Are overwhelm and lack of clarity holding you back from living your best life? How different could it be if you had more clarity, energy and focus in business and life?
In this episode of the Influence By Design podcast I chat with Marcy McDonald, a mindset expert, end-of-life doula, and international best-selling author.
Marcy explains how her work as an end-of-life doula helps her clients navigate through their thoughts and feelings at the end of their life. She shares how these conversations have helped her to see the opportunity of having less regrets if this conversation was opened up much earlier in life.
Listen to this episode if you’re ready to reach your fullest potential now!
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- What does an end-of-life doula do? (01:55)
- One of the regrets of dying (06:53)
- Uncovering what’s important and discarding what’s not (10:15)
- How to not get affected by negative self-talk (13:53)
- The importance of reframing your negative thoughts (22:04)
- Balancing the emotional mind with the rational mind (25:44)
- What is rationale questioning, and how can it help you? (30:17)
- Why should you allow yourself to be curious (31:57)
- How self-talk affects your energy (36:45)
QUOTES:
- “An affirmation isn’t actually true. It is just a statement of belief of what you want to have to happen.” -Marcy McDonald
- “Being curious and asking questions is one of the greatest gifts that we have as entrepreneurs.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
WHERE TO FIND MARCY MCDONALD
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcymcdonald/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068785427011
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ABOUT MARCY MCDONALD
Marcy McDonald is a mindset expert and end-of-life doula. She helps entrepreneurs gain the clarity, energy, and focus they need to build an amazing life and business.
Marcy is a participant in Season 2 of the reality show 4 Days to Save the World and an internationally best-selling author.
TRANSCRIPTION (AI Generated)
Marcy McDonald Snippet 00:00
As long as it’s about me, then how I’m feeling is going to interfere with my ability to keep on doing what I need to be doing in order to be happy to interact, to do the steps we need to take as entrepreneurs. So that’s what I mean by rational, true reframing, moving those emotions that are judgmental, out of your way, and breaking that habit of thinking of yourself as not being good enough.
Samantha Riley Intro 00:27:
My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income, and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the Influence By Design podcast.
Welcome to today’s episode of influence by design, I’m your host, Samantha Riley. And I’m looking forward to today’s conversation, where we’re really going to talk about silencing your inner critic and proofing or recession proofing your mindset, making sure that you’re in a place where you can get on with your day and be super productive. So I’ve invited Marcy McDonald, who’s a mindset expert and end of life doula, and she helps entrepreneurs gain clarity, energy and focus so that they can build an amazing life and business. So looking forward to diving into today’s conversation. Welcome to the show. Marcy.
Marcy McDonald 01:36
Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.
Samantha Riley 01:39
Awesome. No, I didn’t that bio that I just read out. It said that you are an end of life doula, that is something or it’s a term I’ve never heard of our listeners may have. But I’ve never heard of what you know what that is? Can you just explain what it is what you do? Yeah. And
Marcy McDonald 01:55
I appreciate your asking that question. Because so many people do not know what it is. More people have heard of a birth doula, which is basically someone who helps bring people into the world, I help people leave the world at peace with themselves. I help people with the practical spiritual and emotional challenges that come as you’re ending your life. And when I say people, I mean, the whole family, whoever that whatever that consists of, I work to make sure that you understand what will be happening. As you take your last breath, or as your loved one begins to shut down. I help you consider what your legacy is, what your regrets are, and how to reframe them. How people would visit you when you’re dying. Most people don’t realize that they have choices about all these things. They think boom, they’re in hospice are there in the hospital? And that’s it. But actually, you have a lot of choice about how you leave this world and exercising that choice. makes it so obviously, it’s not the thing you want. But then it’s as he’s one easy and loving, as it can be.
Samantha Riley 02:57
Hmm, well, what a special gift I guess that you’re giving to not only that person, but the family. I remember years ago reading the the Five Regrets of the Dying by brawny where and when you mentioned regrets, then I know that’s one of the biggest regrets that people have is, or that is one of the one of the top five things that people have is a regret that they didn’t do things or you know, see people that they wanted to in their life. How do you find that plays into how you work with entrepreneurs?
