Strategic Conversations, Part 2 - Root of All Behavior

This is part two of a five-part podcast series on leading Strategic Conversations so you can improve your results and relationships at work. Check out the first episode here. 

In this episode, I explain what's at the root of all behavior. When you understand what drives people's behavior and what drives your behavior, it is so powerful, because now you know how to influence yourself and others. 

What drives your actions? What drives the behavior of your negotiation counterpart? 

You'll learn: 

1. What emotion is and the role it plays in driving our behavior 

2. The difference between neutral circumstances and thoughts, and how we become biased 

3. The thinking that generated $50K then $100K in income for me 

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 63 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee. I specialize in helping women in male-dominated industries who love their jobs but hate office politics.

And I help them become bolder, braver, and better paid.

This is Part Two of a five-part podcast series that I’m doing on how to lead strategic conversations at work to improve your results, your reputation, and relationships.

And, in case you missed it, I highly recommend you go back and listen to the last episode, which was the first part in this five-part series. I talked about how to plan your strategic conversation with a future focus.

This is so important - so important - and many of us miss this part.

It’s important because, when you have future focus, you know what you want for your future and you want what you want from a place of abundance.

And what I mean by that is that, right now, you know you have enough and it’s great...and you want more.

And you appreciate that. You appreciate where you are and you want more and it’s this great feeling of abundant desire, rather than I don’t have enough. I’m a victim and I need more.

And when you’re in that scarcity mindset, it’s not great. You don’t feel great and so then you don’t have a great future focus.

So I wanna encourage you to really think and create your future focus that drives you to come to these strategic conversations with a feeling of calm, with a feeling of confidence, with a feeling of appreciation. Because, when you’re feeling this way and you’re future focused, you become more present in the now.

It’s so cool.

Today, I’m so excited to talk to you about the root of all behavior.

The root of all behavior.

It’s like this secret to the Universe. It is the secret to the Universe.

When you understand what drives people and their behavior and what drives your behavior - why you do what you do - it is so powerful because now you know what you can do to influence your behavior in a way that influences other people’s behavior.

I mean that’s the endgame of negotiation. That’s the endgame of strategic conversations, isn’t it?

So, first, you have to know how...well, before you know the how, you gotta know the why and that’s the part we’re gonna talk about.

And then you influence yourself first before influencing anyone else’s behavior.

So many of us don’t know why we don’t take action, why we don’t ask, why we hesitate to ask for what we want because we don’t understand what’s at the root of our behavior.

So, when I say this is like the secret to the Universe, is it a hyperbole? I don’t think so!

It is not. The root of all behavior is the why behind negotiation experts all agreeing that empathy, listening, and curiosity are the key skills and attributes of great negotiators.

Because, once you understand the root of all behavior, then you can get to it.

Okay, so the first thing I want to establish for you is that feelings drive all behavior and now, if you’re an engineer, a scientist, you’re a logical, rational-minded, technical person and you’re listening to this and you’re like That’s nuts. Feelings don’t drive my behavior! It’s data. It’s information!

Hold your horses there for a minute if you’re thinking that.

Because, when I say feelings, I’m talking about the vibration in your body that you experience as emotion. I’m not talking about the brain chatter that a lot of people associate with what they feel like.

And, when we are driven to take action after we consume specific information or data, we are being driven by the emotion of certainty, the emotion of having authority, the emotion of being right.

So, there are only five things. And feelings are right in the middle of those five things that just happen to explain the root of all behavior.

So what are the five things?

First, there are neutral circumstances, things that happen in our world that we can prove to be true. You have a conversation with Steve on Wednesday or you got an email from a colleague on Thursday. You can print that email and you can prove it in the court of law. You had a phone conversation and there is a log of that phone conversation. It happened.

So, circumstances are neutral, provable, they’re factual.

And this is important. I want you to really pay attention to this.

The second thing that’s really important to understanding the root of all behavior is that we have thoughts about those neutral circumstances and these thoughts are our opinions, our assessment, our interpretation, our judgments and our brains are hardwired for storytelling. We have verbal brains.

If you do speak language, if you do want to understand and communicate language, that is, we have a brain that is just constantly spewing out thoughts, judgments, assessments, opinions, interpretations.

Thoughts are not circumstances. Circumstances are not our thoughts.

Take, for example, I just coached a client who happens to work in a growing tech startup and she’s responsible for this new marketing project and she felt that it was a fact that no one has a clear idea how to execute this project. Those were her words. “No one has a clear idea how to execute this project.” And she felt that this was a fact.

It felt factual. It felt like a circumstance.

But, in fact, it’s her brain’s interpretation of a neutral circumstance called project. There’s this project, right? We can all agree that there’s a project they’re working on and it’s her assessment that no one has a clear idea.

This is a subjective assessment because somebody else could have a completely different thought that the project is going really well. And, in fact, in the same breath, she told me “The project can be executed if we had x, y, and z.”

