we can do to improve our negotiation results in light of our mammalian brains wanting to always one-up others because of our desire for serotonin and to feel good?

We just first start with observing and raising our self-awareness. Observe our knee-jerk reaction to want to prove ourselves right, to want to be right, and be morally superior to others at any given time, at any point in the conversation.

Just observe and raise your self-awareness around that and ask will this help me? If I follow this impulse, this desire to prove myself right, will this help me achieve my big goal or just make me feel better in the moment?

Now take, for example, you’re going into a salary negotiation conversation and your supervisor makes a comment about, “Well, you’re doing pretty good but there’s this one aspect of your performance that I’d like you to improve.”

This sort of thing is something that I coach a lot of my clients over and our minds, our brains, will be tempted to just sort of fixate on that one negative comment because it means that we weren’t right, we’re not doing 100%, we’re not special. And it’s gonna make us want to fight and debate in the moment and say, “Wait, wait, wait. But you’re missing x, y, and z,” right?

So just observe that knee-jerk reaction and that desire to prove yourself right in that moment and ask, will this actually help me or will this make me feel just good in the moment?

And also, understand how the other side wants to be perceived by others because, in the workplace, we don’t like to think of it as a hierarchy but of course there are hierarchies in the workplace. There are people who make decisions, right? And how do those people want to be perceived by other people in the workplace? Treat them accordingly.

When I was very young, I once made the mistake of going up to the CEO of a small firm that I worked at and I went and I demanded that this person give me the reimbursement for a training that I had signed up for, it was like $1,000.

And we’re gonna talk about this a little bit later on but serotonin metabolizes very quickly and the brain’s natural state is actually cortisol, or stress, or to look for threats to your perceived social status. And so when this young person who’s fresh out of college marches up to you and makes a demand like that in front of everyone, from his perspective, it can seem like a threat.

And so I did myself a disservice by not thinking about how my behavior can undermine my own desired negotiation outcome because I didn’t think about how the CEO wanted to be treated.

So, what about you?

How can you better understand how you’re negotiation counterpart wants to be perceived by others and treat them accordingly?

Take, for example, if you need to negotiate for help with somebody and they want to be perceived as experts in a particular field, make sure you treat them accordingly. Make sure you treat them the way they want to be treated because it is linked to how their brain wants to see themselves as having a particular social standing.

So now let’s talk about oxytocin.

Oxytocin is happy chemical. It’s another happy chemical. When oxytocin fires, we feel good. And this chemical is associated with social trust, belonging, and the safety we seek in numbers. And we know that oxytocin is fired when a mother nurtures her infant and when a mother breastfeeds her infant.

I really like this quote from Dr. Loretta Breuning again, “Neurons connect when oxytocin flows, which wires you to trust in a context that triggered it for you before.”

Again, it kind of shows you how the brain will always want to revert to the past memories that triggered happy feelings, so when you felt good because you belonged to a softball team when you were in middle school, you will always want to recreate that happy feeling by belonging to a team like that.

So, oxytocin drives us to belong to a group, conform to a group, but also drives us to be selective about whom we trust because of what Dr. Breuning said, because neurons are going to look for the same context that triggered oxytocin for you before.

And so, how does this impact our thinking about our counterpart? How does this impact us at the negotiation table?

When others conform to their social group norms, we judge them to be closed-minded. We sometimes call these people biased and we make them out to be wrong. I have a lot of experience with this because I have belonged to many different social groups and I’m sure that’s also the case for you.

I was born in South Korea so, for my formative years, I belonged to the social group of Koreans who identified themselves as Koreans. And then I moved to America when I was very young. I’m an immigrant and so then I belonged to a social group of immigrants and now I belong to a social group of people who call themselves coaches, right?

And when I was assimilating, when I was becoming more American in my teenage years, I wanted to judge my parents. I wanted to say, “Oh, they’re so closed-minded. They’re so stuck in their old ways of thinking and feeling and behaving because they only wanted to stick to Korean ways of doing things. And I was judging them to be closed-minded but in fact, I think it’s really because of how our brains are wired and because our neurons fire when oxytocin flows and we’re always going to be looking for the same context. And so, for adults, they’re gonna look for the same context and for my parents, it was the context of being among other people who look and talk and eat like them. Koreans, right?

So, for us, when we want to do something different than our group, we fear social rejection because we don’t want to give up oxytocin flowing in our brains. Oxytocin makes us feel good and we fear that if we choose something that is different than the group we belong to, we will be rejected and we will lose out on oxytocin. So I think it’s really fascinating to think about how do we undermine ourselves, like our individual desires, our individual and unique dreams because of oxytocin?

What are we giving up to feel good and to feel like we belong?

And how often do we fold because we feel like we’re not going with the group?

I have coached some people who told me that they don’t want to be too successful in terms of their status, in terms of the money they earn because they don’t feel that it’s fair. And another way to look at that is they fear that they will lose belonging, lose the sense of belonging to this social group that identify themselves in a specific way in terms of as coworkers, as people who are struggling.

And when you think about how serotonin is also fired when we feel moral superiority, you can see how the cocktail of serotonin making us want to feel moral superiority over those people who have the things that we look down upon and oxytocin making us want to belong and stick with the group that shares the same values as us. You can see how it can create conflict and make us want to feel like it’s safer to just stick with the status quo instead of sticking our neck out, making waves, asking for what we want, and going for our dreams.

And so, what should we do?

Here’s some suggestions. First of all, you can use oxytocin as a positive way to create a bond with your negotiation partner. And that’s why, when I teach negotiation, I always talk about how the first thing you want to do is you want to establish a relationship. You want to establish that bond. And you can do that by identifying what is the common ground that both you and I share?

You and I both work in this particular industry.

You and I both work for this particular person.

You and I both want the same thing, which is to be able to go home to our loved ones sooner rather than later.

Or, do we share a common enemy? And that’s why a lot of people bond over gossip, right?

And a really easy way to think about this is you can simply talk about the weather.

“The weather is terrible today, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it totally sucks.”

And just by talking about some common ground or common enemy that you both share, you can easily and very quickly establish a bond. It can happen with something really simple like just a greeting, a little bit of small talk, or you can really invest time in establishing that relationship by sharing meals, going out, spending time together.

You don’t necessarily have to touch each other to create that feeling of oxytocin. You can just create a bond by building a relationship and I say this is like the fundamental thing that you want to do. This is the fundamental thing you want to do before asking for what you want, before making demands or negotiating.

And when you are negotiating, find social proof for your ask that they care about. Now, social proof is one of the six principles of influence that Robert Cialdini talks about in his book, Pre-Suasion. And social proof is basically, it shows that what you are asking for is something that is validated by a group of people.

And so, in the context of workplace negotiation, it’s really straightforward. Think about, okay, what are the metrics, what are the values, what are the key goals that the person that you’re negotiating with most cares about?

It’s not just what you care about. Take, for example, if you work as a graphic designer, you probably most care about creating the best graphic design. But the person that you negotiate with, what they really care about may be revenues for the company because their performance is measured by the revenue they generate for that company.

So social proof can be also metrics, goals, values, and so it takes some curiosity. It takes some asking questions, open questions, and researching the other side to understand what they most care about. Which group do they most want to belong to?

And also, don’t give up on your unique desires, on your individual goals for the sake of oxytocin. If you want to become the best person in your industry, if you want to become a person who earns a six-figure salary, don’t give that dream up because other people in your social circle haven’t done it, other people in your social circle look down on it.

I’m thinking about how, for me, not a lot of people in my immediate circle are coaches. I don’t know anyone who is also a Korean and an immigrant and a coach but just because I didn’t see other people doing what I’m doing now, it didn’t mean that I needed to give up on it.

So think about what it is you want and honor your desires, your individual desires.

So now, let’s talk about cortisol which is the only unhappy chemical I’m gonna talk about today. It’s an unhappy chemical triggered by real threats, perceived threats, and imagined threats.

So something really fascinating that I read while I was putting together this content was that cortisol is basically always there. In other words, it’s natural. The brain’s natural state is to always look for threats to its survival and that makes sense when you think about the millions and millions of years that humans survived in the wilderness and we had to watch out for threats to our survival like a predator, so our brains are wired to always seek out predators and to look for threats and because our brains are so big and because human brains think in terms of language, our brains are uniquely adapted to imagine threats, to create threats by our thinking, and we think in our language, with words.

Dr. Breuning says, “Cortisol creates the feeling that you will die if you don’t make the threat stop. Disappointment triggers cortisol.”

So this is really fascinating, that this explains so many things - why we buffer. Buffer is my way of describing how we try to resist feeling uncomfortable, we try to avoid disappointment, we try to react by doing things that will mask this threat of disappointment.

And often that looks like us looking for distractions, that looks like us giving up, that looks like us blaming other people.

And that’s because cortisol is baked into our brain for the purpose of our survival in the wilderness and it creates a feeling that you will die. That also explains why when we feel stressed about negotiating or doing anything that is courageous, it feels like, in a fundamental place in our brains, it feels like oh my god, we’re gonna die. Even though we’re not. We’re gonna be perfectly fine and all we’re gonna do is we’re gonna just sit down and have a conversation.

So, another really interesting thing about cortisol is that it is fired when our brain anticipates pain. And so it is fired when we anticipate pain and it makes us feel afraid of imagined or perceived threats and it can drive us to buffer or avoid, react, or resist uncomfortable feelings because, for us, in the wilderness, disappointment meant that we were getting eaten by a lion even though now, in our present lives, disappointments means that a conversation doesn’t go exactly as we imagined it, right?

So, at the negotiation table, when we don’t understand the picture in the mind of our negotiation counterpart, in other words, when we don’t understand how our negotiating counterpart is anticipating pain or imagining or perceiving threat to their identity, their social identity, their sense of belonging, when we don’t see that picture, then their stress reaction, which might be either avoiding, blaming, resisting, looking for distractions, it can seem really illogical. It can seem like what’s wrong with these people? Why are the acting like that? It doesn’t make any sense and then it creates even more stress for us.

