Ever felt the nagging inside you – is this all there is? Am I living my best life? Last week I reached the milestone of delivering 100 episodes of my podcast! It has been a process that is transforming me into someone who, with consistency, can live my best life. Today I’ll share with you 5 key lessons from those 100 episodes – foundations to living YOUR best life.
Show Notes
Here is a breakdown of five important lessons…
[01:42] 1. Every single person I’ve interviewed who has achieved anything, started out small, and they ALL suffered serious imposter syndrome.
- My guests have all been successful people, in one way or another living their best life.
- As you accomplish your goals, as long as you keep raising the bar to grow and challenge yourself, you will always feel imposter syndrome in your new zone of performance.
- In Episode 100, Sara Price shares her experience of imposter syndrome at the Leadership Forum on Richard Branson’s Necker Island.
[03:59] 2. To live your best life, it is absolutely crucial to understand the brain – its wiring, its evolution, and why fear exists.
- The brain’s primary purpose is survival- to keep you safe- and when you push yourself into new territory you are not ‘safe’.
- Fear is the brain’s way of keeping you in your comfort zone.
- What does being brave entail? Particularly in the face of the ‘everyday dragons’.
[07:08] 3. You can use your fears to your advantage to get things done.
- Know what your fears are so you can use them.
- Learn how I use my fear of failure to ensure that I deliver on my objectives taking me to the next level of my best life.
[08:39] 4. The subconscious brain processes at 11 million bits per second (bps), whilst the conscious brain only processes at 50 bps. (To learn more about it, head over to Episode 86 where I interview Abby Medcalf).
- Will power (at 50 bps) is finite. It is necessary to understand the subconscious through actions and body sensations in order to get to the bottom of the REAL reasons you do what you do (the 11m bps).
- The most important tool for change is your subconscious brain, so question everything. Listen to Episode 87 for how to reprogram the identity statements – ‘I am’ and ‘I can’.
[14:09] 5. The battle does truly exist in your head.
- It’s only you who can unlock the change you need.
- What is YOUR best life?
- Be mindful of what makes YOU feel good. When do you feel your best energetically? Joyful? Playful? Connected? Passionate? An awareness of beauty? Free of worry?
- Don’t give in to what The World Out There says. What do YOU think?
What my 50 interview guests have taught me is that you need to do the work every day to be mindful of the way you talk to yourself, the way you limit yourself. Only then will you be able to live your best life. It’s a complex concept, and it starts with a desire to be the best version of you.
I want all of you to be brave to be free. Nothing and no-one else can do it for you. Only you. It requires a daily commitment to understanding what makes YOU tick, and how you can use your unique self to be of service to others.
If you are eager to make a change, click on the link below to download the free eBook & Worksheet to start you in the right direction.
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FREE eBook and Worksheet.
Related posts and articles
- 100. Actually… YOU can change the world! with Sara Price
- 86. Talking to your partner about money with Dr Abby Medcalf
- 87. How to overcome your biggest stumbling block to change your life
- 57. From imposter to influencer with Tara Bradford
Further reading
‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’ by Susan Jeffers
Quotes from this episode
‘The challenge of safe, is that it doesn’t lead to you living your best life possible. If you want that, you have to push yourself into new territory.’
‘You can only get true change in order to live your best life when you look at the cause, the REAL reasons for your actions.’
Transcript
Lisa Linfield: 00:09 Hello everybody, and welcome to today’s episode of Working Women’s Wealth. I’m wondering today about whether we really can live our best life. And I’m reflecting on having delivered 100 episodes of my podcast because if I’m truly honest with you, I don’t think I ever thought I would make it to 100 episodes because consistency is actually something I battle a lot with. You see, I like new things, I like exciting things. I like rollercoaster rides. I guess it’s kind of that high passion, high-intensity, high energy side of me. But I struggle to do things consistently. I’ve said many times that the only reason why I’ve consistently exercised for eight years solidly when it comes to training is that I have a personal trainer. And he makes sure that I rock up because I paid the money whether I go or whether I don’t.