So, in fact, she had an idea of how to execute the project, so this is really funny.

It might seem like I’m splitting hairs about circumstances and thoughts. This distinction is important. This is really, really important because of the way our brains have evolved, our brains are constantly judging, assessing, opining at the strategic conversation, at the negotiation table.

And we feel, because we’re so close to our thoughts, and for so many years we have thought that our thinking, our assessment, our opinions, our observations are facts, we are going to be biased.

We are going to be biased by what we think because, as humans, we are all biased. There’s nobody who’s not biased by what they think.

This is important and thinking is important because it creates the third thing that lies at the root of all behavior: our emotion.

Remember, I said feelings drive all our actions and emotion is experienced as a vibration in the body, right?

When you feel sad, you feel this energy drop. For me it’s like at the pit of my stomach. I feel the energy drop in my spine and my stomach and sometimes I feel like crying, sometimes I feel like holing up and not seeing people.

When I feel mad, I feel like punching somebody. When I feel mad, I feel like stomping. It’s an emotion that has a vibration in the body and it makes me want to take action, which is the fourth thing, right?

What we do is driven by what we feel.

And sometimes we don’t take action when we feel a certain emotion.

Take, for example, if you feel anxious because you’re thinking Oh, I can’t ask for what I want because then they’ll say no and I can’t deal with rejection. I can’t deal with rejection.

If that is the thought you have in your mind, you may feel anxiety and in order for you to push this anxiety aside, you might not take action. You might procrastinate. Now, I know this because I’ve done this myself for many, many years before I learned how to negotiate for myself and started teaching it to other women.

So the result you create is the sum of all these actions or inactions is the result of your thinking. The result will prove your thought to be right. And the result is the fifth thing in the root of all behavior, right?

So let me give an example.

And, first, to recap: first, there are neutral circumstances that are provable, factual.

Second, there are thoughts, our interpretation, our opinion, our assessment, our observation of neutral circumstances.

And there is the feeling that is generated by what we think.

And number four is what we do or what we don’t do because of the emotion created by the thought.

And, finally, the fifth thing is the result that we have.

I want you to think about this framework and think about the money that you make.

For me, at one point in my career, I made $50,000 while working at a hedge fund. And then a year into the job, I found out the going market rate was $100,000.

And that was a tough wake-up call that I had to figure this out.

I had to learn how to negotiate, learn how to communicate, learn how to engage in strategic conversations, lead and influence other people, so that I can improve my results and not shoot myself in the foot like I just had by earning $50,000 at a hedge fund.

So what was the thinking that had created the result of me making $50,000 at a hedge fund?

I was young, I was fresh out of college and I had the thought that I’m not supposed to ask for more. I’m not supposed to ask for more.

And the feeling that was created by this thought was kind of a fear.

I had the fear of messing up. I had the fear of Oh, I’m doing this new job and I’m a newbie, I don’t know, I shouldn’t ask questions, I should just keep my head down and just do good work and then they’re gonna reward me.

I had the thought that I’m not supposed to ask for more. I had the thought that They’re supposed to reward me and the feeling, one of the feelings that was created by this mindset was one of fear.

And because I was afraid, I didn’t ask for more. I didn’t research more. I didn’t try to figure it out. I just wanted to keep my head down. And that’s what I did. And that’s how I earned $50,000.

Fast-forward, several years later, I was working for tech startups in operations and I had read Women Don’t Ask, I trained, I hired a negotiation coach who specialized in training women. She became my role model.

And then I had a new thought about my salary. The new thought I had was that I will ask for what I want. And I had a future focus of one day making $100,000 and so I asked for what I want because, when I thought to myself on purpose, I’m going to do this, I’m going to negotiate, I’m going to ask for what I want, thinking that thought on purpose generated the feeling of courage that drove my action.

And I did sit down with the co-founders of this startup and I did ask for $100,000. I asked for a $20,000 salary increase.

The long and the short of it was they didn’t give it to me initially but, after fundraising, they did. They gave me a $20,000 salary increase. So, in the meantime, I asked, I kept believing that one day I will earn what I want. I continued to create value in that role and, as a result, one day, fast-forward a couple months later, they did reward me with a $20,000 salary increase and I got the salary of $100,000. That was really cool.

So, what does this mean for you?

How can you raise your self-awareness around what you are thinking about you, about the negotiation process, about the negotiation counterpart, about the potential outcome of this negotiation?

I want you to write it all down.

And don’t try to be more mature or more enlightened. Just write down what you think and what your brain is coming up with and then just observe, Oh, these are my thoughts.

And this is something that I do all the time. A thought download. Just write down all your thoughts - negative, positive, intentional, unintentional - and see what is the impact of the thinking that you’re having, the impact of your mindset around your strategic conversation and how is it impacting your emotions, your current actions and the results that you have now?

