The People Builder

Are you able to keep the safety on your triggers and your hot buttons or are they open and ready to be pushed all the time?

Do you find yourself always calm and control in emotionally-charged situations or do you go into complete overwhelm and lose control of your behaviour? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence by learning to manage our disruptive emotions.

So, let me start by saying that managing emotions is not about getting rid of them. Emotions are there for a purpose. Our emotions are cues and clues and signs to help us to navigate what's going on around us and within us. The way we feel gives us an indication of how we are processing external stimuli. And depending on whether or not that is linked to a highly-charged experience, a memory or a belief structure that you have, that will determine whether or not you respond in your logical brain or react out of the emotion.

I don't know about you, but this is a major problem that I've had to work on for my entire life. I've been able to learn through my studies in Emotional Intelligence how to employ a strategy so that even though I have the emotion going on, whether it's positive or negative, I can allow the decision-making process to happen from the logical brain, from the prefrontal cortex. 

As we've talked about before in our neuroscience 101 that our brain has certain parts within it that control different functions. And if we look at it from just an overall holistic view so that we can understand what I'm talking about here today, we have the limbic brain, as some people call it, which is deep in the center of the brain, which, linked to the hippocampus and our emotional memory, have a couple of sensors there, little almond-shaped nodes, called amydalae and what they do is they determine whether or not there's a threat by the data that's coming into the brain.

So, all data except smell, which is in the olfactory system, comes into the brain via the thalamus and what it does, it then distributes that data to the limbic brain and to the neocortex at the same time.

Now, depending on what the amygdala finds when it does that threat assessment, it will determine whether or not that data continues to go to the logical brain. If the amygdala senses that there's something that we need to fear, there's something that we need to put a hold on what we're doing, we need to fight, we need to freeze, whatever it is, then it will give the signal, "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!" And it'll actually cut off all the sensory data from continuing to go to the logical brain. 

The prefrontal cortex is the executive command center just behind our forehead here and it's the front third of the cerebral cortex, the neocortex, and it makes good decisions. It's there for emotional regulation. It's where our creativity takes place and where we decide on logic what we're going to do. So, if our emotional situation traps how we feel and traps all that data down in the emotional brain, then we just go over and over it in our head as an emotional thing that's happening, asking ourselves, "Why does this happen?" And then we react based on our beliefs, our previous experiences, et cetera.

So, what we want to do is we want to learn a strategy to get it back up into the logical brain so that we have a greater chance of responding in a way that's healthy; healthy for us and healthy for others, rather than react. People say that we should avoid overreacting. What I like to do is put a distinction on it that says, "Let's not react to anything, unless it's in an emergency situation." What we want to learn to do with our emotions is always to respond. So, let me teach you a process that you can take away and use right now to be able to keep yourself in a managed state when you are going through emotionally-disruptive experiences.

Now, this is a five step process and the key elements of this process is that it provides a couple of things. It firstly provides the power of the pause. When we experience something in our emotional brain, we can go from that original thought to a learned, ingrained, conditioned behaviour just like that. So, what we want to be able to do so that we can get out of the emotion and back up into the logic as we want to be able to pause and break that pattern. The second thing that it does is it helps us to light up the logical part of our brain by asking a series of questions and going through a process that is logical. So, let's have a look at it.

Step one: what we want to do, firstly, is we want to recognise and name the emotion that we're going through. As we've talked about before, the first thing we've got to do is increase our emotional vocabulary so that we actually know which emotion we're going through and when so that, in the moment, we know which emotion so therefore, we know which one we're managing. Because there's a different strategy for happiness or feeling happy than there is for feeling frustrated, for example. So, step one is name the emotion. 

To do this, we ask the question, "What is the emotion I am going through right now?" So, there's two things here. The first thing we've done is we've engaged the logical brain by asking a "what" question. A "what" question is looking for data. It's looking for information. So therefore, it's going to light up the logical part of the brain. The second thing that we've done is we've initiated the power of the pause. So, the first thing we do is name the emotion. 

Step two in the process is to audit our thoughts. I love the word audit in this context because an audit is a logical process. When you have an audit done on your taxes, they look for information, not for story. So, when we do an audit on our thoughts, we are, once again, engaging in a logical process and we're looking for information of things that we might be thinking that are creating the emotional disruption. To do this, we ask the question, "What am I thinking right now?" So, step two is to audit your thoughts.

Step three is to decide on the outcome that you want. When we are in emotionally-charged situations, when we've got a pattern of reacting, we forget what it is that we want in the first place. I don't know about you, but there's been many a time where I've got into the emotion of something and I've totally forgotten the logic of why we started the conversation or why that situation even happened in the first place because I got trapped down in the emotion. So, step three is to decide what do you want to happen right now.

And the question we ask ourselves is exactly that, "What do I want to happen right now?" So, once again, we have engaged in a process, in a logical question, so that we get focused on what it is that we want to happen. So therefore, we're able to have a strategy and a response that is going to move us towards that outcome.

Step four is to control the sabotage. I don't know about you, but I know that even though I know the outcome that I want, I can do and say things that will make sure that I don't get there. And I'm not even talking about those unconscious sabotage strategies that we all run, I'm talking about consciously reacting or saying something that is definitely counterintuitive to the outcome that I've decided that I wanted. So, what we need to do here is metaphorically put a piece of duct tape across our mouth to stop and avoid that sabotage. So, to do this, we once again ask some questions and we can do this two ways.

So, the first question we can ask is, "What could I do right now to sabotage that outcome?" Or as we get more in tuned with this new process and it becomes second nature, we can ask the question, "What is one thing that I can do right now to move towards that outcome?" So, depending on your level of maturity in this process as to whether or not you would use the first one, the second one, or a combination of both, the key element to remember here is that we're asking a "what" question so that we're keeping it in the logic and we're pausing around what we would normally do in that situation. 

Step five is to decide on the strategy. It's like a chess player. I'm not a great chess player. I know the fundamentals of the game. I can play a game of chess. However, I've never put enough effort into it to be like these masters who know five or six steps in front, moves in front, what they're going to do. I just move a pawn or move the king or move whatever I need to move to stop that thing from happening that I think might happen.

And that's just like working in the emotion, but what a great chess player does, it has a strategy that says, "If that move there takes place, I'm going to do this one." Or, "If that move takes place, I'm going to do this one." Or indeed, "I already know five steps, the five moves down the track where I'm going to move."

So, in this controlling and managing our emotional situation in this disruption, step five is choosing a logical path, a logical strategy, a next step that we can do so that we can respond. 

For example, if I am feeling frustrated, the strategy for feeling frustrated would be to remove myself from this frustration, remove myself from the thoughts that are creating the frustration. My strategy could be to ask questions, to get clarity around the misunderstanding around the emotions that I was going through before I allowed myself to get frustrated. So, step number five is to decide on a strategy.

So, there you have it, five steps that you can go through where you name the emotion, where you audit your thoughts, where you decide on the outcome, where you control the sabotage, and where you decide on the strategy so that you can respond and get the outcome that you want. Managing our emotions, as I said, is not about getting rid of them, it's not about ignoring them or suppressing them, it's about acknowledging them, feeling them, and then having a strategy to use them to help us to go forward in a logical response.

Well, that's it for me this week. Join me again next week when we continue to look at our behaviour and how we can change our behaviour to get the outcomes that we want. I'll see you then.

Do you have to consciously think about your poor behaviour to get it to come up or does it just turn up out of the blue without an invitation? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence and our Behavioural Self-Control by talking about changing our behaviour patterns.

