Ep #35: Self-Management and Self-Regulation

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach Kim Guillory and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hey guys, how’s it going? I am just returning from my mastermind with my mentor and 500 other life coaches. It was so fun. I’ve had some – of course, every experience is an amazing experience when you’re looking for, “How can I grow?  How can I grow?” all of the time, and then your brain does all of this crazy stuff and then you have to figure out how to grow.

That is my – it’s probably either an addiction to breakthrough or buffering with breakthrough, which is just like getting distracted with always trying to get the enlightenment or the next moment of – anyway, I caught myself in this exact experience at the mastermind.

So I was honored as being part of the 100K or more earners, so we were called up and recognized and we had the opportunity to speak and share with our fellow coaches, how would we give them feedback or what would we tell them about believing that it were possible even for themselves as a coach.

And I thought it was fascinating that, it was an honor, yes, and there’s such a deep desire to be seen, to be recognized, to be noteworthy. This is for all of us because this is something that I noticed, it wasn’t just with me but it was with other of my peer coaches that we had this conversation afterwards. And it’s this cognitive dissonance.

So part of the mind is like, look at me, see me, recognize me, I want to be acknowledged. And then there’s this other story going on, this unconscious story, don’t look at me, don’t judge me, don’t compare me, like I don’t want you to know all of me. If you knew me, then you would know about these other parts of me.

And it’s like this hidden shame. And I thought it was so fascinating because a few weeks or a couple of weeks prior to that, I was nominated for woman of the year in my parish and I kind of had this similar experience, you know. There’s this running story that I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, it’s this lack of confidence is what it is and belief in myself.

And it came from an old story, from growing up or whatever, I think it’s actually just a human tendency. I’m just going to take off where I think it came from because I believe it’s every single human has some part of it because we have a shadow side, and that is where our shame hides. It hides in the shadow.

So I’m recognizing that I’m doing this more and more often and as my business grows and as I get more recognition and I work with more clients and my social media is growing, the platform, the podcast, all of these things are really shifting into a more impactful social status, I’ll say. And as I see myself in each of these circumstances, I’m noticing, I’m hot and sweaty and nervous and telling myself stories.

So I’m not like a watcher of those stories. So when it was for the woman of the year, it took me like two weeks of dread and I went into this little anger spell. I don’t know, I was kind of like, this is a ploy to get people there and it’s not really a thing, and just all this defense. This is how we know, this is like a traumatized brain, what it does because we’ve experienced some sort of trauma or crises in our life, our brain goes into this defense to make sure we’re never there again, and then it creates this wall and these stories. So you guys know how I’m always talking about that.

And so that defense of not wanting to be seen, not wanting to be recognized, that’s been with me since I think I was 17, 18 years old. I remember working and I was given a promotion to become customer service manager, and very early in at this store I was working at, and I remember thinking this same exact thing back then.

I’m now 51, so it’s been a long-running story. And so if I recognize that that is just part of humanity and it’s actually not something that’s personal, it’s not a personal flaw, could I look at it differently? And I started really watching myself form this, and then I started speaking about it, which gave others permission to speak about it. And I realized, I can totally drop this story, and so can you.

Like, because it’s not how what our parents did or what this guy did or what this boss did or what happened with our spouse our kids, it’s really not personal. It’s just humanizing humanity, being willing to feel shame, feel dissatisfaction or discord with ourselves, feel unworthy. It’s okay to feel the emotions or the feelings that a human has.

So, that’s what I started noticing. And so I was like, I sat in the chair, and they’re like, I am not going to mastermind with this and this same thing happened to me. And so I get there and I’ve pretty much got it together and I’m like it’s all fine, I’m not going to be uncomfortable, I’m going to rock this, I’m going to be excited about it, I’m going to have joy in my heart and I’m just going to smile and love every minute of it.

And as soon as they called my name, the pit of my stomach was on fire. I started feeling this shaking through my body, I started getting really hot and I’m like, no way. I am happy. I am grateful. I did this. I deserve this. And I would just let that download, let those new feelings download, like gratitude, joy, pleasure, acknowledgment, and just let them start oozing though my body.