By the way, the results you have now, one of which can be the amount of money you make now in your job, is the result of past thinking.

So, think about okay, what was I thinking a year ago? Was I thinking I gotta do whatever it takes to get this job? Or I know my worth and I’m going to ask for that salary increase?

Just notice. Notice how what you were thinking in the past has created the result you have now.

So what this means is that what you think now will create the result you have in the future. What you think now about that conversation, about your counterpart, about the process and potential outcomes will impact the results you have later.

So you want to be really intentional about it, yeah?

Most of us don’t realize that our thinking is creating our results. Most of us feel like we’re at the effect of circumstances that are not neutral but somehow set up against us. I really did believe and feel this way before I learned how to shift my mindset, so to speak.

So, I have some parting thoughts for you.

What if everything about where you are in your career, everything about that upcoming conversation, everything about your counterpart is the way it’s supposed to be?

What if you are where you’re supposed to be?

Because, you know, the world changes depending on our perspective.

I could have a thought This is a great day and I can feel great or I can have the thought This is a terrible day and feel terrible, right?

It’s the same thing about your negotiation. So what I’m saying is how you think will impact how you negotiate.

And how your counterpart is thinking will impact how they show up and how they feel about the negotiation and the results they have from the negotiation.

How you think creates your results and this applies to your salary, this applies to your work, this applies to the relations you have at work. So I wanna leave you with this thought that maybe the first thing you want to do is just simply raise your self-awareness around what you’re thinking.

Write it all down and ask yourself why am I thinking this?

Why?

What emotions are driving your behavior?

What emotions do you want to drive your behavior?

What emotions do you want them to experience?

So, if you want to learn more on this topic, if you really want to start changing your own behavior so you do become bolder, braver, and better paid from a place of genuine self-confidence and real power that comes from within, I have an offer for you.

I have an exclusive six-week coaching program where we’re going to explore what’s not working for you, we’re going to explore your compelling vision, we’re going to explore your emotional mastery, we’re gonna explore how you can cut through the drama, we’re gonna explore how you can create conscious leadership and create intentional outcomes in your career. And one of those best be becoming bolder, braver, and better paid.

So if you want to learn more, you can email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. Come to my site, jamieleecoach.com and I look forward to hearing from you and, next week, I’ll tell you more about how to engage in and lead strategic conversations.

Thank you and have a great week!

Strategic Conversations, Part 1 - Planning with Future Focus

I coach smart women to get promoted and better paid without throwing anyone under the bus, manipulating people, or burning themselves out. 

How? 

I teach simple but powerful concepts that help my clients engage in strategic conversations with a mindset of self-confidence and authentic power. 

Over five podcast episodes, I'll be teaching each of these five simple but powerful concepts that you can immediately implement into your life and career so you can get bolder, braver, and better paid. 

This episode is about the first and most important concept: Planning with Future Focus. 

Three questions I ask my clients to help them with Future Focus is: 

1. WHO are you in the process of becoming? 

2. WHAT results do you want in the future? 

3. HOW can you be your Future Self now? 

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 62 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m Jamie Lee. I’m a coach who helps smart, ambitious women working in male-dominated industries like tech, engineering, finance, energy, etc. get promoted and better paid.

My clients do this without throwing anyone under the bus because, frankly speaking, they hate office politics and who can blame them? And my clients learn how to thrive in their careers without playing little games or manipulating people.

Most importantly, they do it without burning themselves out.

How?

I teach my clients how to engage in strategic conversations with a mindset that generates self-confidence and authentic power.

My clients learn how to negotiate, lead, and influence with emotional mastery, which is the secret to lasting success and genuine confidence.

Now, if you’re listening to this and wondering: Wait, what? Where’s the catch?

Here’s the catch: It’s simple.

Really, no! So simple that you might overlook it, you might disregard it.

I certainly did for the first 35 years of my life, almost 40. The secret is that it’s so simple to master these strategies, to learn the new mindset, but it takes effort, it takes practice, it takes a whole lot of mental focus to get it right.

So it’s simple but not easy.

So I want you to stay tuned for more on this because I will be teaching you, my dear podcast listeners, my thrivers, these simple, powerful, but not always easy to implement concepts right here in this podcast.

Why?

Because you’re born to thrive. Not just survive, not just get by, but thrive.

I believe that.

This past week, I had the amazing privilege of presenting one of my favorite workshops: Strategic Conversations - How to Lead, Influence, and (of course) Thrive for women working in deep foundations right here in Manhattan.

For those of you who are not engineers, like me, I will tell you what deep foundations is. I Googled it and I also learned from having conversations with the engineers this past week: deep foundations is the work geotechnical engineers do - geotechnical means that they work with the earth, the rocks - and they study the earth, the rocks, and figure out the best way to lay down roots for buildings - foundations for buildings, highrises. And we have plenty of them here in New York City.