You and I have been doing things a certain way for many years. And as we've learnt over the many weeks that we've been together now that our beliefs, the meanings we put on things, the experiences that we've been through, and all the conditioning that has gone on over the years that we've been on the planet have created a set of neural pathways in our brain that says, "When this happens, I do that."

Has there ever been anything that you've decided that you want to change? Whether it be your health and vitality, whether it be the way that you operate at work or the way that you work with these certain people, whatever it is, whatever behaviour. It could be becoming a non-smoker or changing any type of behaviour and you've found it difficult to make the change.

The reason for that is that you are fighting against a deeply ingrained pattern in your brain, backed up by limiting beliefs and thoughts that you have around certain things that are not serving you. So, what I want to do today in this short video is just give you the process, a logical process that you can take yourself on whenever it is that you're wanting to change your behaviour.

Now, this is a four step process and I've attached some alliteration to it because I find, for me, it makes it easier for me to remember and bring up when I need to. And what I want to do today is teach you the process, the procedure, and then as you practice, that it will become one of the newly ingrained neural pathways in your brain and it'll happen automatically.

The key to anything that I've been teaching you over the last few weeks comes not in the information that I give you, but in the implementation of you putting it into action. So if this is an area that you really want to work on in your life and you want to change some certain behaviours, it's not enough to just hear a motivational talk from me. So, let me take you through the process.

The process is a series of four R's and the end result of this process is another R and that is to rewire our brain. Through neuroplasticity, we know that at any age, we can relearn things. So, the first thing we need to do, as we've talked about before, is unlearn the things from the past so that we can relearn the new stuff. This process works on doing that in a logical sequence so that you get the result that you want.

Step one in the process, the first R, is recognise. So, what is it that we want to recognise? We want to recognise that the thought pattern, the belief, the mindset, the behaviour that we are currently using is not serving us. It's not actually giving us the result that we want. Now, as we go through this process of recognising this, we're going to have that mini-me that we learned how to reprogram a few weeks ago shouting at us and going, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true. What you're recognising there, that's fake news."

We don't want that because that means that when we recognise it, we're going to change it. And at this point, we've still got a belief that it is serving us. So, you may need some help from a coach to help you to go through this process if those beliefs and behaviours are really ingrained, but let me be your coach right now and help you to go through it and at least get the pattern in place.

So if I've got a belief that says that I can't do something, that belief is definitely going to stop me from doing something. So if I recognise that that belief is the first thing that's holding me back, that's the first step. If it's a behaviour, like I talked about a couple of weeks ago or last week, whenever it was, if I recognise that me tooting the horn at someone three cars in front of me, who is totally oblivious to me being there anyway, is only creating more anger and frustration for me and for the people in the cars in front of me, then I'll want to do something about it. So, step one is to recognise the behaviour that's not serving you.

Step two and the second R is to reject. Now, this one's a little bit more unfamiliar, a little bit more challenging because it's one thing to recognise the behaviour, but unless we reject it, we're not going to do anything about it. So, we need to have that conversation with our inner dialogue, with our current belief system, and we need to go, "No, no, no. I know you think that it was doing this for us, but it's not."

So, I need to reject it before I'll do anything about it. So, we've recognised what it is. We'd now rejected it as being something that we need in our life, something that we want in our life, something that we want to continue to do. It's gone.

Step three, the third R, is to replace. Now, here's the thing: if we recognise something and reject it, but we don't have anything else that we can do instead, we'll very easily go back to what we were doing before. So, we need a new behaviour, a new thinking, a new strategy that we can replace the original one with.

When I do work with a lot of clients around different areas of their life, addictions they might want to get rid of, let's say they're wanting to become a non-smoker, then what I'll help them to do as they're going through that process, because that's a chemical addiction, is get them to have some carrot sticks. And when they feel like having a cigarette and they've now recognised that it's not helping them and they've rejected that, what I'll get them to do is to reach for one of these carrot sticks and put that in their mouth instead.

So, we're doing a break of the behaviour pattern in a more subtle way. And over a period of time, we'll be able to wean ourselves off that as well. So, we talked about last week in those triggers and the behaviour that came out of them what would be a different response and they are things that we would replace the original behaviours with. So, step three, now that we've recognised, we've rejected, is to replace. Give ourselves something else to do, instead of the old behaviour.

Step four is repetition. So, step four is to repeat the process, the new behaviour that you've replaced it with over and over and over again, so that you then rewire that part of your brain, that pattern that in the old days, when you did this or thought this, it would lead you that way, it now is going to take you down a new path. So, you've now got a neural pathway that's built stronger than the old one and that only comes with repetition and that's how neuroplasticity works.

So, we've got a four part process: recognise the behaviour, reject it as being useful, replace it with something that's resourceful and is going to give us the results we want, and then repeat that process over and over again so that we rewire our brain. It's been said that the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. What we now have with this process is the ability to change our behaviour.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around managing our behaviour and our responses, our Emotional Intelligence by talking about two critical elements that we need to be able to make all these changes, and that is support and accountability. I'll see you then.

Are you able to speak your truth assertively or do you hold back because you fear what people might think about you? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around this important subject of Personal Power by helping you to be more assertive in your communication and to say no more often.

Being assertive means you're able to stand up for yourself in a calm, positive way without being either aggressive or passively allowing people to continue their poor behaviour. To do this, we need to revisit our priorities. We need to make sure that we are clear what's most important to us. And if you haven't got it by now, that number one priority needs to be you because out of you comes everything else. So, get clear on what it is that you do want and you don't want out of life; what it is that's most important to you, whether that be your health and well-being, whether that be your family, your friends, whatever it is for you.

And the second thing that we need to make sure that we consider are the decisions that we are making and the reason that we're making them. So, we've talked about the Performance Trap, and we've talked about the fact that sometimes we say yes to things and we do things and we put up with things based on our need to overcome those fears: the fear of not being enough, the fear of not belonging in the fear of not being loved.

So, sometimes we'll make those decisions that feed that unhealthy need for approval from others and then we regret it and we say yes to things out of obligation or out of wanting to get that approval, which actually makes us say no to things which are our priorities. So, what I want to do this week is take you through a process and help you to be able to speak your truth in an assertive way that puts your priorities first, and so that you end up saying yes to things that are important and no to things that aren't and no to things that you would normally say yes to, because you're feeding that unhealthy need for approval.

So, as I said, the first thing we need to do is we need to make sure that we understand our priorities. So if you haven't done this yet, or it's something that you need get to get more clarity on, what I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions and take some notes so that you can get clear about what's really important. Now to do this, we need to make sure that we've got that inner dialogue under control. This needs to be the big version of you that you're having this conversation with because your mini-me, that small version of you will steal those priorities from you as you go to write them down.

So, get yourself ready, get yourself in a state where you're thinking about you and the importance of the things that are your priorities, and we'll get a list down together. And ask yourself, "What's most important to me about my health? What's most important to be about my relationships, about my family, about my career, my business? What's most important to me about my finances, about my fun and recreation, about where I invest my time? So, step one is to make sure that we're clear as to what our actual priorities are. It's only then that we're able to put some boundaries around those and speak out truth so that we can go to those priorities. 

So now that we have that list of priorities, here's something to consider: whenever we are saying no to someone, we're not saying no to them, we're actually saying yes to our priorities. And that, for some of us, is a flip of what we normally do. What we normally do is the boss comes in and says, "Hey, I need you to work back every night, this week." And you know that you've got your daughter's recital or your son's soccer game or whatever it is that you have promised that you're going to go to, and they're your real priorities.