Marcy McDonald 03:31
That’s a great question. It is essential to me that anybody I work with, whether it’s an entrepreneur or someone else, but especially entrepreneurs, because most entrepreneurs enter the field of their own business, hoping to have an impact on the world. And yet, they can be carrying things, habits, ways of thinking regrets, things they’ve always wanted to do, but they aren’t doing or they’re fighting that long, lonely, hard battle, being in their office by themselves and discovering that there’s a whole lot more to being an entrepreneur than they had anticipated when they had this glorious idea that I’ll help people in this way where my expertise lies. So having bedside with people who have regrets, and only have a very short time to reconcile with those regrets made me realize that I needed to move that conversation much, much earlier in people’s lives. Obviously, I still haven’t with someone who’s dying. But I think pretty much everyone who’s an adult should sit down and have at least a conversation about what their lives meet with them to them. And so I front load all my coaching with what I call a number in your days, which is a series of exercises around imagining that today is your last day. When we have that experience together. It’s very raw. It brings up things that people have stuck for a long time, but it also helps clarify in a way that nothing else does, except perhaps, on end of life experience, what truly matters to you. And it brings a level of urgency to actually making those changes that you need to make or adhere to those principles or intentions or to the purpose that led you to your work in the first place, with the urgency to actually take the steps to change it. So most people when they recognize that they’re unhappy, or things aren’t going, well, they want to change, but they don’t get around to it. Or they have big lists, when they go into their office of these are all the things I’m going to do. And they hit snags, because they don’t really want to do social media posts, or figure out their strategy, or do sales calls. But when you have done that initial work of saying what truly matters to me, what if this were the only day I had left? How would I live it? How would I present? What would I bring forth, out of myself and from other people, then it guides you in an entirely different way. And it provides a huge amount of energy for doing the work you have in front of you so that you don’t die with regrets.
Samantha Riley 06:12
I have a question around the way that you speak with this with your clients. Because when we spoke the first time you said, you know, imagine that today was your last day. And I love my business. So much like anyone that knows me knows that I could talk about business underwater with marbles in my mouth for you know, 10 days straight without taking a breath. But if I was thinking today was my last day, I would not be spending it in my business. I’d be spending it with my husband and my children like 100%. So are you asking if this was your last day? Or are you framing it in? Tell me how, you know, what did you do in your life like so I’m really interested in this because my brain is having a little bit of a hiccup here.
Marcy McDonald 06:53
It’s a wonderful question. Because, yes, most people would say if this were my last day, heck no, I’m getting out of the office. In fact, one of the Five Regrets of the Dying is I wish I’d spend less time at the office. Nobody ever on their deathbed says, gosh, I wish I’d work more. Okay. So it just clear that out. But when you do the work of boiling it down, and I do what I call a reverse bucket list. So we start with, you’ve got 20 years, let’s make your bucket list everything you’ve ever wanted to do experience travel, and then sky’s the limit. Don’t worry about money, whatever. So we get all that down, and then gradually start taking time away. So okay, you had 20 years, but now it turns out only 10 years, what’s still on the list. And we bring it down to that precious last day. And that is where people find, you know, my family, my friends, but it’s also where they find where they haven’t been attending to that. So let’s say you have a business that you start with a real purpose, which I definitely do, I’m very driven and called to help people in the way that I am. And to change lives. This when it comes down to this being my last day, I can still live out that intention. Even if it were my last day, I wouldn’t be going online and posting necessarily, but I would still be crystallizing what truly mattered to me. So then we build it out like okay, you have you brought it down to one day. And now we’ve discovered what’s on that list. And sometimes it’s very surprising to people. Now we move forward. So we get to add time. Now. All right, you have a year to live after all. Turns out the doctors were wrong. It’s not one day, it’s a year, what do you do? What comes back on? What’s your plan for getting there? And we add five years, 10 years and back out to 20 years. But now with the shift in perspective, that number of feeling like we have all the time in the world. That’s an illusion. If you don’t have all the time in the world, then what does that mean? When you come in, in the morning and you get into your office? And you decide I’m just gonna blow it off? What does that mean? So it has marvelous implications for integrating everything it is you’re trying to do, and dropping off the things that really aren’t that important. I see a lot of entrepreneurs just spinning their wheels, you know, popping from one thing to another. This is better, I should shift my avatar and you do have to be nimble when you’re an entrepreneur, but when it comes from self doubt or not being clear about your intentionality and your purpose, then it’s just you getting in your own way. So this whole process of working through numbering your days, helps you on a daily basis, come back to wait a minute. Hold on. What is my intention within this? What if this were my last day? What’s important? How am I going to use it? All right, I said family is my most important thing. And yet, I’ve structured my day so that I’m going to be working till 10 tonight because I didn’t focus on the things I need to focus on. So there’s marvelous trails that lead out from it. And back to it, if that makes sense to you.
