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Hi there, Maureen China here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer. I use insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. So, welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel podcast. I'm so thrilled to be with you today because we are talking about how to rewire your brain so you can win the war in your mind. This episode is the part two of this series. We started off last week looking at the biochemical reactions, looking at how thoughts are formed, and looking at how we can actually rewire the brain and what it actually means to rewire the brain. This week we're going to dig a little deeper into how we can apply this whole concept to our lives as leaders. Now, one of the questions I always ask people when I start a talk is are you a leader? And usually you find about 20% of people that raise their hands. The fact is that we are all leaders. And one of the episodes I'm actually going to look into what leadership truly is. But for today, let's dive right in now and start looking at applying this whole concept of winning the war in the mind by rewiring your brain. As a man thinketh, so is he. This is a popular quote from my favorite book. Excellence to a large degree depends on how you think. Your thoughts influence the actions you take and your behavior. The part two of this podcast is going to teach you how to identify how your thinking is shaping your actions to enable you shape and change your behavior appropriately. Learning to recognize how you think gives you the ability to achieve not only others' talents but your own as well. So let's start with this story. Sally was an outstanding research scientist at a global pharmaceutical company. She was respected by others across the industry and was viewed as an expert in her field of specialty. Trained as an immunologist, she successfully led several high-profile clinical trials. After years of outstanding performance, Sally finally received her dream promotion. She was chosen to lead a newly created global service function in support of the organization's new customer-centric strategy. In contrast to her previous position, the new post demanded more customer contact, people management, lateral organizational collaboration, and reliance on technical experts outside of her specialty. Within months, Sally's career started to unravel. She struggled in working with others to get things done and felt powerless because she didn't completely understand the variety of technical issues. She felt out of her depth in meetings with a sense that she was no more the go-to person or the smartest person in the room, and this bothered her immensely. Sally soon developed a reputation as being arrogant, self-absorbed, and inflexible. She demanded that others in the organization do exactly as she wanted and provided her with the resources she required regardless of their priorities. Sally was now referred to as someone on a personal mission to get to the top and couldn't care less about the people she managed nor the vision and strategy of the business. The fact is that Sally needed a mindset change. She needed to learn to rewire her brain. Sally had to step back and understand the impact of her behavior and what she was doing to alienate the very people she needed to become successful in her own new position. She had to find a way to see the organization as a whole and value that view rather than focusing only on her areas of expertise. Many organizations at this point would conclude that Sally is not coping with this new role and either fail her probation or manage her out. In a lot of cases, Sally would get so stressed and overwhelmed and go off sick, which you tend to find a lot in organizations. In order to help Sally rewire her brain, she could be asked to do a presentation to one of the organization's investors on the new initiative. This would force Sally to think in terms of the organization's broader vision and the importance of generating positive financial results without relying on her technical areas of expertise and comfort. She could also be asked to lead a team charged with improving collaboration between departments that were not working well together. In this role, Sally would hopefully come to realize that her narrow mindset was getting in the way of her success. In part one, we talked about the awareness. It's Sally becoming aware of her narrow mindset that will now enable her to change her mindset by rewiring her brain. By developing awareness of how you think and how others think and act enables you to understand the subtleties of human behavior, which as a leader is so vital to enable your people and enable you to achieve high performance and quick results. By learning to manage your thoughts, you learn how to create the life and career you want for yourself. Life is literally what you make it. My course on emotional intelligence in leadership at the MindSight Academy goes into more detail if this is an area that you want to develop further. Leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, and employees are experiencing an epidemic of overwhelm, such as pressure of achieving results, getting a promotion, selling your services or products, downsizing or reorganizations, or the sheer volume of work that you find. To be effective in your role, you need to be able to change how your brain works. All your thoughts and feelings produce more electromagnetic energy than all the mobile phones in the world. Think about that for a moment. It just shows you the power of our thoughts. But the good news is that we can change it. You can change all the limiting thoughts that you have. Perceptions, attitudes, intentions, passion, purpose, your thoughts basically drive your actions. If you don't address your thoughts, meaningful change will not happen. In the same way that when you do begin to investigate your underlying beliefs and attitudes and become mindful of your thoughts, true transformation then takes place. Everything that you say you do and physically manifest first starts in a thought. And you might want to write this down. Everything you say, everything you do, and everything you physically manifest first begins in the thought. What you think on the inside manifests for you on the outside. Envision what you want. Because your actions are a direct result of your thoughts. And it's your thoughts that will enable you to carry out the appropriate actions to achieve your desired goal. When you take control of your thoughts, you take a proactive approach to