But by saying no to the boss, to your partner, whoever it is, you're actually saying yes to your daughter, to your son, to your friend, your spouse, whatever it is, to yourself. So, what we're doing by having that mindset is eliminating the negativity around saying no to people. You're not saying no, you're actually saying yes to yourself. 

The second thing to understand is that when people make a request, it's exactly that. It's a request. It's not something that we have to jump at. And I don't know about you, but I certainly was someone that before they got the words out, I'm going, "Yes. Yeah, I'd love to do that." And then when they walk away, going, "Oh, no. Now I've got to do that." So, it's a request. So when someone makes a request, what we can do, if we stay in our logical brain, is we can get some more information around that. We can give ourselves space to eliminate that instant reaction of saying yes. So, someone asks us to do something, whether it be a friend or whoever. 

So, the first thing to do is to obviously remember if it's against your priorities. So if someone wants you to do something and you are thinking of your priorities, and you go, "Okay. If I do that, I'm actually going to be saying no to that." That's step one. The second thing to do is go, "Hey, that sounds like something that I could possibly do. Could I get some more information what's actually involved in that?" What if it's a situation at work where someone wants you to do more and they've brought you in this pile of stuff and said, "Hey, I need you to do this by Friday." We're able to go, "Okay, yeah. Look, I'd love to do that for you. Can I ask you which one of these other things that you wanted me to do by Friday would you like me to put aside?"

Because what you're doing is you're negotiating. You're having a conversation around it, rather than just going, "Yep. I'll do that." And then Friday comes and you don't get that done and you don't get the other stuff done because you've created overwhelm.

So, learning to speak your truth is simply having dialogue that says, "Hey, let's look for some alternative solutions here. Who else in the team could actually do some of these things?" Whatever it is. However, to get to this place, we need to go right back to the start and that is remembering our priorities.

Because if we have someone that just puts ourselves last, we don't really care. "Yes, boss. I'll do that by Friday. Yes, friend. I'll come and help you move." Whatever it is. And then, we'll work late into the night or whatever it is just to get that done so that they approve of us. So they like us so that we belong and then feel bad about ourselves, about what we said no to, and that's our true priorities.

Knowing your priorities and staying true to them helps you to say no gracefully to others, because what you're doing at that time is you're saying yes to yourself. You're honoring a commitment that you made to yourself about your true priorities. 

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this journey of going beyond COVID-19 by working on other areas of our Emotional Intelligence. I'll see you then.

Are you someone that can set healthy boundaries for your life or do you let people treat you the way that they want to treat you and then feel bad about it later? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around developing our Emotional Intelligence in the competency of Personal Power by talking about exercising some assertiveness and setting healthy boundaries.

Personal Power will empower you to not only set healthy boundaries, but to enforce them as well. There's no point putting boundaries in our life, if we then allow people to come within those boundaries without there being any consequences. And I talked about being assertive, so assertive is not aggressive. 

So once again, as with all things to do with working with people, with relationships, it's not so much what we do that gets us in problems, it's how we do it. So, being assertive says, "No, no, no. I actually have something that is a value to me and I'm letting you know that." To do this practice that I'm going to teach you today, to take this strategy and use it, I want to remind you of, firstly, of two components of this whole Personal Power journey that we have to grasp before we'll do this. 

The first one is self-care. So if you're still somebody that even after going through all these with me up to date and you're on the journey with us, if you're still someone that thinks self-care is selfish or self-care is not something that you deserve, then I would consider getting with someone, whether it be a friend or a coach, someone who can help you to realise that this is a prerequisite to having Personal Power. This is a prerequisite to being able to be assertive and set healthy boundaries. So, the first key element in boundary setting is an understanding and a belief that you are worthy of having those boundaries and what those boundaries give you. So point number one, exercise self-care.

The second principle to grasp is speaking your own truth. Now, we talked about a couple of weeks ago removing the masks and being who you really are. And as you can see, once again, and this is a sequential journey that we're going on now because we need to remove the mask so that the truth we speak is actually our truth. It is actually your truth.

So once again, it's not about what we do here, it's how we do it. Feeling worthy, feeling valuable, knowing that you've got something to say, that your boundaries, that your values, your beliefs are important is what we definitely need to have in place so that we will speak the truth. Because as you'll see, as we go into the strategy of how to set these boundaries and how to enforce them, we need to be able to speak up with a voice of authority so that people get the message.

So, the first place we need to set boundaries is for ourself. As we go through this process, I'll be talking about dealing with others. But what I want you to also consider is your own internal dialogue, your own conversations and behaviour that you have with yourself. And we've talked about retraining that mini-me and getting that into dialogue-healthy and we really need to work on that here with ourself as well.

We need to make sure that we set boundaries for ourself and we make sure that we enforce them in the way that we behave, in the way that we talk to ourselves, in the way that we treat ourselves. So, that's the first place we need to start is with yourself. And then the next place is to work on setting the boundaries with others and to do that, it is a process of two decisions and four steps. Let's have a look at them.

So, let's start with the two decisions. The first decision that we need to make is to decide what it is that we want from other people, decide how we want people to treat us, decide what is important to us and what we need to set boundaries around. So, the first step is to have an understanding of what your priorities are, what's most important to you in your life, and to decide what boundaries you're going to set.

The second decision we need to make is to be extremely sensitive about those boundaries, to enlarge those boundaries, and to be constructive about enforcing them. So, the first part of this process is to make those two decisions: decide what we want and decide that we're going to enforce them.

The next thing we need to look at, now that we've seen the two decisions and we know what they are, is the four steps and we'll go through them one at a time just to get an understanding of them. And then, I'll give you an example and some language and a script that you can use so that you can go and set those boundaries with people.

The first step is to educate and inform people of what your boundaries are. We're not mind readers. Human beings need to know what it is that you want so that you can then enforce those boundaries. So, the first step is to have conversations with people that are in your life, no matter where they are, whether it's in your family, whether it's in your workplace, and do it in a matter of fact way. So, we're not being aggressive and saying, "This is what I want. These are what my boundaries are and don't step over them." We're just letting people know who we are. We're letting them in a little bit. We're saying, "This is what's important to me." So, step number one is to educate and to inform people of what the boundaries are.

The second step is to let people know that if it continues, this is what you're going to do. So if the behaviour goes outside your boundaries, the next step is to make sure that people know, "Hey, if you continue to do that, this is what I'm going to need to do." And the second part of that is to make them understand how it makes you feel when that behaviour happens. So, we've educated people and we're now telling them what we're going to do if it continues. So, let's now have a look at what the third step of the process is.

Step three is where we really need to exercise our Personal Power, where we need to be able to speak our truth and be true to ourself and step up and give people a warning of what you're about to do if the behaviour doesn't change, what you're going to separate yourself from, whether it be permanently or temporarily until the behaviour changes.

And step four, and this my friends is where the rubber meets the road, this is where that second decision of being sensitive about our boundaries and knowing that we're going to enforce them is to actually do what you say you're going to do, is to actually remove yourself, separate yourself. Whatever the warning that you gave, make that beyond being an idle threat to actually taking place and separate yourself from that situation, from that person, whatever it is, whether it be permanently or temporarily so that people know that that boundary is really important to you.

So now that we know the two decisions and the four steps, what I want to do is I want to give you some language and a script around that so that you can understand it. And you can take this right here, right now, today, and go and talk to someone about a boundary, which might be something that you haven't been enforcing because you didn't feel like you had the power to do that.

