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Hey there, Maureen Chana here, founder of the Mindsight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel Podcast. Indeed, welcome to our first podcast of this new decade and of the year 2020. So I wish you a very, very happy and blessed 2020 and new decade. This show is designed to equip you with knowledge to understand the science of how your brain works so that you can unlock your leadership potentials with the tools to rewire your brain to enable you to flourish, excel, and achieve high performance in every single area of your life. I am so thrilled to be with you today because as a new year starts and as a new decade starts, it's a great time to reflect on our achievements and our desires. So our topic today is who am I? Psychological research shows that we do not have privileged access to who we really are. When we try to assess ourselves accurately, we are really poking around in a fog. This podcast today is going to launch you out to a lifetime of lasting change. Development and growth is dynamic as we know. Your purpose in life is to live beyond yourself, but you can't shape your life according to someone else's expectations, nor can you be your perfect self if you're locked up. You can't find your meaning or live in your purpose if you don't identify your blueprint and operate in your perfect self. So let's start off with a question. And I want you to ask yourself this question: What is my purpose? Do I understand myself? Do I really understand the blueprint of identity that God has given me? And what have I done with it? Sam, a senior director at a large hospital, was due at office. But instead he was called up in bed, duvet over his head, unshaven and in his pyjamas, crying into his pillow. This began slowly in a meeting with his operational director, when the thought bubbled up in his mind, and he asked himself, Why the hell am I even here? From that moment, Sam noticed that he was getting more edgy, more stressed, anxious, impatient, and extremely unhappy. And the growing frustration with his job got deeper until all at once he realized he wanted out. He didn't find happiness or fulfillment in his work, and maybe he never really had. For someone who'd worked so hard for so many years and built his entire identity around his career, this thought sent Sam into an existential crisis. Who was he? If not a high-powered NHS director, had he wasted so many years working for nothing? Would he have had a happier family, more friends if he hadn't spent all this time at work? Is this all there is to life? He asked himself. There has to be more to life than this. Sam was successful but extremely unhappy. Now, Sam's story is not uncommon. Many people now find themselves unhappy with their careers or businesses despite working hard their whole lives to get to their current position. Hating your job is one thing, but what happens if you identify so closely with your work that hating your job then means hating yourself. As a neuroleader, I specialize in helping leaders and managers navigate their way through work and life challenges to help them maintain mental well-being whilst achieving high performance and increased productivity by supporting them to rewire their brain. And that is why I decided on doing this podcast today, the first day of this decade, and the first day of this year. Because at this time, many people start reflecting. But the question is how deep are you actually looking at yourself? How much about yourself do you really know? And how much work are you prepared to do to really achieve fulfillment in your life? Do you actually know your purpose? But you see, the fact is that you can't know your purpose if you don't really know who you are. There are so many Psalms today that these issues interact in such complex ways with people's identity, emotions, and behavior that it often requires a deep understanding of yourself and your brain to enable you achieve that fulfilled successful life. So let's look at what identity is. And the question is, what is your identity? As neuroscience shows, we create our unique reality and shape our brain with our thoughts. Your identity flows out of how you think, how you speak, and how you act, no matter how much you try to suppress it. Princeton University psychologist Emily Pronin, who specializes in human self-perception and decision making, says the way we view ourselves is distorted, but we don't actually realize it. As a result, our self-image has surprisingly little to do with our actions. For example, you may be absolutely convinced that you're empathetic and generous, but still walk right past a homeless person on a cold day. The reason for this distorted view is actually because of your divergent views of yourself and of others. You might have recognized yourself or other people have no trouble recognizing how prejudiced or unfair your office colleague acts towards another person, but you don't actually consider that you could behave in much the same way because your intention is to be morally good. It never actually occurs to you that you too might be prejudiced. So how well do you know yourself? The fact is that many people do not really look into themselves, but instead they produce a flattering self-image that denies the actual failings that you have. Research on self-knowledge has actually yielded much evidence for this conclusion. So although you think you're observing yourself clearly, your self-image is affected by processes that remain deeply unconscious. True self-awareness comes from recognizing your perfect self, the true you. It changes you from the inside out, you become unlocked. This is actually so much more than finding your purpose, it's about finding yourself. And this is a question that I've asked myself a lot. My birthday was a few days ago, and it got me thinking, am I actually living my purpose? And do I actually understand who I am? And the question of who am I kept coming back. Who really am I? Growing up as a young girl, there's one thing my mom taught me, and that is, you are who God says you are. The next question then became so who does God actually say that I am? And I'll come back to that in a second. This biblical quote is something that I've held on to all my life, and I'll read it. It says, Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. So neither can you unless you abide in me. This is very important because, as scripture says, if a man abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered. And