Samantha Riley 10:15
Oh, absolutely makes sense. And I’m guessing that people as much as they add things in and say, Wow, I didn’t realize that that was important as I thought, I’m guessing that they also get rid of things that ah, that now I can see that that’s not so important.
Marcy McDonald 10:30
Yes, absolutely. are, you know, if I did it in 20 years, then cool, that’s fine. But the thing is, you have to have a plan about doing this, you have to be both flexible, and a planner. So ultimately, we build out the narrow steps for the things in that first year. How are you going to make this happen? You said this is important. So for instance, I had a client who really lamented that she worked such long hours, she didn’t spend time with her two teenage boys. Tough age anyway. Quality time. Yeah. And once that came up, as on her last day, that was the most important thing, then I can say, well, how are you going to build this into your life? If this was your most important thing, and we get 10 years down the road, and you didn’t do it? Five years down? Is because you didn’t plan for prepare for it and act on it. So how do we put that into action? Then it’s the same with anything that’s going to come up in that discourse. Yeah, I
Samantha Riley 11:31
love that. You mentioned that years ago, when I’ve got three children, there’s quite a gap, big gap between my second and my third. So my third son was at school while my other two had finished. And one of the things that came up when I started working with a business coach was that I wasn’t giving priority my calendar to the things that were important to me. So exactly what you’re talking about here. And one of the things that I did was put in my calendar that every Friday when I picked him up for school, we would go to a cafe, and he would you know, I’d have a coffee, he’d have a milkshake, you know, would share a piece of cake. But it was in the calendar. And every single Friday, we did that without fail. Nothing ever got in the way. Because once I really realized how important it was to me, you know, and my other two children had already finished school. I know how quickly it goes, right? So it was very easy from that time to because if it’s not in the calendar, it’s very easy to go, oh, I’ll just do that next week. I’ll just do that next week. And next week never comes. So I’m a big proponent or a big, you know, how do you say it proporta To actually putting things in your calendar, and really making sure that you stick to that calendar?
Marcy McDonald 12:42
Absolutely. Sunday is the same as saying no day. Yeah. So when you realize what’s truly important to you, then you can also say what’s not truly important to me? Yeah, totally. I often tell people that I changed their lives by showing them what to pay attention to what to ignore, and how to do both better. Because most of the time we pay attention to the things that don’t really matter. That might be stuck in our head where we’re beating ourselves up and might be what somebody else said that we’re running in a squirrel cage about, it might be that, instead of doing my daily posts, I decide I need to clean my desk. Not that it doesn’t need cleaning, but it’s all a series of choices that you have to be very conscious about. So you should see my calendar. Everything’s booked, including taking time off.
Samantha Riley 13:30
Yeah. 100%. Yeah, I’m a big believer in putting time off in the calendar. That is the first thing that I do every well, you know, I have a habit of I don’t work these days, I work these days. And no one ever gets access to my time, because my time is the most precious thing I’ve got besides my health.