So, let's have a little bit of a scenario around this. Let's say that you're in your workplace and you go to meetings and in those meetings, you've got a particular person that continually puts you down, that speaks over the top of you, that raises their voice when they're talking to you and it's something that you're not wanting to continue. 

So, let me just use this script now to take you through a process that will help you to understand, if that is a situation for you, what to do and what to say. And if there are other boundaries that are coming up for you as we are going through this that obviously you put that context into this situation.

So, the first thing that we do is we make sure that people know what the behaviour is or make sure people know what the boundary is. So, let's say it's Bob and Bob is doing the yelling and the putting down, et cetera. So, we're in the meeting and we might go, "Hey, Bob. Can I just see you after the meeting?" So, it's a casual meeting where you go to inform Bob of what the challenge is. 

So, the first step is to tell them how you feel. And that's why we need to know how we feel and why we need to know how to name the emotion and all the stuff that we've done up until now. So, begin by saying, "Well, when you...", and then tell them whatever the behaviour is. So, in this case, say, "Bob, when you raise your voice at me in the meeting, it makes me feel worthless. It makes me feel like I'm not a part of the team. It makes me feel less than. It makes me feel like I don't want to contribute to the meeting at all.

The next thing we do is tell them what we want. "So Bob, can I ask you that in the meeting? Would it be okay if you just talk to me in a normal, conversational tone like we're doing right now? And if you would let me finish what it is that I'm talking about before you jump in." So, we're now telling them, "What do I want?" So, "When you..., I feel..., I want..."

The last part of the process is to use the term: "If you..., I will..." Now, we can use this in a positive or consequence way. So for example, "So Bob, if you do that, I will be able to contribute more in the meeting." And we could also have, "So Bob, if you continue to yell at me and put me down, I will just withdraw in the meeting as if I'm not even there. And in fact, if it continues after that, I'm actually going to stop coming to the meetings."

So, setting boundaries is a two decision, four step process: Decide what you want, decide to be sensitive about enforcing that, and taking people through a process of "When you..., I feel..., I want..." And "If you..., I will..."

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this journey of Emotional Intelligence in the critical competency of Personal Power by learning how to speak our truth assertively. I'll see you then.

When you spend time in the past, is it a positive experience or do you come away from it feeling really, really bad about yourself? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence and building our Personal Power by having a conversation to help us to recognise our past achievements. 

If you're like me, I used to carry around a list of everything that I did wrong. It was all there, ready to go, ready to come up and remind me. It was fuel for my mini-me, for that inner dialogue. It was a reservoir for it to be able to reach down into and pull up and go, "Hey, remember this? Rememaber when you got that wrong? Remember when you failed that? Remember when your marriage didn't work? Remember when you didn't get that position, you didn't get that client?"

Whatever it was. It was this big reservoir of all the past experiences that I would nurse and rehearse. "You remember when your mom left you on a doorstop as a baby?" All those things. And I'm sure you've got those similar things as well.

And as we talked about last week, we want to give a better inner dialogue. We want to have an opportunity to have some good stuff be spoken to us because that'll propel us and empower us to be who we can be. So, what I want to do today is to help you to look at things from a different way.

There's three positions that we can be in. We can be in our past, in our present, or in our future. And I know that you know that it's great to live in the present moment, to have an understanding of where we're going and to learn from where we've been, but to be able to enjoy being in this present moment right here, right now. 

And I know that so many people, they miss out on the beauty of the present because they're still beating themselves up about what happened in the past, or they're still feeling uncertain about what's happening in the future. And particularly at this time of COVID-19 right now, as we're doing this, people have got some challenges around that and they're rightly so to have those things that they're thinking about because this has been a big change to all of our lives.

What I want to do is to help you to feel confident in your own abilities to develop that Personal Power so that you can enjoy being in the moment, knowing that you have everything within you and around you to be able to have the future that you want to have. So to do that, we need to recognise our past achievements. We need to look for the same amount of evidence or more that we can do things, that we are good enough, that we are liked and we are loved than we had in that reservoir of things to the contrary. 

I remember when I was in first year of high school. They called it first form then. That's how long ago it was. And I remember this was the time I went to high school early. I went when I was 15 and I was the youngest kid in my class and I was short and I had all these issues. That was the time when I found out about my mom abandoned me as a child and I took that meaning on that was the negative one, rather than what it really meant and all those things we've talked about before. And if you haven't heard those stories, please go back and I'd love to share them with you.

So in that time, I wasn't feeling all that good about myself. And we had our athletics carnival at school and I had an opportunity to go in some races and to jump things and to throw things and all that sort of stuff. And I remember this one event, it was the 800 meters track event. The one where you have to stay in your stagger until you get down around here, and then you can come into the inside lane and do a couple of laps and it's 800 meters of that 400 meter track.

Now, that gun went off and I took off like a startled gazelle and I came across and I led that race from the stagger all the way to the finish by quite some margin. And not only did I complete the race and win, I actually broke a school record. And I'd love to say that I had an experience when I got up on the dais and they put the medal around my neck.

You know what it's like. You run across the line and there's a teacher there with a blue ribbon in their hand and they want to get it to the person who came across first. And the next one gets the red ribbon and then the green ribbon or whatever way they go. But all I could see was blue this day.

I remember getting that blue ribbon and I remember pinning that on myself and feeling proud of myself, feeling so good. And in that moment, I could have done anything. I believed in myself. I forgot what was going on. I started listening to my empowering voice. Now, it was a process and it didn't take long for the other voice to go, "Hang on a minute. That's just one race, dude. Let me just remind you of all the other things that you've failed at."

But I tell you that story to give you an example of what I would love you to do. I would love you to go into your past when you were a small child, as you were going into school, as you went into high school, university, became a parent, whatever it was for you, and I want you to find two or three things, more if you can, experiences that happened in your life where in that moment, you felt proud. You felt good about yourself. You experienced an emotion, which you want to experience again.

Now when you go to do this, here's what might happen because we're still just starting to retrain our mini-me. As you go to think about those things and to give yourself permission to feel good about yourself, your mini-me could decide to try and take that away from you and remind you of things like, "Well, compared to this, that's nothing. I mean, it wasn't an 800 meter race for goodness sake. 

So, what this is going to give you an opportunity to do is two things: One, it's going to give you an opportunity to practice what we talked about last week. And if you haven't seen this or heard this, go back and do it and it's going to give you some resource to be able to retrain your mini-me with. And as that voice comes up, go, "Hey, hang on a minute." So, acknowledge and then retrain. 

So, I want you to go through and find those places in your life and hey, if you can find one, that's great. Let's work on that. And I want you to deeply immerse yourself in that moment. I want you to close your eyes, if you need to, and allow yourself to go back into that moment and feel what you were feeling, see what you were seeing, hear what you were hearing, smell what was around you. 

What were you touching? What were you doing? And relive that moment. And I want you to recognise what was going on in your body. I want you to recognise how that made you feel and then I want you to ask yourself a question. Was that feeling one of empowerment or did it disempower you? Did it hold you back or did you feel like you could go forward?

And the reason we do this is we want to give our brain reference points that it can refer to. Points in our past when we succeeded and feelings that we felt that we want to repeat. So therefore, what it's going to do, and our inner dialogue will help us to do this, is move towards more of those experiences so that we can feel that way again. Now, something that I really find that I need to stress to people all the time is that when we go into our past, we're there for a moment.