rewiring your brain instead of being led around by your habitual attitudes and self-limiting beliefs, you're then able to use your thoughts to proactively affect those very stressful episodes that you formally reacted to defensively. In doing that, you experience very different results because you're more open to seeing opportunities. Because the fact is that when you're dwelling on negative thoughts, your focus is on that negativity or what you're not getting or not achieving. But when you focus on the positive, on the solution, then you're more open to seeing opportunities when they come. You're not close to them, you're more able to see them. And I'll I'll use this as an example. As a leader, when you're interviewing people, when you're more open to really listening to people and finding good talent, you find that you'll be able to actually see beyond a lot of things and you're able to identify good people with great talent that will bring a lot into your organization, as opposed to when you're operating in that fixed mindset whereby you're just focusing on a spec on specific things or looking for, or when you're not aware of the biases you have, you end up finding that you're recruiting people that are just like you, and you're very limited on diversity and diversity in terms of skills, you know, diverse skills, and you find out that you're just employing people of the same type, which is the normal reaction of the brain. What you want to do is to look more broader out to be able to really bring in diverse skills, diverse mindsets, because then there can be more creativity and greater progress and faster results for you as an organization as an as a team. So by managing your thoughts, you consciously choose your actions and behavior, which is winning the war in your mind. This, in essence, determines your present and your future. So rewiring your brain by controlling your thoughts will liberate you from passive acceptance of your limiting or deceptive thoughts and free you from its negative and toxic effects. You will find this practice so empowering so that you can now live your life the way you desire. Live a life that you truly deserve. The fact is that you can consciously choose your future by being in control of your thoughts. There's no situation or person responsible or to blame for what goes on inside your own mind. The quality of your life, your organization, your team, your family, your career is dramatically impacted by how you think and how you behave. And how you behave depends on how you think. The story that I'm going to tell you now shows that how you choose to think in any given moment affects your circumstances, your destiny, and your success. I'll tell you about a client of mine who's been in event planning and excellent in what she does, very great in her craft, very creative. She had a bigger event than she normally had in the past. Part of this was to go abroad to run this event. And all along, she's very excited, looking forward to doing it, and got there the day before the actual event, she went into a panic. And all it was was that suddenly the negative self-talk started. Are you sure you can do this? What if it doesn't go well? What if it all fails? What will people think of you? You know, you're not even in your own country, you're in another country. What if they don't understand what you want? What if they don't get the vision that you're trying to bring? What if, what if, what if? And all these what ifs led her now into panic and got her and literally made her freeze. So she couldn't think, she couldn't do anything. And she called me and we had a chat. And immediately we finished talking with these tools that she now had of how to rewire her brain. She was now able to now rewire her brain totally herself and then carry on with this event. And she says that it's the best event she had ever done up till that point. She was in control even when problems came, and she said they had quite a lot of challenges. She was able to now remain calm and go through the process and come out with excellent results and got even more work from that. So it's so important to understand first and foremost what's going on and have the tools to then rewire your brain. There's a quote from John Maxwell that I love. It says, Good thinkers are always in demand. And he goes on to say that people who know the how to do things may always have a job, but the people who know why are the ones that will always be leaders. So it's the why that is the key, the why that matters. I hope this podcast gives you the why of what's going on in your brain, why you think the way you're thinking, because then once you know the why, then you can do something about it. Unlimited thinkers solve problems. They never lack ideas that can build an organization, and they always have hope for the better future. So you don't get paralyzed when pressure comes, when challenges come, when suddenly at work you've got so much to do. Because what you what I always hear people say is, oh, I'm so overwhelmed. It's too much work. And the more you see it as too much, remember what we said, what you don't use, you use. And what you use becomes stronger connection. So the more you see it as being too much work, too much stress, too much of things, that's the way it will be. I want to bring in this example of children taking exams. It's been in the news so much now that exams should be SART should be stopped, and children shouldn't be, you know, be asked to take so many exams because it causes them so much stress. The fact is, and this is my belief, that children will see it as stress when we, the adults, make them see it as stress. When we keep talking about exams being stressful, that's the way they will see it. But when we look at exams as something that is beneficial for us, I told my son recently that look at it as you're gaining new knowledge, you're learning more broadly, and tell yourself that you know what, I'm enjoying this because I've got time to really consolidate a lot of learning and be able to then go in and look at questions and evaluate, analyze, and be able to apply the knowledge that I've learned to the answers and come out successful. And when you look at it positively, then you're able to go through the process. And it's the same in any challenge or anything we're going through. Look at it positively because you know what? When we stop children from sitting exams now, when they come out and they encounter situations that are challenging, then they can't cope, which is what which is what we are seeing a lot now. The