But when we feel stress, when we imagine or perceive a threat to our social identity, it feels awful! It feels terrible! We feel it and I often ask my clients, so what do you feel when you feel stress? And it’s in the mind, they really feel it physically too, it’s in the body. They feel it in their neck, in the pit of their stomach, they can’t think straight and that stress can further impact their behavior and further impact their results.

So how do we work around this? How do we become better at responding to cortisol so that it doesn’t ruin our negotiation outcomes?

The first thing I want to offer is you want to learn how to separate stories from facts. Remember I just said how our human brains are big, they’re the biggest of mammalian brains and we’re uniquely adapted in that we think in language, in words. And the words that we have in our brains help us concoct stories. And the stories feel real. Our brains don’t know the difference between an emotion that is triggered by imagination, by thoughts, and the emotion that we experience from direct input from our environment.

In other words, there’s no difference between emotion that we feel because of our thinking and the emotion that we feel because of experience.

So this is the hardest part. What are the stories that we believe about ourselves? What are the stories that trigger our emotions at the negotiation table? And what are the facts?

I think this is why it’s really important to gain a really good mastery around your emotions. This is why how you feel will drive your negotiation outcomes because we want to first understand the stories that create the emotional reactions.

Take, for example, I’ve dealt with social anxiety for most of my life and I noticed at one point that I always felt threatened when people were looking at me a certain way. Now, that’s because I had created a story in my mind about what those people were intending, what those people were thinking, what those people were feeling about me when the fact of the situation was that simply they just made a facial expression.

And I had to remind myself, okay, this is another story. This is fiction that I’m getting myself into, not fact. So, first, sit down. Write down the thoughts you have about a situation and learn how to separate stories from facts. And this is gonna be difficult because this is something that I do with all my clients and they always tell me that their story is a fact because it feels like a fact.

And, again, that’s because the experience that we have in our brain from thoughts is just as real as emotion that we experience from actual experience.

And from there, once we have learned how to separate stories from facts, we want to learn how to allow the discomfort without buffering. Because, as I said, cortisol, the stress neurotransmitter, is a constant. I mentioned earlier, the good feeling chemicals - oxytocin, serotonin- when they are fired, they mask the cortisol but they metabolize quickly and so we come back to that natural state of feeling like there’s something wrong, feeling like we gotta be on the lookout, feeling like our own survival is at risk.

And it’s uncomfortable to just allow that cortisol to fire without reacting, without avoiding, without taking a negative action that takes us away from our goal as opposed to towards our goals. This requires us to separate our thinking from our emotion and to allow negative emotion because the reality of the human condition is that 50% of the time, we are going to experience negative emotion.

And, again, that’s just because of the way our brains are wired for survival from evolution. It doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with us, it just means that there is something right with us in that our brains are working just fine.

And also, something I teach all the time is so difficult to do and yet so simple. Easy for me to say, hard to implement, which is we want to get curious about our negotiation counterpart, not furious when they react from the stress they experience in their own minds because of the cortisol that is firing in their brains.

Let’s say people say no to your ask. Don’t get furious, just get curious.

Try to understand, better understand their stories, the picture in their mind’s eye. What is the perceived threat they see? What are they imagining? We don’t know until we ask and get curious about them.

So the purpose of this content was to help us better understand our human brains, better understand the behavior that can lead us to undermine our negotiation results and to think about ways to improve our negotiation outcomes.

And at the end of the day, I want to encourage all of us to stop beating ourselves up for having a human brain. Let’s stop beating ourselves up for wanting to feel morally superior, wanting to always feel special, wanting to fight when, in reality, that impulse is not gonna serve us, wanting to belong to a social group, wanting to conform even though we know that conforming is not going to serve what we truly want for ourselves.

And also, let’s stop beating ourselves up for feeling that, feeling stress, feeling like there’s something wrong because that’s just how we are wired. It doesn’t mean that we have to give in. It doesn’t mean that we have to concede. It doesn’t mean that we have to surrender to having this human brain. I think want we can do is that we can choose to evolve from our default, reactionary behavior because of the neurotransmitter.

We can create intentional thinking. We can manage our brain from the most evolved part of our brains which is, I believe, called the prefrontal cortex which is where our higher reasoning, planning, imagination, where all of that happens. We can start managing our human brain to lead, influence, and thrive.

And so that concludes the official content and if you like this material, I want to quickly tell you about the Small Group Mastermind that is starting in a month. Small Group Mastermind will start in March 2019. I just wrapped up the first group in January, it went really well. And it’s designed for eight women who want to lead, influence, and thrive and who want the support so that they can manage their brains.

Each group call will be a deep dive into your future self, imagining your future self, imagining your more evolved self and how to generate self-confidence from within you, how to set and maintain healthy boundaries and more. And you will benefit from both private coaching with me - you will get two sessions with me - as well as opportunity to interact and hold each other accountable within the context of this group.

So, we just talked about serotonin, oxytocin and cortisol and my intention with this Mastermind is to help you use your brain on purpose to create that future reality that you most want to create. And so you can come to jamieleecoach.com/mastermind to read more about it.

As I said, the next Mastermind will start on March 19th and if you sign up before then, you will schedule a private one-on-one coaching call with me and then there are going to be four group calls: one on how to set goals and how to envision your future self, the second will be on how to generate self-confidence, the third will be establishing boundaries, and the fourth will be emotional mastery - how do we become more evolved so that we don’t just give into our natural tendencies to fight, fold, and take flight but instead create emotional mastery so that we’re not just reacting to negative emotions but generating positive emotions on purpose to take positive action towards our goals?

So it works, as I mentioned, with both a combination of private and group coaching calls. You will have two private coaching calls with me, four group coaching calls, and in between calls, you will also get to deepen your learning and take action towards your individual goals. You will also be assigned worksheets that will help you deepen your learning of how to generate emotional mastery, etc.

So this is a testimonial from somebody who was in my January Mastermind and she said that “being in the Mastermind was extremely valuable and with the group’s help, [she] developed and applied strategies for helping her regain some control over [her] response to life’s hurdles.”  So what she’s talking about is how she was able to overcome her human brain tendency to react, right? “And in turn this has empowered me to better pursue the life that I want.”

So, if this is what you want for yourself, please get in touch with me. Let’s talk.

So this is a really, really good deal. My retail coaching fee is $350 but this group coaching program is only three monthly payments of $210, so you save more than $1,000.

Email me directly if you’re interested, or you can go to jamieleecoach.com/apply and submit your application form. Either way, if you apply you will get a free consult. You and I will get an opportunity to talk. I’m not about hard selling, I just want to make sure that this is a good, mutual fit for both you and for me and you might get benefit out of our quick conversation. So, reach out. There’s no harm and there’s no risk.

So, finally, does coaching actually generate results? I know coaching is becoming more popular but does it really work?

So, I want to share some of the results that my clients have seen in their own careers so you can decide for yourself.

So, I had one of my clients, she was able to flip a no to a yes for her dream job. I coached her as she was transitioning from one job to another and she really wanted to work with this particular dream company. At first, they said no. But because she was coached and because she really dug deep into her self-belief, into generating confidence for herself and not reacting from her brain’s natural tendencies but choosing using her human brain, her prefrontal cortex, to do what she knew she could do which was ask for more. And so she did. She negotiated a $10,000 salary increase when she flipped that no to a yes and she’s currently maxing out her quarterly bonus.

I have another client whom I coached through her negotiation process and she’s still a current client. When she got a job offer, she realized what she really wanted was a bigger role. She didn’t just want to be another project manager, she wanted to be a technical program manager so she asked for that bigger role and the thing that held her back from making that ask was her brain saying, “Who do you think you are to make that ask?” And so the coaching was around getting over that perceived fear and as a result, she got that bigger role, she is earning $10,000 more than she would have if she didn’t ask, and she’s also now working to achieve her goal of becoming an expert in her field.

I have another client who has a job and she also has a side hustle that’s all about making impact for women with ADHD and, again, the coaching is about managing her mindset about what is possible. What is she thinking by default and what does she want to think on purpose, intentionally? And when she chose thoughts that served her, by design, the thoughts that would make her motivated to overcome the brain’s natural tendency to avoid pain, she was able to reach out, she was able to get in touch with industry influencers, and she’s currently being groomed to be a thought leader at her day job.

So these are some of the results and there are more results. I have clients who are earning more money, becoming leaders and thought leaders in their fields, so if you want to see more results from my coaching, please go to jamieleecoach.com/results.

So if you have any questions about the content I’ve just shared, please feel free to type them into the Q&A box. If you look, I think it’s either at the top or the bottom of your Zoom interface, there is a little button that says ‘Q’, so if you click on that, you’ll be able to submit a question directly to me.

Alright, well if you don’t have any questions, I will assume you are satisfied with what you’ve heard, there’s nothing that was confusing. Thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from you.

How to Generate Self-Confidence without Faking Anything

We all know self-confidence helps you get more of what you want. But how do you get confident if you haven't yet gotten what you want?

There's a better way than "fake it till you make it," pretending to be something you're not, or blowing yourself up like a blowfish... 

The best way is to generate confidence inside of you, by you and for you.

This is something I help my clients do so they can become bolder, braver, and better paid.

This episode is a replay of a webinar where I shared five simple steps anyone can master to generate self-confidence.

If you'd like to watch and not just listen to the replay, come to www.jamieleecoach.com or email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. 

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 55 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

How are you?

I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills.

I believe that we are all born to lead, influence, and thrive.

In order to lead, in order to negotiate, in order to influence, confidence is key. And often we look outside of ourselves to generate that confidence for us and it never feels enough. It never feels adequate.

And I think that’s because real confidence comes from within us, not from outside of us.

This is a replay of a webinar that I gave earlier this week, so the sound quality is not super clear but if you are interested in seeing the entire webinar slides and everything, come to jamieleecoach.com and click on Join the Webinar when you land on the home page. There is a button there.