Marcy McDonald 13:50
Yeah, right. That’s perfect. Yeah.
Samantha Riley 13:53
So you mentioned then about the mindset, you know, negative self talk. I’ve never met anyone in the world that doesn’t get affected by negative self talk. If there’s someone listening, and it doesn’t bother you let me know, because I want this the secret to the universe. But you know, it’s there’s a lot of things that can be going on, and especially with the economy doing what it’s doing right now, you know, it can be very easy to get caught in thinking I’ve got to get that sign that next client or I’m worried about the money or what if that, you know, the big universal question, what if, what are some of the ways that you have found that is really, I guess, a positive way to start to quieten or silence that self talk?
Marcy McDonald 14:39
Right? So you’re right, almost everybody in the world has negative self talk at some point. More than 70% have admitted in surveys that they have negative self talk. I think it’s much more because most people don’t even realize they have negative self talk. I work with clients sometimes who are talking about something else. And yet, within five minutes, I know all the names, they’re calling themselves all the ways they’re beating themselves up. And when I call them on it, that’s what I didn’t say, Wow, you don’t hear it. Yeah. So I want to throw out a couple tools if that’s okay. So yeah, the first is what I call the red flag test. So one of the biggest problems is people don’t know when they’re beating themselves up. And especially right now, with the economy, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t realize how their mindset is beginning to get in the way of their being able to work persistently, consistently and positively, what you need, because the people out there that they’re trying to work with, they’re also feeling all the same things, all the same worries. And if you’re are feeling that way, and they’re feeling that way, you’re just going to be mirroring it back and forth to each other, and you’re not going to get clients and they’re not going to get your help, which they badly need. So you have to become aware of that. So hence the red flag test. Let me just ask you a question. And everybody listening, or watching please think about this. Where does your attention go on your body? When sorry, where when you start feeling stressed? Where does it show up to get a headache and neck gag?
16:17
Ah, yeah, gotcha. Um, for
Samantha Riley 16:21
usually a headache.
Marcy McDonald 16:23
Okay, so that’s very common for a lot of people, it might show up in their shoulders, neck, back, stomach ache, and pretty much everywhere, all those together, I worked with someone the other day, we were talking about the red flag test. And he said, I don’t really get that much tension in my body. And but then as we went through the exercises, he said, now that you mentioned it my drawers like rocks off. Yeah, at the end of every day, I don’t realize I’m locking it down. The red flag test is simply notice when your body is telling you that you’re stressed, because that is a sign that you’ve got negative self talk, or that you’re experiencing something emotionally, that’s unhealthy for you. Because of negative. That’s the signal to say, Okay, let me just stop for a second here. What’s going on? I got a headache. What happened before this headache? Oh, I was looking at the numbers for this month. And you start to tease it out. So that you can say, Okay, I was looking at the numbers. Well, how did that make me feel? Well, pretty darn stressed. Because the numbers aren’t as good as I thought they should be. Oh, I felt they should be a certain way. What does that mean with about me? Well, I’m not doing a good enough job. And next thing, you know, you’ve got a whole string of things that are attached to that simple feeling on your body. Like I’m not good enough, or the economy is bad, or all the other voices like it’s rarely just one single voice. It’s usually a whole railroad tracks, full of things that are attached to that. And so you can then start to unravel it, once you start noticing what’s going on. You know, I have a whole bunch of things we do to unravel that and then shift that self talk. But the other thing to really understand is that a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, start out posting things all over their office or their computer that are positive affirmations, you got this, you know, I’m a million dollar winner, or whatever it is, you know, I’ll have 1000 clients by the end of the year. Yep, whatever. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small, it’s an affirmation is to help you believe in yourself and and what’s going to happen. What you’ll make happen. Unfortunately, those affirmations don’t penetrate our self talk because of the way the brain works. So you have and I don’t want to get too weirdly technical here, but you have an emotional mind and you have a rational mind. The emotional mind. Oh, you just blinked in the time you just blinked. The rational mind processed 64 bits of information. emotional mind, processed a quadrillion. Wow. Which part of your mind is in charge?