But this has been different. This has been something I have done consistently for 100 episodes. So it’s natural that at this milestone I reflect on what I’ve learned from my guests, from myself, and also from the actual process of producing 100 podcast episodes. So I’m going to teach you five of my lessons. And the first one is that every single person I’ve interviewed, and I assume all over who have achieved anything started small. They all started as young human beings, and they all suffered serious imposter syndrome. In fact, most of them still do suffer imposter syndrome. My guests have all been extremely successful. In one way or another, they are doing and living part of their best life. And so their learning is crucial to me. And although I felt like an imposter almost every single day of my life, what I soon worked out for my case is that they’re also feeling like imposters too.
You see, over time as we get to conquer one front, the bar gets raised. Where you once felt like an imposter begins to feel comfortable. But if you’re growing and challenging yourself, you will always feel some form of imposter syndrome in your new frontiers, your new zone of performance. I loved my episode last week with Sarah Price, who was talking about going to the leadership forum on Richard Branson’s Necker Island with all the Bransons. And I really giggled as I imagined her shopping herself into a comma trying to look like she belonged only to find everyone in shorts and t-shirts and to hear every single person she spoke to, ex presidents, Nobel Prize winners, major corporate giants, all felt for some reason that they were out of their league. All had a slight amount of imposter syndrome.
Why? Well, because an ex president might feel intellectually inferior to a Nobel Science Prize winner. And a major corporate giant might feel a little inferior to an ex president. So for some reason, everybody feels imposter syndrome. And I guess that learning for me has been almost an ability to breathe out. That, yes, I feel out of my zone, and, yes, I feel like a complete imposter. But it’s okay because so does everybody else. The second thing I learned is that it is absolutely crucial to understand the brain’s wiring, its evolution and why fear exists. And how we can get on top of all the nuances if we understand brain science. You see your brain’s primary purpose is survival, to keep you safe. But the challenge of safe is that it doesn’t lead to living your best life possible. If you want that, you have to push yourself into new territory, and fundamentally that always goes against safe. You see, you’ve got to think back to a million years ago when we lived in a tribal situation and we had predators.
And so keeping safe and keeping within the tribe was the only way that you would survive and that we as a species would survive. So fear is the brain’s way of keeping you in your comfort zone. It freezes you there, makes you take flight from anything vaguely scary, which every new thing is. And especially damaging is making you fight any form of change or threat to that specific comfort zone. So as Susan Jeffers, the author of the book whose title I love says, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. You see, the reason why I love it is that it acknowledges that you are never going to not feel fear. If you want to take your life, your health, your wealth to the next level, you will feel fear because your brain will resist the change. That is guaranteed. What do you need to do is recognize it, but separate you and your goal from that fear and put in place the steps that’ll get you there.
I call that being brave because brave only ever exists in the presence of fear. The princess warrior is never brave when she’s on the couch with her popcorn watching Netflix. She’s only brave when she’s slaying dragons, and she feels that fear when she’s in the run up to it, when she’s in bed the night before the big battle, in the morning getting dressed. When she’s on her way to the fight. Why? Because that’s when her brain is trying its very hardest to get her to flee away from the danger, to keep her safe. And so that’s when she needs to use every tool and technique she can to feel the fear but be brave and do what it is that she needs to do. And the most important form of brave is in the everyday dragons. Having the conversation you don’t want to have, phoning the person for the job, negotiating a salary increase because the fear of rejection from the tribe is stopping you do all of those things so that you can stay safe in the comfort zone of middle.
The third lesson that I’ve learned is that you can use your fears to your advantage to get things done. So my biggest fears are the fear of failure and the fear of rejection. I guess all things related to belonging to a tribe. In brain terms, my fear is that something I say or do will make me be excluded from the tribe. And my brain thinks if I’m excluded from the tribe, I’m not going to survive. So I’ve used them successfully to launch this podcast and produce 100 episodes, to get my online courses complete, and to deliver the value I need to deliver to my one-on-one clients for wealth management. How? Because the expectations of my tribe are that every Wednesday a new podcast episode will be there. So I make sure it is because I don’t want to let them down. When I wanted to launch my course, I announced the date and started selling it when I had only developed the outline and framework.