So, without further ado, please enjoy this replay of How to Generate Self-Confidence in Five Steps Without Faking Anything.

Thank you and talk to you soon!

Hello! Welcome to the webinar!

We will get started in literally one minute. I have a lot of amazing content ready for you, so I intend to get started right on time.

Alright, excellent, I love the people who showed up right on time! You’re amazing! Punctuality is an awesome trait, so I really salute you for showing up to the webinar right on time. Love it!

Okay, and I see some of my clients here as well. Great to have you!

So, I have prepared a slide presentation because I know some people like to read as well as listen. Some people are reading-oriented, listening-oriented, visual-oriented, aural-oriented.

So, welcome to the reprisal of this webinar, How to Generate Self-Confidence in Five Steps Without Faking Anything.  

My name is Jamie Lee, I work as a coach. You can email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. You can come on over to my site: jamieleecoach.com

I am a coach, I am a speaker, I am a martial artist.

And maybe there’s a lesson right here on this introduction because I think you can generate a lot of self-confidence simply by the way you speak about yourself.

How do you introduce yourself?

What language, what identity do you choose for you?

And for me, I really feel at heart I am a coach, I am really born to be a coach. I love this vocation and I also  have worked as a professional speaker for a little bit longer than I have worked as a coach. And that was supported by the fact that I have been my first and foremost client as a coach. I coach myself constantly, all the time.

I am also a martial artist. This is something that is new in my life. This is about a year ago, I’ll tell you a little bit about that, and that has also helped to generate a lot of self-confidence.

As a coach, my mission is to help high performers like you become bolder, braver, and better paid through powerful mindset shifts.

I started out by helping women negotiate for what they want in the workplace and I have found that the most important thing is how we think, how we feel, and how we act, which is how I define mindset. It’s what we think, how we feel, how we act and how we think on purpose, how we feel on purpose, and how we act on purpose.

In other words, the intentional mindset that we bring to our negotiation, to our workplace, to our lives can generate results and if you think, feel, and act on purpose, you can create the results that you want.

So, as I mentioned, this is a reprisal of a webinar that I gave last week, so I just want to give a public announcement before we dive into the content because last week I was telling people about my Mastermind group and I said it’s going to launch - well, the second iteration- will launch in February and I’ve gotten feedback that more people would like to start in March. So, the date has changed, and you can come to jamieleecoach.com/mastermind to learn more about this group coaching opportunity.

Well, it’s more than just group coaching because you get the opportunity to do self-study, you get the opportunity to work with me privately, and to work within a group of ambitious, like-minded women. So, the first group call with start in March, March 19th, as you can see the dates are listed here.

What you see on this page is a picture from a really wonderful workshop that I get to give again! I’m really excited to reprise this workshop in March. I hosted a speakers’ workshop for global feminists. In this picture are feminists from all over the world: Canada, Poland, Peru, Africa, Congo, Syria. And these women come from places where there are conflict, where there is war, where there is poverty, where there is persecution of women. And yet they still choose to take a stand. They still choose to speak up, use their voice to elevate the status of women all around the world. They come to the UN and they address the UN, here in New York City, and they talk about what we can do as world citizens to uplift women around the world and to make the world a more equal place.

I think the work that I do is so important because I empower women to use their voices and I believe in the work that I do because women can change the world. I really believe that. And I believe that as a woman of color, as a first-generation immigrant, as somebody who is a minority in this country, I really feel that the work I do is important, not just because it generates a living for me, but because it has the power to change the world.

You have the power to change the world.

So, I have a lot to say, obviously.

I work as a speaker, a professional speaker, I often give workshops, keynotes, seminars and webinars just like this one and I still have more to say, so I also host a weekly podcast. You can find it on the Anchor platform, or on iTunes, Android, there’s ten different platforms where you can find Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I have 54 episodes, many of them around the issue of speaking up, communicating, setting boundaries, for example, how to negotiate, how to lead in your life so that you can thrive. I really do believe that we are all born with the capacity to thrive, not just survive, in our lives.

As I mentioned, I’m also a martial artist. I started a year ago. I’m still a white belt, as you can see in this Instagram photo, but this year I really doubled down on my commitment to making growth as a martial artist a priority in my life and I’ve been training quite a lot and it has really generated a lot of self-confidence for me.

I practice the art of Aikido which is a modern Japanese martial art that is focused around peace and protecting both the attacker and the defender. It’s about redirecting the flow of energy rather than putting people down and hurting people.

I do this practice every Monday night where I practice freestyle Aikido with my eyes closed and I have simultaneous attacks from my classmates, my fellow martial artists. And as you can imagine, 80% of the martial artists in my dojo are men. And I’m petite. I’m Asian. And most of them are about twice my size.

Regardless, because I commit to the art of this Aikido, I have learned how to flip them, throw them, evade them, even though they’re coming at me with strikes, punches. And I want to say, the number one thing in my practice that has really helped to generate the most self-confidence is every time I fall, I get back up again. Getting back up again over and over and over again not just does wonders for my core but does wonders for my self-confidence because it just reminds me again that I have the capacity to get up and learn, to grow, and try again and again and again.

We’ll talk a bit more about that in-depth.

So, if you are listening to this webinar, you might think, “Well, that’s nice, Jamie. That’s great. Must be easy for you. I bet self-confidence comes really easy for you.”

I can see how people can think that about me because it’s so easy to compare other people’s shiny outsides with your shabby inside. I used to do that too, all the time and think, “Oh! That must be nice for that other person, doing these great, amazing things, being a public speaker and coach and doing martial arts.”

The truth of the matter is I have struggled with self-confidence for most of my life. I struggle with anxiety every day. And there was a time in my life I was so lacking in confidence, I did not know how to speak up in the workplace.

About eleven years ago, I worked in finance, in a male-dominated industry. I was the only woman at the trading desk at a hedge fund and I remember just feeling so down on myself, feeling so frustrating, so lacking in self-esteem, I looked at my life partner and I said, “You know, I’ve really gotta learn how to communicate! I really can’t get through to my boss, to my coworkers. I feel like I’m hitting my head against the wall.”

I also found out I was making $50,000 in a $100,000 job. So there was a point in my life when I didn’t know how to negotiate, I didn’t know how to communicate, I didn’t know how to lead. I just felt like I was being affected by external circumstances and I felt stuck and lacking in self-confidence.

So what turned that around for me is that I made a conscious effort to growing the skills that I realized I needed in order for me to thrive and those skills were negotiating, leading, communicating. And now what I do is I teach other people how to do that because I’ve found out that this is such a powerful skill. You can learn it, you can grow it, and it will change your life.

And when you hear that, you might say, “Yeah, that’s easier said than done, Jamie.”

Absolutely! You’re right! It is easier said than done!

Talk is cheap.

For me, the moment my life really changed was when I started to study these concepts of negotiation, communication, and leadership and I decided that not only did I want to become so adept at it that I can teach it and coach other people to do it, I want to walk the talk that I give.

I want to be a living, walking example of what is possible when you apply those concepts, apply those skills, and really commit to growing as an individual.

So doing it has made the biggest impact, rather than talking about it. And today, we’re talking about it. This is easy. Listening about it is easy. Applying these concepts and seeing the impact in your life? That is going to generate change, power, and transformation.

So, don’t just listen to me. Try them out yourself.

And also, you might be wondering, “But, you know what? Studies say men have it easier. There’s so many books and articles that say men are confident, women are not.”

So, I want to take a pause there because I just want to highlight that this is a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of choice because there are other studies and there are other books that say men don’t have it easier. It’s actually tougher on men now. Women have it easier. It depends on who you ask. Some people will say men have it easier, some people will say women have it easier. So, what this shows us is that it’s a matter of perspective. When it’s a matter of perspective, it means that it’s a matter of choice.

So what’s the choice that you are making?

I used to think that the world is so unfair. I used to think it’s so unfair, men are privileged, women are not. It’s terrible. Something has to change in the world before something can change for me, inside of me.

And when I thought this way, when I believed this way, I felt very resentful, I felt powerless, I felt it was unfair, I felt frustrated, and I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of forward progress in my life. And notice when I held onto these thoughts, it’s unfair, that not a lot changed for me, inside of me.

And having said that, a lot of people think that self-confidence is created at the effect of external circumstances, that self-confidence is created because of the body you have, because of what other people do for you, because of the money you have, because of the success you create outside of you.

So, let’s examine that.

By the way, I looked up the word “self-confidence” on Google.com and this was the sample sentence that was being used just to demonstrate the use of the word self-confidence:

“I feel terribly tired and completely lacking in self-confidence.”

So what this example sentence shows us is that a lot of people think, even Google.com thinks that self-confidence is at the effect of the body. And I want to question that.

If you feel terribly tired, if your body is tired, does that really mean that you can’t generate self-confidence? If you feel terribly tired, does that mean that you will be completely lacking in self-confidence? I want to question that thought.

Here was the second sample sentence:

“She took care to build up his self-confidence by involving him in the planning.”

Now if we have some feminists in this group, in this audience, I think we should all question this. Why is she building up his self-confidence? Why isn’t she building up her own self-confidence? Why does he need her to build up his self-confidence, right? Is she his mother? I mean, it’s just weird. But this was the sentence that I found on Google.com as an example of the usage of the word self-confidence and it shows that a lot of people think that self-confidence is at the effect of other people.

My father, my own dear father told me that he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence because he didn’t have the right upbringing. Even though my grandmother was this really successful, self-made business woman, he felt that nobody was there for him, therefore he doesn’t have the self-confidence and therefore he doesn’t have the success.

So, this kind of thinking is rampant, like everybody, a lot of people, 99% of the world probably thinks this way.

And also, a lot of people feel that confidence comes at the effect of what you have, of your bank account. This is something that one of my clients told me: “If I had $100,000, then I’d feel confident to quit my job and go for my dreams. Money is security and I need that security so that I can feel confident to quit my job and go for my dreams,”

And I want to question that. Why can’t you create the security in yourself before you have the money, right? And if you could generate that self-confidence before you had the money, imagine, you’d be more empowered, more ready, more confident to create money. And when you’re more confident, you create more money, right? Instead of waiting for the money to give you confidence, what if you created the confidence first and then created the money. I think your results would just be exponentially better.