So, the deeper the roots, the more sophisticated the foundations, the higher the building can rise.

And, on a personal note, this is so cool. This is so cool for me because I recently moved to Hudson Yards here in New York City and Langan, the engineering firm that hosted the workshop this week, it’s the same engineering firm that laid down the deep foundations for Hudson Yards.

It took two years, I learned. Nearly the entire New York office and probably more working around the clock, hundreds of engineers working around the clock for two years. I heard they had to work 24-hour shifts, just around the clock, all hands on deck and they laid down the most technologically advanced and the most deep foundations in the Western Hemisphere. Isn’t that so cool? I think that’s amazing.

And what’s really, really mind-boggling is that Hudson Yards is actually built on top of servicing train lines and so they had to be so sophisticated and it was like laying down some really intricate root canals right next to servicing train lines. And I heard some amazing stories of how engineers - the best engineers - worked around the clock to make this possible.

Anyway, at this workshop this past week, I presented five key ingredients of strategic conversations, how to lead, how to influence so you can thrive in your career by showing up to strategic conversations and leading them.

So, these key ingredients are some of the most simple but powerful concepts that you can immediately implement into your career to get bolder - that’s right - to get braver, of course, and get better paid.

I’ve decided to teach each of these concepts over a five-podcast series starting today. The first of these five concepts is planning with future focus, so that’s what we’ll talk about today.

Most of us are past-focused and I know this because when I ask my coaching clients, “Okay, tell me about where you are now and where you want to go,” they immediately go into their past. They immediately start telling me about where they went to school, how they got their first job, how they got lucky or they didn’t get lucky and now they are where they are. And so they tell me everything about what had happened in their past because we, a lot of people, most of us are past-focused and we feel that what has happened in our past will determine our present and our future.

And when you think that the past determines your present and your future, guess what you get.

More of the same. More of your past.

If you had experienced some things that are unfair...I remember early in my career when I worked at many of these companies, many, most of these companies, I always felt the situation was unfair. And when I thought the situation was unfair, my boss was terrible, he’s not a good manager, things are so unfair for me. And when I thought this, I always sought evidence of how the situation was unfair for me in the past and how the situation was unfair for me now and then I created that by thinking it into the future.

And of course, when I got to the future, that’s what I got because I was always thinking it’s unfair.

And our primitive brains are wired for security, safety, and comfort and I think this explains why so many of us are past-focused as opposed to future-focused because the brain is wired for security, safety, and comfort and the brain will look to repeat patterns of the past so that it can have a sense of security, safety and comfort.

Even if you feel miserable, if you’ve been so miserable in your life, it just feels comfortable being miserable because it’s what is familiar. So then we keep looking for the familiar in the past, in the present, and then again in the future.

What if we said we can have a future focus, not a past focus?

This is simple but it takes mental focus. It takes active imagination to create future focus. And it’s simple but it might feel unnatural and, because it feels unnatural, it might feel uncomfortable and, because it feels uncomfortable, not a lot of people do it. And that’s how you stay stuck in your past focus, repeating the past over and over again.

Nothing changes if you keep looking into the past.

So, I have some key questions to help you create future focus and I hope you take this as an opportunity to apply this to your own life, to your own career, and you can do this by writing down your own answers to these questions.

The first question that I like to ask is: Who are you in the process of becoming?

When we were young, we were always in the process of becoming something new. I remember,  when I graduated kindergarten, I was interviewed at the kindergarten graduation ceremony and the adult asked me “Who do you want to become in the future?” And I said “I want to become a teacher.”

And here I am, teaching.

And when you were in elementary school, who are you in the process of becoming? You were always preparing for the next grade. If you’re in first grade, you’re looking forward to becoming a second-grader. If you’re a second-grader, you’re looking forward to becoming a third-grader and so on and so forth, right?

But then, sometime after college graduation or high school graduation, we stop asking ourselves who are we in the process of becoming?

And we feel like we’ve just become a person.

Or, worse yet, we feel like we need somebody else’s permission to become the next level.

And I see this is my own experience when I felt that I needed the acceptance, the approval of my supervisors, my managers, my employers. I needed them to give me their stamp of approval so that I can become promoted and become a manager and become the next level.

And what I want to offer you is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to become someone new.

You only need your own permission.

You don’t need the school system, you don’t need the authorities, you don’t need the employer to give you a definition of who you are in the process of becoming.

It’s up to you.

If you can imagine it, you can be it.

Take, for example, I have a recent client who works in a male-dominated industry, super smart, super ambitious, her brain is just amazing. And she hates office politics, right? And she kind of struggled with this future focus and then we landed at: I’m in the process of becoming somebody who fulfills her potential.

And that unlocked a lot of self-appreciation, self-acceptance, self-confidence.

And she had a recent win she shared with me, which is that she’s been doing so well in her job right now she got a call from this C-level executive who called her personally and told her that she should continue to act as if she couldn’t fail.