You see, I’m so scared of failing that it makes sure that I will deliver on my objectives taking me to the next level of my base life. In effect, my audience and my clients are my accountability partner. They keep me on track. So you can use your fears to your advantage. What you need to be as mindful enough to know what they are and what in actual effect will kickstart you to getting action to get things done. The fourth thing is another element of brain science, and it’s that the subconscious brain processes at 11 million bits per second. We learned this in the episode with Abby Metcalf. The conscious brain only processes at 50. So hold onto that for a moment, 11 million, 50, 11 million, 50. Which one do you think will win? So you can’t wield yourself to change in your conscious brain. It may work for a short time, but it’s not going to work for a long time.
And that’s why we start gym and stop. Always start a diet and stop because your willpower can only last a certain amount of time. At the core of your subconscious is your identity. And that’s expressed as I am and I can or they’re opposites, I am not and I can’t. In my journey and now journeying with my 12 year old daughter, I’ve come to realize about how many of these I can and I am statements come from a very young age where our upper rational brain isn’t fully developed to counter these statements.
They come from those little bitches who themselves are hurting, and so say hurtful things to us on the playground. They come from tired parents who have had a bad day and to rash out an anger totally unrelated to your tiny action. They come from teachers, flawed humans themselves who are trying to control too many children. And the easiest way to do that is to get them to conform. They come from media, magazines, TV, social media, books whose only job is marketing to sell and make more money by selling and making more magazines, TV, social media, books. And all of these are propelled essentially by diet and fashion and fitness industry of billions of dollars.
The terms about the subconscious is that you can only understand it through actions and body sensations. By its very nature, it’s up or below our conscious awareness. And so you have to dig really deep in the reflections of your actions, your words, the things you say and then use that taste that I introduced a while back on five whiskeys and a Heineken repeatedly asking yourself at least five iterations of why or how to get to the real bottom of why you’re behaving a certain way or why you said a certain thing. It comes down to distinguishing between good reasons and real reasons. We stay in the land of good reasons because they excuse ours and other people’s behavior and justify our actions. But like curing your symptoms, you can only get true change in order to live your best life when you look at cause, the real reasons for your actions.
So if there’s any change you’re struggling to make in your life implementing sustained longterm exercise, starting a side hustle, changing your eating, you need to truly understand what the I am statements are that you are believing. I tried to do this in episode 87 when I had my big aha on why I couldn’t myself exercise every single day. When I dug deep, the statements I was believing where daily exercise is non-team sport. And daily exercise only exists to diet and I will never diet again. ill my brain do daily exercise? No, because it fundamentally believes that. I also believe that I’m not a dieter, so I’m not a daily exerciser. I believe that I have never been able to sustain continuous consistent exercise in the past. So therefore, I’m not a daily exerciser. I’m not an early riser, so therefore I’m not going to be a daily exerciser. And doing this is therefore guaranteeing failure.
So what do I do? I keep myself safe in my comfort zone so that I don’t have the pain of failing. Only when I look at those real reasons can I then start reprogramming my brain to say I am a daily exerciser, and I do wake up early. And the list goes on and on, and on. If my subconscious brain tells me that 11 million bits per second of what I can’t do, what chances does my conscious brain of 50 bits per second have me in telling me to exercise every morning? So you have to reprogram and use your subconscious brain because it is the most important tool for change for each one of us to master. And without it, we are going to go into a dragon fight with a toothpick. We never will win. So key to reprogramming yourself is to question everything. And I really do recommend you go and listen to episode 87 on how to reprogram those identity statements.