But, you know, a lot of people feel that success comes when you have position, authority, success. But is that true? This is a fascinating TED Talk that I highly recommend. If you Google “Know Your Inner Saboteurs,” a TEDX talk given by executive coach Shirzad Chamine and what he did was he interviewed 100 CEOs and he asked them to share the one secret they never tell anyone, one secret that is really true inside of them.

And this is what they said: My air of confidence is fake. I don’t love myself very much. I am self-destructive and I don’t know why.

And remember, the CEOs in our world right now, 80% of them are men, so even though some people have the perspective that men have it easier, men are more confident, if we look at the actual data, things that real CEOs, again, most of them men, are saying, it seems contrary to our perspective that men have it easier.

My air of confidence is fake.

I don’t love myself very much.

I am self-destructive and I don’t know why.

So, this begs the question, if success and achievement, if position, big salary, big titles like CEO, if they don’t make you confident, then what does?

To summarize, I want to highlight that when you think that confidence is at the effect of external circumstances like position, title, money, other people, your body, this generates a sense of powerlessness, right? You’re giving power to other people to create confidence for you. You’re giving power to money to give you that sense of confidence. And when you feel powerless, you feel like a victim of the circumstance. And when you feel like a victim of the circumstance, you feel resentful. And when you’re resentful, unhappy, you feel insecure, you lack self-confidence.

So, what’s the solution?

Here’s the solution I want to suggest: Instead of waiting for external circumstances, what if you caused the effect? What if you generated that self-confidence from within you? And this, if you are the cause, you cause the effect of self-confidence and the results you have because of self-confidence, you generate immense power. You put yourself in the position of being the creator, you are in creation mode rather than survival mode, rather than stress mode, right? And when you are in creation mode and you generate that power, you have confidence, you generate that confidence.

So, what is self-confidence? Self-confidence, as I see it, is simply a state of mind. It’s a mindset. Remember, mindset is how you think, how you feel, and how you act. So, self-confidence is how you think of yourself. Self-confidence is how you feel trust for you to do the things that you said you will do. And self-confidence is how you act to follow through on your own commitments to yourself.

It’s all about the relationship that you have with yourself. How you think of yourself, how you feel about yourself, and how you act to follow through on commitments to yourself.

So, that said, as I promised, here are the five simple steps that anyone can do. Simple, not easy. It does require effort. It does require focus. It does require action. It does require risk.

So, what are the five steps?

Number one: Believe in your future self. Believe in you. Believe in your future self.

Number two: Commit to taking action.

Number three: Allow yourself to fail when you take that action.

Number four: Think greater than you feel.

Number: five: Do it all over again, again and again and again. Repeat.

So, what do I mean by believing in your future self? To believe is to simply think on repeat. That’s it. Whatever you believe, it feels like your truth. It feels like your reality because you have thought the thought on repeat over and over and over again. So, if you want to believe in your future self, simply think about your future self on repeat, on purpose, over and over and over again. It becomes a habit of the mind. You create a new habit of your new mind.

And just think about what the future is. I love this quote by Dan Sullivan: “The future is your property. The future belongs to you. At any given moment, when we think about the future, the future only exists as a concept in your mind.” And that means you can do whatever you want with your concept of the future.It does not have to look like yesterday, it does not like to look like your present.

You can build your property any way you want. I live in this really great New York City apartment where the shape of the living room is a triangle, not a rectangle. That’s why I have so many windows behind me, it’s a big triangle. So, it doesn’t have to look like every other apartment, right?

So your future is your property. You can make it be whatever you want. The only limitation is your imagination and that goes for whenever you think about the future because whenever you think about the future, the future simply exists as a concept in your mind. When I think about that, it really blows my mind, it’s really fun to think about the future.

So who is your future self?

Your future self is who you will become to live a life of no regrets.

Your future self is who you will come to live a life of no regrets.

So, having said that, this is a question that I want to pose to you and I really want you to think about it, and not just think about it but maybe journal about it. Write it out. What do you think? How would you answer this question: Who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets at the end of your life?

The art of coaching is all about supporting you to live the life that you most want to live. And in order for you to do that, first we need to think about, imagine our future. Who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets at the end of your life?

And for me, I answer this question by saying I would have taken 100% responsibility for everything that I have created in my life. I do not want to be a victim. I do not want to be in the position of blaming people at the end of my life because I didn’t do something, I didn’t generate a specific result. That, for me, is my definition of living a life of no regrets - taking 100% responsibility.

And for you, you may have a different response to that. Maybe for you, you would need to become the person who takes care of your family. You need to become the person who is the breadwinner. You need to become a better student, a better professional, a better architect, a better engineer, a better friend. For you, it’s a very individual and personal answer. No one’s life is like anyone’s life.

So, who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets? Think about it. Journal about it.

And in order for you to believe in your future self, I think this requires for you to have an intentional relationship with your future self.

So, in this picture, what’s happening is that on the left is your current self and on the right is your future self which I’d imagine would be a greater version of you. Don’t we all want to grow and become a better version of ourselves?

So when the current self looks at the future self, what does she see? How do you see your future self? And this can be a really powerful exercise, something that I take all of my clients through. How do you see your future self? Is she more confident? Is she more accomplished? Is she standing tall? Is she bolder? Is she braver? Is she better paid? What kind of life is she living?

Get really vivid with your imagination.

And at the same time, you have a relationship with your future self. So how does your future self see you, you right now? And when I ask my future self, “Well, how do you see the current Jamie?”, the future self of Jamie says, “She’s doing great! Keep going! What you’re worrying about is not such a big deal. It’s all gonna work out. Don’t worry so much. It’s gonna go great. Keep going, you’re doing good.” There’s only words of encouragement, support, and love when I ask my future self, “How do you see me now,” right?

So this could be a really powerful exercise. You can do it yourself. Just ask yourself, “Who is my future self?” and get really vivid with your imagination. And also, from the perspective of your future self, see what that future you would say to you now.

And from there, number two: Commit to taking action. If you ask your future self, “What do I need to do to become a better version of me?” she may have an answer for you. Or you may know right now what you need to do in order to become that better version of you. So commit to taking action towards that future self because commitment generates immense power.

And for you, that commitment may look like, I am going to reach out to one person a day to grow my professional network. I am going to practice asking for what I want to build my negotiation skills. I’m going to commit to joining Toastmasters, which is something that I did three years ago because I am committed to growing my skills as a speaker.

Action creates results, so commit to taking action.

So, what is one ambitious goal that you want to achieve so you can be more of who you want to be? Write this goal down and make this goal specific and time-bound so it’s real.

Once we do that, we are going to experience the negative emotions, the ugly emotions, right? Fear, doubt, shame. And a lot of us don’t know how to deal with these negative emotions and interpret these emotions as a sign that we need to stop, as a sign that we can’t honor our commitment, honor our commitment and take action, that we can’t do the things, which is not true.

What if fear, doubt, shame, or any other negative emotion that comes up with you committing to taking actions towards an ambitious goal are there for you to get past them? What if they’re not a stop sign? What if they’re not a Do-Not-Proceed sign? What if they are a door, an entryway for you to get past and go to someplace really cool? Maybe you’re exiting the door and going on an adventure or maybe you’re going into the house and living the life of your dreams.

And also, what is failure, exactly? Because in order for us to commit and continue to take action, we need to allow ourselves to fail. That’s number three: allow ourselves to fail.

What is failure, exactly? How do you define failure?

And I have coached many clients and clients have answered this question many different ways. Predominantly, there have been three responses:

Failure is simply an omission of a necessary action or key step. You just didn’t do the thing. So, take for example, last week I gave this webinar and I forgot to hit record. So that was a failure on my part. I omitted the action of hitting record.

Some clients have told me that failure is simply when things are different than what you expected it to be. It’s simply a different result than your expectation. It’s just different. Sometimes people feel that’s a failure. That’s fine.

Also, my client told me this past weekend that for her failure is simply a learning opportunity and I think that is a really great way to look at failure. When you look at failure as a way to learn, as an opportunity to learn, you put yourself in the growth mindset as opposed to the fixed mindset. If you haven’t already, look up Carol Dweck growth mindset and when you think that failure is a way to learn and grow yourself, you’re more likely to generate self-confidence, willingness to take action and continue to develop your skills. But when you have a fixed mindset that it’s either/or, you either succeed or fail and failure is bad. There’s no learning opportunity, it’s just bad. When you have that fixed mindset, you’re less likely to continue to take action, continue to grow and actually grow.

And I think this really sums it up. “For me, the road to success is paved with failure.” This is a quote by my own coach, Brooke Castillo who is an extraordinarily successful woman. She has created $17 million as a life coach! Amazing!

“The road to success is paved with failure”. So are you willing to fail so that you can succeed? Are you willing to get on that road to success and allow yourself to make mistakes, omit necessary actions, and learn in the process? Because that is how you succeed.

And when you continue to allow yourself to fail, allow yourself to learn, then you can generate a lot of self-confidence from that commitment to continuing to grow yourself.

But I think a lot of people mistake the concept of failure with the fear of what other people will think, what other people will say about us. And this is a barrier that I often encounter when I coach negotiation clients. A lot of women have said that they are reluctant to negotiate, especially in the workplace, because they are afraid of being seen as greedy, aggressive, a witch with a ‘b’. So we create barriers for ourselves. We create barriers for developing and generating self-confidence when we let that fear of what other people will think, when we let that fear stop us from taking action. So we create barriers for ourselves when we let fear stop us from taking action and stop us from allowing ourselves to fail.

So, if you have experienced that fear, here’s a question I want to ask you. So what if you gave it your all, you gave it 100% to achieving your ambitious goal, to living a life of no regrets, to making yourself more like the future self that you want to be and you failed? You forgot to do something. It happens to the best of us, right? It didn’t go as you expected or you learned that oh, I had to something completely different. So what if you failed? And what do you think people will say?

