[00:00:00] And welcome to the scary goals club. I am your host, Hazel Robertson. And I believe that to make the impact that you know, you're called to make in the world, it requires setting bigger, scarier goals, and then becoming the person who creates them. That is what I am here to show you how to do. That's what we're diving into.
Mindset tools, tricks, really simple, practical, actionable steps. You can take and start applying straight away. Cause. Or whatever you believe, we have this one life that we definitely know about. Start making the impact you know you want to make in the world. Fear is not a reason to stop. We keep going. We work through the fear.
That is what we do in the Scary Ghouls Club. So come on in, come join, hit subscribe, and let's get started.
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Hi and welcome to episode 24 of the Scary Goals Club podcast. Now it's quite interesting that I messed that up at the [00:01:00] beginning and I have left it in because what I want to talk about today, that is an amazing example to explain, I want to talk about having your own back and why that is. The most important thing for going after scary goals, because the more that you can have your own back, meaning being kind to yourself, the easier it's going to be to continue to show up.
Even when you make mistakes, even when you fail, even when things are not working as you thought. now, the reason that I wanted to talk about this today on the podcast is I put up an Instagram story, I think it was yesterday, and just basing it on something that's come up in a few coaching sessions with clients over the last few weeks.
And I got such a good response from it. People were leaving messages and like replying and saying, Oh, thanks. This is so helpful. And I thought, actually, it's such a useful tool and way of thinking and something that I use with my clients and with myself, but it was like, okay, I want to put it on the podcast so that you have access to it as well.
[00:02:00] And. There's some common misconceptions. So oftentimes we think, and I used to think this, pretty much most of my clients used to think this as well, maybe you think this too, that if we are mean to ourselves, if we pick out the things we didn't do right, if we focus on like the things we haven't done, that we didn't do properly, the mistakes, like beat ourselves up, that somehow that's going to make us want to try harder.
And actually the opposite is true, because If you think about it, like, if you're telling yourself, oh, that wasn't good enough, like, oh, you made such a mistake, or you're so stupid, or you're whatever, that's not enough, like, this narrative that comes around, and also knowing these are thoughts, and these are often thought loops, or habitual, and if you imagine, like, you're trying to work, you're trying to, like, work on whatever it is, or your scary goal, or some project, and literally someone is coming in, and, like, knocking on your door, like, excuse me.
Just to let you know, like, you're not good enough. Remember that time that you messed up that thing in that last presentation you did? Like, [00:03:00] better not do that again, when you're about to go into this meeting, and it's like 10 minutes later, knock, knock, knock. Hey, just to let you know, like, you better not mess things up.
Like, remember that time that you didn't get this right and you made that mistake? Would literally be exhausting. Can you imagine, like, if someone just kept coming in and doing that? And yet that is what is going on in our brain. That is what we are doing to ourselves. It's our brain is doing to us just on repeat this like negative thought loops and I don't often use the words positive and negative when I'm talking about thoughts.
It's the same when I talk about feelings because they are neither good nor bad, but I'll say I'm helpful. So when there are like thoughts coming in that our brain is offering us and we believe them, that's the key thing. Our brain can offer us thoughts and if we don't believe them, if we're like, Oh yeah, there's my brain.
It doesn't really matter because we're not having an emotional charge associated with it and it's not changing our behavior. Having done a lot of this work, I can, not all the time, but sometimes I can watch if my brain, like I'm picking up, if you're watching this video, picking up like a [00:04:00] whiteboard marker, my brain can be like, Oh, you're not good enough for this.
You're not this. It'll come in with this. quote unquote negative or unhelpful self talk, and I can just notice it and be like, thanks brain, but we're not going there today. And like, it doesn't change my behavior. I just get back on with what I was doing. It's almost like I can put the pen down. I'm like, I'm not getting caught up in this thinking.
But oftentimes, certainly before we do this work, I'm Before I got, got coached and had a coach before my clients got coached and had a coach, or if you've done any therapy, like we're not often aware that these thoughts are actually optional and that we can just let them be and that we don't need to get caught up in them.