Samantha Riley 19:18
Yeah. 100% We know that it’s the emotional brain is
Marcy McDonald 19:21
the emotional mind. So that means that when you get into that negative self talk, the emotional mind is taking over. It’s not the rational minus the emotional mind saying, Oh my God, and it draws on the negative past in order to work faster. So not just the past but the negative past because that’s where the all the sparks are right? That’s where the biggest highlights like I just go back to here. Oh, this is just like for me. I was in business in 2008. When I got back from a trip I was in corporate then I got back from a trip and was told you have to lay on half your staff to Today got a call on the Houston airport. Where’s your list? Well, I’ve been out in the jungle because I didn’t want anyone to call me. List. I made 13 names by today. I don’t care if you’re in the airport. Yeah, delay of half my staff. And then in order to make up for lost revenues, my company decided to double production and cut our production time in half with half the staff. Wow. So when we start talking about Ooh, recession coming up, my emotional mind goes to 2008 and says, Oh, no, I that again? Yep. But because I am self aware, and I, I know the red flag test. And I know all the tools that I also use with that. Then I go to, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? Do I want to feel that? No, what I want to do is prepare for that. So I’m going to tease out my feelings about it. And I’m going to look at what can I actually do. I was on an event not too long ago, where everybody was asked like, what did you do? What were you thinking about over the last hour and a half during your workday? And most people were thinking about how they were screwed. They were screwing up, or how the economy was bad or whatever. But they weren’t thinking, Oh, the economy is bad. I’m seeing it in the numbers. What am I going to do next? So they were judging themselves, you tease that emotional piece out of it, then you can say, Oh, I’m worried, okay, fine. What am I going to do about it? And then you can move into taking action that’s going to have an impact on your business. Because believe me, Samantha right now, the more people who are unaware of their mindset, with their work, the more those people are going to drop out, the more that people who are paying attention to their mindset are going to persist and come out on top, this will be a great shuffling. Yeah. And the people with the greatest edge will be the people with the healthiest emotional mindset.
Samantha Riley 22:04
You mentioned that your mind goes back to past negative experiences. Can you train it to go back to past positive experiences? And the reason I asked this is because I’ve been in business for almost 30 years, I’ve been through multiple recessions, some of them were just in Australia, some of them were global. And I haven’t had this experience that people talk about in corporate, of laying people off and things being bad, because we’ve actually done well in recessions. So we’re having these conversations. And I was talking about this with a friend the other day, actually, where I was saying we still have, you know, she was saying, it’s almost like, we’ve got to pretend it’s not there. And I totally get that. But I think you still need to be aware that it’s there. But I’m not in the mindset of Oh, my goodness, this is doom and gloom. It’s like no, well, I know we’ve got opportunities. Let’s find them. Yeah. So I guess I’m asking like, you know, do we always go back to these negative things?
Marcy McDonald 23:07
Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up. Because really, it brings me back around to what I was meaning to say about affirmations. So the affirmations are that positive thing that’s almost like saying, I’m just ignoring everything that’s going on? Because an affirmation isn’t actually true, is just a statement of belief of what you want to have happen. That’s positive. So it’s, you know, in that way, it’s innately good, shall we say. But for you to train yourself to go to the positive side, you have to do what’s called reframing. So when you have a negative thought, or worry or observation, then you have to look at it and reframe it, restate it in a way that is positive, that is healthy, but that’s also true. If it’s not true, then you don’t retrain the neural pathways in your brain to accept it as the new habit of thinking. But you can retrain and say for instance, back to my example, 2008, recession, yada, yada. Now, I hear that, but I can reframe and say, I survived 2008. I came out on top of it, I learned so many skills, because I was forced to do everything. And yes, I had five difficult years because I worked 80 to 90 hours a week. But I wouldn’t be here was so well prepared if it weren’t for that. So that’s a positive reframing that I can bring back up whenever any tension shows up that I feel is actually fear. And then I can reframe it with something that’s true. I’m well equipped here and I’m nimble, I’m flexible and willing to pivot I’m able to pivot. A lot of that came out of having experiences in the past so you can reframe, you just can’t pretend it away.