you look at the word wither, what does it actually mean? It means to shrivel, to lose, or cause to lose energy or freshness. The moment a branch is broken off the vine, it begins to die. It doesn't matter how close it is to the vine. If that union has been broken, there'll be no energy going through it. It's just like taking a plug and putting into the socket and it's switched off. So there'll be no power going through. Or your socket is on, but you take out the plug. There'll be no sap flowing from the vine into the branch. That's exactly what happens to us if we don't stay in vital contact and live in union with our Lord. When we become too busy to spend time with God in prayer and his word, when we become preoccupied with natural earthly things and disconnect from communion with him, we immediately begin to wither. We still belong to him, we still have his life within us, but his energy is not flowing through us, so we can't produce anything. And I honestly don't want to live that way, even for a day, do you? So being able to identify who I am, first and foremost, means that I need to connect to the source, and that's God. Now, the question, the other question then becomes so who does God say I am? And I'll read a few things which I've held on to. And the fact is that going through challenges, going through struggles and trials, these are the promises that I have come back to that has stabilized me, kept me focused on where I'm going and what I want to achieve. Because you see, a lot of people are setting goals at this time of the year. But the question is, are you setting goals that are really for you, or are you setting goals based on what you feel or what you believe is expected of you? Because this will determine to a great extent if you achieve them. So coming back to who does God say I am? I am wonderfully and beautifully made. He also says that I am made in God's image, I am more than a conqueror, I can do all things through Christ who straightens me. I am love because God is love. These are some of the things that scripture tells us who we are. We know that whatever we think about most grows. So we become literally what we meditate on. So let's look at the meditation. Research shows that love mindsets are the norm and fear mindsets are learned. The Bible also tells us that there is no fear in love, and we know from the promise that God says that we are love. So why would we then be living our lives in fear? You find that a lot of people already start their identity from a place of fear, but we have this promise that says perfect love drives out fear. Now, over the past several decades, scientists have researched the anatomy and physiology of love and fear right down to a molecular genetic and actually epigenetic level that can be described in detail. These are two different systems, and at any one conscious moment, you'll be operating in one or the other for each thought that you think. An attitude is a cluster of thoughts with emotional flavor, and every type of emotion has one of the two roots, love or fear. So, how do these attitudes get a love or fear flavor? Through your thinking, feeling, and choosing, and that is what makes you who you are. Now, keeping a diary, pausing for self-reflection, and having probing conversations with others have a long tradition, but whether these methods enable you to know yourself is actually hard to tell. In fact, sometimes doing the opposite, such as letting go, can be more helpful because it provides some distance. Erika Carlsen at the University of Toronto noted that mindfulness was useful in overcoming two big hurdles. One, distorted thinking and ego protection. The practice of mindfulness teaches us to allow our thoughts to simply drift by as we just notice them. Thoughts, after all, are only thoughts and they are not always the absolute truth. Frequently, stepping out of oneself in this way and simply observing what the mind does fosters clarity. And for me, being able to one, focus first on what the word of God says about me, and that's the standard, so that when thoughts are flooding through my head, what I'm doing is weighing them against what that word of God says about me. And if it doesn't align, then it's not true. Gaining insight into your unconscious motives can help you enhance your emotional and mental well-being. So it brings me to something I've always talked about: renewing your mind to enable you to be in control of what you're thinking so that you can achieve the goals, the success, the high performance, the high productivity, the positive relationships, and the life that you truly desire and deserve as well. We live in a complex, unpredictable world. We can no longer rely on plans and predictions. We are called to work in ways now that are entirely different to the ways of the past. The only part of the system on which we can potentially rely on is ourselves. And yet, this is the part of the system that many people leave largely untapped. You have to trust and believe that if you are true to yourself, your outcomes unfold in line with your truth. Your sense of well-being tends to grow as your conscious goals and unconscious motives become more aligned or congruent. For example, you should not slive away at a career that gives you money and power if these goals are of little importance to you. But how do you go about achieving such alignment or harmony? And the key is by imagination. For example, try to imagine as vividly and in as much detail as possible how things would be if your most fervent wish came true. Would it really make you happier? Often people succumb to the temptation to aim excessively high without actually taking into account all the steps and effort necessary to achieve ambitious goals. Science has shown that we can change our brain by what we think and what we believe. So the brain is malleable. So that means that we are limitless. So let's look at people with low self-esteem. You will find that if you have low self-esteem, you experience setbacks more frequently. Experiencing contempt and belittlement in childhood, often associated with violence and abuse, can trigger this kind of negativity, which in turn can then limit what people can accomplish, leading to distrust, despair, and even suidal thoughts. People that are wrapped with self-doubt tend to seek confirmation of their distorted self-perception. Swan, a psychologist, described this phenomenon in a study on contentment in marriage. He asked couples about their own strengths and