Overcome the Mental F*ckery to Lead with Confidence

Written By Odalis Salazar Mullins
 

Show Notes

In this episode, I'm diving into the mental obstacles (the f*ckery) that often pop up right before we make a change. If you've ever felt doubt, fear, or resistance when trying to implement a new strategy or decision, this episode is for you.

I’ll explore how our minds can play tricks on us, creating barriers that hold us back from taking action. You’ll learn how to spot these limiting thoughts, question their truth, and push past them to move forward with confidence. I’ll also talk about external factors that might be blocking your progress and how to navigate those challenges.

Take Action

Use the two step process in the episode to work through any thoughts or external roadblocks keeping you from taking action. Check out the edited and oh-so-nicely organized transcript below for a recap.

You can always message me (Odalis) to share your thoughts, questions, or barely-baked musings about leadership. (The less thought out, the more interesting. Honestly, haha.)

References

Organized Transcript

Hey, you're here!

This is the Change Lives with Your Leadership series for leaders and managers who want to leverage the coolest f*cking thing ever... the fact that, as a leader, you get to change people’s lives every. single. day. without any corporate, toxic f*ckery.

So if you listened to the last episode, I said that in this episode, I was going to talk about how to implement the change you want to make. And that is important and a great opportunity for further impact.

However…

I know that the time right before making a decision or right before making a change is when most people start to feel…

the pushback…

the doubt…

the fear…

Feeling resistant? Worried? Freaked tf out?

If you're feeling resistant or worried about making any changes, that's normal. If thinking about how every decision you make will have an impact is freaking you out or creating tons of pressure, that's normal too.

You can add to that, that as a leader, doubt and overwhelm and loneliness can creep in and easily move you into a state of just surviving each day versus taking real action towards a bigger vision and your goals.

And I don't want any of that to get in the way for you!

I want you to be able to make the change you want, to be able to take action, and to get to see the results of your work.

So instead, in this episode, I'm going to talk about the thoughts and situations that may get in the way and how to overcome them.

And we will get back to how to implement the change in another episode, that's still happening!

Now, as far as the things that get in the way of taking action…

Thoughts

Thoughts are at the tippity top top of the list.

Why?

Because we have anywhere between 6,000 and 60,000 thoughts in a day, depending on which scientist you ask. And our minds lie to us through thoughts all the time to get us to take certain actions.

Here's what I mean.

Your mind is designed to constantly be on the lookout for any potential danger, to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and to identify the easiest path forward.

And it is really, really good at doing these three things, like Simone-Biles-doing-anything-gymnastics-related level of good.

So when you decide to make a change, your mind is processing everything related to that change to see if it could potentially cause any danger, pain or be too hard. And if it detects any of that, that's when the Simone-Biles-mastery shows up.

Your mind knows you oh so well and knows exactly what to say to get you to do what it thinks is best for you. So if your mind finds that making a change for your team will lead to let's say, potential danger to your career based on how your abilities are perceived, it will figure out the easiest way to convince you not to do it.

Maybe your mind knows that appearance and reputation are very important to you. So it goes straight into giving you thoughts like…

“If this goes bad, you could get fired.

And if you get fired, what are you going to put on your resume?

How will you explain that during an interview?

What will your parents say when you tell them why you're looking for a new job at the next family potluck?”

(People will still have potlucks, right?)

Here's the kicker.

Like I mentioned earlier, your mind lies to you. It will say whatever it needs to do to protect you, which includes lying.

So even when you logically know that you won't get fired for making the change you want to make, that thought will still pop up because your brain isn't using the logic to convince you. It's using any thoughts that it thinks will generate the right emotions to get you to take the action it wants you to take.

And our emotions are what get us to take action. So how you feel is very important and your mind knows that. It knowsss…

Introducing: The Mental F*ckery…

If right now you're like, “What the f*ck? Why is my mind even designed to pull this kind of shit?” I get it.

It sounds like it's working against you. This is why I call it “mental f*ckery” because what the actual hell?

That said, your mind isn't actually trying to work against you.

Evolution has molded our minds to ensure our survival, but that doesn't mean that it understands the difference between a car about to run you over and your boss yelling at you in front of other people. Both scenarios can trigger similar emotional responses, even when one scenario is about your physical safety (and real potential death), and the other is about your psychological safety (nowhere near death or even a toe-stub).

Both are still a threat from your mind's perspective and they must be dealt with.

There’s good news, I promise!

Here's the good news.

(Because how much would it suck if I just stopped there with your mind lying and scheming and always watching you. Nope. Can’t have that.)

Once you know that this is what's going on inside your head, you can call it out and move past it.

You can say,

“Ha, I see what you're doing. Thanks for looking out, but I got this. I'll be just fine. Now, go use your super-sensing mind powers to detect whether that six-year-old of mine is about to pull all the garbage out of the can again for his “science experiments.” It would be great if you caught that before it happens this time. Thanks, boo.”

I mean, you can have a more contentious relationship with your mind if you want. Sometimes you will tell it to f*ck off and shut up. No judgment, I've done that plenty.

I just find that, in general, if you acknowledge your thought and then scooch it out of your head, it can be easier to actually let the thought just be without giving it energy.

I also find that just laughing at the ridiculousness of the f*ckery that your mind can come up with is the most fun way to deal with it because the crap it comes up with is batshit bananas sometimes. Hilarious. I am truly impressed at times.

So I hope you enjoyed that mini science lesson about your mind.

Overcoming the mental f*ckery…

Now let's use that to get past any thoughts that might be getting in the way of you making changes.

