[00:00:00] Hi, 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 are 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 are diving into with mindset tools.
Tricks. Really simple, practical, actionable steps you can take and start applying straight away. 'cause whatever you believe, we have this one life that we definitely know about. Start making the impact, you know you wanna 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 Goals Club. So come on in, come join, hit subscribe, and let's get started.
Hi, and welcome to the Scary Goals Club Podcast. I'm your host, Hazel Robertson, and I am here and I have the loveliest hot drink. I'm gonna tell you all about [00:01:00] it. First of all, it's in my favorite mug. Fkynn chose it. We were at this like craft fair where there's like makers can sell their own art and things that they've made.
And so we got to meet the lady who's like made this, it's this like ceramic. She's like made this ceramic and hand-painted, painted mug flin shows the color, and in it I am having a hot cacao with oat milk, but I'm gonna give you the ingredients in case you wanna make it. It's so good. So a bit of cacao. A bit of, and you can like mix it with the oat milk and then a bit of honey.
I actually put in a little bit extra honey and it's literally so good. I'm gonna be buzzing on this podcast. Normally I'm put in a teaspoon and this was like a very large heaped teaspoon of honey put in how much honey you want or not. I sometimes I have it without honey. We don't have any. But anyway, the bit of honey in it.
Cayenne pepper. So this gives it a bit of spice. I'm probably gonna start sweating and like, I was like, oh, cool, it's not so hot here. And then literally had a few sips of this. It's like, I'm so warm, so cayenne pepper, [00:02:00] cinnamon, and turmeric as well. And then I've, we've got this like milk frother, so it was like froth oat milk.
Top it up with that. And literally it's so, so good. It's like spicy warming, warming. Everything you want on a warm summer's day anyway. Cool. So that is my hot drink. Also, also something else really fun I wanna share. So this morning look at to print a few things off and Flynn was wanting to like play with a printer and it was like, oh no.
And it was like trying to like encourage him to do something else, but also wanting to encourage his curiosity as well. So he was obviously like interested in like how it worked and, and with the printer it's like you have to print something from the computer or from our phone, so that's not gonna work.
So we lifted up the lid on it. And I showed him how to work the scanner and it's so cute. He was taking like, I'll see if I can move this round, if this is gonna work. I dunno. Yeah, you can kind of see there, he's taking like scans of his face and of his feet and his hands and like of our hands together and I had them, they were like all in, out on the floor and I was [00:03:00] like, stick them up there.
So it's so cute seeing all his little hands and his like face like playing with the scanner. Anyway. That's my news. That's today's this morning's news. so today I wanted to dive into something that, this has come up a lot recently in conversations, in coaching sessions, and I know is something I personally have struggled with, not struggled with, but something that I have gone through a process of doing and then kind of pulled myself back from it.
So like I can quickly spot it when one of my clients is like in that place. And is this, it is using mindset coaching, manifestation work, all of this like self-development and self-improvement stuff against ourselves. And it goes a little bit something like this. So we are taught and like this is how our brains work, that like what we are believing the most, what we are focusing our attention on.
We [00:04:00] will create more of, it's like the glasses, the lens that we put on of how we see the world. If we keep putting them on enough, we start feeling that way. We start acting that way. We start becoming that person. We start shifting that reality. The phrase is, it's like. Thoughts become things like whatever you think the most, you'll create more of.
It's like what you put your attention on. And yes, that is true, but we can al almost like use it against ourselves of like getting into a place where it's almost this fear that if we are not thinking positively and visualizing our future and imagining the future and imagining the best case and thinking about everything and feeling good all the time, or being high vibe, or whatever the phrases are that.
Maybe you've heard or maybe you use yourself, that if we are not this all the time, that somehow we're gonna create this reality that we don't want. It's like, oh no. It's almost like we can get afraid of quote unquote unhelpful thoughts or quote unquote [00:05:00] negative thoughts. We can get almost afraid of quote unquote negative feelings.