weaknesses, the ways they felt supported and valued by their partner, and how content they were in their marriage. As expected, those who had a more positive attitude towards themselves found greater satisfaction in their relationship the more they received praise and recognition from their other half. On the other side, those who habitually picked at themselves felt safer in their marriage when their partner reflected their negative image back to them. So it's like a self-confirmation bias. They did not ask for respect or appreciation, instead, they wanted to hear exactly their own view of themselves, such as you're incompetent, because this confirmed what they believed about themselves. Likewise, people who consider themselves failures will go out of their way not to succeed. And you find people like this self-sabotaging and procrastinating and literally contributing actively to their own undoing. They'll miss meetings, habitually neglect doing assigned work, and just get into trouble with their bosses. If they're running a business, just keep putting things off, things they know that would enable them to succeed, they will look for every excuse possible not to do it. Your belief or theory about who you are influences how you behave. Your self-image can therefore easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Carol Dweck of Stanford University says that if we view a characteristic as mutable, we are inclined to work on it more. On the other hand, if you view a trait such as IQ or willpower as largely unchangeable and inherent, we will do little to improve it. So in Dweg's studies with students, men and women, parents and teachers, what she discovered was that people with a rigid sense of self take failure badly. They see it as evidence of their own limitations and become afraid of it. Fear of failure, meanwhile, can itself cause failure. In contrast, those who understand that a particular Talent can be developed, accept setbacks as an invitation to do better next time. The solution then is to have an attitude aimed at personal growth. When in doubt, you should assume that you have something more to learn and that you can improve and develop. So, bringing this together, we see that self is not a thing, but rather a process of continual adaptation to changing circumstances. And the fact is that when we see ourselves as more competent, moral, and stable than we actually are, it helps us to be able to adapt better. The fact in life is that you don't know where the next ball or challenge will come from. And it's as if you're a sports person playing a game. You don't know where that ball will come from next or how it will come, but you can manage yourself so that you have a strong sense of the outcome that you want to achieve, and you're always in a state of readiness and flexibility to seize the chances as they present themselves. So now, are there things that you have been putting off? Are there things that you know that you need to do that you've avoided doing? It's time now to step out in faith and act on the things that you know you should be doing. There's no easy journey to get to a great place. You've got to just step out and start moving. The joy of discovering who you are is that you find that you become more intelligent, you develop more positive relationships with others, your mental health will improve, your physical health will improve, and you'll experience more joy in your life. And you find that you'll be able to understand yourself and others better. Having a purpose that is greater than yourself will give you a constant impetus to strive, to work hard, to push forward. Discovering your purpose gives your life a meaning and helps you to direct and focus your talents and efforts. It also attracts the talents and energies of other people whose purpose aligns with your own. You can develop the right mental attitude when you realize that nothing external can upset you or hurt you without your mental consent. You're the only thinker in your world. Consequently, nothing can move you to anger, to grief, to procrastinating, to fear or sorrow without your mental consent. The suggestions that come to you from the outside have no power whatsoever except the power that you give it. Realize that you are a master of your thought world. Emotions follow thoughts. Hence, you are supreme in your own orbit. So do you permit others to influence you? Do you allow the headlines in newspapers, the gossip or the criticism of others to upset you or prevent you from living your life or bringing you mental depression? If you do, you must admit that you are the cause of your own mood. You created your emotional reaction. Circumstances can only affect you as you permit them. You can voluntarily and definitely change your attitude towards life and all things. You can become master of your fates and captain of your soul. Through disciplined, directed, and controlled imagination, you can dominate and master your emotions and mental attitude. You were born to win, to conquer and to overcome. The intelligence, wisdom, and power of God are within you, waiting to be released and enabling you to rise and achieve excellence. So go into this decade, go into this 2020 with a limitless mindset. Start off the year by reflecting on who you are and what your purpose is, and set what I call brain-based goals. I'm going to leave a link in the description about a workshop I have coming up on how to set brain-based goals that will give you a better chance of achieving the goals that you want. Thank you for tuning in. And remember that you are in control of your brain. Don't be a victim of life, don't be a victim of circumstances. Get back into the driver's seat of your life and live the life that God has ordained for you. And I want to hear from you what was your biggest takeaway from this episode? And also 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. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss an episode. You can also find the podcast in YouTube as well. And remember to subscribe there if that's where you listen to it. And I'll appreciate you leaving a review as well. And finally, I wish you a very happy, successful, fruitful, blessed 2020 and decade. Step out of your comfort zone and do what you thought you couldn't do before. And if you fall, get back up and keep going and learn from every step and every process that you go through. So I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Have a fantastic week and have a blessed year. Bye.