But yeah, imagining someone is coming in, literally like knocking on your door, checking in, like, how do these thoughts make you feel? Like, when I think, oh, I'm not good enough at whatever, I'm not a good enough podcaster, I'm not a good enough coach, I'm not good enough this, I'm not good enough that, like, there's always going to be something my brain can find.
It makes me shut down in shame, I feel guilt, [00:05:00] anxious. It's not just like, not good enough, but any times where it's like, oh, you made that mistake. You made this mistake. Oh, that was terrible. That was so you're so embarrassing, like the way that you acted on camera, the way that you did these things.
And it just makes me completely shut down. And the same with my clients as well. It's like when they are like negative and adding this judgment and the self talk on top of whatever has happened, like they're humaning around in the world doing human things. They make a mistake because we are human. We all make mistakes because that's just like, we're not robots.
We're not machines. Like we're not going to get everything quote unquote right all the time. Then when they're adding like this layer on top of like being themselves up and all this judgment, it just makes a situation that maybe a bit challenging to deal with anyway, like even harder. And.
So knowing that, like, it's a complete lie that our brain has told us that if we are mean to ourselves, it's going to make us try harder. Like literally it has the opposite effect for me and for so many people that I coach. It's [00:06:00] like they just shut down. They're not showing up in a bigger way. Everything just feels harder and heavier.
And it's like, yeah, Again, imagining your brain is that person coming in and pointing out all the mistakes and focusing your attention on that. Because here's the thing, what we focus our attention on the most, we create more of. It's almost like we put on these glasses this filter, and if we are only looking for the mistakes and the things that we're not doing quote unquote right, we will see them.
So not only will we see them, like our brain will find all this evidence, but our brain loves to prove itself right. So then because we're feeling maybe like uncertain or unsure or like about making mistakes, we're actually more likely to then be making mistakes because we're second guessing ourselves or we're going to be hiding and we're not going to even do things that we might make a mistake on because we're so scared of making mistakes, because we're so scared of how mean we're going to be to ourselves if we make these mistakes.
Something actually we have full control over. Because a lot of the [00:07:00] negative self talk is a habitual response. And these are like thoughts and beliefs that we have internalized. Often it's from childhood, where we actually have no control. We are like little sponges when we're kids and just taking on beliefs from the world.
And if someone has always been pointing out. Things that we shouldn't do, or where we're not enough, or where we've made mistakes, like, we will take that on. It's the same even if you go through school it's like, focusing on like, oh, don't make mistakes, don't get an F, don't fail, failure's bad, like, we're fed this from society.
We're also fed from like, advertising, it's like, buy this thing, then you'll be beautiful enough, then you'll be Do this course, then you'll be smart enough to do this thing, then you'll be confident enough. Like there's, there's so much that we are just taking in that we don't even realize on a subconscious level, telling us we are not good enough at something, telling us we quote unquote should be better if we do this thing by this thing, think in this way, whatever.
So no wonder we are going through like as humans. Only [00:08:00] seeing where we're not enough, only seeing that gap between this like aspiration that we may never get to because it's made up or it's theoretical,
and actually where we are now.
And so what we want to be doing to help us go after things we've not done before, like scary goals, put ourselves out there, continue to show up even when we don't want to, even when we've messed something up, is be kind to ourselves. Is have our own back and have our own back just means knowing like for me it's like that resilience piece knowing that no matter what happens I know that I'm going to be okay because I'm going to be nice to myself.
I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to rest. I'm going to give myself a cuddle when I'm not feeling great. I'm going to only say nice things to myself. I just want to say I'm a human. This doesn't always happen this way. I used to have a lot, a lot of negative self talk to the point that I actually ended up getting completely burned out.
It was like nothing I did was ever enough. And I was like, just so emotionally drained. from this like, not enough, not enough, not [00:09:00] enough, I got burned out. That's when I had therapy and started to understand that like, mind body connection of, the thoughts that we are thinking, that we are believing, and that we are telling ourselves drives how we are feeling and our physiological response and how stressed we are or not stressed we are, and then how we are showing up in the world.