And also, I want to highlight, this is a really powerful exercise, so if you are following along, if you have some pen and paper, write it down. What do you really think people will say if you gave it your all and you failed at achieving your ambitious goal?

So, for me, when I ask this question to myself, I can see either way. Some people would be like, “Oh, it’s not big deal, Jamie. You can try again. You’ve got what it takes! Don’t worry so much about it. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” It’s something that I’ve actually heard a lot of people tell me. And if you are an ambitious person who sets some ambitious goals for yourself, you might have also heard that. People are like, “Don’t be so hard on yourself! It’s alright! No big deal,” right? For people outside of you, they see that you can do it, it’s not a big deal.

The part of myself that can imagine the negative things, I call it the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee or the Primitive Brain because it’s always saying things like, “Who do you think you are? You’re gonna fail. You’re not gonna meet expectations. You’re gonna be a disappointment. Why do you even try?”

That voice is the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee and that voice is like, “Well people might say, ‘Told you so. This coaching thing is a hack. I told you you’re not gonna succeed.’” Okay, so I can imagine both sides.

So, if you can imagine both sides, write down what they would say and then ask yourself, “Who are these people? Who are these people exactly? What are they saying and who are they?” I want you to name ten. Really think about it. Who are ten people who are gonna say that it wasn’t worth it for you to go for your dreams. Who are they?

When I ask myself this question, I realize that I have generalized one or two people who said something that wasn’t quite as bad I think it’s gonna be and then I extrapolated it in my brain and then I created this story that they said these things.

I’ll be more specific. I recognize that when I was growing up, my sister used to be like, “Well, don’t do that! I’m gonna tell Mom! You said a bad word!” She said things like that, with the best intention, I’m sure. And then I blew it up in my mind over time that I can’t do the things that I want because then people will criticize me. And when I really try to think of ten people who say negative things about me, I can’t name them! There might have been one person who was having a bad day and said something that was tangential to what I was doing.

So, anyway, long story short, what I do in my own brain is create a story, a fictional story, from an irrelevant past. And I often blow up a story that is not actually what people literally said.

So try it out for you. Who are these ten people who are gonna have an opinion if you go for your dreams and fail? And really name them. Is that exactly what they said? Be really truthful here.

Number four: Now that you have believed in your future self, now that you have committed to taking action, now that you have allowed yourself to fail, number four is the key step, which is to think greater than you feel.

Think greater about you than how you feel about you.

What do I mean by that?

This is a quote from this phenomenal book I highly, highly recommend. This book is literally changing my life inside out. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe DiSpenza. I love it so much, I bought a copy for everyone in the January Small Group Mastermind. It’s a book about the science of the human brain and how you can leverage meditation to change your brain. I love that! So powerful.

So, what does it mean to think greater than how you feel?

Well, first of all, you have to write down your thoughts. What is it that you think about you when you go to take that ambitious action towards your ambitious goal so that you can live a life of no regrets? What are all the negative thoughts? What are all the positive thoughts? All of them. Who do you think you are? You’re gonna fail. This isn’t gonna go well. I’m probably gonna give up. Or maybe you have some great thoughts. This is great. I’m excited! Write them down. Our mind is very fickle. Our minds are slippery. The act of writing down the thoughts will give you the opportunity to assume the position of authority as the watcher of your mind.

So you’re not just at the effect of your mind, you get to watch your mind. This is a very powerful act, actually.

And thoughts and feelings are very connected, interconnected. Thoughts cause emotions and so you want to become aware of your emotion. What is the feeling? And what is the connection between what you’re feeling and what you are thinking? Because there is always a connection. And the thing here is we have not been taught to become aware of our feelings. We have been taught to just think, think, think, think, use our analytical minds to survive and get by, make money, right? And more thoughts, more stressful thoughts, just create more stress.

We have not been taught how to become aware of our emotions inside of ourselves and how to deal with them, so I’m gonna talk about that in a little bit.

So, write down your thoughts, become aware of the feelings. What is the emotion? And then choose new thoughts on purpose. Allow yourself to become aware of the thoughts. Allow yourself to become aware of the feelings. And even if you feel a negative thought, you can choose to think a greater thought on purpose.

So, as I said, we’ve not been taught how to manage negative emotions like fear, doubt, and shame which will come up when we commit to taking action, when we commit to a really ambitious goal. They will come up. It’s just part of the process. So, how do we manage them?

Well, first of all, we’ve not been taught how to manage them, so most people take three steps when they feel uncomfortable emotions like fear, doubt, and shame.

Number one: We resist. If you’re not familiar with the symbol beneath the word ‘Resist,’ these are emojis, text emojis that were invented in Japan and in this emoji you can see that the mouth is like a squiggly line. You’re tensing like this, you’re trying to resist the emotion, just not allow yourself to feel the uncomfortable emotions. This is something that a lot of us do by habit, by default.

And some of us just react. And what’s happening here is this little text guy, text emoji guy is flipping a table. Might be a girl, might be woman, excuse me. Text emoji person is flipping a table because they’re reacting to negative emotion. Just blame and anger and attack.

Or you simply avoid. You just shut down the conversation. You walk away. You don’t deal with it at all. And this is a common reaction to how people deal with conflict as well, which is a whole other topic.

But what can happen is, when you resist, react, and avoid, you create this trap, this cycle of resisting, reacting, avoiding, resisting, reacting, avoiding. And it just becomes this cycle that perpetuates itself. You don’t evolve out of the negative emotion, you just make it greater unintentionally.

So, what is an emotion? Why do we create these negative cycles? Why is it so difficult to deal, why do people think that it’s so difficult to deal with? Well, simply, emotion is a vibration in the body. When you feel excitement, like when I feel excitement, I feel it in my chest, I feel like a lightness in my head. When I feel shame, I feel this heaviness in the pit of my stomach.

Emotion is a vibration that you can experience in the body. That’s it.

And as I mentioned earlier, it’s associated with a thought, which is simply a sentence in your mind. And so emotion, by itself, is completely harmless. Anger, when you feel the emotion of anger, you might feel tightness in your stomach and it’s completely harmless to just allow that emotion to be and to pass through the body. It is possible and it is something that I coach my clients to do. And it’s a very, very powerful thing because you can observe emotion with compassion, you can experience emotion without suffering, and you can generate new emotion. And remember, self-confidence is the feeling of trust that you will do what you said you will do, and you can generate that emotion inside of yourself.

And emotions are so powerful because there are only five things in the universe. WHAT?! That’s crazy! There are only five things in the Universe? I mean, everything in our world, in our lives, can be categorized into one of these five things. That’s it!

There are neutral circumstances. We talked about the body, we talked about money, we talked about other people, we talked about titles, position, these are all circumstances that are provable, that are neutral, that are factual. Circumstances are things that you can prove in the court of law. And how we interpret or what we think of those neutral circumstances are thoughts which are 100% optional.

Now, our brains are wired in such a way that think thoughts by default and that is because our brains are wired for efficiency and it’s just efficient for the brain to just have these knee-jerk reaction thoughts. And in the book that I mentioned to you earlier, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe DiSpenza talks about how 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. They come from our subconscious mind because it has been programmed by socialization, by habit, by our past.

So, what I’m saying is even though 95% of your thoughts will not feel like an option, they’ll just feel factual and believable, they are in fact optional because you can choose to use the human brain, the prefrontal cortex to generate new thoughts on purpose.

And that’s what I mean when I say think greater than you feel.

And the thoughts that you have generate feelings, generate emotions, and the emotions are so powerful according to MIT professor Jared Curhan, feelings rule negotiation. How you feel about yourself, how you feel about the counterpart, how you feel about the potential outcome, how you feel about the process. That’s what drives the success of a negotiation.

Why?

Because feelings drive behavior. Feelings drive your actions. And as I mentioned earlier, actions drive results. And the results that you get from a specific thought will always prove the originating thought.

So, let me give you an example of this model when I indulged in a default thought, in a thought that comes from the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee, as I mentioned, or the Primitive Brain. So, as I mentioned, three years ago, I lacked confidence as a speaker but I had this dream, I had the vision of becoming a professional speaker, workshop leader, and coach. So, I joined Toastmasters and I committed to delivering a prepared speech at least once a month for ten months. They had a program called The Competent Communicator and in The Competent Communicator, there are ten speeches. I said, I am going to deliver a speech at least once a month.So, I made the commitment.

And so the neutral circumstance was that I had scheduled myself to give a speech at New York Toastmasters and New York Toastmasters is a wonderful nonprofit that really does wonders, especially if you are looking to develop your self-confidence as a speaker, communicator, and leader.

But at one point, I had the default thought that I’m afraid to fail in front of people. I’m afraid what people will think. I’m afraid of messing up. And when I had this thought, when I thought this thought, I’m afraid to fail in front of people, I experienced the emotion of fear and also anxiety, fearful anxiety. And when I was coming from this fearful anxiety, I procrastinated. That was the action that I took from this fearful anxiety because I didn’t know how to deal, I didn’t know how to allow for this emotion. I was resisting it, I was avoiding it, and I was looking for distractions like looking for snacks in the kitchen or checking my email or going on social media.

And then I would worry rather than work on the speech. And then I fumbled through the speech. I didn’t really do my best because I had spent so much time procrastinating, looking for distractions, worrying rather than working on this speech.

And what was the result that I had created for myself from thinking that I’m afraid to fail in front of people is that I felt like a failure. And you see how the result, feeling like a failure, provided evidence for the thought that I’m afraid to fail in front of people.

So, how did I apply thinking greater than how I feel to myself?

Once I started coaching myself, I decided to approach the Toastmasters speech with a different mindset, with a different thought. So, same circumstance, Toastmasters speech, and I decided to think a new thought on purpose, even though I was still experiencing anxiety.

I am committed to learn by doing. I am committed to learn by failing. I am committed to allow myself to fail in front of 60 people who attend New York Toastmasters because that is how I will learn. That is how I will grow myself and I am committed to learn by doing because this is how I grow. I’m committed to learn by doing.