I don't like to use the word negative. I prefer to use the word uncomfortable feelings, basically any feeling that. We're not, it's not like an elevated one where we're like, oh, joy and abundance and happiness, and flow and ease. The ones that feel like a little bit heavier. Oftentimes what can happen is when we start doing this work, when we notice maybe a slight like heavier feeling coming up, we wanna just ignore.
It's like, oh, no, I, I can't, I can't feel this right now because it's almost like I'm gonna get stuck in it. Then I'm just gonna. Like get all consumed by it and then I'm not gonna be able to live the life I want and create the reality I want. And if this is you, it's normal. Okay. I have done this. I think pretty much everyone who've coach has gone through this same process where.
Once we start learning this work, and it's so powerful and we realize we can change our mindset and [00:06:00] we realize that we can release old stories and we realize that we can feel however we wanna feel on purpose, and we start to see things changing and we're taking different actions and we're showing up differently and we're feeling differently and things are just starting to happen and, and we're creating different outcomes, our reality is changing because our internal reality is changing.
So we change the internal first and then the external shifts. It can become, it's like, oh, this is so exciting, and so we want to do more of it, and then we can fall into this trap of, oh no, I can't feel a negative of feeling like I have to just switch it to something positive. And this might come up for you in a few different ways of maybe it's ignoring the feeling or being like, I don't have time for this.
Maybe you notice there's some unease, some sadness, some grief, some uncertainty, some anxiety, something coming up that feels a little bit like. Heavier and it's almost like, oh, I don't have time. Like I don't wanna look at it like, I don't have time to do this. I shouldn't. It's like we can [00:07:00] almost tell ourselves I shouldn't be feeling this way.
We can get into thought swapping. So this is, say, once you start doing this work and you're noticing the thoughts that are coming up and you're practicing what's called metacognition, so you're noticing the thoughts going past your brain, offering you the thoughts, and you're not getting caught up in them, but you're noticing them.
It can be easy to just. I'd be like, oh, I'll just reframe this and I'll think some other way and I'll just push it away and swap this thought from this thought of like, I can't do it. Of course I can do it. Yay. And just like thinking positive and just, I keep thinking positive. This will happen. It doesn't work.
Okay. Because the only way that we take. Different action and change things in our life is if we are genuinely feeling differently, and if we're swapping out thoughts and just trying to believe something and think positive if we're not actually believing it. Like if you're telling yourself, oh, of course I can do this thing, [00:08:00] but I've never done before and oh, I had all this self doubt coming up.
But like, of course you can do, yeah, just think positive, but inside your body knows that that feels like a lie. It doesn't feel like a truth to you. There's a mismatch between what you're pretending to believe in your mind. In your conscious mind, which is about 5% of basically like what we actually do and what we're aware of.
And then our subconscious mind, is about 95%. And this is what's actually running the show. And if there is a disconnect between what we are like. Consciously, we want this thing, but subconsciously there's a part of us that doesn't believe it is maybe scared if we go after it or doesn't think, or is wondering what people will think.
If we go after the goal, it's not gonna act. We're not gonna actually take the behavior to go and do it. So we'll try and think positive, but nothing will actually change. And it's almost like we're gaslighting ourselves. It's like, yeah, just like, of course I feel this way. It's like, no, don't do that to yourself.
Don't do that to yourself. Also. [00:09:00] It is not possible to feel good all the time. We are humans. We are having a human experience. We had these amazing, amazing, powerful brains. We don't get an instruction manual. We don't get taught how they work. How they work, which is why this work is so important to me and sharing.
This is like, once I learned things, I wanna share it with you.
And yes, they are amazingly powerful minds and brains that can create literally anything that we want. However, there is also a part of our brain that is wired for survival, and it's like this mini fire alarm, the amygdala in like the limbic system of our brain, which. Is scanning for danger is looking for things that are unknown, things that are new, things that could happen again, that have like happened in the past.
It's looking for any kind of danger and it will send the alarm and send our body into a stress state like fight or flight. And this is just how our brains work there. It's like we don't have an off switch for this. And it's amazing that they work this way because if we're about to step out into busy [00:10:00] traffic and there's a bus coming or a car coming.