amount of youths that I'm coaching now is unbelievable. And the problem is pressure, stress, anxiety. And that's because they don't know how to deal with it. So good thinking can enable you to generate increased revenue, it can help you solve problems by being solution focused and create opportunities. It can take you to a whole new level personally and professionally. Good thinking can really change your life. And I'll just give you some of the ways to kind of help you be in a position where you can rewire your brain easily. The first thing is expose yourself to people who think positively. The book of Proverbs says, iron sharpens iron. And um, there's another quote, a very common quote is you are the average of the five people you hang around with. So what are you listening to? Who are the people you're surrounding yourself with? What are they saying? And are the things that they talk about helping you to achieve what you want, or are they people that are very negative and not inspiring, or are people that you're hanging around inspiring? So expose yourself to people who think positively, to good thinkers basically, to unlimit to people with it an unlimited mindset. Be intentional about your thinking. So put yourself in the right place to think. One of the practices that I use, that I I tell my um coaches, is in the morning when you wake up, have your quiet time and use that time in the morning before you get up. Give yourself a few few minutes and just think about what you want to achieve that day. What are your goals? Think of those things, and at night, reflect again on what you've done in the day, what worked, what didn't work, what are you going to change? And then in the morning, repeat the process again. Make it a priority every morning, every evening to have that time. So be intentional about what you're thinking, and then through the day, as you have the opportunity or things come up, go back to your thought again and just be aware of what you're thinking. Remember, an unlimited mindset thinking or good thinking is a discipline. You've got to discipline yourself to be able to do it effectively. Act on your good thoughts because ideas have a short lifespan. You must act on them before they become outdated, basically. Repeat the process, it's so important that you keep repeating it because it's the repetition that creates the rewiring. And remember what we said previously: what you don't use, you lose. There's a saying inside by Gordon Avian that neurons that wire together fire together. So basically, when the neurons are not connecting together, when there's nothing connecting them, they lose that connection. So repetition is very important in rewiring the brain. And science has shown that it takes about 120 days to create to create a new habit. I always say, add another 120 days for that habit to be embedded and also be aware of any triggers so that you don't go still go back to the old ways. You learn quickly and can achieve significant results when you have a clear vision and purpose. When you are in that state of curiosity, possibility, and calmness, one good thought does not make a good life. The people who have one good thought and try to write on it for their entire career often end up unhappy or destitute. They are the one hit wonders, the one book authors, the one message speakers, the one time inventors who spend their lives struggling to protect or promote their single idea. To achieve sustained success, you need to keep repeating the process of unlimited thinking so that whatever Situation you're in, don't just stop at one thing. Don't just achieve one thing and go, okay, that's it. Okay, I've and this is a habit I want to change, or this is something I want to achieve. I've achieved it and it stops. No, just be current. Look at what's going on around you. You achieve one. Do you need to change things? What do you need to adjust? For is it something, is it a habit, or is it something you want to achieve or something you want to do? Success comes to those who become success conscious. A quote by W.C. Henley says, I am the master of my faith, the captain of my soul. And this just sums up everything that we've been talking about because you have the power to control your thoughts. I hope this encourages you to really think bigger, to move faster, and to rise higher and to keep rising. Don't get paralysis of analysis. And I'll repeat that again. Do not get paralysis of analysis. If you think about success and confidence, you will feel strong and competent and you'll perform better at whatever you do. If you think about making mistakes or being embarrassed, you perform poorly no matter how good you really are. Whatever you believe becomes your reality. You always act in a manner consistent with your deepest and most intensely held beliefs, whether they are true or not, and all your beliefs are learned, so you can change them by rewiring your brain. Your mind is extraordinarily powerful. Your thoughts control and determine almost everything that happens to you. They can raise or lower your heart rate, improve or interfere with your digestion, change the chemical composition of your blood, and help you to sleep or keep you awake at night. Your thoughts can make you happy or sad. They can make you alert and aware or distracted and depressed. They can make you popular or unpopular, confident or insecure, positive or negative. Your thoughts can make you feel powerful or powerless, a victim or a victor, a hero or a coward. In your professional life, your thoughts can make you a success or a failure, prosperous or poverty stricken, respected or ignored. Your thoughts and the actions that they trigger determine your whole life. And the best news of all this is that they are completely under your own control. Focusing on problems will continue to lead you to your past. It leads you to try to change what can be changed. Focusing on problems leads to blame, excuses, and justifications. It's complicated, slow, and will often drain your mental energy. Focusing on solutions on the other hand immediately creates energy in your mind. It opens you up to ideas and possibilities. So if you want yourself or your team to come up with great ideas, to think well, to maximize potential, you want to ensure that you focus on solutions. This doesn't mean that you don't address problems. It actually means that you address them by analyzing the way forward instead of their causes. Let me illustrate this with some examples. So looking at a problem focus versus a solution focus. So the problem focus will be