And when I told myself that I’m committed to this, I’m committed to doing this, I felt the emotion of commitment. And the emotion of commitment feels solid. It feels like strength inside my body and from that feeling of strength, I can allow the feeling of anxiety to pass through. I can let it be and not resist it, not react to it, not avoid it.

And when I allow the feeling of anxiety to pass through, then I can use the power of my human brain to plan, to prepare, and to practice ahead of time. And when I planned, prepared, and practiced ahead of time, I can ride the adrenaline when I’m standing in front of 60-some-odd people and follow through on my commitment.

So you see how the intentional thought created this new feeling that allowed me to process the negative feeling and follow through on taking action.

And of course there were times I did fail. I didn’t always give perfect speeches. I fumbled. I used a lot of space-filler words, ums and uhs, I still do. I have made mistakes in front of people but that’s okay. It was my commitment to keep showing up, keep following through because I really believed in the vision of my future self who is a professional speaker.

And now I’m doing that! I get paid thousands of dollars to attend leadership conferences, to show up to organizations and teach people the art of negotiating, the art of communicating, the art of leading.

And as a result, I have grown my self-confidence. You can do this too. You don’t need to be a coach, speaker, whatever. You can apply this new thinking on purpose to generate emotion on purpose so that you can generate self-confidence for you, by you.

And so, finally, the last step in the process is to do it over and over and over again. Repeat it, 1-4. Believe in your future self, commit to taking action, allow yourself to fail, continue to think greater than how you feel. And that takes courage.

I remember the last year I was in Toastmasters, I was VP of Membership and I committed to acting from courage rather than comfort. That was inspired by reading Brené Brown. Brené Brown talks about how you can rise about shame by choosing courage over comfort.

So how does courage look for you? What does it look like when you act from courage? When you act from the courage to dream, to believe in your future self, the courage to take action, the courage to feel discomfort because you can and it’s harmless, and the courage to do it over and over and over again.

This, I tell you, will change your life.

So, that wraps up the official content and if you like this material then I want to take this opportunity, the last five minutes that we have, to tell you a little bit more about Small Group Mastermind, which I said earlier will start in March 2019. I got feedback from people that March works better.

So, Small Group Mastermind. It is for eight women who want to lead, influence, and thrive. I’m looking for ambitious people who have strong values of service and excellence. And what you get is, in addition to one-on-one coaching, two one-on-one coaching sessions with me, you also get deep dives into future self, self-confidence, boundaries, emotional mastery, and more. And you’ll get to benefit from both private coaching as well as group accountability as well as the opportunity to study this material by yourself.

So, how does it work exactly? Come to this link: jamieleecoach.com/mastermind. But basically, as I said, you get private coaching, group coaching calls with deep dives on these specific topics and in between calls you will be held accountable to complete worksheets and take action towards your goals.

So if you really want this unique opportunity to be supported by me individually and by a group of like-minded, ambitious women, this is perfect for you because it’s a great deal. And these are the dates and the plan. I just wrapped up the January Mastermind and Sarah S. who was one of the seven women - the first group was seven women - she said that, “Working with Jamie in the Mastermind was extremely valuable.” She said with the group’s help, she developed and applied strategies for helping her regain control over her responses to life’s hurdles and in turn, this empowered her to better pursue the life that she wants.

I love this testimonial.

Here are the next steps: It’s only three payments of $210. You save about $1295 compared to my retail, one-on-one, private coaching rate of $350/hour. This is a great bargain.

If you are interested, email me. Let’s set up a time for us to talk. Let’s make sure this is a good fit for you or you can go to my site and apply at jamieleecoach.com/apply. If you apply, you will get the opportunity to have a free consultation, so there’s no risk, really.

So, does coaching actually work? Does it generate results? Will it generate results for you? So, if you got www.jamieleecoach.com/results, you can see all of the testimonials from my previous negotiation, leadership coaching clients, as well as workshop clients.

I want to tell you some of the success stories from the past year. I coached this amazing woman, Sarah, who was also in the January Mastermind and through coaching, she was able to flip a no to a yes with her dream job company. She was initially turned down but she didn’t give up. She didn’t give up believing in her future self. She didn’t give up generating her own self-confidence and so she was able to go back, get an informational interview, and then get an offer from her dream job. And in the process, she also negotiated a $10,000 salary increase. She is now maxing out her quarterly bonus and she’s still coaching with me and coached her through the performance review process.

I have another client who also hired me to coach her through a salary negotiation process and she’s still coaching with me now as a leadership client. And when she got the offer, she countered, she asked for what she really wanted which was a bigger role. She wanted to be in a capacity to lead technical conversations rather than just be a project manager and as a result she also got a $10,000 salary increase and she is on target to achieve her goal of attending grad school. She’s working towards that goal on purpose with a lot of thought work.

I have another client who I coached and as a result of our coaching, she grew her impact-focused side hustle. She created this wonderful business in addition to her day job that supports women with ADHD and as a result, she was interviewed by industry influencers and this was as a result of her generating her own self-confidence, not looking outside of herself, but generating it from within herself. And she’s also doing so well at her day job. I recently coached her through her performance review cycle and she’s been tapped by the founder of her organization to be a thought leader at her day job. So she’s also growing her entrepreneurial side hustle and excelling at her day job. You can do that. You can thrive.

Do you have any questions for me? We are out of time. I like to end my webinars on time because I want to honor and respect your time commitments as well. If you have any questions for me, feel free to email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. This webinar was recorded, so if you were not able to attend it live, you will still be able to watch it and stream it.

Thank you very much for your time and attention. If you have any questions, email me. I am grateful for your time and focus. Thank you! Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day.

Why Do You Assume the Worst-Case Scenario?

"I'm afraid of losing all my money and becoming a bag lady." 

"I think they are going to criticize and rebuke me." 

"They will pigeonhole me for what I've done, not what I can do." 

Does your brain assume the worst-case scenario when it comes to your career and interactions with other people? 

If so, what's the impact of assuming the worst? What's the upside and what's the downside? 

In this episode, I share: 

- my personal experience of assuming the worst and living in survival mode 

- two of the "worst-case scenarios" that actually happened in my life 

- some biases I'm choosing on PURPOSE so that I can thrive, not just survive. 

If you enjoy this podcast, you'd enjoy joining me at my upcoming webinar. Come register at www.jamieleecoach.com 

Or write me for suggestions, thoughts, and more: jamie@jamieleecoach.com

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 54 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

How are you?

Happy February 1st!

How was your month of January?

My month rocked. It was awesome.

I meditated 31 consecutive days. As I mentioned in Episode 52, I read How to Break the Habit of Being Yourself  by Dr. Joe DiSpenza and I did the meditation that he recommends in that book. It’s amazing. So powerful.

And I also did 14 days of Aikido training, which is pretty much every other day. I am committed to becoming a masterful Aikido athlete. Aikido, if you don’t know, is a Japanese martial art focused on peace, flow of energy, and protecting both the attacker and defender, even though there are throws, grabs, twists, turns, flips.

It’s a lot of fun and I love how the martial art of Aikido is like a physical connection of the concepts that I’m learning in the book and also the concepts that I’m teaching here in the podcast about how mind overcomes matter, how we can integrate our mind, body, and spirit and thrive, no matter what other people say, do or think.

In other words, no matter what the circumstances are, no matter if somebody’s trying to grab you, throw you, you can maintain your ground, you can maintain your power, you can maintain your peace. And that is possible.

So I love how all the things that I’m working on in my personal life and my professional life, there is so much synchronicity.

And I did my Mastermind Group in the month of January as well. We met four times this month, every Tuesday, and we had some really great conversations on self-confidence, on setting goals, on emotional mastery as opposed to emotional dependence, which creates powerlessness and resentment. And finally, we talked about how to process discomfort so that we can become courageous and become unstoppable as negotiators and leaders.

So, I’m really excited for the second iteration of Mastermind. So, if you’re interested, email me: jamie@jamieleecoach.com and better yet, come join my webinar next Wednesday on February 6th at 12:30 pm EST/ 9:30 am PT.

I’m going to reprise the webinar I gave this past Wednesday on how to generate self-confidence in five simple steps without faking anything.

Now, I want to say all the concepts that I teach and apply, I apply them to myself first and I know that they work because I have done them, I have applied and worked through them, I have coached myself and I know that self-confidence is something that you can create in yourself, regardless of your circumstance, regardless of how much money you have, what you look like, how much student loan debt you have.

It doesn’t matter. You can create self-confidence and with self-confidence you can do what you want in your life and in your career.

So, join me. It’s gonna be a really fun discussion. I have some phenomenal content ready for you. Join me. Challenge me with your difficult questions. You can also join the webinar on demand, so even if you cannot join it this Wednesday, you can watch it later. So, if you want to register, come to my site, jamieleecoach.com.

So today, I want to talk to you about why we assume the worst-case scenario.

I had some phenomenal coaching sessions with amazing women and the common thread among all of the coaching sessions this week was that these amazing women are all assuming the worst-case scenario in one way or another.

And I have done the same.

So take, for example, somebody who is going for a new job, a career transition. She’s worried, she’s assuming the worst-case scenario that people will pigeon-hole her for what she has done in the past, not what she can do in the future. She feels that her resume will be a liability and people won’t give her a chance to prove her future potential.

I had another conversation with somebody who assumes the worst when people reach out to her, send her an email, or call her at work and she immediately goes to the worst-case scenario that she’s going to be rebuked or people are going to find fault with her.

And why? It’s because there’s been experiences like that in her childhood. With our parents, when we have experienced parents who rebuked us or when we recall the childhood memory of being afraid, it’s like our mind is just playing a repeat of a past experience.

And there’s another with whom I’ve spoken and she is afraid of the worst-case scenario that a lot of people are afraid of, which is losing all her money and ending up as a bag lady, a homeless bag lady.

So, why do we assume the worst-case scenario?