And I think that’s because she has created the mindset of I’m becoming a person who fulfills her potential.

What you think creates your result.

So if you think you are becoming somebody who is a better leader, if you think you are becoming somebody who is bolder, who is braver, who is better paid, then you can make that a reality.

Just by thinking it, believing it and seeing it, imagining it, you have already created this as a possibility for you.

So the only permission you need is yours.

Who are you in the process of becoming?

I am in the process of becoming somebody who creates a scalable coaching business. I am in the process of becoming a coach who creates $250,000 and more in annual revenues. And I love just thinking about who I am in the process of becoming.

Take, for example, you can become somebody who has as much money as you want.

I like to think about what would it be like for me to just have an extra $20,000 in my bank account? It’s just sitting there in my checking account. It’s just sitting there, sitting pretty, and when I go to my checking account, I see it, it’s just there. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a possibility and I am in the process of becoming somebody who has created that result.

So my next question for you to help create a future focus is: What results do you want for yourself in the future?

And this is a big question that a lot of people, surprisingly, struggle with. 9 out of 10 times when I ask my clients, “What do you want for yourself?” the first words out of their mouth are “I don’t know.”

So I want you to take some time and just write down what do I want for myself?

I want to have more money.

I want to be a leader in the industry.

I want to be promoted.

What you want is, I think, something that is sacred. And when you can want something and feel good about wanting it, it’s just magical.

And the secret to this magic is to want what you want from a place of abundance, not scarcity.

And you would know if you’re in a scarcity mindset because you’re thinking, “You know, if I make more money, than it means someone else makes less money and that makes me feel bad. If I win, that means someone has to lose.”

In other words, you’re thinking in a win/lose mindset, a zero-sum game.

You’re thinking there’s only a fixed and limited amount of good things in the world and I shouldn’t be the one to hog it all. I don’t deserve what I want.

The impact of you bringing a scarcity mindset to a strategic conversation is that it results in you bringing a past focus. It results in you thinking, “Well, I did x, so give me y.” It results in you creating this sort of win/lose mindset that can create a haggling situation as opposed to a win/win conversation.

So the alternative to this is to come from a place of abundance, to want what you want and feel good because you’re coming from the mindset of there’s always more and the abundance only grows.

Now, these are two diametrically opposed mindsets and it’s totally okay for us to sort of struggle in terms of straddling from all of our thinking, having been in this scarcity mindset and we’re now trying to cross what I call the River of Misery and really think and believe from an abundance mindset. That’s where I am. And that’s where most of us are because most of us have a human brain, most of us are predisposed to think in scarcity and it takes effort, it takes mental focus to consciously choose to think in an abundance mindset.

In other words, belief is a choice. It’s a choice that takes effort.

And I have been practicing this abundance mindset for a few years now, just a few years since I’ve become a coach, and it has created a tremendous impact in my life, in my thinking, in how I feel, and in the results I create because I now do believe and I do think that when I make more money, when I have created that amazing, scalable business, when I do just have that $20,000 just sitting in my checking account, sitting pretty, my clients get to make more money because when I’m more successful, it means that I get to invest more into making this business scalable, successful, impactful, and that creates positive results in the people I work with.

The work I do changes lives. I mean, right now, I have clients who have generated 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars increase in salary. Just imagine what else is possible if I can grow as a person, as a coach, as a business person.

Imagine the impact that you can make if your abundance only grows and grows.

I think about my mother a lot because I kind of have learned my scarcity mindset from her but, at the same time, I’ve also learned the impact of what happens when women win, when women economically, when women make money.

There’s research that’s quoted by Clinton Global Institute that women around the world in developing countries, when they make money, they invest 90% of it back into their families and that means it goes back into their communities. So, when women win, the world wins.

And my mother showed this to me with her example, even though she taught me a lot of scarcity mindset by her example, she also taught me that when she made money, she made sure it went toward children. We got it. We got it in terms of food, in terms of rent, in terms of clothing, in terms of education, right?

When women win, families, communities, the world wins.

So, when you win, we all win.

It’s a win/win game.

And that is the abundance mindset that is so important for you to bring to yourself, to your future focus, to your strategic conversation.

It’s so powerful when you come to this conversation, let’s say a salary negotiation, with the mindset of There’s plenty of good things in the world. There’s plenty of value that I can create. And there’s plenty of money to go around. And I’m worthy of what I want. I’m worthy of the value I create. I’m worthy of the money I earn.

Just imagine the power of believing it and bringing it with you to the conversation.

This is a tough one to really believe.

I know because I’ve coached my smart, ambitious women around it. It’s so tough but you can believe it if you practice it, if you want to believe it.

A lot of us, a lot of us who are smart, a lot of us who are ambitious, we feel like we need to struggle. We feel like we need to strive, you know?