Samantha Riley 24:57
Yeah, I love the difference there. I Love that you can’t just pretend it away. And that’s I guess, where I’ve been really, I guess, feeling different to a lot of other people that are having this conversation of, like, let’s just pretend the economy’s Okay. Well, it’s, it’s not like you don’t have to focus on it. But you can’t just pretend that things are not happening. So I really love that you’ve bought this into the conversation. Once you realize you get that little red flag, you know, you know that there’s, you know, some sort of negative self talk or something that’s physically coming up. Is there a technique that you use with your clients to reframe? Or is it just as simple as you have to go back and think about something positive?
Marcy McDonald 25:44
No, it’s, first of all, the next step is what I call rational breath. Because you have to balance the emotional mind with the rational mind. And that means that you have to very deliberately call the rational mind forward to say, the rational mind is always going to say, hey, the emotional minds got this, you know, I’ll just sit back and relax till you need me to, you know, work a spreadsheet or something, you have to call it forward. And the easiest and fastest way to do that is to ground yourself and your body and your breath. So, pretty much everybody in the world has been told at some point or another, don’t panic, and Oh, stop stressing, take a deep breath. And that’s sound advice, except that most people aren’t actually good at taking deep breaths, they’re not really trained to do it. Even people in yoga classes, often don’t take deep enough breath, I have a friend who’s an amazing yoga instructor. And she’ll see women trying to stick their stomach in, you know, so that rather than fill their belly, because we have this self consciousness around them. So what I have clients do is, as soon as you go through that red flag test, you notice I’ve got tension, you’re going to start the questioning process. But first, you have to call out the rational mind, you put your hands on your belly, and you look at your hands, immediately, you’re shifting your focus from what’s going on in your brain to something physical. And you really then deeply enough to move your hands. And you’re watching to make sure you’re moving your hands and then you’re breathing out enough so that your hands move again, you repeat that five times, I call it rational breath, because it’s very deliberate, it shifts your focus, it calls forward the rational mind. And then you’re in a position to start questioning, what was the trigger that led to this. And then to move into reframing, I have a whole process for rational reframing. But it is a process, it’s hard for me to take people through it. But I’ll give you just a simple thing people listening to do if you just slap a big piece of paper up on your wall, and you draw a line down the middle, and the left side is for your negative self talk. And the right side is for reframing. And just randomly throughout your day, notice when you go through this process, pay attention to what it is you’re actually saying to yourself. Now sometimes it’s it’s very direct, like I’m fat, that’s obviously negative self talk, or I’m a failure. Sometimes it’s more complicated, like, my client is a jerk. And you keep repeating it or, you know, I’m not getting enough money. That’s negative self talk, too. So whatever you notice, you stick up on your wall on the left, and then you go back and on the right hand column, you reframe it. So you just think about how can I restate this. So that it’s a fact? It’s not a story? It’s back. But it’s positive and healthy. And it’s true. So for instance, let’s take the first one. I’m a failure. Okay. You might feel like a failure because you don’t have you’re not hitting your numbers. So you haven’t talked to a client all year, and you’re running out of money. But never. That’s a story, though. So on the right hand side, what are the facts? What can you say about that? That’s true. I’m a failure could become F reframed. I don’t have any clients yet. Well, that’s true. But it’s not got any judgment in it. Do you feel the difference in that Samantha? If it becomes simply and there’s many, many ways to reframe it, but if you just make this super simple, I don’t have any clients this month, then it becomes something that you can then say, well, with my action, find debate. It’s not about me anymore. As long as it’s about me, then how I’m feeling is going to interfere with my ability to keep on doing what I need to be doing in order to be happy to interact, to do the steps we need to take us entrepreneurs. So that’s what I mean by rational, true reframing, loving those emotions that are judgmental out of your way, and breaking that habit of thinking of yourself as not being good enough.