Like it was foreign, they were different and unfamiliar, but I was able to accept them. And so I would say this little thing, I would do; receiving, downloading, and I would take on the congratulations, I would take on the acknowledgment, and I would feel it go from my head and drop all the way down into my belly and then I would feel it expand. And I would say thank you, even if it were to myself. But I just kind of played this out.

Anyway, I thought I had it together, so I’m on the stage and I’m looking at the person next to me and I keep trying to back up against the curtain, to get out from the light, to get out from the front of the stage. Like, can we hide up here? Is there any way to hide?

And guys, this is what was so interesting; I was in gratitude, I was in joy, I was in happiness. I was fine with receiving the acknowledgment, I was grateful for the opportunity to celebrate this. all of that part was like that part of me was totally on board, as well as the part of me that hadn’t quite shifted the story. Isn’t that fascinating?

Like, logically I was telling a story and I was watching that I was also unconsciously telling a story and I was able to watch both of them play almost against each other at the same time. It was so interesting. And I remember, I went up to my mentor and I grabbed the microphone and I was like, I won’t die, right, I won’t die.

And I was like, I’m not really feeling that. That’s like an old habit. It’s an old behavior. Those are the sorts of things that I used to say and think. I knew logically I was fine, so why was I saying that? Because the unconscious story was still there. It hadn’t quite unraveled.

I hadn’t uncovered it to a point to where I understood it on all levels. So I grabbed the mic and, I don’t know, I said, like, why, so I can answer it today, the pain of staying stuck exceeded the fear of moving forward. I remember that point like yesterday.

I had been coaching. I had been trying to, like, make this take off in a real area. I was trying to make some money doing it and I was trying to move away from the nail desk and the hair chair and the yoga teaching, and I just wanted to coach. I wanted to teach mindset and I wanted to help people improve their lives and create this more positive approach so that they would want to come and exercise because I was realizing that the limitations were in their mind, it wasn’t in their body.

And so I was like, I’m going to stop all of that and I’m going to do this, and so I did this for years. And I remember, the program was $299, then $249, then $199, then $149, and then I was down to $59 and I was trying everything just to do the work, just to get people to try it. I was in this convincing energy.

And it took me years to finally get to the point where I received a total, of all of those years, of $19,000 coaching. Like, I just was ready to throw in the towel. I didn’t think I would ever – my mindset was so stuck on no one here will pay for this, no one will pay for coaching, and I hear new coaches saying that today, right? I have to convince them, I have to prove to them, they don’t believe me, all of those stories.

So I was in that same thing, but eventually your desire to do this, your passion, that continues to grow, and then you improve your skills and your own mindset as you get coaching and you do your own work, so you become your best client. So if you can’t find a client to pay you, you become your client and you become the example of your own work.

What, you can do that. Did you know you can do that? I did that and made myself a way into multiple six figures. Go figure.

But here’s another interesting part; there was still a story running. This blew my mind. I still believed I didn’t know how to do it. And that is why I froze when it was time to speak in the microphone and tell them how I did it because I didn’t really believe that I had done it yet.

Now, I’m on the stage. I have the box from Tiffany and Company, I have the microphone, I have my peers with me, the announcement has been made, I’m looking at this picture right in front of me with my name and the total that I made in the last 12 months. I had logical proof. All of it was proven, it was right there in front of me. I had all of the evidence. And yet, I still didn’t believe I was doing it. It’s fascinating.

This is what our mind does. So it doesn’t matter if it’s $900, $9000, $90,000 or $900,000. It does not matter. Our brain is a beast and it will continue to challenge us. And it’s our work to manage it. And that is how I made my way to the stage. That’s the work that got me into the position to receive the award and to be acknowledged.

But what I thought was so fascinating is, you know, how I talk how this is on all levels, so it’s not just how you think, it’s really how you show up, how you feel, the money that you make, your status quo in society, how you show up for relationships, your social life, your spiritual life, it shows up on all levels.

So it was interesting about this is I understood it mentally. My mind, I was saying it like, I’m not going to freak out, I’m going to be in abundance, I’m going to have fun, it’s going to be playful. So mentally I got it. Physically I got it. I walked up on the stage, I received the award, I received the recognition, but emotionally I had not gotten the belief totally through my system, and I realized how that was holding me back, not just in that area of my life but in other areas of my life.

