You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 69.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Hi, my strong friends. Who are the people that you surround yourself with?

Thought Communities & Your Mindset

As we develop our mindset, all of the ways that we think about the world, all of our beliefs, it gets influenced by the people that we're around. There's this term called thought communities that I wanted to share with you. It's a collection of people that tend to have the same types of thoughts. They've had similar experiences. They share those thoughts. They have similar beliefs. They share those beliefs. When a new thing happens for someone... Say a new circumstance happens in their life. All of the people around them, their thought community, they're going to offer all of these different thoughts or these different beliefs that they've been sharing for years. It's like, there's nothing new. It's always the same stuff and it might be helpful, or it might not be helpful.

When you're looking at all of the people that are in your life, you have different thought communities that you're a member of. You have your family. The ones you're with all the time, like your immediate family. And you have your distant family. When you are working somewhere, that's a thought community too. In your neighborhood, there might even be a thought community, or you might decide, Oh no, I don't want to be associated with any of these people. I'm just going to stay inside my home. This is my thought community.

With COVID, we had so much isolation from everybody that our thought community shrunk. It was mainly just the people that we lived with and possibly the TV. And even those TV shows that you're watching, whether it's news or a comedy or drama or something, they're all individual thought communities. If you happen to watch the same ones over and over and over again, you're going to start adopting their thoughts and their beliefs about things. You're going to reflect on different circumstances in your life, where you had a thought or a belief. Now that you're watching this TV show, it might influence how you're thinking about something. And again, that could be helpful or it could be unhelpful.

You get to decide, you can tell by how your emotions are talking to you. If it has been setting off your emotional flare gun, the thoughts that are being presented to you by the people around you, or the people on TV, may not be helpful.

You're in charge of how you want to think about things. If you want to live your life, where 90% of the time you're feeling pretty yucky and 10% is the feeling pretty good. If that's okay for you, then keep going. Keep being around all of those people.

If you want to have closer to say a 50/50 life, where half the time you're feeling good and half the time you're not, you might need to change up your thought communities.

I know that the types of programs that my husband likes to watch on TV are full of thoughts that cause a lot of emotional pain for me. A lot of turmoil. I don't like to see a lot of conflict. I don't like to see people bullying each other, being mean. It just really drains me. This weekend, as much as I love having my husband home every night, he had to work overnight a couple of days. He works in a hotel. You know when you go and stay in a hotel, sometimes as a guest, you might need to call the front desk for extra help or whatever. Usually there's someone else that has that shift. But, my husband had to fill in. This gave me the opportunity to be the one who picks what's on TV. I don't have to find something that we both like. Well, actually, I usually give him the remote. It's just easier that way. But sometimes it's really draining. The shows he loves, emotionally for me are just draining. I don't want that kind of negativity all the time.

When I got to choose my own programs, I thought, well, what thought community would I like to be in? Do I want to be in the ones that are just doom and gloom? Or tragedy? Or do I want something different?

Experimenting with Other Thought Communities

For the last three plus years I've been on this personal journey, like a healing journey. I started to wonder, at what point do you decide that you're healed and that you don't need that anymore? It's an interesting thought, right? Because if you think that you still have wounds that need to heal... Just having that thought almost pulls you down and makes you think that there's something wrong with you.

But what if there wasn't? What if everything that you needed to resolve was already resolved? And now it was time to just enjoy your life? That's a completely different mindset shift.

Instead of finding programs that I thought could help evolve me in some way, I thought, I just want to watch something that's going to feel good and uplifting. I found this one. I can't remember the name of it. I wish that I could, it was like mom's night out or something. It has Molly Shannon and Toni Colette. I love her. It was on Netflix. It's about women that are moms that don't have a social life because they're too busy being moms or trying to work and be a mom. They decided that they wanted to go out and just have fun together.

At first there was a bit of a clash between two people. They were calling each other harsh names. They eventually, throughout this long night together, end up having conversations. One shares she doesn't actually spends time with friends. I think all of us feel that way from the isolation with COVID. When was the last time that you just sat around with friends? Or different friends? Or people that you were not friends with before? They're basically in a different thought community. They're going to have different views on the whole world.

When we're stuck with seeing the same programs or with just our isolated family, and now we can get out...COVID is starting to be under control. The restrictions are being lifted. We can get out and actually talk to other human beings! How amazing is that? Oh my gosh. I think even introverts are going to love this! Being an extrovert, oh my gosh, this is been horrible! I get my energy by being around other people and especially big crowds of people. I like that. I miss that. I'm really looking forward to this.

We have this opportunity to go out and meet new people and talk to them. Guess what? They're going to have different thoughts and views on the world. That's similar to what happened in this movie. They had a great time. They're learning from each other. It wasn't any soul defining moments or anything like that. It was just humans, just having fun with each other and laughing and bonding. They decided to make this a routine. They're going to go out once a month and have a mom's night out. Oh my gosh, I would love that right now! I just want some friend time.