Again, this is the example I learned from my mother: you gotta strive, you gotta work hard, you gotta put in that extra effort, there’s virtue in working hard.

And of course, this is all great. There’s nothing wrong with that. Working hard feels great.

But if we approach it from a scarcity mindset, there’s only a limited amount of good things and we’re not really sure we’re really worthy of it, so maybe we shouldn’t have what we want. Underneath, there’s the fear that we’re not worthy of our success, which leads to tension, which leads to stress, which leads to subconscious stress, this cognitive dissonance.

But what if you can imagine the person you are currently in the process of becoming? What if you can imagine your future self and you can imagine your future self with absolute love, unconditional love?

And when I ask my clients to imagine their future self, who is successful, who is worthy and when I ask them, “What emotion does your future self feel?”, they almost always say “Present. Calm. In the moment.”

And so this is really fascinating because, the more we think about our future self, the more we think about who we are in the process of becoming, the more we think to believe that we are worthy of what we want for ourselves in the future, we come back into the present. We become present. Now.

This leads to my third question: How can you be your future self now? How can you live into that future vision now? And how can you bring that future self to this strategic conversation?

How would your successful vision of you in the future, what does she look like? How does she hold herself? How does she show up to a strategic conversation?

Would she sit tall? Might she make eye contact? And might she think, “You know, what I want is a done deal because I can imagine the future and it’s amazing and it’s great and I’m worthy of it,” and so it’s not such a big deal that you ask for what you want because you’re coming from a place of abundance, you’re coming from a place of worthiness.

And so another way to think about it is kind of like you’re reverse engineering your future self into the now. You imagine your future, you live into it because what you imagine for the future is what you bring now because when you imagine the future, you feel the emotions now. Just like when you imagine, or when you think about the past, you feel those emotions now. So it’s always what you think now, whether that’s the past or the future.

And the option that I want to offer you is that you can come from an abundance, from a place of worthiness and luxuriate, enjoy what you want, feel good in what you want.

And when you do that, it’s not such a big deal if you’re in this strategic conversation and you encounter some pushback, you hear no, it’s not such a big deal because in the future, you know it’s a done deal. It’s just a small stumbling block right now and you can deal with it.

What couldn’t you ask for? What couldn’t be able to say with honesty if you really came from a place of love, abundance, worthiness, from the future?

So, if you enjoy this, if you enjoyed listening about your future focus and how to bring this future focus to your strategic conversation, I want to invite you to my exclusive six-week coaching program that I’ve just created for women who are ambitious, women who want to become braver leaders and braver leaders who are better paid.

It’s a six-week program.

In the first week, we’re going to explore what’s not working for you.

The second week, we explore that compelling vision of your future.

The third week we talk about emotional mastery because emotional mastery creates negotiation mastery.

And then week four, we talk about how to cut through the drama with your emotional mastery. Week five we talk about your conscious leadership, we put all the elements together.

And then week six it all comes together for us to hone in on the intentional outcomes, the results that you want to create with your leadership, with your mastery of emotions and negotiation.

So, if you are interested and you want to schedule a quick consult to see if this might be a good fit for you, email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com.

I look forward to hearing from you and I will talk to you again next week.

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!

Why It Feels Gross to Claim Value for Ourselves

Clients often tell me, “It feels gross to claim value for myself. It feels like bragging. It’s uncomfortable to assign dollar value to my accomplishments.” 

In this episode, I dispel a persistent myth -- one that was ingrained in me by the patriarchy from a very young age --  that holds us back from generating real self-worth and authentic self-confidence. 

Find out how to generate power, so you can claim value for yourself and become unstoppable as a negotiator. 

Here's where you can access transcriptions of previous episodes and get in touch with me: https://www.jamieleecoach.com/podcast

Your review on iTunes would be super appreciated!

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Hello! Welcome to Episode 52 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

First, I just want to say thank you for listening!

I really appreciate you.

I would love if you would go to iTunes and leave a review because that would help other people find and access this content.

I really appreciate that my listeners are coming back and listening every week, every time I produce content, and I intend to create more podcasts this year, marrying the best of coaching principles, leadership principles, and helping you negotiate so that you can lead, influence, and thrive.

I was away last week. I traveled to Atlanta, Georgia and delivered a negotiation workshop for women who work in the nuclear industry. That was phenomenal!

And today I want to talk to you about why it feels gross to claim value for ourselves at the negotiation table.

When clients come to me, they’re often struggling with speaking and articulating their unique value at the negotiation table, especially when it comes to asking for money.

They tell me, “I don’t want to come across as too aggressive.”

“I don’t want to be seen as arrogant.”

“I don’t want to be seen as selfish or greedy.”

Or the often say, “It feels gross to brag about my accomplishments. It feels gross to assign a dollar to the value I bring.”

Now, I think that this is because, from a very young age, we’ve been trained to seek external validation from others.