It will like, like we will react so quickly and we will step back. It also means if we are thinking about doing a presentation or standing up in front of people, and maybe we got laughed at at school when we did something on stage or we forgot what we were saying and the class laughed us when we were 12, our brain and our body remembers that.
And so any feeling that we felt then is gonna come up again when we were thinking about doing a presentation. Even though there's no threat, it's your lovely coworkers. They adore you and they want the best for you. Still you can have that same emotional response that you had when you were 12, and so your body's like, do not do this thing like, this feels like a threat, even though there's no actual threat.
So our brain doesn't know the difference between a real threat of actually physical danger where we might die, like get hit by a car or a threat that is imagined that we're just thinking about, and there's no actual physical danger. It's just. It feels scary because anything where we're separated [00:11:00] from the tribe or where we're looking different or being judged, used to evolutionary wise, when we were in tribes used to mean death.
'cause we would have to find our own food and fend for ourselves and fight for ourselves. So anything where we're separated from the tribe feels like a threat to our system. And so our brain's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't do the thing. So just knowing that like. This is just how our brain works and it's amazing.
It's kept us alive. It's got us this far. If you're here today, now it's because your brain has been working perfectly. And so we're, because of this, we are going to have quote unquote, negative feelings we're going to have. We're gonna switch into stress states based on something that's happened in the past, and our brain is imagining could happen again, and it wants to protect us.
Having quote unquote negative feelings or uncomfortable feelings is actually just part of being a human. And we think about it, it's like we want to have uncomfortable feelings. We want to have negative feelings like. Just a recent example, I dunno whenever you're listening to this back, but like there's horrendous stuff going on around the [00:12:00] world at the moment, especially in Gaza and like, we don't want to feel good about that.
That's not something you want to be witnessing and watching and like looking on from afar. And feeling happy about. That's, we don't want to be feeling those things. We want to be feeling grief and shock and anger and sadness and disbelief, like those are normal human responses to something that feels almost like incomprehensible.
So quote unquote negative feelings are part of the human experience. They're not going away. And so to think, you know, when we get into the, I can't feel these feelings, it's gonna mean I can't create the life I want. That is just, it's just not true and it's just not possible. Like, it's not possible to be on this like hi vibe floating around like state all the time.
It's just, unless you're like maybe in a bubble meditating all the time, you know? But even then, surely there's gonna be something that like pops up. But if you are a human living your life, you're gonna be slipping into [00:13:00] a stress survival state from time to time. Now, here's the thing. The key thing is when you notice that your body has gone into a stress response, that it's in a survival.
So when I say survival mode, I just mean your amygdala's calling the shots. This like little fire alarm. It's very, it's a very like primitive part of your brain that's wired for survival. And when we are in a survival state, our creativity goes offline. Our prefrontal cortex, like the human part of our brain at the front of our head like that goes offline.
Our long-term, logical, rational reasoning goes offline. Our like imagination, like creativity and seeing possibility and like vision for the future and how amazing it could be. Literally all goes offline. We are emotional, we are reactive. We are just trying to get out of danger. So like our palms are sweating, our digestive system shuts off, everything shuts off.
We are just focused on survival and this has been useful. Of course it gets us outta being hit by a car, but if we are not aware of this and we're not conscious about it. [00:14:00] When we're in this place, like our body can get addicted to these stress states, to these emotions, these feelings, and we can almost get like stuck in them.
It's like the more we So emotions, okay, let me rewind. Emotions are essentially just a chemical reaction in the cells of our body. Okay? So it's a very physiological thing. We have a thought or we've seen something. Something has like come in through our brain. We're aware of something, or we've imagined something or thought about something in the past, and the signal gets sent from our brain to the cells of our body, and they produce hormones and chemicals that if it's in a stress state that we're tipping into, that will help us get ready to run away, fight something like our breathing will go up.
