Full Transcript

Sari
If you're ready to skip the line and get the full formula on how to turn your passion into a business, I want to invite you to pick up my brand new book, Key Ingredients: How to Turn Your Passion Product Into A Profitable Business. It's available on Amazon in paperback and eBook form, go to keyingredientsbook.com or simply search it on Amazon. You know, I love a great party, and I am throwing a special book launch party in July and your ticket to get in is to go and purchase a book. All you need to do is forward the receipt and I'll have the email in the show notes. This will be a chance to ask me anything about the book, about your business, about me, about writing a book, and I'm going to be doing some really fun giveaways including giving away a four pack of VIP one on one strategy sessions with me, but to be entered to win that, you do need to submit a review of the book as well. And all you need to do is forward your review to the same email and then you will be entered to win. Go to keyingredientsbook.com to get the link to go grab your copy and then forward me all that info, will get you the registration link so you can join me in July for a fun book launch party! Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host Sari Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach. And it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in, and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work, and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in! Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 150th episode of the podcast. What? It's just insane to me. And really there's more than a 150 because I've done Bonus episodes, but 150 officially so I am celebrating, doing a little dance over here, giving myself a high five. And it's just a cool thing, right? It doesn't mean anything about me personally, like I'm a better person or finally I'm good enough. It's just a fun thing to celebrate that I have shown up here every week for almost three years and giving you guys so much value for free! And I love it. It's been a true joy to do this podcast and I'm really proud of myself for starting it. I definitely had reservations, there was a lot of stress and pressure at the beginning to have it be "perfect", right? But what is perfect? And it's evolved over the years. And I feel like I've just been able, it's been a, I guess an opportunity to lean into more of who I am. And really just keep becoming more and more authentic. And just, it's a way for me to serve my purpose, which is to help all of you to become the best version of yourself, to go after your potential, to open up what you are capable of beyond what you think now, and to help you have less suffering along the way. And just ultimately, you guys are changing the world as you step into your potential of what's possible. And I think entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful vehicles that we can do that really will open that up. All of that is very true in my belief, that is my purpose. But what it's also going to do when you step into entrepreneurship is it's going to trigger all of your baggage, right? And I like to say like parenting, relationships, and entrepreneurship are probably the top three triggers that like bring up all of our shit, and I should just let you know I'm going to be dropping that word a couple of times. So if you're around the small ones, I just was like, it's 150th episodes, I am going there, right? I'm fired up. I'm excited about this topic because what's funny is I actually already recorded a totally different episode for the 150th. And I was like, this morning, I'm like, no, that's not it. I don't want to talk about that for the 150th. I actually want to talk about this today because I see it as one of the most limiting pieces, one of the biggest pieces of bullshit that gets in our way as entrepreneurs, and I'm using myself in that group as well. Listen, I have coaching tools that have helped me tremendously to go bigger, make a bigger impact, take bigger risks, but it doesn't mean that I don't need to also manage my mind and the words that I use. So today, I want to talk about the words that you are choosing to say to yourself, and the quality of questions that you are asking yourself, because entrepreneurship, more than anything else has a responsibility. For you to do it well for you to be successful, whatever that is for you. But for you to be successful and really go after bigger things to go after your potential, you are going to be putting yourself in harm's way, you're going to be bringing up all of that stuff, right? All of those negative messages that we kind of try to stuff down and ignore, but things about your worth, things about your confidence, your self criticism, your fraud complex, right? Your self esteem.