And that is my takeaway. That’s what I realized whenever this, the next morning, and I started asking myself those questions, like how did this happen, what was going through my head, what was my belief? When it stood up from the chair and I walked up, what was I thinking? When I grabbed the microphone, what was I thinking? What happened?

And that’s when I realized, I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t believe I was doing it. Just saying, if this is happening to me, I know it’s happening to some of you.

So this is what I’ve been doing in my business is I’m doing this training for coaches who are becoming entrepreneurs. So we start off as solopreneurs and we start off with doubts and fears and all of these stories, just like I’ve been telling myself, like I’m telling you here today. And we have this part that we want to be seen, but then we’re afraid to be seen.

And then we have this complex, this imposter syndrome like we’re not quite believing and trusting in our self. We do on one level. So logically, we know our skills, we know what we’re doing, we know how to coach, we know the process, we know we’ve had transformation ourselves, but then there’s part of us that doesn’t believe in ourselves, period, okay.

So that’s that imposter syndrome. And then we start to tell ourselves things like looking for the reason why we think it’s not happening for us. And so I was talking to a client when I was doing this training because I was asking the questions, what do most of you new coaches want to know about, like, really launching your business and getting out there? Why don’t you think that you are doing it right now?

And they were like, I believe that I need to choose differently or I need to choose something else, I don’t know what I really want. I’m trying to force things, like I’m putting things out all over the place in so many different places. I’m like, if you don’t get it then you’ll get it and you’ll get it and going to put it here and I’m going to put it here and you go into this forcing energy.

And then you have this splitting your focus in many directions. So it’s like because you’re putting it out, you’re putting it on social media in five different areas. You put it on Twitter and you have it on Instagram and then you put it on LinkedIn and on Facebook and then you’re telling your local community and before you know it. Your attention is split all over the place and you’re trying to keep up all of these platforms.

And so then there is this, I’m not doing it because I haven’t chosen yet, I haven’t decided. Like, I think if I would choose and let myself not get distracted by all of these other things. And here’s the truth. What’s happening is there’s a circumstance. It’s either the amount of clients you have or the amount of money you’re making.

That’s it. It’s just the circumstance and you have a thought about it. So if I were coaching you and you were like, I only have two clients or I don’t have any clients yet, that’s how you would give it to me, right? You would try to make that a fact and convince me of why you don’t. And so you kind of add this story to that line.

So the first thing is to get really clear on where are you now, like, I have two clients. And notice how you may have a thought about that, like I only have two clients, or I don’t have the 10 clients yet or I haven’t made money yet, or I’ve only made $900, I’ve only made $9000. Notice how that is your thought.

Whereas, if you just did the circumstance, it would just be $900, just clean, really easy and clean, $900 and then the rest of it is just your thoughts. I haven’t done it yet, it’s because I’m confused, it’s because I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t have my website up, my email list hasn’t grown. These are all my stories, by the way.

And I think I even said that on stage as I’m standing there, it’s like, well, I can tell you this, you can make a butt-load of money with a half-managed mind, because I still had the belief that I wasn’t doing it and I clearly had done it because I was making the money.

I had the clients, I had the proof, I was there, I had the money in my bank account, all of that stuff. But my brain still believed all of these other stories. And so the only thing that had gone wrong is I had an unmanaged mind that was in disbelief, period.

And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. It’s like, what is this disbelief costing you? Because what it cost all of the previous years, it cost me over $300,000. Staying in that story, not getting coaching and having my mind managed, one of the hardest things to explain to a new coach, because these stories are so real and they create this sensation in your body, you can feel the worry, you can feel the defeat.

It has the sensation, it has this imprint, this emotional signature. And if we don’t know how to self-regulate, which that’s what I was doing when I walked up to the stage, I was self-regulating, so as soon as they said my name and I felt like – actually, when they started getting close to the K, I started feeling it come into my body.

And it was like, I’m ashamed, I don’t know if I can be seen, I don’t like the way I look, I don’t know what they’ll think. There was just all this stuff happening. Well, those thoughts were creating this chemical to be released in my body, and that chemical released the sensation, and then I attached myself to the sensation and I saw it, or my brain did, and saw it as fear. It’s something has gone wrong, and then it started freaking out.