Samantha Riley 30:05
Mm hmm. I love that so much. So once you’ve gone through that rational breath, and that reframing process, is there another step to what you’re doing here?
Marcy McDonald 30:17
Yeah, so it’s called Rational questioning. So this is the process of teasing out whether what you’re thinking is real or not. Is it a story? Or is it real. And this is important, because the things that we’re stories are the things that have judgments in them. And that we actually have control over the things that are facts, or the things that are just facts. The closer we move into the facts, the less we have to be washed away, and the feelings and the stories. Some of those questions are things like, Well, how do you feel when you believe this? How would you feel if you didn’t believe this? So let’s just go back to the example of I’m a failure. How does that make you feel to believe you’re a failure? What would you feel? What would your life be like, if you didn’t believe that you’re a failure? It begins to open up possibilities, and also to help you detach from the feeling, and whatever history led to that, and what you can actually do about it. So as you know, a coach, I mean, there’s a million different kinds of coaches, but for me, I’m not a therapist, things are going to come up that happened in the past, and we’ll tackle them as they do. But I’m mostly trying to help my clients with tools and strategies for how to be present, right now. Without all that judgment, without those negative feelings without that negative self talk, because there’s a huge amount of joy and power and just being present.
Samantha Riley 31:57
I feel like being curious, and asking those questions is one of the greatest gifts that we have as entrepreneurs. And one of my values or one of our the values of our business is resourcefulness. Because I believe that we can answer anything, or get the answer to anything by asking a question that is more resourceful. So not like how do I do that? But, you know, who do I know that can help me with this? Or? Or what is something that someone else did that I can learn from just asking different questions? And when we’re curious, and when we ask questions that are, you know, not questions that we’ve asked ourselves about a situation before, it’s amazing what you can come out with, and move forward with, it’s completely different.
Marcy McDonald 32:48
Yeah, that’s perfect, perfectly stated. When you feel bad about yourself, when you’ve got a like an a lot of negative self talk going on that you’re especially if you’re not very aware of it, is very difficult to give yourself permission to just be curious. Because you want things to be a certain way, it makes you very rigid to be caught up in that negative self talk, because you’re trying to be perfect, or you’re trying to prove something to somebody else, or whatever it is, curiosity implies a certain liberty to figure it out. I think being an entrepreneur is like being a mad scientist in a way
Samantha Riley 33:24
100% Every single day, just throwing
Marcy McDonald 33:28
stuff at the ceiling of seeing. But when you throw something at the ceiling, and it doesn’t stick, and you then say, I’m never gonna get this, then you deprive yourself and your potential audience who needs your medicine? From what you could figure out from the stuff that didn’t stick? Because you’re caught up in a different argument in your head?
Samantha Riley 33:51
Totally. That’s so good. And I think that just knowing these steps of the red flag and the breadth and the questioning, the reframing is, you know, having this knowledge or it’s actually a whole tool belt, really, it’s not even just a tool in your tool belt. It’s almost like a whole tool belt, because it can really change the way you show up in your business. I’d love you to share as we finish up what is a story or an anecdote that you can share with a client that you’ve worked with, that you went through this process and the kinds of outcomes that they experienced in their business moving forward.