One of the dangers of doing any exercise where you go into the past is that you can camp there. You can pitch your tent and go, "Oh, yes. I remember this life. I remember how it used to be before I had this and before that happened and whatever." Or all the things that happened that were negative in that time can be dumped on us, if we let our mini-me just run rampant.

 No, we go back to our past for two reasons: One, define things that didn't quite go so well, learn a lesson and do things differently moving forward. We also go back to the past to find frames of reference, like we talked about today, of the times when we got it right and we learn, "Well, what did we do?" So, I focused totally on the finish line. I didn't worry about anybody else and what they thought or what they were doing, I just focused on me and I focused on running one foot after the other and continuing to run until I got to the end. So, that was a lesson that I learned in that moment. 

So today, we've had a conversation that's going to help us to rewire that brain of ours with positive dialogue, with positive frames of reference, to build up our Personal Power, that competency that underpins all the other competencies of Emotional Intelligence by looking into our past and acknowledging those times when we did feel good about ourself, those times when we felt that we did achieve. And the reason we're doing this as well is so that we develop a pattern of looking for the good, of looking for the achievements, of looking for evidence of "I can", rather than listening to the false evidence of "I can't".

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue to build our Personal Power by learning how to enforce healthy boundaries. I'll see you then.

Are the conversations that you're having with yourself healthy or do you have that small inner voice that always wants to hold you back?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around building our Personal Power by talking about changing the internal dialogue. 

I don't know about you, but I have lots of conversations with different people every day. And the conversations that I have with myself, I have found to be the most important. Now, I'm not talking about sitting in a corner, talking to myself. I'm talking about that inner dialogue that we all have that either empowers us or holds us back. And I know for many years, this was a major issue for me.

Every time I went to expand my comfort zone, every time I went to do something that was outside those limiting beliefs that we've worked on before, I have this voice that would remind me of where I really belong, remind me of my shortcomings, remind me of what it is that I should be doing and shouldn't be doing. And in my experience of working with people all around the world, just like me, human beings, I find that this is the case for everyone.

Now, the first thing we need to understand is that this voice was created by us. I like to call this voice my mini-me, my little version of me, that voice that is deep inside my subconscious that reminds me of who I really am. Now, the challenge with that voice is a lot of times, that reminder of who you really are is not the truth. It's a truth that you have created based on the things that we've talked about in the weeks previous, where we've talked about those limiting beliefs, those things that you've done in your past, those experiences that you've had that you have created a meaning from that changes the way you feel about yourself, changes the way you see yourself. 

And that inner dialogue is either helping you or harming you. Then, what I want to do today is to help you to retrain that voice, to make sure that we understand that because we were able to train that voice. We can retrain that voice today. Let's get started.

Now, we've all heard of this thing called the comfort zone. It's that place where we feel safe, where we feel confident, where we feel competent, and anything that's outside that comfort zone, by virtue of what it's called, feels uncomfortable. Now, one of the things that I realised years ago is that language is vitally important. What we say to ourselves, what we say to others then creates what we get back. So, it's really important for us to understand some language around comfort zone.

Now, you've all seen them. You've seen those memes that say the magic is all outside your comfort zone. Well, it's not. It's uncomfortable out there. So, it's not about it being magic and it's not about being hard or what's inside the comfort zone being easy. It's all about whether or not it's familiar or unfamiliar.

So when we look at it in this context, when we look at it in this way, we can see things that we now do that we might say easy, I'd like to say familiar, that fit inside our comfort zone. Now, remember the first time you did some of those things. I remember the first time that I picked up a telephone to ring someone that I didn't know to ask them to take me on and utilise my services.

Many, many years ago, I almost had a pink fit. I had butterflies that were not flying in formation. And my inner dialogue was reminding me that they were not interested in me because I wasn't good enough. But nowadays, I can pick the phone up and I can ring anybody. I can speak to anyone because I'm not ringing them to see if they like me or if I belong or if I'm good enough, I'm bringing them to offer them a service, a solution that they need.

So now, it's in my comfort zone. It's familiar. It's something that comes easily and effortlessly for me and I'm sure there's things for you as well. I'd love you to talk about them in the comments below. So when we want to retrain our mini me that inner dialogue, we need to remember that we have trained that mini-me, that small voice to keep us inside that comfort zone. Because when we step outside that comfort zone, it feels uncomfortable.

So let's say for example, you're one of these people that doesn't like speaking in public. Apparently, in the list of fears all around the world, speaking in public is only second to death by fire. So, there's something about speaking in front of other people that people feel fearful of. And we know it's because their focus is on themselves and they're concerned that they won't be good enough, that they won't belong, that people won't like them. So, it's not the speaking in public itself. That's a challenge because we've all learned to speak since we were tiny babies.

So, let's just say that you're one of those people. And if it's not speaking in public for you, just put your own story in there. But let's just say that you decide one day that you're going to get up and speak in public. Let me tell you, and if you've already done this, you'll know there's that small, not so quiet, inner voice that will remind you that that's not something that we do.

"We don't speak in public. We've got nothing good to say. No one's going to listen to us. What if they don't like it? What if they throw things at us? What if, what if, what if...?" And what do we do? We then have a choice to go, "Yeah, you're right. What was I thinking? Thank you. I'll just pull back from doing that." And I'll miss out on that opportunity. And there's many times in my life where I've done that, where I've let that small voice keep me comfortable in my beliefs about myself and about my ability and about the world, and it stopped me from going forward and serving in the way that I'm meant to serve.

So if you're ready to retrain that voice right now, I want you to come on a journey with me and I'm going to take you through a simple process to do that.

Now, I, at the time of doing this video, have three amazing grandkids. They are the greatest grandkids on the planet and I've taught them that all they need to do is say, "Grandpa!", and I forget everything else that's going on around me and I focus on them. That's exactly the same as what you and I have done with that inner voice. We've trained it that all it needs to do is say these things that we've taught it to say and it will get our attention. So, let's just say, while I'm talking to you right now, one of my grandkids came to my studio door and said, "Grandpa! Grandpa!", and I totally ignored them and kept talking to you. 

Yeah, we all know what's going to happen. They're going to change their behaviour, their tone of voice, the volume of their voice to get my attention because I have disrupted their pattern. Normally, they speak, I listen. Full attention. It's exactly the same with your mini-me. So, let's just come back to the analogy of getting up on stage. Let's say you go to step up on stage. You take that first step and your mini-me goes, "What do you think you're doing?" Instead of just walking up on stage, the first thing that we need to do is acknowledge the mini-me. Why? Because we have created it and we've asked us to keep us safe.

So, let's say it's one of my grandkids coming in again and I go, "Hey! Just excuse me, everybody." And I get them to come over and I hold them up and I go, "Hey, this is my grandchild." And I give them attention. I say, "Hey, I'm just going to talk to these nice people for a minute and then you and I are going to get ice cream." We do the fist pump, they sit down, and we're ready to go. Now, the children, it's a metaphor. We do know that if I don't go back to them immediately, then we're going to continue with the same behaviour, but work with me.

So, let's say we were to do the same thing with our mini-me. So instead of disrupting that pattern, we would have say, "Okay, I hear you. I know I taught you to stop me from speaking in public, but I want you to unlearn that because we've got a lot to say, and we've got something that these people need to hear. So therefore, watch and learn." The beautiful thing about a mini-me, that inner dialogue, is that it can be retrained. If we trained it once, it tells us straight away that it's teachable. So therefore, just like us, just like every bit of learning that anyone does to be able to move forward from past beliefs, from past learnings, we need to first unlearn.