I was born in South Korea and I was really trained to seek external validation from authority figures like parents, teachers, basically, the patriarchy.

And we’ve been told that conforming to the expectations of other people will make them feel good about us.

And when they feel good, they reward us with acceptance, recognition, and reward which sometimes takes the form of money.

We’ve been taught this myth that how we do, how we behave, makes other people feel something inside that then causes them to give us what we want and that, basically, the power is in their hands to give us what we really want for ourselves which is acceptance, recognition, and reward.

Take for example this common phrase, “Be a good girl and make mom proud.”

It feels so innocent and yet there is this myth, this lie that when you do something it will make other people feel something.

And I’ll tell you why I think that is not true.

And this line of thinking extends into the workplace where I used to believe that if I work hard and if I keep my head down then my boss will love me, then my boss will reward me with recognition, money, promotions.

When it feels gross to claim value for ourselves, we’re not only experiencing the feeling of powerlessness but we’re experiencing the fear of social rejection and losing the approval of others.

When I was afraid of losing other people’s approval, it was because I was relying on external validation to make me feel good about me on the inside. It was because I was relying on external validation to make me feel that I am worthy and that I can ask for what I want.

I was waiting.

I badly, badly wanted my boss to approve of me so that I could feel good and worthy inside.

So this meant that even though I was a fully grown adult, I was really acting as an emotional child. Emotional child basically means that I was relying on other people to make me feel something good, something worthy, some sense of certainty that I deliver value, that I deliver value and am worth the money that I want.

I believed my boss was responsible for both my positive emotions and negative emotions. I believed he was responsible for my lack of motivation, which I didn’t have a lot of and therefore that he was responsible for my lack of career fulfillment, lack of growth, that I was stuck in my career, and it was all because my boss was not giving me what I wanted so I can feel good and feel certain of my value.

So instead of feeling what I wanted to feel, which was fulfillment and worthiness, I was full of blame, anger, and resentment. They were gross feelings. Those feelings felt really gross.

I was not a lot of fun to be around at this time. I was full of misery. And you know, as the saying goes, misery loves company. I would complain and whine and throw temper tantrums about my boss behind my boss’ back. This is how I behaved as an emotional child.

But here is the truth that I have learned since then. Here is the truth that I think can help us really become powerful from the inside out: It’s that we are 100% responsible for our feelings.

Every moment. In every situation.

Yes, even at work.

Yes, even when it comes to claiming value for ourselves.

And especially when we are negotiating for what we want, for money, for example.

We are 100% responsible for the confidence we bring. We are 100% responsible for the nervousness we feel. We are 100% responsible for the certainty that we want to generate so that we can claim value with confidence.

Now this is because there are only five things in the Universe.

Number one: Circumstances, which are neutral, factual, and provable.

And how we interpret those circumstances is number two: our thoughts, our judgments, our beliefs.

And number three is that our thoughts generate our feelings, our emotions, which is so important in a negotiation.

According to research by MIT professor Jared Curhan, our feelings are the number one factor that is most important to negotiators.

It is not because feelings are fluffy, not because we’re soft people.

It’s because feelings drive number four: our actions. At the root of all our behavior is how we feel, and how we feel drives what we do or don’t do.

And then finally number five: the sum of our actions or inactions creates the results we have.

So, let me give you an example of this.

Back then, when I was acting as an emotional child in the workplace and always blaming my boss and feeling unworthy and therefore I felt gross to claim value for myself, I had the thought that he (it was always a he for some reason) should give me recognition.

At work, which is the neutral circumstance, I want him to give me recognition so that I can feel good about me and my value.

And when I had the thought that he should give me recognition, I felt a lot of resentment. I felt a lot of just this yucky feeling. That’s the phrase I like to label resentment. It’s yucky, it feels yucky to feel resentment, right?

And I was feeling this yucky resentment, I was complaining and whining and throwing temper tantrums behind my boss’ back. I was not speaking up at work. I was not contributing my ideas. I was very passive. I was waiting for him to give me recognition.

In negotiation, this is sometimes called the tiara syndrome, where we’re waiting for people to anoint us with validation and recognition, as opposed to us actively seeking what we want right?

So that’s what I was doing. And the sum of my actions, the result that I was creating by thinking that he should give me recognition, feeling yucky resentment, and not taking any action was that I was not giving myself recognition and I was also not giving him any recognition.

So there was no recognition to go around and it felt even more gross when I thought about claiming my value. There was no sense of power and certainty in this model.

So here’s another model I’d like to suggest:

At work, which is the neutral circumstance, what if you had the thought: I create value?

What if you had the thought: What I do benefits others?

So, don’t make it about other people. Don’t create manuals in which other people have to do certain things to make you feel good. But what if you dropped those manuals, you drop the shoulds, and you came from a place of real authenticity and personal responsibility, emotional responsibility?