I think our brain will reason that it’s because if we prepare for the worst-case scenario, then at worst, if that worst-case scenario happens, then we will be prepared for it and then we will be able to survive that worst-case scenario.

And notice how our focus on surviving the worst-case scenario keeps us in survival mode, in fight mode, in stress mode, not in thriving mode, not in creative mode, not in value creation mode.

So, I think there are just, in general, three explanations for why we always assume the worst, which is a symptom of our negative bias, right? Our brains are wired for negative bias.

Number one is that we have experienced it in the past. We experienced our parents getting mad at us, rebuking us for something that we did wrong and so then we start thinking that we’re going to get rebuked and get yelled at in the workplace.

So we think that the past repeats itself, right? That’s number one.

Number two, we have, as a society, as a culture, we have a bias for scarcity. Money is running out. The planet’s resources are running out. Time is running out. There’s so much marketing messaging around how you better do it now, you better buy now before the sale ends, before stock runs out, right?

There is so much focus on scarcity in our culture and society, so we are trained to believe that things are not going to last. Time, money, energy, particularly.

And number three, there are a lot of naysayers, you know? The more successful you become, sure, you experience feedback and sometimes there are haters, right? Haters are gonna hate. And there are naysayers. Naysayers are gonna say nay!

And those people who are wired to just criticize and find fault with you, that’s their bias, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are right because, just as much as there are haters, there are people who are kind of like me. Who are sort of biased for positivity and will always find reasons for why things are going well.

So, our brains are wired, our brains are hardwired for us to believe that the past repeats itself, to believe that time, money, energy will run out, to have a scarcity bias, and number three, to have a negative bias. And when we hear naysayers outside of us saying those things, our brains will be tempted to believe them.

I will be tempted to believe that my gender, my skin tone, that the shape of my body will determine what’s possible for me because there are so many people and a lot of marketing messages that are about hey, there’s something wrong with you. You gotta fix it. Spend money to fix it, right?

So, I want to explore a little bit at a deeper level, what is the impact of this worst-case scenario bias?

When we assume the worst-case scenario, how do we think, how do we feel, how do we act, and what are the results that we create from assuming the worst-case scenario?

And I did some work on myself because, I mean, I used to assume the worst-case scenario just constantly, incessantly, I was very miserable for a very long time in my career.

And the common thread among all of the times I assumed the worst-case scenario - that people don’t like me, that money is going to run out, people don’t get me, that my external circumstance, that my body defines my future, what is available, what is possible for me - when I assumed those things, I always got defensive.

Take, for example, when I assume that people don’t like me, I experience the fear of social rejection and then I try to manage that fear by preemptively getting defensive with people, putting up walls, or worse yet, belittling myself.

And I see a lot of people, I’ve seen women do this. I’ve seen myself do it. You get kind of nervous and kind of weird and you say [laughs nervously], “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry I said that! Sorry I exist! Sorry I’m taking up space!” And you belittle yourself preemptively in an effort to save yourself from a perceived attack.

Now, the thing that is really interesting is that when we assume the worst-case scenario, when we think that other people don’t like us, they’re gonna reject us, criticize us, etc., our brain will see that image, that imagined future, and it won’t know the difference between that imagined perception of a dangerous future, of a worst-case scenario, from what it actually perceives, from sensory perception.

The brain doesn’t know the difference between a sensory perception and imagined perception.

Now, you have all experienced this.

You know, take, for example, you are thinking about somebody who said something really nasty to you and when you start thinking about that person and you re-imagine, you remember that situation where anger was boiling up, and you can start feeling, physically feeling the discomfort and the tightness in your stomach or in your neck and you can feel the blood pressure rise up. You can feel yourself getting hot and angry and defensive.

Or if you think about somebody you are infatuated with and you imagine a sexual fantasy, your body will automatically go into that mode where you’re feeling aroused and excited, right?

So, even if those people, the person that you’re angry at or the person that you’re infatuated with are not in front of you, just by imagining those people, imagining the situation, or remembering the situation, you have a physical reaction.

And that shows you that your brain doesn’t know the difference between an imagined perception and a sensory perception.

So, when you assume the worst-case scenario, what happens is that you put yourself in that worst-case scenario. You create the situation in your body at a brain level, at a chemical level, at a hormonal level.

You go into that fight or flight mode. You go into that survival mode. You go into that stress mode simply by imagining that worst-case scenario.

The worst thing that can actually happen when you imagine the worst-case scenario is an emotion.

Emotion, Dr. Joe DiSpenza says in his book, is the chemical residue of a past experience, so when you experience that worst-case scenario from having remembered something that happened to you that triggers all this negative emotion, you feel the experience.

You feel the emotion of shame, fear, guilt.

That’s it. That’s the worst thing.

And when you imagine the worst thing, you create that emotion in your body.

And so, for me, my reaction to that emotion of either shame, fear, guilt, anxiety, failure is that I would get defensive. I would want to put up a fight. I would get tight and tense.

Just thinking about it, just remembering how I used to be right now as I’m recording this podcast is recreating...I’m remembering right now in my body what that defensiveness felt like.

I always felt like I was under attack even though I was never actually under attack because I was always imagining the worst-case scenario.

And I would get defensive. I would get weird. I would get creepy. I would belittle myself. Or if I felt that the worst-case scenario would happen and that I would run out of money, I would feel panicky. I would feel like I was going to die.

The primitive brain, when it’s not managed, is like a toddler with a knife and even though there is no actual toddler with a knife, it can feel as if your existence or your ego is under attack by this toddler with a knife.

And so when I examine my own experience of always going to the worst-case scenario, I notice that I got defensive, I get creepy, I get needy, I feel desperate, I feel panicky, I feel stressed out, and as a result, I would not be able to show up and be genuine with people.

I would not like those people but be so desperate for their approval. I would always feel so afraid of spending any money. I would be so afraid that I would not be able to access my creativity and imagination to generate value for other people, which is how you actually create money, so I was not in that creation mode.

And I would get angry. Preemptively angry.

So, I was thinking about this and then I wondered what were the actual worst-case scenarios that had happened?

And I can think of two things. Things that happened that at one point I was actually very upset about.

One was that - this happened about twelve years ago - I was married to a man who overstayed his student visa. So we were actually in a loving relationship, actually living together, and he asked me to marry him so that he can get a green card and stay in the United States. And I was very young, naive, I did not have a lot of money, neither did he. And so we got married at the city hall. We just had a nice lunch with a friend, and that was it. We didn’t have a wedding.

Long story short, we go to the green card interview and he couldn’t answer a single question. His mind went completely blank.

It’s funny now but I was livid back then when he failed the green card interview.

He couldn’t remember where I lived, where I worked, he couldn’t remember what bank account I had. He couldn’t remember a single detail about my family even though he had spent...and he had cooked holiday dinners for them!

We were in a real relationship but, at the green card interview, we looked like we were completely fake because he couldn’t answer a single question.

I was so angry.

I was so angry.

I had never been so angry.

And I thought that was the worst-case scenario and it had happened! I was shocked, I was upset. But over time, I have learned to really appreciate what happened because it allowed me to leave him.

And this was the best thing that had happened because over time I realized that he was not the person I thought he was. I think if I had stayed in that relationship, I would not be where I am today. And if he had not failed that interview, I may still be with him.

And after I left that relationship, I found a wonderful man whom I’m still with. We’ve been together for 11 years and he’s very different from the first husband I had.

And so the worst thing that had happened turned out actually to be the best possible thing.

Also, I talk about how I bungled my salary negotiation ten years ago. I had no experience in the finance industry, I didn’t research the going market rates, I didn’t tap my network, I didn’t really prepare a statement of value, I didn’t know how to frame for value and ask for the high end of the going market range. So I didn’t do any of that and then found out I was making $50,000 in a job that is valued to be $100,000 at most other hedge funds.

And so at first I was very angry but over time I have become really appreciative of that too because it taught me a really valuable lesson of all the things that I could have done and now I teach those lessons. I teach those lessons and I get paid to teach those lessons. I get paid thousands of dollars to go to women’s leadership conferences, to go to corporations, to universities.

I was just at NYU law school and I spoke on the panel about fair pay and I shared that experience verbatim. I said, “Hey, I once found out I was making $50,000 but I’m really appreciative that it happened because it taught me all the things that I now teach others, that I am now teaching you.”

Long story short, I want to challenge your thinking around worst-case scenarios. And that’s the work I do with all my clients. I always challenge why are you always assuming the worst-case scenario. What is the impact of going into the worst-case scenario in your mind, right? Because it creates, it recreates those negative emotions and you react from that negative emotion and you go into survival mode, stress mode, fight mode.

One of the things that experts all agree on is that humans are biased. We are all biased. And our default mode is for negative bias. Our default mode is for scarcity bias. Our default mode is to buy into what everyone else tells us to be true.

But what if we purposely chose biases that served us, biases that helped us thrive?

So here are some biases that I am choosing for myself:

• To hell with circumstances, I create my own future.

• The future will be more amazing than my brain can imagine now.

• I want to have a future focus and I want to believe that the future is even better than what I have experienced in the past, than what I can imagine now.

• And I also want to have a bias that there is always more than I need.

• There is always more time, there is always more money, there is always more energy.

• I’m going to let my mind evolve into creation mode as opposed to survival mode. And I know that is how I will thrive.

• And I’m going to let all the naysayers be wrong about me. Let the people who have their thoughts about me be wrong about me. Why not? Everyone’s going to say, do, and think what they say, do, and think anyways and why not let them be wrong?

• My gender, my skin tone, the shape of who I am, where I come from can never create limitations but only opportunities. And when I choose to see it this way, it generates a lot of appreciation, gratitude, and excitement.

• I choose to celebrate what is possible for me.

• I choose to celebrate the best possible scenarios and not always go to the worst-case scenarios. And this is how I believe we can make the gender wage gap irrelevant in that awesome, amazing future, which will not be the worst-case scenario but the best possible scenario.

So, what about you?

What bias will you drop?