So once we've unlearned that past belief, the root cause of why you wouldn't walk up on stage, the now mini-me will go, "Okay, I'm ready to learn the next bit.", just like they did the first time you taught them the last belief. So, you get up on stage and you speak and it's fantastic and the people love it and you have served and you've given your best. And by the way, I teach people how to speak in public and sometimes, I'm sure that every speech that they said no to doing, once they get up there to do a two minute speech and they've got to just come out and you've got to hook them to get them off the stage.

The reason being is the belief has been debunked. We've gotten rid of that one, chucked it out back to where it belongs, and we've got a new belief now that says, "Hey, this speaking in public thing is good." So now, over a period of time of repeating the new behaviour, we now develop it in a dialogue that says, "Get up and speak on stage because now we have changed the underlying belief. We've changed the underlying language.

So, I had to retrain your mini-me to get on top of this inner dialogue, the first thing we need to do is retrain that inner voice. We need to dispel those myths, get those new beliefs embedded and through neuroplasticity with my friend just behind me here, our brain, we can rewire those neural pathways. So when that initial thought comes up or that opportunity or that behaviour or that experience, we think this way, rather than what we did before.

So, a key step in being able to develop our Personal Power is to change the inner dialogue, the way that we speak to ourself. So, what I want you to do over this coming week is I want you to look at some of those limiting beliefs. I want you to flip those beliefs and I want you to affirm those new beliefs to yourself. I want you to practice retraining that inner dialogue so that we can have a healthy voice that empowers us that moves us forward.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join us again next week when I'm going to continue this conversation and add some layers to this retraining of our mini-me by looking into our past and looking at our previous success so that we get some evidence of the things that we can do to help us to dispel the myths that we have about the things that we can't. I'll see you then.

Do you show the world a true version of yourself every day or is your whole life one big masquerade ball? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Personal Power by helping you to remove the mask.

For most of my adult life I got around pretending that I was someone that I wasn't. And once again, the motive for doing that was to get people's approval. And as we talked about last week, that can be very debilitating and hold you back from being who you truly are. And wearing that mask to pretend that I was this person because that was the person that I thought would be good enough, would belong and would be loved meant that there was a lot of stress. You see, pretending is a fun game when you're a kid, but when you're an adult, pretending can get you into some hot water. Pretending can cause a lot of anxiety around your performance.

So once again, this whole thing of wearing your mask is counterproductive for the reason that you're actually doing it. It actually puts you in a state where your performance, where your likeability, where your acceptance, all those things are diminished because people are confused by this version of you. It's not the real you and people can sense that. So, what I want to do is I want to give you the benefit of my own personal experience and my experience of working with others and help you to feel confident to remove the masks that you wear during your day.

Now, there are different types of masks and I'm going to deal with just a few of those in this short time together. However, to get started, I want us to realise that it's okay for you to be who you need to be in particular arenas of your life. So for example, when I'm being a husband or being a father, there are certain ways that I will act and behave and perform that are perhaps not as appropriate in being a speaker, a trainer, an educator, a business person. So, I'm not talking about being this cookie cutter that goes around in a monotone way all their life. What I'm more talking about is forcing yourself and pretending that you’re someone that you're not to feed that approval addiction that we talked about.

As I said, there are many types of masks that you could wear. There are masks that hide just a little bit of you and there are masks that totally hide who you are and a lot of those, as we talked about in the Johari window, are in your unknown area where you don't even know that you're putting on these masks. Some of them are in that blind spot area where others can perhaps see it, but you can't see it. Most of them live in the area where the hidden area lives, where you can see it, but others can't because it's a version of you that you're wanting to portray because you think that that is the one that's going to line up and give you the reaction, the response that you want from others.

So, the first mask that I want to help you to get rid of, if it's one that you are accustomed to wearing, is the “I’m okay” mask. You see, when we wear the “I’m okay” mask, it says, “I got everything under control. I don't need any of your help. I'm doing great.” And I know when I wear that mask and when I've worn that mask, that might be what's coming out when you see me, but inside I'm dying. Inside, I'm scared, I'm anxious, I don't know what I'm going to do.

But the reason I'm wearing that mask is because I don't want you to think less than of me than you already do. I don't want you to think because I had a negative belief, a wrong belief that said asking for help was a weakness, I don't want you to think that I'm weak. So, that mask of “I'm okay” is the first mask that we need to remove.

The second mask to remove is one I see a lot in any area of leadership, whether it's in the home, in the workplace, in the community, doesn't matter where it is. Whether it's leading one person or a whole organisation. And that's the mask of “I've got all the answers”. A lot of leaders feel like, “Well, now I'm a leader. Wow, now I have to have all the answers. Now I have to know everything.” And I don't.

So, this is where the imposter syndrome sneaks in and instead of letting people in and know what's really going on, we go, “Okay, I better pretend that I know everything.” And I know in my career that that created a lot of anxiety. It created a lot of seat of your pants working that didn't always get the results that I wanted. It created an opportunity for me to stay up late at night to make sure that I got it ready just so that I could keep wearing that mask tomorrow.

So, the “I know everything” mask is the second mask that we need to remove. Even as a parent or particularly for me as a parent, I've grown okay in saying to my children, “Hey, daddy doesn't know the answer to that. I can help you find out.” And not fearing at all that they're going to think less than of me. But what it's actually doing is modeling to them what I hope they do as they grow up.

And I used the term “daddy” there. My youngest are about to turn 18, my twins. So, it's a great time in their life. They're doing their last year of high school in lockdown, just going back to school now for some time together with their friends and with their teachers. But I'm really hoping that's something that I can instill in them as they go into adulthood as well. So we've had two masks, the “I’m okay” mask and the “I know all the answers” mask.

And the third mask that I want to talk about is the mask of the victim. This is a mask that we wear that says, “I don't have the ability to do this. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I'm not great. Oh, don't ask me to do that because I'm a bad choice for that.” It's that mask that we wear that says, “I'm the victim here.” And what it portrays is how we're really feeling about ourselves and it's keeping us safe from people relying on us, from people giving us responsibility, from people asking us to do things.

What it also does, it's a mask that gives people an opportunity to go, “No, you're great. You're really good at that.” Which is, once again, feeding that approval addiction. So, the “victim” mask is one that may need some help to be recognised so that you know when you're wearing that.

And that “victim” mask is one that's put on by that small inner voice, that one that wants to pull you back and says, “Hey, okay. Don't portray yourself as being who you're not. Don't tell anyone that you’re good. Come back. We're less than. We're not good enough. We're not loved. We don't belong.” So when we wave that mask, we're telling people how to actually deal with us. We're telling people, “Well, hey. Don't think that I'm worthy because I don't.”

And as we build up those affirmations we talked about last week, as we change the beliefs, as we expand things that are unfamiliar to us now and make them familiar and we rebuild those neural pathways, this is a mask that we want to tear off and throw away because it's a mask that's stopping you from being who you really are. It's a mask when you're wearing it, that someone gives you a compliment and you go, “Oh no, no, it wasn't me. It was such and such.” Or, “Oh no, it wasn't really that good. It's not a big deal.” It's diminishing what they say about you to bring it back in line with who you really believe you are.

So as I said, there are many masks that we can wear and we've just talked about three of them. The mask of “I’m okay”, the mask of “I've got all the answers”, and the mask of the victim that says, “I am not worthy.” So when we can overcome what we feel about ourselves, we can become more self-approved. We can work on the layers that I'd been laying down each week. We can then confidently remove the mask and be who it is that we were created to be. Being who I really am, I find that to be the easiest role to play. I don't have to remember any lines. It just comes out of the abundance of my heart and who I am. And I want that for you as well.