Step 1

First, try to identify the specific thought or thoughts that are trying to convince you not to take action.

Sometimes you'll be able to identify these right away because they will be running on repeat.

If that's the case, write them down. Get them on paper or onto a screen and out of your head.

If the thoughts are shifty little buggers and trying to hide from you, then I suggest you sit down and start writing an email to your boss (or your team if you don't have a boss), telling them about the change you want to make and on what date it will go into effect.

That will get your mind to start doing its thing. So all you have to do is listen to your thoughts at that time and write them down.

Tip here: To avoid sending anyone a nonsensical stream of consciousness email, make sure you don't put anyone's email in the to line.

Step 2

Okay, once you've identified the thought, the second step is to question it:

Is it really true?

Is it a fact?

For example, a fact could be that it is 76 degrees outside if your thermostat is reporting that.

(Okay, who am I kidding? Nobody has a thermostat anymore.)

If the weather app on your phone says that it's 76 degrees outside, then that could be a fact.

However, saying that it's hot outside, that's an opinion. Some people would think that 76 degrees is on the cooler side or that it's the exact right temperature and is neither hot nor cold.

Either way, it's debatable and not a fact.

So when you have a thought that says something like, “I can't do this because I'm not a good enough leader or my team doesn't listen to me,”… question it.

Is it a fact? Is it something that everyone could agree or you could prove in a court of law to be true? Or is it an opinion? Is it debatable?

I know that you can figure out the difference.

Another question you can ask is…

Is this thought helpful?

For example, it may be true that your company doesn't have the $500 budget to cover the costs of the change you want to make.

This is assuming that you checked with whoever is in charge of the company budget and they confirmed that the $500 wasn't available. If you haven't done that, then this is a thought and not a fact, so go check that first.

However, thinking the thought, “there isn't money available for this change” limits you to one solution:

“I need $500 for this and the company says we don't have it, so I guess I can't do this.”

As opposed to a thought like:

“Well, we don't have the $500 budget to make this change, but…

I wonder if we even need the money?

Maybe there's another option?

Or maybe there's a cheaper option within the budget?”

Or yada, yada, so on and so forth.

The point being that this kind of thought is opening you up to other possibilities. It's letting your creative problem-solving skills flow instead of shutting everything down, which is far more helpful.

This is a skill…

Now, identifying thoughts and questioning them is a skill.

If you're doing this kind of work for the first time, it can be hard and that's okay.

I know you can do hard things.

Even though we may not know each other well (yet), I know you have done hard things before…

And that you will again.

Plus, this is an incredibly valuable skill for straight up humaning. It is worth getting better at it.

And if you want some help with this, reach out to me.

I've been practicing these skills for years and at this point, eight or nine times out of 10, I see the f*ckery a mile away and shut it down fast. And I'd be thrilled to help you do the same!

To be clear, this is not me telling you to reach out to me to only turn around and tell you to sign up for a paid coaching session. Don't get me wrong, I love to coach and would be happy to chat about working together if that's something you're (honestly) interested in.

But that's not what I'm saying here. This is just an invitation to chat and practice the skill of identifying thoughts and getting in the way of what you wanna do and questioning them.

That's it.

No sales pitch or credit card required.

The external factors

Now, let's switch over to talk about the external factors (out of your control) that might keep you from making the change you wanna make.

At work, this can be things like the company culture not supporting certain changes or your boss not supporting the changes you wanna make. These can be real roadblocks that make it tough to move in the direction you wanna go.

There can also be external roadblocks outside of work that impact your ability to do things at work.

For example, you may want to start a weekly game night for your team to bond and have fun together outside of work but you've got some other chosen priorities like kids at home or aging parents to care for.

Step 1 (again)

Wherever the external roadblock is coming from, I want you to question it just like your thoughts.

Determine if it's a real roadblock or not.

Sometimes our minds try to convince us that external factors have more power than they really do because again, they're trying to protect us. Make sure that's not what's going on here.

Step 2 (also, again)

And if it truly is a roadblock, then question whether it has to be.

Give yourself permission to think about alternate solutions. Let those creative problem skills leak all over this roadblock.

Worst case scenario, you pick something else to change which honestly is not a bad thing at all because every change will have an impact and it will ripple out in ways you can't predict. So if right now isn't the time for a specific change, pick something else. Your team will still benefit.

And if you want to make it as easy as possible for your mind to get on board, pick something your mind thinks is easy and non-threatening. You'll know you've identified it when your mind doesn't feel the need to make a daytime-soap-opera out of the decision.

There is nothing wrong with choosing something easy. Harder things aren't better or worthier.

And if that's coming up for you, I can tell you right now… without a doubt… that is a thought and not a fact. So let that thought be on its way because it's not needed here. It's not helpful here.

Don’t forget…

If you have any questions, thoughts, or need help working through any of what we covered today, message me. I'm happy to help. All of this IS MY HAPPY PLACE.

So I promise to restrain myself and not dive into a two-hour tangent about the intricacies of the amygdala and limbic system's role in fear and pleasure. (I mean, it would be fascinating, but only if you like to geek out over things like that.) Though I might send you a link to someone else's video about that, but you can ignore it. It won't hurt my feelings.

Share this for a laugh…

And if you know of a leader or a manager that could benefit from learning to wrangle the mental f*ckery, share this episode with them. Give them a chance to laugh at the over-dramatized ridiculousness our minds can come up with.

In the next episode…

We'll talk about how to implement the change you want to make and how to use that as an opportunity to create even more ooey gooey goodness for your people. I can't wait!

Let's keep on changing lives with our leadership—together.

Odalis Salazar Mullins
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