why didn't I hit that target? And the solution focus, on the other hand, will be what do I need to do next time to hit my target? So now let's look at it in terms of you being a leader and addressing a member of your team or your team generally. Why did this happen? Is the problem focus? And then the solution is being solution focused instead will be what do you want to achieve here? So let's look at some other. So I'm going to say the problem focus first and then go on to the solution focus. Where did it all start to go wrong? What do you need to do to move this forward? Another problem focus. Why do you think you're not good? How can you develop? What's wrong with my team? What do my team need to do to improve and win? Why did you do that? Versus what do you want to do next? Who is responsible for this? Versus who can achieve this? And finally, why isn't this working? Versus what do we need to do to make this work? Being conscious of removing the word why from your conversations can be a great way to remember to focus on solutions. And there's this quote, can't remember where I saw it, but it says, Two young fish are swimming happily. An older fish swims by and remarks, Water's warm today, isn't it? And the young fish asks, What water? We often don't know we're swimming in water until we stand on the shore. So in order to change mindset, leaders need to get some distance from their old selves to see themselves more objectively. The journey to developing a new leadership mindset always involves leaving behind the safe and familiar for the unknown. You always act in a manner consistent with your deepest and most intensely held beliefs, whether they are true or not. Remember, we said that these thoughts, these beliefs have been created from thoughts and experiences that you've been exposed to for a good part of your life, or even as a child, for the first six years in particular. And over years, these thoughts and connections that have been firing together, wire together, and become fixed, and that's where the beliefs come from. So basically, all your beliefs are learned. At one point, you did not have them. Your beliefs largely determine your reality. You do not believe what you see, you rather see what you already believe. You can have life-enhancing beliefs that make you happy and optimistic, or you can have negative beliefs about yourself and your potential that act as a roadblock to the realization of everything that are truly possible for you. Science has now shown us that we think between 60 to 70,000 thoughts each day, and about 90% of those thoughts are the same. So these same thoughts always lead to the same choices, the same behaviors, same experiences, same emotion, same behavior, and the same thoughts all over again, and it keeps going round in a circle. How you think, act, and feel, your personality all create your reality. So to create a new reality, to create a new life, you need to be aware of your unconscious thoughts and modify them. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is termed as madness, isn't it? Your brain is a record of your past. It's all that you've learned and experienced up till this moment. Another example is let's look at the morning routine. You get out of bed, maybe pray, have Witter beaks for breakfast, go through the motions, check your email, go have a shower, get ready, go to work, get in the car, and then drive the same route to work. Get to work, log on to your computer, check your emails again, and your day starts. Performing the same actions, feeling the same emotion, making the same choices, but expecting different results is not possible. Your brain is hardwired to that pattern. Neurons that fire together, we said, wire together. Unconscious habits automate emotions, attitudes, and it creates the repetition that conditions your body to do it better than your brain. 95% of most people's behavior, habits, and attitudes is completely unconsciously programmed. Learning is forging a new synaptic connection. You now need to be defined by the visions of your future and not the memories of the past. Create a new future. To achieve this, you must be passionate about what you desire. If you don't start your day with a clear vision of your desired future, your external environment will control your actions. You find yourself again doing the same thing, associating with the same people day in, day out, and then experiencing the same reality. Let me ask you a question now. Do you believe that your thoughts have a lot to do with your future? So let me warn you now once you start to rewire your brain, you will find it uncomfortable. To persevere, you've got to insist on no more complaining, no more blaming, no more, I can't do this, no more, I'll start tomorrow. It's my mom's fault, it's my dad's fault, it's my partner's fault. The best way to create your future is to create it from the unknown, not the known. So I'll encourage you to take that step today. First of all, discover who you really are, discover what your thoughts are, discover what story you're telling yourself, what narratives have you been telling yourself, what behaviors, attitudes, beliefs need to change, and take that step now to start changing those thoughts and beliefs. Thank you for tuning in and remember that one of the biggest challenges facing organizations and businesses today is the mindset of leaders, the mindset of the business owners. So if you want to learn more about how to rewire your brain and lead a successful life in your personal life and in your professional life, visit morinciana.com. You can also have a look at our online courses at the mindsiteacademy.com. My aim in all the courses is to return you to the soul of your leadership role by providing you with the concrete skills to get you to the top and keep you there. So now, three things before we finish today. Have you subscribed to this podcast? If you haven't, make sure you click on that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so that once a new podcast is released, you will get the notification. So make sure you subscribe and don't forget to leave a review because I will do a listener shout out each week and it just might be you. But also the reviews and comments you leave will help me structure the podcast to meet your needs. So if you have any particular topic that you want me to discuss or talk about, then let me know in the comment section. And finally, don't forget to tune back in next week to listen to what the next podcast will be. So I'll see you in the next week's episode. Have an amazing week.