So hopefully, that's spoken to someone. If it's just spoken to one person, then my work is done. And I thank you once again for trusting me and helping you along this journey of developing your Emotional Intelligence and particularly Personal Power.

Well, that's it for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around Personal Power by teaching you how to change the internal dialogue. I'll see you then.

Have you given yourself the total gift of approval or are you continually seeking the approval of others? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Personal Power by talking about removing the Approval Addiction.

For many years in my own life, I cared way too much about what other people thought of me, and I went around being the person who needed to be liked, who needed to be approved of who needed to be accepted by others. This led me to become a people pleaser, to work outside my boundaries and to totally erode away any sense of my own true self. And over the next few weeks, I really want to give you the benefit of my experience, not only in my own life, but working with thousands of people around the world who have this exact same challenge. And I want to help you to overcome the Approval Addiction.

You see, an Approval Addiction is just like any other addiction. It says I cannot go a day without getting it. I need that. If I don't have that approval, then I'm not whole. I'm not able to go through my day and go, “Hey, that was a great day.” So in subconscious and conscious ways, we go around looking for things that we can do so that people can approve of us. Now, there's nothing wrong with getting approval from others. It's a good thing. It's a part of life being affirmed and knowing that people value you. That's a great thing. But when it becomes the motive for everything that we do, that's when the problems arise.

You may or may not have seen me talk about before what I call the Performance Trap and that is where we perform on a daily basis to get the approval externally from other people. So, our whole motive for doing the performance is clouded in this need for approval. I see people like speakers, for example. People who need to present in front of people, they are challenged and fearful of doing it and indeed stumble as they are doing it because of this Approval Addiction.

You see, the reason that we get up on a stage is to impart and inspire to others. Therefore, our focus needs to be on others. Yet when we get up there with a need to be approved of, to be good enough, to belong, to be liked and loved, those three universal fears, then our focus is on what we don't have. Our focus is on the internal. So, we start looking inwards instead of looking outward. So, that's just one example.

So even though our motive is to do our best job so that we get that approval, it's actually counterproductive. It actually creates exactly the opposite because it creates a state within us of overwhelm, of doubt, of fear, of anxiety, and the negative effect of those emotions and us feeling that is apparent in the actual performance. So what we set out to get, we didn't get. And then what happens is over and over, we try to do our best so that you were like me and you approve of me, but I'm not getting the approval. So instead of changing the strategy, what we can do is we can allow that evidence that we're getting to further a road how we feel about ourselves.

So, let me help you to understand how to change from performing to get approval to operating in a way that's going to empower you to be the best version of you. When I found this out, when I was introduced to this concept, I've tweaked and massaged over the years and worked with many people with, it changed my life. And let me tell you, it changed it for the better. No longer was I getting up every day needing to get your approval. It's like this video right now. It is not perfect and it's never going to be perfect because I'm not doing these with a videographer with all the bells and whistles and I've got a few lighting challenges and whatever and my team will fix those up in post-production probably.

But it's not about my performance. It's about what you can take from it. It's about what I can inspire you with. So now that I'm not focused on getting your approval, I'm focused on inspiring you and I'm focusing on you. I hope I'm giving you a much better version of me and you're getting so much more out of it. So, put your hand up right now if you would like me to show you how to break free of the Approval Addiction and I can see hands going up in my mind's eye everywhere.

Because this addiction, just like any other addiction is holding you back from being the best version of you, from being, as we talked about last week, being the you that we need so that when we have you and your uniqueness, and what you bring and your genius, collectively as a world, we can be who we need to be. So, let's take a look at how to shift from the Approval Addiction to being self-approved.

So, step one in breaking this Approval Addiction is to work on your limiting beliefs. And if you want to get some help on that, I've done an episode on that. So, just look at the previous episodes and you'll see about breaking your limiting beliefs, reframing them, changing them. But you form beliefs about yourself, I've formed beliefs about myself, which are not true. They are beliefs that we formed that are based on what people said about us and what experiences we went through and our failures or whatever it was. So, the first thing is to build your own identity. Build yourself up, look for reasons to affirm yourself rather than need it from the external. Every one of us needs affirmation and the more of it that we give ourselves, the less we need from others. So, step one is work on your limiting beliefs.

Step two is to control the inner dialogue. And over the next few weeks, I'm going to do an episode to help you to do that. So, look out for that to control that inner dialogue, that self-talk that tells you that you need the approval, that tells you to do things or to not do things based on that fear, based on not being good enough, based on not belonging, based on not being loved. So, retraining your mini-me as I call it, retraining that inner voice is the key to being able to have a voice that helps you to accept yourself.

Step three is to practice your new beliefs. So now that you've got a more healthy set of beliefs about yourself, about the world, about others, you've got a better internal dialogue that reminds you of those beliefs, the more powerful and positive beliefs. Now, it's a matter of rewiring your brain by practicing the new beliefs over and over and over again. And a great belief to start with is that you are enough. You do belong and you are loved.

So, one of the things that I like to do is help my clients to write out some affirmations. So, as a practical exercise that I want you to do to get the most value out of this is to pause the video or podcast right now. And I want you to write out a list of at least 10 things that you like about yourself. Now when you're doing this, you might find that a little bit of a challenge, a little bit of a struggle because it's unfamiliar. Because what most of us are doing are rehearsing the things that we don't like about ourselves.

So as you're doing it, I want you to have the thought and put it straight to paper. Otherwise, that internal voice is going to steal it from you and go, “No, that's not true. Who do you think you're kidding?” Just stay in your logical brain and put something down that you like about yourself. This was a big challenge for me. I worked on this. This took some help. I had to actually get an external coach to pull these things out of me and my first list, about 90% of them, I didn't believe them, but I practiced them anyway because what we can do is we can rewire our brain and we can trick it with future things that we're moving towards by stating them in the present.

So for example, if you’re someone who has a skill that isn't quite yet where you want it to be, instead of saying, “Oh, look. I'm not good at doing videos.” What I could say instead is, “I'm getting better every time I do a video.” So, it's a moving towards what we want. If you want to really get the benefit, you could go, “I am great at doing videos.” And even though it may not be totally true right now, it's an empowering affirmation for you to move towards.

So, there's some tips, hopefully, that will help you to break free of this Approval Addiction. Now, it's not going to happen overnight because you have a pattern of belief and behaviour that's gone on for many, many years. So, it's a matter of practicing, practicing, practicing, repeating the new beliefs, the new behaviours, listening to what you say about yourself in the positive that allows you then to have a new set of neural pathways that will be your new normal.

So when you start having a negative thought, the positive one would jump straight in and take you where you need to go. So, the Approval Addiction is about needing approval from others. What you do when you set it up, as we've just talked about, is you get to a position of self-approval. You see, a lot of times, we go around wanting from others what we haven't given ourselves. And if you don't yet think that you're good enough, you don't yet think that you belong and you don't yet love yourself, then it's an unrealistic expectation for you to get that from others. So, all approval starts with yourself.

Productivity trainers will tell you to delegate. And let me tell you, the only thing that you never want to delegate is approval. That's for you alone. Eleanor Roosevelt said it so well, “What other people think of you is none of your business and nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

So, Approval Addiction to self-approved is the next step in you developing your Personal Power. I'd love to get some feedback from you, whether you're on my YouTube channel, whether you're in my blog or whether it's on the podcast, whether you're connected on social media in some way, jump into the comments, get into the conversation, and I'd love to be here for you so that you can soundboard these new beliefs off me and I'll come back and I'll answer those, every single one of those personally because I really see the value in being able to help people to develop their Personal Power.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we'll continue this conversation around developing our Personal Power by learning how to remove our masks. I’ll see you then.