Our muscles will feel stronger. We'll have like cortisol, stress, hormones, adrenaline, like our pupils will dilate. We will get ready to fight or to run away. And sometimes like a, a little mild stress response of course is useful. Like I'm [00:15:00] probably a little bit more elevated right now because, and it can make us alert and we can think and we can focus and it can be useful in some ways.
But when we are in that place for too long, it can become a mood. It almost like any emotion that we have. Again, the physiological chemical process in our cells. If we catch it in the moment and we just remind our body that right now we are safe, I know that it's thinking about this presentation that's coming up next week and it's imagining from when we were 12 and everyone laughed at us and we're feeling our heart racing, and it's like our palms are sweating.
When we can catch that and remind ourselves, no, in this moment everything is okay. Like you are safe. There's no threat, there's no danger. We're not in any physical harm. Then we can bring our body back down to this kind of rest and digest, like a calm, creative, expansive state. And that's when all of the ideas will come, all of the possibility, and we can think about how amazing the presentation's gonna be and actually like practice it and [00:16:00] feel and flow and like get our slides ready or whatever's going on when we don't, when we don't catch the quote unquote negative feeling or like us tipping into a stress state.
Or we're ignoring it. So this could be like, I don't wanna feel this right now. I don't have time to feel this right now. Or even like with all of this, no shame because we don't get taught this and or most of us don't get taught how to notice our feelings that they're okay and how to actually process 'em through and feel them like, we don't get taught this stuff until we go to therapy.
We have coaching and we learn it so much later in life. Which is one thing I'm so passionate about teaching Flynn is like how to be so present and understand his feelings and be like, they're okay and breathing through them so that he's not ignoring them and pushing them down and feeling like he can't feel a certain way.
Anyway, that was a tangent. Another way we can avoid our feelings is through numbing. So it's like going for something that feels pleasurable and avoiding what's really going on underneath.
So maybe you have, you're thinking about this presentation that you [00:17:00] have coming up and you feel maybe the anxiety or a bit fear coming up, and you immediately reach for your phone and start scrolling. So that would be like numbing, like avoiding the feeling. It's like the feeling is there, but you're kind of ignoring it.
And reaching for your phone to get a dopamine hit, to get a bit of pleasure to just zone out and almost like escape reality. It could be overworking, like throwing yourself into work for something over. Researching can be another way for something like just feeling scared of actually doing something or showing up.
It's like we can over research, over Netflix, over eat, over, drink, over li literally over anything, anything where in moderation and when it's really conscious and really intentional, then. Like it's kind of a normal part of life when we start doing excessive amounts of it. And when we are doing it in a way to avoid something that's actually going on underneath, like a feeling that's going on, that's when it's kind of numbing the feeling.
And the thing is, the feeling doesn't go away. Like the only, imagine there's a fire alarm in [00:18:00] your brain. The amygdala going off going, we think there's danger. We think there's danger, danger, danger, danger. This presentation coming up, remember this thing that happened when you were 12, like watch out for this presentation.
When we are ignoring that and maybe the anxiety that's coming or whatever we're feeling at the same time, when we're ignoring that and pushing it down, it, it just gets like stronger and stronger. It doesn't go away. Imagine I think of it sometimes, like my 2-year-old is like if he's saying like, mommy, I'm trying to get my attention.
If I am like, hang on a sec. No, no, no. I'm just gonna do this thing over here. Or I'll just do this first, or just. He, he just gets louder. He comes closer, he gets more persistent. Then he is maybe trying to throw something or trying to do something else to get my attention. It's just gonna get louder and louder and louder because he is wanting to tell me something or share something or have that connection.
So it's ramping up like in his brain. It's the same for us. If we are not present and feel our feelings, they get louder and louder and they come out in so many different ways. Maybe sometime, [00:19:00] like say with the presentation stuff, if we're not feeling it, not being present with the feelings. Then it becomes a mood.
So then maybe it's like, we'll notice into the weekend we're just a little bit withdrawn and we're not really present. 'cause all we're thinking about is this presentation. When we are, the feeling is there and we're caught up in it.