Marcy McDonald 34:32
Okay, I have a lot of stories about that. But here’s one that I like to say, which is actually a story of two people. So two women came to me at about the same time, about a year and a half ago. And they both wanted to start their own businesses. They both work for other people. And they were both completely caught up in negative self talk. So one of them hated her boss. She hated her the business some Watch that it didn’t matter if she was on a weekend camping trip, all she talked about was oh, you know how awful work was she had a negative feedback loop going all the time. And she was miserable. She was overweight, she was unhealthy. So that’s woman, number one, Woman number two, and much the same thing going on all at the same time, her husband got very ill. And so she had a bunch of additional worries about Is he gonna die. And while I’d be the only breadwinner, and she got so wrapped up in the negative self talk that she couldn’t even go into the same room with him because she burst into tears. At the same time, she wanted to start her own business. So both of them had this giant tangle of things. One of them decided to hire me, the woman who decided to hire me, we started working through first numbering your days, like, hello, and you don’t actually have forever and ever, I know you think you have 12 years to retire. But are you really going to spend that being utterly miserable every second. So that shook her up. And then we went through the all the phases of negative self talk, which are obviously more complicated than what we went through, but at least those four basic steps until she heard and started to, in her own mind be able to reframe in a healthy way, and create new neural pathways that were a different way of thinking. She ended up losing weight just because she stopped spending most of her energy, feeding what she was feeling. She ended up starting her own business on the side because she had more energy. Most people don’t realize that negative self talk is a huge energy suck.
Samantha Riley 36:44
Yeah, totally.
Marcy McDonald 36:45
Because it’s totally in your way. It’s like walking down the street barefoot and throwing glass in your way. Because that’s where your energy is going. Not toward walking down the street while prepared and enjoying the walk, you’re throwing stuff in your own way. So she had more energy, she came up with a business plan, I helped her with the micro steps to calendar it, she ended up quitting her job 12 years before she thought she would be able to and starting her own business and being able to live on it and being happy with having less income, but more control over her life and feeling better than she had in decades. The other woman decided not to work with me, around the same time that this first woman called to say, Guess what I retired, my business is going great. And I feel better than I ever have I got energy, all this, the other woman called and said, You know, I really would like to start my own business. But, and then she listed all the things, you know, all the reasons why she couldn’t whatever. So she’s just spent an entire year, not moving forward because she still want to invest in what it would take for her to change her mindset to change her life to take those steps and start moving forward. It wouldn’t mean that after working with me, she would necessarily become an entrepreneur, but she would have been a lot happier. With herself and her life, she wouldn’t have wasted an entire year caught in the La Brea Tar Pits where she was drowning in that negativity. So I like to use that example. Because first of all, a lot of people don’t like to invest in themselves. It takes a lot of people just sometimes a big explosion in their lives for them to realize that they are worthy of spending money on in order to be happy and productive and healthy or whatever. But the other is because this really works this process whether it’s me or someone else, your mindset is everything. And if it’s running away from you, if your emotional mind is in control, then you’re not using your days wisely. And well. Because you’re letting that live rent free in your head instead of doing all that you can to live fully and productively and happily as you’re kind of having the impact that every one of our listeners is meant to have.
Samantha Riley 39:16
Absolutely. Absolutely. Marcy, I know that you’ve got a free guide on how to silence your inner critic. Can you please share a little bit more about that and where people can go to find that?
Marcy McDonald 39:28
Yes. So it’s a 10 page guide, which covers seven steps to silence your inner critic. So it goes into more depth of the tools that I’ve been talking about. A little bit more about how you actually reframe for yourself. It’s just kind of to kick start this as a practice in your life. It’s very helpful to have someone else work with you on your self talk because as I mentioned, it’s really difficult to hear, but anybody can get started and getting started. Unlocks everything is like taking your face Grab the damn it. Yeah, all the water flows out. So I recommend this guy for someone who’s ready to say, You know what, I’m tired of beating myself up. I’m tired of getting in my own way. Let me start with myself talk and shift that. So I have the URL, but it’s kind of long, so you might have to put it in the show notes.
Samantha Riley 40:22
I was gonna say, we’ll pop it in the show notes. So you can go over to influence by design podcast.com And just click on that link to get your free guide so you can start to silence your inner critic and move on and create an even more successful business than you’re already creating. Marcy, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Marcy McDonald 40:44
Oh, what a joy to talk with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Samantha Outro 40:48
Love it so much. Thank you so much for sharing just so much value in today’s episode. It’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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