Do you have a calm inner conviction about who you are and your ability to get what you want and need in life or do you tend to live in a world of self-doubt?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence beyond COVID-19 by talking to you and starting a conversation that we will have over the next few weeks about what I believe the number one critical competency and that is Personal Power.

Many people are addicted to approval. They care way too much about what other people think about them and what they're saying about them. I know in my own life, for many, many years, this is what was holding me back. Everything that I did, everything that I performed, I was doing it with a motive to get you to like me, to get people to accept me.

You see, we all operate with three universal fears in mind. The first one is the fear of not being enough. That means I'm not good enough. I've got to prove myself to you. The second one is the fear of not belonging. And the third one is the fear of not being loved. And whenever those fears are evident whether or not they're imagined or real, a lot of times we will go into what I call the Performance Trap, where we will do everything possible to get people to think that we're good enough to accept us and make us feel like we belong and to like us and love us. And this is a major problem that erodes our Personal Power.

I also see people with a very low self-confidence, but they look in the mirror and they're not happy with what they see. And I don't just mean physically, their frame of reference from their past and from what's been said to them has eroded away that self-confidence, slowly chipping away at their authentic self, who they really are. And because of this, we become in a position where we're unable to set healthy boundaries, where we let people walk all over us, where we say 'yes' way too easily. And all this angst going on, all this emotional disruption going on in our emotional brain tends to make us feel powerless and overwhelmed.

Then right here, right now in this time of COVID-19, there are many things that I've seen, people making decisions around based on these things. It's like I see people in business going, "Oh, should I be selling things right now?" People are doing it tough right now. They're not getting their income that they were getting. And there's people getting sick and there's people passing away and they're making decisions in that emotion because they care that if I sell something, then people might think this about me.

So it goes away from the logic that if I sell something, I might be able to help the economy and I might be able to help people to develop and grow and navigate this pandemic in a much more comfortable way. I know for myself putting together this self-paced online course, which I'm doing and have done for this time of COVID-19, I had those thoughts and I very quickly said, "You know what? No, you're a leader in this field and you have a resource that's going to help people and you need to keep feeding your children." It's funny that kids, they want to eat every day. So for me, I could make a logical decision because I was making a decision based on how I could serve rather than what people would think.

Personal Power gives you the ability to feel self-approved where it starts with self-love, where you look after yourself or you exercise self-care, where you're confident in your own ability and where you are calm and in control. And when you're calm and in control, you can make decisions that are logical and are strategic and will actually solve the challenges that you are in. And all these things come from developing our Personal Power.

So, what is Personal Power? Personal Power is having a sense of your self-worth and your capabilities. It's about having self-confidence, knowing that you have everything within you and around you to be, do and have whatever it is that you want in life. So, what I want to start this week in doing is laying some principles around Personal Power, and we'll unpack these over the weeks to come because this, as I said, is the area that I feel when we get on top of this, it has an effect on all the other competencies of Emotional Intelligence.

The first is that we need to be authentic. You need to be the real deal, who you were created to be. There's only one you, and we need that so that the world can collectively be the world that it needs to be. For many years, I wore a mask where I pretended that I was this because I was feeding those fears and I cared what people thought. Now, by the way, when I say I don't care what people think anymore, I don't mean in an arrogant way where I don't care what you think. I'll be whatever I want. I'll do whatever I want. No, still remaining humble and teachable, but not doing what I do with the motive of getting you to like me.

To do this, we need to retrain our mini-me. We need to retrain that inner voice, that small, not so quiet, sometimes voice of doubt. That inner dialogue that says, "Well, hang on a minute, Grant. Why would you be able to help people all around the world to develop their Emotional Intelligence and reduce their stress and conflict and be happier in their life and…” No, no, no. Retrain that dialogue to go, “You know what? This is what you do. This is the evidence that you've been doing it and this is what I'm going to use as my frame of reference, not what others have said or what they might say or what I've believed in in the past.

Retraining that voice to be a voice that lifts you up so that when you are having those bad days, which they're okay to have by the way, because we are human, we're not robots. That small voice lifts us up and says, “Hey, come on.” Whispers in your ear and says, “Remember that time you…Remember those people that you helped there? Remember what your kids said about you?” Whatever it is. So, it gives you a different dialogue to build you up.

The third thing to develop your Personal Power is that we need to be able to set and then keep boundaries. Boundaries around our priorities, boundaries around what we believe is most important to us. Boundaries around our self-care. By the way, self-care is not selfish. Self-care says, “I've got a balance of looking after myself so that I can take care of others.” Being able to set boundaries around how we'll let people speak to us, how we'll let people behave around us, and then to be very particular and keeping those boundaries. Learning to say yes to our priorities and no to things that go outside our values because we're not concerned about what people think. We're concerned about who we're supposed to be and what it is that we've been put on the earth to achieve.

The next one is we need to move on quickly from things. I want you to imagine you're in a car right now and you're looking at a big piece of glass in the front of your car. It's called your wind screen. And then in the center of that screen, there is a little mirror, a smaller piece of glass, and that's your rear view mirror. What I want you to do is think about your journey, your life with that in mind. So, the rear vision mirror is just there to have a quick look every now and then to see what's behind. But the main focus is on the larger piece of glass, which is where we're going.

Things happen in life. Situations come every single day in my life, just as they do in yours. People say things. This morning, I had someone on a webinar that I was on who attacked me and it was crazy, but I moved on quickly from it because in the scheme of things, listening to that was going to stop me from doing what I need to do for you right now. So, being more focused on where we're going rather than where we've been and going back to where we've been for two reasons. One, to look at the things that we've done in our life that can give us evidence that we are able to do things and two, be able to look at things that we didn't quite get right, so that tells us what to do differently moving forward.

Then number five, to be able to have a high level of Personal Power, we need to learn to speak your truth assertively. Not aggressively, assertively. When we know our priorities, when we know what's important to us, when we set boundaries around those things, we're able to then speak that to others with conviction. And if they ask us to do something that's outside that we can go, “You know what? No.” Or we can say, "Hey, I'd love to do that. I just need to get some more information first before I make a decision.”

Or if somebody is treating us in a way that's not within our priorities and our boundaries to be able to go, "Hey, when you do that, it makes me feel this way and if you continue to do that, I'm going to do this." So, speaking your truth assertively is going to allow you to navigate your life with a lot more happiness and fun and you're going to be able to overcome roadblocks and continue to build up your identity and your Personal Power.

So Personal Power, and you can probably tell by how excited I am going through this this week, is the number one competency of Emotional Intelligence that it underpins all the other 25 that I work with when I'm working with people. And it's a part of the Self-Awareness quadrant where we've got Emotional Self-Awareness, Accurate Self-Assessment and Personal Power. If you're interested in developing your Personal Power, the online course that I've just put together takes you through exercises to do all those five things that we just talked about and gives you support and coaching so that you can get there.

So, that's it from me this week. What I'm going to do next week and beyond is I'm going to pull out elements of that overview that I just gave you and we'll go deeper on some of those things so that you can develop a strong sense of self-worth, that you can feel good about yourself. Be confident in your ability and navigate through this pandemic and beyond with a high sense of Personal Power. I'll see you next week.