I am responsible for how I feel and I can create value at work.

I create value that benefits others.

So, what if you had the thought and you really believed that I create value and I benefit others?

What would that feel like for you?

And maybe at this point you’re hearing this and you’re thinking, “I don’t know, it’s kind of inconceivable for me to think that I just feel that I am creating value that benefits others, period.”

But what if you did?

Because it is a choice. It is a choice for you to think that.

For me, when I think I am creating value that benefits others, it makes me feel valued. It makes me feel like I am worthy. That what I’m doing is worthy.

And from this place of feeling valued, I am motivated to create even more value. I am motivated to step out of my comfort zone and try to learn how I can benefit others.

I would be more willing to listen. I’d be more willing to take action to create even more value, because I feel inspired to think that I create value that benefits others.

And as a result, because I am taking action, because I am taking action from this place of feeling valued and feeling inspired, I would create even more value. And you see how the thought will help support the result that you have.

And the result creates evidence for the thought.

So this is great news because, as I said, we can choose all our thoughts and we can choose all our beliefs. And when we choose empowering thoughts, when choose empowering beliefs without relying on external validation, without relying on other people to make us feel something inside of us, this puts power back in our hands. This gives us that real, authentic power.

And we then can create emotions that we need to drive the actions that we do want to take. For example, claiming value for ourselves at the negotiation table.

If you really believed in yourself and did not rely on other people to tell you that you are valuable, you would be unstoppable when it comes to claiming value for yourself, when it comes to asking for what you want and requesting what you want because not only are you feeling confident from the inside out, you’re not relying on other people’s responses to make you feel good.

Even when they don’t follow through, even when they don’t say yes, you have the choice to decide what that means.

Again, this puts power right back in your hands instead of disempowering you. Instead of losing the negotiation, you can reframe your thinking and you can come back and try again and again, right?

The best negotiators are persistent negotiators because they can generate their own confidence. They can generate their own self-approval. They can generate their own self-recognition.

So this requires breaking the habit of thinking on default or thinking the way society or patriarchy trained us to thing, which is again relying on external validation, relying on other people to make us feel good and giving them a long list - and sometimes we don’t even give them a long list - of manuals, by which I mean a long list of instructions for how they can make us feel good.

Instead of doing that, we make honest requests, we make bold asks, and we don’t get disappointed, we don’t interpret it as a personal failure when people don’t follow through.

And when people don’t follow through, we can still move on.

And when we have this mastery over our thinking and therefore our own emotions, we create negotiation mastery. We become unstoppable. I really believe that.

And that is because when you lose the need for other people to make you feel comfortable, when you lose the need for other people to make you feel liked, or you lose the need to make you feel valuable, what could you not ask for?

There’s nothing that you couldn’t ask for.

We have full authority 100% of the time over how we feel, over how we think about ourselves, about other people and about the value we bring to the negotiation table.

We don’t have to wait for other people to give us acceptance, to give us recognition, to place a tiara on our head so that we can feel certain of our value, so that we don’t feel afraid of claiming value for ourselves.

We can generate that feeling of certainty within ourselves.

It’s not easy. It takes practice. It takes consistent effort. But it is possible.

We also don’t need to worry about what other people think.

Now, I know when people hear this, they will object and say “But, you know, it does matter because what other people think will impact how I rise or don’t rise through the ranks of this organization.”

But, ultimately, we are not what people think.

We are never limited by other people’s thoughts or judgments about us unless we believe them to be true.

And we are more than what people think of us. We are more than what we think of us.

And, in fact, one of the most powerful things that I do as a coach is I work with a client and I ask her to list all of her accomplishments and when I just play it back to her, the list of accomplishments that she has made, it’s always like, wow, you’ve done all of this. That’s amazing, right?

For a lot of us, it’s hard to feel that what we have done is worthwhile, worth the value that we’re asking for because we tend to be perfectionists, because we tend to wait for other people to give us validation.

But when we drop that need, we realize that what we have done is really valuable.

Who we are is uniquely valuable.

So, we have the power to decide who we are.

We have the power to decide who we will become in the future and that will give you a really powerful focus, a future focus, that will make you influential and make people inspired to change the status quo, which is basically the endgame of negotiation, right?

So, from this place of real and authentic power, we can generate self-acceptance. We can generate self-approval. We can generate real self-confidence.

And I just want to end this by sharing with you that this is the outcome I coach my clients to create for themselves so that they can lead, so that they can influence, so that they can negotiate, so that they can thrive on their own terms.

And I think that is a really beautiful outcome that is possible for everyone at any time because, again, we are 100% responsible for our feelings and we are capable of it.

So I hope that helps you think through why it feels gross to claim value for ourselves. I hope it helps you to put that power back in your hands.

I would love to hear from you: jamieleecoach.com/podcast. If you would leave a review, that would be fabulous.

Thank you so much and I will talk to you next week.

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!