And so that’s that process. And so the regulation, self-regulation is recognizing that that thought just produced a chemical that oozed through my body and then I’m feeling it. I now have this feeling sensation. And then I can self-manage my mind. And so then I asked myself, how did this come about? Where did this start at?

And it started with a thought.  I’m ashamed to be seen, I don’t know what I’ll say, any of that stuff. Those thoughts, what will they think about me, will I say the right thing, will I look the right way, those thoughts were creating this chemical response through my body that was stress, anxiety, worry, fear, doubt. And ultimately, it was shame.

I was ashamed of who I am as a being, as a person, as me in my body. It was my own personal shame. That’s the emotional signature. It was very, very familiar. It’s the same feeling that I had with the woman of the year award or whatever recognition – this has been going on as long as I can remember. But specifically, I’ve been working on this piece in my life for the last couple of years because I notice how much it’s affecting my business growth or how much it’s preventing my getting out there and impacting or creating this bigger movement that I want to create because this emotional signature is causing me to stop, to stifle, to freak out and to not move forward.

It’s got power and control of me, and so I’ve been working diligently in feeling sensation and actually allowing myself to be a human that has feelings of shame, of worry, of just a fear of failure, like allowing myself to have that because I wasn’t allowing myself anymore.

I had pretty much gotten addicted to mindset and buffering with breakthrough. And this is something for us coaches to be aware of. Mindset work is so fun. It truly is. Coaching is so fun. It’s like the best job ever. To help people see their unmanaged mind is hilarious, it’s so fun.

Then we get in a spin of coaching ourselves all the time, but we can’t see that we’re coaching ourselves on a thought that we believe is a fact. Like, I truly believed there was something wrong with me, that I should be ashamed, like 100% I believed that. I felt it all the way through me and it showed up in those sensations that came through.

So it wasn’t just like oh I had a negative thought about myself. It’s like I have a negative belief lodged in myself. That’s when you know it’s this emotional signature. And this is the work that we’re doing moving forward. It’s all about More Than Mindset.

So yes, mindset is beautiful, thought work, amazing, the money you can make, the things that you can produce and create in your life are limitless with mindset. But then there comes a point where you hit the brick wall, and that’s because this emotional signature, these sensations that are oozing through the body and the lack of knowledge of self-regulation, self-management, not knowing how to manage your mind and emotions, not knowing how to process and integrate and embody it in such a way that it no longer has control of you but you are regulating and managing it.

These are the pieces that I’ve been diligently working on and teaching my clients and my coaches. So I’m training my coaches in this process because we are seeing so much crisis and trauma that is unresolved in the world that’s creating these sensations to create reactions and people are doing things that they don’t want to do or it’s stopping them from doing things that they really want to do.

So I just wanted to leave that example here today. I’m going to be dialing this down, taking it a little bit further, and I’m going to be doing some interviews about this. So that’s where we’re heading. I’m super excited about the new branding. I hope you love it. Let me know what you think. Give me some feedback on the podcast. Make sure like and give me a review, share it with your friends, tell other people about it, that would be amazing, and let’s get your mind managed. Let’s get your life regulated.

Self-regulation, self-management equals amazing results. And once you realize that, you can gain power and control of your life. You can put yourself back into the driver’s seat. You can buckle up your emotions in the passenger seat or throw those babies in the trunk. You can go out. You can create more impact. You can make more money. You can help more clients. And what this helps you to create is better health, wealth, and relationships.

This process that we talk about every week that I’m using in my life, that my coaches and my clients are using in their life and in their business, so powerful, impactful. It is the way to personal responsibility. It is the way to shift humanity.

This self-management model, this self-regulating system, simple five steps, very basic, anyone can do it. We all have to start with presence. We have to be aware of what is happening in our body. We have to be able to step out form ourselves and watch what’s going on from a neutral space. That’s where we start. That’s the work.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset. If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to health, wealth, and relationships, head over to www.portal.kimguillory.com to learn more about the portal.  It’s a membership community where we take this work deeper, apply the concepts, and coach around the tough stuff.