What bias do you want to choose on purpose so that you can set yourself up for success and create the best possible scenario?

Thank you and I will talk to you next week.

Bye!

How to Break the Habit of Being You

Out of unconscious habit, I've thought that there's something wrong with me. I've thought, "I'm lazy. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough." 

Thinking this way had me feeling shame, anxiety, and self-loathing. 

This negative mindset did not motivate me to inspired action. 

In 2019, I'm committed to breaking this habit, so I can love myself more fully and create more intentionally. 

I share my three biggest takeaways from the awesome book "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself" by Dr. Joe Dispensa (https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Habit-Being-Yourself-Create/dp/1401938094), which are: 

1. Mind Creates Reality

2. Mind Shapes Body

3. To Change is To Think Greater Than How We Feel 

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 51 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

Happy New Year!

How is the first week of 2019 unfolding for you?

I hope it’s going superbly.

I had the awesome privilege of traveling extensively for the past two weeks. I was in Japan, we went to several cities, including Tokyo and Kyoto, Nara, Tokushima. We also went to Singapore and we had a fabulous time and ate the most delicious foods. It was wonderful.

This trip was made especially meaningful to me because I got to do two things:

First, I got to take a long mental break from my own thought errors.

And I read the book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself  by Dr. Joe Dispenza which gave me valuable insights on how to address my thought errors.

The thought error I’m talking about is something that a lot of ambitious people encounter. When you are ambitious, you set high goals and expectations for yourself.

I’ve noticed that I have a pattern of habitually setting more goals, more to-do items within one day than I can actually do and this is something that I’m going to work on addressing in 2019.

The effect this creates is that I often fall short of my high expectations.

I fail. A lot. I fail all the time.

And I say that with pride, not with shame, because I do know that the road to success is paved with failure.

But at the same time, I haven’t quite made myself accustomed to the new pattern of thinking that would help me deal with this failure better than I have done before.

And that means that I often encounter my default thinking, which is thinking that there’s something wrong with me.

That I’m lazy. That I’m not good enough. That I’m not smart enough.

And when I allow my brain to entertain these thoughts, the thoughts generate feelings of shame, anger, frustration, anxiety, depression and self-loathing.

I really struggled with self-loathing in late 2018.

I’ve noticed that the combination of high expectations and cold winter months and shorter days during November and December is somehow...it creates an environmental cue for my brain and my subconscious mind to just make these negative thought errors more strong. Especially in the morning.

And so in late November and December, I woke up very often feeling sad and heavy and then I would intentionally work on creating new thoughts, new patterns of behavior so that I can accomplish regardless of the fact that I was feeling sad and heavy and dealing with self-loathing.

So, you know what? I’m actually really proud of myself.

And the first thing I did when we left on vacation was I stopped hating on myself. I said, “Enough! I’m on vacation. I am going to give myself credit. I am going to be grateful to me for all that I have accomplished.”

And that was a really powerful and poignant moment for me when I just looked myself square in the eye in the mirror and I said, “Thank you.”

Reading the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself really helped me understand why this thought error was happening and how it became so habitual that my body became accustomed, it became a sort of automated response from the body and the subconscious mind to have and to repeat the thought error that there’s something wrong with me and that there’s something for me to hate about myself.

And I highly, highly recommend this book. And reading this book really helped me see that there are three truths:

Number one: Mind creates reality, mind creates your reality.

Number two: The mind shapes the body.

And number three: Change is possible when we think greater than how we feel.

So number one: Mind creates reality. This might have you think, “Wait. But, Jamie, I think you’ve got it wrong. Isn’t it circumstances that create your reality?”

Well, hear me out on this.

I think the thought that our circumstances create our reality is another thought error that so many of us suffer from.

A lot of us think that, hey, only if I had a new job that I like better, I’ll be happier. Only if I had more money, I’ll be happier. Only if I went away on vacation, only if I got to away on an awesome vacation like Jamie did, I’ll feel better about myself.

Now, I have had these thoughts myself and in my experience, what I have found that new circumstances did not always change my internal reality. It didn’t always change how I feel from the inside.

And isn’t it that we all want to feel better at the end of having achieved whatever new circumstances that we’re chasing?

Isn’t it that we just want to feel happy and successful and peaceful by having the new job, by having more money, by going away on vacation?

But it’s not true that simply having these new circumstances will create those internal changes.

In my experience, before I learned to manage my own mind, when I had a new job, that was great, it was a very temporary high and within two or three months I often felt the same frustration and the boredom that I felt when I had an old job.

And when I made more money, before I learned to manage my mind, I still encountered worries about, okay, now I have this money, how am I gonna keep it? And then I would worry that I somehow didn’t deserve it. Or then I would worry how am I going to earn it again?

And before I learned to manage my mind, when I went on vacation, an awesome vacation, I’d still worry about the job that I wasn’t happy with. Even though I was on vacation away from the job, I would be thinking about the job and making myself unhappy even though I was away.

Does that sound familiar to you?

And the point that I’m trying to make is circumstances don’t change our internal state of being. It’s what we think, it’s how our minds are thinking that create the internal experience of happy, joy, wonder, gratitude.

And I think reading this book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, really helped me see that it is possible. It gave me a manual for creating new thoughts that are not the same as default thinking which are triggered by our environment, our circumstances, our socialization.

The most powerful thing that you can do for yourself is to believe in yourself, in your potential to change in spite of your current circumstances, no matter what your socialization is and no matter what other people believe and say.

This is what amazing leaders in history have done. This is what Martin Luther King did. This is what Mother Teresa did. This is what Gandhi did.

They believed in a new possibility, in a new future, regardless of how much suffering, how much injustice was in their world at their time.

So, your mind creates your reality. What you think and what you believe will shape your experience of your reality.

It’s similar to confirmation bias, right? If you think you’re going to have a wonderful time, you will find reasons for how this is a wonderful time. If you think this is going to be a terrible time, your mind will go and find evidence to support the thought that this is a terrible time.

So your mind, your mindset, will create your reality. And that’s why I prioritize on helping people shift their mindset so that they can become bolder, braver, and better paid.

Another thing that reading the book really helped me understand in a scientific way is that the mind shapes the body.

The book talks about how there is a neurochemical relationship between the brain and body. As you think certain thoughts, the brain produces chemicals, neurotransmitters, neuropeptides that trigger hormones in your body, that cause you to feel exactly the way you’re thinking.

And, in the book, Joe Dispenza talks about if you start to think about confronting your teenager over the new dent in the car, your neurotransmitters would start a thought process in your brain to produce a specific level of mind.

And your neuropeptides would chemically signal your body in a specific way and then you would begin to feel a bit riled up because the peptides find their way to your adrenal glands and the adrenal glands would be prompted to release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which is the hormone associated with a stress response, and now you are definitely feeling fired up.

Chemically, your body is ready for battle.

And so what you think, the thoughts, create the feeling, and the feeling sort of confirms the thought in your mind. The way you feel makes the way you think even stronger. And in the book he calls this the feedback loop or state of being. In other words, how you are being is shaped by what you think and what you feel.

And the beautiful thing is that change is possible. To change is to think greater than how you feel.

And this reminded me of a question that I was asked during a recent coaching session with an ambitious professional who wanted to become more bolder, more outspoken, and a better communicator at work but she struggled with the worry of how she would be perceived, and when she worried about how she would be perceived, she found herself holding back, not speaking up, not engaging, not sharing her ideas.

And she asked me, “Jamie, so how can I become confident and comfortable with sharing my ideas?”

And I thought the question was beautiful because it exposed the thought error in the way she had formed the question.

Confidence is not synonymous with feeling comfortable. It’s the very opposite. Confidence comes from embracing the discomfort and taking action anyway.

That’s the definition of courage, right? Feeling the fear and taking action anyway.

So this requires you to raise your self-awareness around the feelings that you have, the unconscious thought patterns that create the feelings of anxiety, fear, and worry and to think on purpose.

In the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza talks about how there are three levels of brain.

There is the prefrontal cortex, the thinking brain, there is the limbic brain, that is responsible for managing your emotions, and then there is the cerebellum which is the subconscious mind that manages your automatic body functions and movements.

And a lot of our memorized emotions from the past get processed in the limbic brain and the cerebellum and so it becomes this automated thought pattern, thinking pattern, feeling pattern, behavioral pattern.

And I think the thought error that I was struggling with in the late 2018 was definitely something that had become so deeply ingrained into my subconscious mind, into the mid and the lower parts of my brain that I really had to think on purpose and it took a lot of effort for me to engage my prefrontal cortex and tell myself to think new thoughts.

Have new thoughts like, “Nothing has gone wrong. Everything is working out for me. I’m exactly where I need to be.”

And that’s how I was able to continue to show up and produce content and deliver value to my clients and I think this is going to be something that I want to take to the next level. This is something that I will take to the next level in 2019.

In conclusion, I want to leave you with a distinction. In the book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza had this great diagram that had two columns:

On the left, it’s titled Survival and under survival are stress, contraction, fear, anger, sadness, disease, cause and effect, past, the familiar things. And on the right the column was titled Creation and he had these words: homeostasis, expansion, love, joy, trust, health, causing an effect, unfamiliar, unknown.

And what that reminds me of - the right hand column, the creation column - reminds me of my definition of authenticity which is the you that you are in the process of becoming.

It is the future you. It is not the you that you are most comfortable and familiar with being out of habit from the past, but it is the you that you are in the process of becoming from here on out.

So, my definition of authenticity is based on the person that you will create and my big goal for 2019 is to create intentionally, with joy, with trust, in a state of health, in a state of conscious thinking so that I can cause an effect in my life that is greater than I’ve ever seen before.

What about you?

How will you embrace the new you in 2019?

How will you create your authentic self in 2019?

What will it take for you to break the habit of thinking by default, thinking and repeating the errors of your past?

How will you become the new you and break the habit of being the old you?

It’s a really delicious question to mull over on the first weekend of 2019. I look forward to speaking with you again soon, next week.

Bye Bye!