All of its going to come up as you are putting yourself in harm's way to be judged, to be rejected, to possibly fail. And a hundred percent, you are going to fail a lot. In fact, I would say 80% of what you do is failing. And only 20% of it actually works. But we got to go through the 80%. And I don't think we know this, like we kind of delude ourselves. And maybe that's okay, I know I certainly did, I kind of came into entrepreneurship with a certain amount of idealism and like, this is going to work so fast, and I'm just going to be on Easy Street. Right? Like I think we need a certain amount of optimism, and hope that this will work. Otherwise, we probably would never do it. But the reality is, most people don't become entrepreneurs because it is hard. It is really, really hard. And I'm avoiding using the F word but it is effing hard. We're talking about this in Master Your Business yesterday, and it's like all the heads are nodding like yeah, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. And it is our responsibility to manage our minds, to be aware of first, and then change the negative scripts that are running around in our brains. Because your brain is an a-hole, it is trying to keep you safe. It is trying to keep you inside the cave so that you do not experience any pain. It only wants to experience pleasure, which is the opposite of being an entrepreneur. Now of course there are amazing moments. I just hit my 100 book sold goal as of today, which was so exciting. But then like, okay, that's awesome. But then you're like, okay, well, what's next, right? On to the next thing so quickly. And so yeah, your brain just wants to have pleasure and wants to feel good all the time. And it does not want to exert unnecessary energy, right? Because you might have to go run from a tiger at any moment. This is what our brains are doing. We have this part of our brain, we have two brains. And this primal part is in there, none of us can escape it. This is the human condition. And so it is our obligation, if you're going to be successful, if you're going to go after big goals and take risks, that you got to manage your mind. So words matter. They really, really do. The quality of your word choice is so important. And first we have to bring awareness to it. We can't change anything if we don't even know it's happening. So just can you start bringing awareness to that script? We're having like somewhere between 60 and 80,000 thoughts a day, most of them go unnoticed. But can you start to bring awareness to them? You know, maybe it's an alarm at certain times of the day where you're like, dang. And you're like, what am I thinking about? What's going on in there? Is it negative? Probably is, right? It most likely is. We are wired for negativity because our brains are trying to keep us safe. And when we see the negative, we can avoid it, right? We're like, ooh, avoid that. Oh, don't do that. Oh, yeah, right? So it's like, putting all these negative thoughts in your brain, it's just the way it is. So let's not get mad at it. Let's actually try to work with it. But first bringing awareness to it and like what's going on? What are my negative scripts? Mine are usually something along the lines of like enoughness, worthiness, like what's wrong with me? Or this will never work, right? This is really hard. Certainly, like anxiety thoughts, right? Worry, like spinning out. And so catch yourself, just be like, oh, so we're not going to judge it, right? It's not right or wrong. It's just is, what are the thoughts? What are the main things that you're spinning out on? So at first notice it. And they're probably like, it's not negative or positive, it's just probably low quality thoughts. When I take you through the model, which I do with my clients, right? The thought like, this will never work, or what's wrong with me, is going to create a negative emotion, it's going to create a less than productive emotion, it's going to be something like, if the thought is, there's something wrong with me, why can't I figure this out? The emotion under there is going to be something around defeat, or unworthiness or victim, I feel like a victim. And it's not going to produce high quality action, which is not going to get the result that you want, right? It's not going to get you more success, it's probably going to reinforce all of the negative thoughts. And then we're just on like, this vicious loop. And so first just notice it without judgment. And I'm going to give you some tools here in a minute that I use to help shift those thoughts gently. Because we don't want to push against it. We want we don't want to be like, stop thinking that, stop thinking that. Like if I say, don't think about a pink elephant. What just came to your mind, right? I said, don't but you thought about a pink elephant. Because that's what we do. That's how we're wired. So it's not about like, don't think that, don't think that, don't think that. First we just observe it, we just let it be. And we go, oh, there's that thought, right? Oh, there it is again, interesting. I keep kind of there's a theme here, right? There's like, there's this record, that's like, huh, it's kind of on repeat. I kind of keep thinking about the same things, the same negative thoughts. So become aware of it, then I also want you to notice, there's kind of just a thought, which has a period at the end of it. And then oftentimes though, there's a thought, and then there's the meaning. And I'm not going to say often, I'm going to say always, there is a meaning behind it. It's like the thought has ellipses, right? This will never work, dot dot dot. Fill in the blank of the meaning, the story that you are giving behind it. Because words are neutral. They don't have any power if we don't give them any. But what's probably at the end of that thought, if we follow it all the way through, it's like this will never work, dot dot dot, because I'm a screw up. And I always get it wrong. Or I'm never enough, or I can't ever figure it out. What's wrong with me, right? Fill in the blank, whatever your flavor is. There are definitely different flavors. That's just mine. I'm being very open and vulnerable here with you guys. So what are you making it mean, right? Because you could just have a thought that's like, I should be further along, which this thought came up in our Master Your Business last night. And we really talked a lot about this was like that thought, is that helpful? Like when you say I should be further along, at whatever stage in your business you were at, you might not have even started. And you're you're starting to say that like, why have I waited so long? I've been wanting to do this for years. I should be further along right now. Or you could have 500k in sales and be thinking the same thing, right? I see it at every level, and I coach some really top names in the industry. And I'm like, huh, everybody has that same shitty thought. And so we don't have to give it power, we could say, like it could just be neutral, like I should be further along. That's interesting. I think that that's not true. And I can just let it go. But what most of us do is we hang on to it, and we make it true, we make it fact or like, that's actually a fact, I can put whatever dollar amount in the circumstance line. So let's just say 500k in sales, and you have a thought I should be farther along. Now that number is neutral, it could be a completely different number. And you could still have that same thought. You could have a million in there and you could still have that same thought. I promise you because I coach on this all the time. It could be $10 million and somebody is still having that same exact thought. So just notice when you think that thought, how do you feel in your body, right? What is the quality of the emotion? And that emotion is going to drive an action or an inaction. And most likely that I should be further along, let's fill in the rest of it dot dot dot. But there's apparently something wrong with me or here I go, I screwed it up again, right? Then we have an emotion that feels like defeat, it feels like victimized, it feels frustrated. Maybe it feels angry.