And we're not processing it through, we're not being present with it. We're just like. Acting from it. Our brain will start to think more thoughts from that feeling that drives the intensity of the feeling that drives our behavior. So for example, again with the presentation example, maybe then your brain's going to all of the other times in a meeting you've messed something up, or all of the other times the feedback that you've got from other presentations that were maybe slightly constructive criticism and it's just.
Thinking, oh, I'm terrible at pres presenting, or it's going to other examples where you've stood up and someone's laughed at you or whatever the thing is, or you've like missed something. In communication, it's gonna find all of those examples, which is gonna probably make the anxiety or whatever you're feeling about the presentation.
Worse, [00:20:00] you're gonna feel more withdrawn. Worrying about it even more. You're not gonna actually be practicing it, not gonna be visualizing the best case, not gonna be working on your slides, not gonna be enjoying your weekend and switching off and being present. And the whole time your body's in this like toxic stress state with all these chemicals like and hormones going around where your actually, your body is in survival mode thinking there's a threat in that moment.
Okay, so. Their emotions themselves are neither good nor bad. They're simply a chemical process based on something we're thinking, something that's happened in our environment or something we're imagining like from the past or the future. And when we are present with them. So that is just breathing through them, noticing them closing our eyes to go inward, noticing where we feel them in our body and letting them just be there.
And sometimes we will cry, sometimes we will yawn. Sometimes we feel we might wanna stretch and shake them out. When we do that, we bring our body back down to calm, and the emotion will pass in like literally a couple minutes. Like it might feel quite intense and then it goes, and then we're like, oh, and all the ideas will come.
And then it's like we can get back to [00:21:00] thinking about the presentation, how amazing it's gonna be, and how we'll connect with this person and say this thing and tell the story in this way when we don't. It keeps persevering. Keeps persevering. It's like, hello, hello. Remember? There might be danger. There might be danger.
And it becomes this mood. And suddenly we're wondering why for the last few weeks things have felt so heavy and it comes into other areas of our life and we can't seem to shake it. And literally all it was was maybe a week ago thinking about this presentation. Our brain was remembering the thing from when we're 12 years old that we might not even be conscious about.
That's the thing. We might not even be aware that that's where that's coming from is this thing that happened when we were 12, but our body remembers, our nervous system remembers, and so it's going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait. And when we don't say that everything's safe, that's when it like extends into the weekend and consumes other things as well.
So if this is you, it is totally normal. Like we're not taught how to actually be present with our feelings. And that's when we can get stuck in. It's almost like we get stuck in a feeling. [00:22:00] We're not really stuck in it, but like we're, it's just in this loop. In this loop and we're creating more thoughts based on the feeling and our behavior is creating more evidence of the feeling and or like maybe if we continue on this way.
We don't do the presentation in the way that we actually want to because all we can think about is how bad it's gonna go and how everyone's gonna laugh, and then it doesn't go as well. And then it's more evidence that we've created only because we've been almost like in this vicious cycle loop. And so this is often what we can think of when it's like I have to feel good all the time to make good things happen.
It's not that feeling good makes good things happen. It's that when we are in a calm. Rested open, elevated place, that's when the creativity comes. That's when the ideas come. That's when we feel flowy and connecting and everything feels like it's just working. And it's like the presentation just feels so easy and everyone's like, that was amazing.
Like I really understood that and I got those examples and like, that was a really good point you made. And it, you just feel like you're just being yourself and it feels really easy. We can only do that when we are in a rest and digest calm, nervous system place. [00:23:00] We cannot do that from a stress response.
So that's often where we can be like, I have to be feeling in that place for good things to happen. Yes, that can help of course with like the visualization and how you're showing up and things happening, but the way to get through that isn't to not ever have a quote unquote negative feeling or never to have a quote unquote negative thought.
The key thing is to notice the thoughts, not get caught up with, got get caught up in them and just be like, oh, interesting. My brain's offering me that, but I'm not buying it. I'm not like getting swept up in that story. And also to notice when the quote unquote negative feelings or uncomfortable feelings come up and actually just pause and breathe through them.