The battle does truly exist in your head, and this is my last learning, understanding that the dragons are not out there. It’s not everyone else that’s going to unlock the change you need. It’s not someone else that’s stopping you from having greater wealth or health or happiness. It is within you. That battle truly exists in your head. We each need to develop a view of what our best life is. Not someone else’s, not your mom’s, not your dad’s, not even your partner’s. And once you’ve developed an idea of what your best life is, work towards it. And we can only do that if we’re mindful every single day of what makes us feel good. When is it that we feel at our base energetically, bouncy like we can conquer the world? When do we feel contained, at peace with ourselves and those around us?
When do we feel joy or playful, that sense of fun? When do we feel deeply connected to others? That sense of belonging, not fitting in, deeply belonging. When are we deeply aware of beauty? When do we sense God’s grace in our lives? When are we aware that we are helping others, that we’re serving our purpose? And when do we feel passion? When do we feel free of worry? When do we feel that our contribution is making a difference? And when do we feel the satisfaction of solving a big problem or overcoming a big challenge? You see, your best life as a complex concept that is sometimes better to understand when it’s not around. And I’m not talking about tragedy or rock-bottom. The place I see it most is people who have spent their whole entire life in a corporate and are forced to randomly retire on some birthday, their 60th, 62nd or 65th.
When I ask them in their 40s and 50s what they’ll do, they always say, “When I retire, I’m going to do nothing. I’m going to sleep, read, maybe do a few mountain bike races, spend some time in the garden, go on holiday.” Whenever I hear that, I know that trouble lies ahead. Why? Because they have no idea what they truly take for granted. They have no idea how tough losing that sense of belonging is or feeling of making a difference or having your opinion valued, of challenging your brain, helping a youngster, of receiving the respect and praise from your peers, your work tribe. Whatever you think will bring you happiness, being thin, being rich, having a new house, being famous. They are all hollow victories without a deep understanding of what brings you joy and what makes you feel fulfilled.
I love Warren Buffett’s statement, “Of all the billionaires I have known, money just brings out their basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with $1 billion.” Same goes for fat or thin, single or married, anonymous or famous. Whatever you were before you will be after because nothing externally can fill those holes inside you or make you change, only you can. My 50 interview guests have taught me that only once you do the work every day to be mindful of the way you talk to yourself, the conversations in your head, the way you limit your success, only then will you be able to begin that journey of living your best life. Nothing or no one else can change you, only you. That it starts with the desire, deeply wanting to be the best version of you. And as you go, as you journal every moment in the day when you’re at your best, then you will start to see patterns. And you will start to develop a deep sense of what makes you happy, contained, joyful, meaningful.
And also as you go and journal what makes you feel stressed, what makes you feel sad, what makes you feel unhappy, you will start to see the root causes of things that steal your joy. I want all of you to be brave, to be free. I want all of you to love and be loved. I want all of you to know that God gave you amazing gifts and each one of you will find your purpose when you use your unique self to serve others. Because we were made to live in community with other humans and for that design to flourish, it needs for each of us to leverage each other’s strengths. But you can only start doing that once you yourself look deep within and work on how do you live your best life. Where is it that you need to be brave? Where is it that you need to make a stick change? Take your life to the next level.
These 50 episodes of interviews and 50 episodes of preparing solos for each of you have caused me to start on that journey. I am by no means anywhere near the end, and I can absolutely assure you that I have a long way to go. But I do know that every single day I need to make a change, a change for the base, a change in the way I think about myself, a change in the way I see the world and a change to find out what brings me true containment and joy. Because it doesn’t matter whether I’m successful or not, whether I have money or not, whether I’m fat or thin. None of that will make me live my best life. Only the joy that comes from living in this world and having the gratitude for every single day. That’s what’s going to start this process.
So if there is some form of change you need to make, please do go to my website and download my free ebook and worksheet that leverages all of these learnings from the base thinking on change to plot and plan yours. I want all of us to live our best life. So go to workingwomenswealth.com, download that ebook and start the process of journaling today. I’m Lisa Linfield, and this is Working Women’s Wealth. Have a great week.