And That really kickstarted the work to me actually becoming a coach and a mindset coach and understanding some of these tools on a deeper level and then helping others with them as well. And so for me, it's this resilience that like, I know that whatever happens, I'm going to be okay. And it's something I help my clients with as well.
It's like that they have the tools that no matter if they fail, if they make a public failure, if they look, quote unquote, they think they look stupid or mess something up or whatever it is that they are going to be okay. Because they know that they're going to be kind to themselves. And it really is the biggest gift you can give yourself, because it's a good, like, If you know that you're going to be [00:10:00] okay, no matter how silly you look, what mistakes you make, what comments people say about you or whatever happens in a meeting online, anything on your way to your scary goal, you're going to be like, just more up for trying things and more up for putting yourself out there in a bigger way and more up for actually helping people.
And so I want to give you a specific example. A few years ago, so when I started the coaching business, I started doing Instagram lives. And so I went live on Instagram and was like sharing a bit of some teaching and some things that I was going through.
And then at the end was like, if you want to chat about any of this, and what I'd meant to say was drop me a message and let's grab a coffee. Instead, I said, drop me a coffee and let's have a message. And when I came off that live, I was like, Oh my goodness. I can't even remember how many people were on the live.
I don't know. But I completely shut down. I was so embarrassed. I was like, you're so [00:11:00] embarrassing. The narrative in my head was like, you don't know what you're doing. You're never going to be a coach. You don't even know how to show up online. You're terrible on camera. You are so embarrassing. I can't believe you did that.
You messed that up. Like, no one's going to reach out to you. No one's going to want to coach with you. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. All of that, like, it was so, like, so thick and heavy voice in my head and I just completely shut down for the rest of that day. I'm like all of the next day I was in bed, like under the duvet just, and I had the tools of coaching.
So I was processing a lot of feelings, like processing through waves and waves of guilt. Meaning, like, I think I've done something wrong, of shame, meaning like there's something wrong with me, of embarrassment, of just imagining other people being like, she's so stupid. Who does she think she is? She doesn't even know what she's talking about.
What, like, they came up in like anxiety about thinking about going back, like, on a live or like showing up online. It was coming like thick and fast. I did take care of myself and I did [00:12:00] process through the feelings that I had and I was able to, you know, after like. A few nights of rest and sleep and like some days of just like processing it through like I was able to feel okay with it.
And I even remember like a year or so later doing a webinar and I'd set it up accidentally with a passcode. And so it was like on live like no one's there and then I was like I'll just check my emails quickly and there was floods of emails like it needs a passcode I can't get in I can't get in. So I did.
Scramble, find this passcode, email it out to everyone that signed up, and it was fine. Like I was able to do it, but again after it was just those like waves and just like oh, you didn't do this, you didn't do that, like it still came back. Again I was able to take care of myself and move through it. So when I was posting this on my stories yesterday, I messed up my words at the start. And at the start of this podcast, I messed up my words. And literally it doesn't bother me anymore because I'm no longer mean to myself. I've also had practice, like practice helps of [00:13:00] being like, okay, it wasn't so bad.
Like I didn't die. I'm still a coach. I'm not canceled. I'm just messing up my words on the internet. Okay. Bye. Bye. Like all of these things that we think might happen, it's like, oh wait, other people are actually just getting on with their lives and literally don't care. Like they literally don't care. And so practice does help, but I'm just so much kinder to myself at the moment for any mistakes I make, I'm just like, okay, I'm human.
Like humans make mistakes. Sometimes I mess up my words. If I'm speaking to someone one on one and I mess up my words, sometimes my brain moves a million miles an hour. And like, Like my words can't keep up with like where my brain is going. So sometimes I mess things up and I'm just having to do it online as well.