It feels like regrets, right? We're thinking about all the things like the feeling of like, ah, I should have done something different. And then that leads to action or inaction, which is probably more inaction, it's probably just more thinking, reinforcing that thought, like, yep, there definitely is something wrong with me, I should be further along. And so we're not getting the results that we want, which is that we're farther along. And I can speak from very much from experience. I have not, I actually noticed, because we were talking about last night, I noticed I was like I have actually not said those words to myself this year. And that's so interesting because I said them a lot. I mean, I've been in business now over six years doing this work. And there have been plenty of times I have uttered those words, right? And they feel terrible. It feels terrible! And it does not make me want to take action, it doesn't make me want to get outside the cave. And you know, go make offers and create new things and go create a new podcast or a post on social media or, you know, think about a partnership. It doesn't help me be more creative, it doesn't help me have more confidence. It just kind of reinforces those same terrible feelings and thoughts, right? So we can play that all the way out, right? And then we can have the questions that we ask ourselves, and we ask ourselves some pretty terrible questions like, why am I not farther along? What's wrong with me? When will this ever work? Why can't I figure this out? Why am I so stupid? On and on and on. So notice the thoughts, but also notice the questions. And I will tell you that the higher quality questions that we ask ourselves, the better results we're going to have in the Arline, right? The model is circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, and we get a result from there. And so we can put in there all of these questions. Now, what we end up doing is our brain needs to close that story loop. We have this brain that's wired for, like closure. And so when you say, why can't I figure this out? Our brain likes to answer us. And it says something like, because you're an idiot, and you can never figure this out. Because there's something wrong with you, can't you see this? We have so much evidence that you can't figure it out. Or why can I ever finish anything? Brian talked about that two podcasts ago about he would come to me and say, you know, I'm just not a finisher. Why can I ever finish anything? And you fill in the blank, right? Because I'm flawed because I'm not enough, because there's something wrong with me. We answer that. We don't usually. I mean, let's get real. We could answer that. Like, why am I not a finisher? Why can't I finish things and then you're like, well because you are still learning and growing and you're an amazing human and you're figuring it out. That is not what our brain offers us. Let's be real. So I wish it was. So we can change the quality of our question we can say, I wonder how I'm going to actually be a finisher this time? I wonder how I'm going to figure this out? What is the next thing I could do? Who could I go and get support from? Who else would know this, right? The Who Not How strategy, we can ask ourselves so many better questions that lead to openness and creativity and new ideas, right? And ahas instead of shutting us down with like, yeah, because you're an idiot, you're never going to figure it out. Instead of like, who else do I know? Who could support me here? Who's ever done this before? Oh, maybe I should go check in with Sari. Or I could go to this group or I could reach out to this person, right? We want to lead you to positive action that's actually going to move you forward, which is what you ultimately want, right? So I wanted to give you a couple of strategies that I use and certainly use with my clients. So we talked about this yesterday, and I said, listen, we can't go to daisies and rainbows, right? Our brains do not like that. Affirmations actually can be more harmful than good. I mean, we do need to actually put in more positive thoughts into our brain but we have to be careful of what it is. And I've been reading this book called The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. I think that's his last name. And he had this really great passage that I read last night that was like, oh, my gosh, I think that's what inspired me to finally be like, actually, this is going to be my 150th podcast. So yes, we do you need to, you know, we can tell, we can feel it in our body when we say a negative thing to ourselves, like this sucks, or this is hard. I can't handle this. Why is my life so unfair, right? Those kinds of things, they definitely shrink us. They kind of make us I mean, I can feel it in my body, right? Like, this is really hard. And we like shut down. And we're like, yeah, it's hard. And we just kind of get smaller and closed off. And positive thoughts they do, they move us in a different direction, right? They help us to feel more expansive. And this is coming from directly from the book. But things like I choose to be here, I've got this, I can rise to this occasion. And so we know we need more positive self talk. And this woman, Barbara Fredrickson, she discovered what's called the Positivity Ratio. And I talked about this a little bit at the beginning like our brains are going to go to the negative, we're negatively wired. So somehow she did some studies that we actually need 3 to 1. So for every negative thought that pops in our head, we actually need three positive ones that will kind of overcome that, and the lack of inertia behind it and get us into like, using those positive emotions, he says, the full impact of positive emotions become unleashed. And when we unleash those positive emotions, when we can tip the scale, when we can offer more positive self talk three to one, then we're actually getting into new actions that are really constructive that serve us a lot better, right? But to my point a little bit earlier, we need that positive self talk to be