So I'm gonna talk you through just how to like a little bit of how to do this now because I think it'll be really helpful. Okay. So. Say you notice that you're feeling you can do this right now if you want, or listen, and then do it after. Say you notice that you're feeling in a kind of stress state, there's some feeling there's something going on, you're maybe behaving in a [00:24:00] way, or if something feels a bit heavy, you know it's a bit off and you don't know really what it is.
So first thing you wanna do is put either your hands on your heart or one hand on your heart, one hand on your stomach, like whatever feels good, and then close your eyes. Then take three deep breaths through your nose hold, and then out through your mouth, and make the exhale longer, like twice as long as the inhale.
Then hold and breathe out, and just make the exhale long twice as long as the inhale. And this is just showing your body and your brain that right now everything's safe, so it's helping you calm down. And then breathe in through your nose hold, and then just out through your mouth and then just tuning inwards to your body.
Notice where you feel any pressure, any tightness, any lightness. Like if imagining that there's chemical reactions going on in your cells, in different parts of your body, like [00:25:00] how would you describe that? And just noticing it. And once we can start to notice it, it separates us from the feeling and we become calmer.
We're like, oh, it's, I'm not the feeling like this thing's happening in my body and it's not me. And then if you can put a name to it, this like labeling a feeling also creates that extra little bit of separation from us not getting so caught up in it. And rather than saying like. I am anxious. I am sad.
When we say I am, it becomes almost like an identity, and then it's like, oh, well I'm just anxious. It's like, no, that's not true. That's not something you are, it's not something you can be just saying like, I notice the feeling of anxiety, or I notice the sensation of anxiety or whatever feels, or I notice the feeling of sadness.
Or if you don't have a label for it, that's okay. Even just noticing where you feel in your body and then take some deep breaths and you might find. The, so it'll kinda like flow through you. Almost like a wave. That's how I imagine it. Like a wave on the shore and it like [00:26:00] ramps up a little bit and then it kind of eases and just taking some deep breaths again and through your nose, out through your mouth, making the exhale twice as long as the inhale.
And just letting it go. You can also ask if it wants to move, if there's anything like it wants you to know. Sometimes there, there's something that it, like the feeling wants us to know. There's some kind of thought, it's like there's something going on when we can just be present and listen to it. We'll kind of understand what that is.
And then you might find you want to cry, you might find you want to yawn, or move your body like. All of this is normal and this is how we release. If you think of emotions, again, chemicals in our cells, it's like, it's like energy that needs to kind of move through our body. It's like our body has literally ramped up to run away or to attack or to do something.
And so when we process it through, like that energy has to go somewhere so we can cry, yawn, or like sometimes afterwards I'll like hang over and like shake, like give myself a little shake, kind of [00:27:00] tune tunes and have a dance, go out for a walk, something to just kinda shift the energy. And you will notice just by doing that as soon as you can, as soon as you can catch that there's some kind of feeling bubbling on under the surface or do this in the morning and like a few times throughout the day you'll find that you naturally come back to a more calm and like open place.
And that's when things feel flowy. Everything feels easier, it doesn't feel heavy and enforced and it feels like everything is just magically flowing. So I hope that was helpful. If you've got any questions on that or you want me to dive into like. Anything else on it, like do let me know. But the final reminder, so you do not need to feel good all the time to be in flow and create the life you want and like have all these things manifest and like live your dream life.
That is a complete lie, and it's not even possible. The key things, the key thing to take away is go and be present and sit with your feelings and breathe through them and notice when they come up and just allow them to be there and tell yourself it's safe. Like right [00:28:00] now, everything's okay. Bring your body back down and then you'll find that you switch back into the creativity, you switch back into the possibility, you switch back into the vision that you're working towards rather than worrying about something that's happened in the past or that's the worst case that might happen in the future as well.
Okay. That was helpful and have an amazing week ahead and I'll see 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 goal, making an even bigger impact in the world. And if you wanna take this work deeper and work with me directly, head to the show note, and I put all of the information.
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 Goals Club.