And I just don't make it a big deal anymore. And it's helped me because if I think back like that live after when I just shut down like a few years ago I didn't show up online for like a few weeks, I didn't post anything and I wasn't helping anyone. Like I wasn't sharing tools that could be useful for someone [00:14:00] in that moment if they just need that one piece of information in their day.
I wasn't offering that. I wasn't sharing that because I was so in my own head, beating myself up and being so hard on myself. And it made it so much harder to then show up online again and do a live again because it was like, Oh, if I mess this up, I'm going to spin out and be in bed for a whole day and be beating myself up.
And if you think about it for your goal, like if you are so mean to yourself and you pick holes in any mistake you made, make. No judgment if you do this. Literally I've done this most of my life. It's only been the last few years I've like been unpacking that and still sometimes I can beat myself up like I can't always catch it but usually I can.
so if you're imagining like if you don't get the result you want or you do make a mistake, your brain isn't actually afraid of making the mistake. It's afraid of how mean you're going to be to yourself, because that's going to generate some uncomfortable feeling like anxiety, like shame, like guilt, that feel really [00:15:00] uncomfortable to us as humans and are like, something's gone wrong.
And yet we are fully responsible for those feelings because our feelings are driven by what we are thinking, we're telling ourselves. And so that narrative of being mean to ourselves and telling us things that are like, you know, untrue and unhelpful create those uncomfortable feelings that our brain now wants to avoid.
because if you think about it, like my very first Instagram live, I was afraid of other Instagram lives of messing up, not because of making a mistake. Because I was so afraid of just being in bed and beating myself up in the heaviness that I was causing to myself, like I was in full control over it.
Because even now, and like, we know it's not messing up your words or whatever it could be with your scary goal. Because I messed up my words today and yesterday and literally, like, Draw a line under it, and I'm on to the next thing. Like, it just doesn't even bother me anymore. So it's not the mistake that your brain is actually afraid of.
Which is good news, because you can't control making mistakes. Like, you're gonna make mistakes. [00:16:00] It's not like, oh, if I make a mistake. It's like, no, when you make a mistake, you are guaranteed to make mistakes. Welcome to being a human. You're going to mess something up at some point and that's okay. You can also change your response to that.
Just because you made a mistake doesn't mean you need to beat yourself up for it. And here's the thing is the way that we speak to ourselves, like if we're beating ourselves up or like quote, unquote, negative self talk. We're actually in full control over it. Maybe it happened from beliefs we've internalized in the past and what we've picked up as kids and through society, and it just becomes a habitual response.
The only reason your brain is offering you those thoughts is because it's just practiced them so many times. But we have this amazing thing called neuroplasticity, which means We can change and rewire our brain based on experience. Meaning, as soon as you start shifting that narrative, you're creating new, like, neural pathways.
So, the neural pathways you've used before, which are gonna be, like, super fat, like, imagine them, like, a super highway with, like, loads of traffic [00:17:00] on them. That's why, like, That's your default response, just because they've been used loads and loads of times. They're very, strengthened. And you're just starting a new neural pathway of actually saying kind things to yourself, or just letting mistakes go and not beating yourself up.
It's gonna feel a bit clunky at first, it's gonna feel really weird, but it's only because it's like you're, you know, pumping a pass through the heather, or like, breaking ground, like, as you're going through the trees. The more that you practice it, the easier it's going to be to walk that path, okay? So just because you have beaten yourself up in the past and had quote unquote negative self talk in the past and been really, really hard on yourself, it actually doesn't mean that that's what's going to happen in the future.
You can, and here's the thing, you can decide right in this moment, okay? So right now, do it with me. Decide right now. You are no longer going to be mean to yourself. That's just not what you're doing anymore, that that's just not who you are becoming and is part of where you are going. Maybe that happened in the past and now that you know this, it's not where you're actually [00:18:00] going.
You can just decide right now that it's not. And then I'm going to talk through some ways to actually build in being kind to yourself. Okay.
Okay. So there's three steps. That are going to help you start to shift that narrative and start being kind to yourself. And the first one, which you've kind of done already, is deciding that you are not going to be mean to yourself anymore. Deciding that you are only going to say helpful things to yourself.