grounded in reality, we can't just be like, I'm amazing, I am totally going to be a millionaire and I got this covered, right? We got to be really careful. Like, our brains are not fooled by any bullshit. It has a really strong bullshit meter. And so we got to be really careful that we don't just try those affirmations. I put up an image of Stuart Smalley, you know, if you're in my age bracket or older you remember Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live and he would sit in front the mirror and say I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it people like me. That always cracks me up but like that if you don't believe it, is actually going to do more harm than good because your brains like nope, that's not true. And it's actually going to demotivate you. So what I said in Master Your Business last night is we need to reach for a 1% less shitty thought. So this is hard. And I'm figuring it out. Like, we don't have to get rid of this as hard right away, because that would not feel true. It is hard. Sometimes it is really hard. And so keep it and add something that kind of lightens it up a little bit that you just feel 1% less shitty. This is hard versus this is hard and I can do hard. I have figured out hard, right? So we need to be really careful that we don't just jump to daisies and rainbows that we find true thoughts. In coaching, we call them ladder thoughts. So it's just like, this is hard and that's okay. This is hard and I'm figuring it out. This is hard and I can do hard. I'm a badass. All the way to. Okay, I got it. This is just one more thing, no big deal, right? Or I can handle this, we can move to where we want to be. But we got to first have it be grounded in reality. So find a 1% less shitty thought. Another way they talked about in the book is we need to keep reminding ourselves of stuff we know is true. There are times when you have overcome really hard things. Like our brain just likes to offer us like a flat truth, right? You're such an idiot is like it feels like a universal truth. And it's like you're such an idiot sometimes but sometimes you're not. And actually, let me come up with reasons I would challenge you to stop in that moment, say let me come up with three ways I actually haven't been an idiot. Or maybe it's like, you never make good decisions like I always screw it up. I don't make good decisions. Let me actually stop and think about when am I actually made three great decisions for my life, for myself. So start coming up with when you notice the negative thoughts like okay, it can still be there, we can let it be there. We don't have to try to resist it, right? Like the pink elephant, don't think about it, don't think about it. Just how can we add something and how can we give ourselves some evidence that there are times when you haven't made great decisions and there are times when you have, right? And the more we can do that, the more we're like, oh, I see you. I see you, brain, I see that you're just trying to help me. And you're trying to keep me safe. But actually I do make a decision sometimes. And here's some here's what's true, right? It feels very true in the moment. But actually, here's what's true. And then the last thing that I want to offer is setting up on purpose, getting proactive about it. Because we know, like I said, we have like 60,000 thoughts running around in our brains. And most of them we don't even notice. And most of them are probably negative. And so I actually get proactive about this. And I have recurring reminders that show up on my phone in my computer. And I have them set for certain times of the day. So every day, I get some reminders that are positive, that are things and I'll read some of them to you. I have one that says I am safe in my success. I have another one that says I am in demand. I have one that says this is all for fun, laugh even more, right? Reminding me to just take a minute to like, oh, this is actually going my way. All right, that could be a really good one. Things do work out for me. I have one that says, let's see, I make great choices for my future self. And one that says everything is possible. I open myself up to it all, things work out for me. So I love this. I think it actually has made a huge difference. Even if I'm in a hurry sometimes and I'm just like check, check, check, right? But I'm still seeing it, right? My subconscious is picking up on it. And I actually think it really has shifted my self talk a lot. I mean, I use the tool of a less shitty thought. I use the tool of evidence. Certainly gratitude is a big one that can shift us out of ourselves. But I love these reminders. I think that they have been a huge over time that compounding effect, right? I've just seen it every day. And I mix them up sometimes. I change them around. I'll notice something that I'm like, ooh, I don't that's thoughts actually really not serving me. And I will come up with a more positive thought that's part of my reminder list. So I think that was a perfect episode, a perfect topic for our 150th. And I just want to say thank you for being on the ride with me. If you haven't left a review, I would so appreciate that. You can go on to Apple podcasts and leave a review. Like I said, this is all free content. I just want to support you, I want to offer you value. I want to help you in your journey to go and reach your potential. See what's possible for you, open up your capacity to do more good in the world. So I really appreciate you leaving a review. Because it does help other people to find this. And if you're listening on YouTube, leave a comment, subscribe, right? All of these things really help us as entrepreneurs. And at some point in your business, if you're not already there, you know how important reviews and comments and things like that are. So I really, really appreciate it. Your engagement and participation is what so makes me want to keep showing up here every week, creating new content, interviewing amazing guests, and it's just been an amazing journey. So until next time, have an amazing week!