Make that decision right now. And it means that in the moment, If your brain starts offering you these thoughts that aren't helpful, telling you how it's not enough, telling you how you're this, like, giving you all of these old beliefs that you've inherited from somewhere, you can just say, okay, thanks, but no thanks.
Like, we're not doing this anymore. Because when you make that decision that you were going to change a habit and change a behavior, Because it's not aligning with where you're going, then even when you're doing that behavior, you can be like, Oh, wait. Oh, we're not doing this anymore. Okay, this isn't who I am becoming.
This isn't who I am. This is past me. Now I know that I can just decide I'm not doing it anymore. So the first [00:19:00] one, deciding.
And then the second one is writing down your wins. So showing your brain, and I've talked about this on a previous episode, but showing your brain all the things that you are doing that's working, writing down any success and really sitting with it. Not just being like, cool, cool. I've written down my wins onto the next thing, sitting with it and being like, that was amazing.
Like I created that. I did that. I showed up in this way. So writing down your wins, whether it's every day or every week, that will help you start to again, put on those glasses where you're celebrating how you are doing things well, showing up, continuing to show up and not just focusing on like the not enough and like the gap and the things to beat yourself up with.
And then the third thing is start saying out loud or in your head, but out loud if you can kind things to yourself. And you can even write them down if that helps But even like when you, for example, like if you're in a meeting or you are showing up [00:20:00] to a call or doing a webinar or posting something online, something where you're maybe like, oh, not wanting to do it.
When you go and do it, well when you are doing it, just saying like, you're doing amazing, like keep going, you've got this, like words of encouragement. And then also if you have done it, no matter what the outcome, just be like, you showed up, like you did it, you're doing so amazing, people make mistakes, it's all good, we'll learn from next, for next time.
And just like saying kind things to yourself in the moment. And what can be really helpful is thinking about like, how would you speak to a best friend, a colleague, your kid, yourself as a kid, like anyone else? Because often we speak to ourselves in such a mean way that we wouldn't ever speak to anyone else like this.
So thinking how would you offer words of encouragement to someone else who's going through the same thing? Say those things to yourself. That's how you can practice. And it's going to feel so freaking weird at first because it's almost, it's like, oh, this feels really weird. And a lot of, certainly I used to think this, and a lot of clients think this as well is like, [00:21:00] well, it's going to make me really big headed.
It's going to make me like really arrogant, become like narcissistic. And I just want to offer that if you have a fear of being any of those things. You're probably never ever going to be because arrogance is thinking that we are somehow better than other people.
if you're even worried about that becoming a thing, you are not the type of person that that's going to happen to.
And it's thinking not about like other people. It's like, how are you different and changing and growing and learning from yesterday or from this morning? That's what this is about. It's not becoming better than other people. It's becoming better than yourself yesterday, last week, a few days ago, and not even better, just kinder to yourself.
learning more about yourself. . So be kind to yourself. Oh yeah.
also, so this is a double episode, as in, I have also recorded a pep talk that you can listen to whenever you need, and it will be the next episode in the, in the list. So the one that's newer than this, I'll, I'll publish them both at the same time. [00:22:00] So if you are ever like finding it hard to be kind to yourself, things feel like they're not working, just a bit like put that on, listen to it.
Take And that will help you, like, give yourself a pep talk if it's maybe hard to access that for yourself. And again, some of those things, like you can access it and start saying that to yourself as well. So I hope you have an amazing rest of the day and an amazing rest of the week and I'll see you next time.
Bye.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If this was helpful, please hit subscribe and leave a review. This helps get this work in the hands of more purposeful people. That is more people creating bigger, scarier goals, making an even bigger impact in the world. And if you want to take this work deeper and work with me directly, head to the show note and I put all of the information there.
If you've got any questions or if there's anything you're like, ooh, I'd love you to talk about that on the pod, please just get in touch. I love hearing from you guys. And I'll see you next time in the Scary Ghouls Club.