As you're thinking about all of the people that you hang out with, whether it's work or home or otherwise, do you need to incorporate a little variety?

Do you need to find a few people that you haven't met before and start bonding with them? Just to learn other perspectives on things?

Creating New Thought Communities

I have a couple of thought communities that have been new in my life in the last year. I either created or co-created them. One of them is the men's feelings matter group. This is such a great group. I'm the facilitator of this one. These men are from all over the world. They get to come and just talk about what's going on in their life. They get to hear experiences from the other guys, the other compassionate guys. They've described this environment as being like a diamond. There's other parts in their life that have such negativity. This group is completely different thought community. Now they can come to this little place in the world, this safe place. It's just so warm and healthy. Someone described it recently. He said this feels like such a healthy thing. Just guys getting together and talking about their feelings and supporting each other. It's just such a magical thing. We've created our own thought community, right? It's like you get to cherry pick from the world. Add in all of your favorite kind of people. You want to be with them. You look forward to it every week. It's that bright shining thing.

The other thought community that I've co-created is an after party. I'm going through life coach certification with The Life Coach School. They have groups of 10 people every time there's a certification class. We decided that we wanted to do an after party after every Monday night of training. We get together afterwards. It's a different type of thought community because we're all open to coaching. We all want coaching. We all want to be a coach. If we are having any kind of struggle, we get to talk about it. We also get to talk about our techniques as we're coaching. It's like we're giving each other hints and pointers and we're bringing in our different experiences. Some of us have been coaching for years. Some are relatively new. We've all had different techniques over the years and different thoughts and beliefs that have helped us through some of those struggles in life.

One of the thoughts that was shared with me this week was super, super helpful.

Throughout your life, you're going to have different chapters. I've talked about this in the very last podcast episode in December, where I was talking about Getting Complete. You're going to have chapters in your life. In those chapters there's going to be some struggles, because that's just part of life. That's our hero's journey. As we go through it's going to be there. The ups, the downs and the conclusion. It's almost like going to school. Almost like going to a university. Although it wasn't a class where we sit with someone teaching us stuff while we consume the information. Instead, those chapters in our life are times when we're Learning By Doing. We had the lived experience. We learned what worked and what didn't work.

Sometimes there are really, really tough times. This is one of the things that I talked about in the After Party group. I share one of my really tough times. I wanted to find a different way of thinking about it so that I could love it. I wanted to release the negative feelings that I had about it. I had some limiting beliefs from this one tough time that were causing me emotional turmoil. It was keeping me from going and doing the next thing that I wanted to do. I knew I needed to resolve this thing from in the past. It was just a struggle from a previous chapter in my life. My new friend in this thought community shared a thought.

"That was just the tuition"

I love that! You know, if you go to school, there's always a tuition that you have to pay. Sometimes it's a small one. Sometimes it's really expensive. It depends on how much you want that education. The ones that you really, really know are going to be so valuable for you...you're going to be able to go on and do amazing things because you have that education. You're going to be willing to pay a lot more for it.

Sometimes our struggles are little. It's like a little tuition, a couple of hundred dollars.

Sometimes there's going to be struggles that are so big, that they're more like the $20,000 tuition. You really have to want that education in order to pay it.

There are no dollars being spent when you're just having a chapter in your life and you're learning by doing. But those struggles become the tuition.

This one particular struggle to me was like a $20,000 tuition. It was so worth it. All of the things that I learned from it, Oh my gosh. I had to invest so much in my own development of human behaviors. That's what caused me to go and learn all about the psychological defense mechanisms. About all of the behavior models. Just to try to understand what the heck was going on. And how to resolve the turmoil. At the end of that chapter in my life, everything was resolved. But I was still holding onto this resentment, this negative feeling. I didn't like it. When I viewed it as the tuition, it's like, okay, I had to pay this tuition to have this expense education. During that lived experience, I learned so much, Oh my gosh, did I learn a lot! Was it all worth it? Yeah, actually it was.

If I hadn't have gone through all of that, I wouldn't have learned all of these amazing concepts and amazing tools. I can use them throughout my life for decades to come. And I can share them with all of you. And the individual stories!!! All of the circumstance that happened, the different things that I learned from my research and the different experiments that I did. I can share what didn't work, how it totally bombed. And the things that did work. Oh my gosh. All of those stories have helped so many of the clients that I've worked with. If I hadn't had that struggle, I wouldn't have had any of those stories. I wouldn't have had that experience of trial and error. I mean, because not everything works the first time. Sometimes you really have to keep at it.

New Thought Community for Your Goals

You have the idea in your mind about the end result you want. How do you make it happen? It's always like a big puzzle. It's like, you're going to try that one puzzle piece. Nope. That one didn't work. Let's try the next one. And after a couple of different puzzle pieces, you're going to find it.

Sometimes it takes being in different thought communities.

Other people might already have that Thought that's going to work for you. If you're all on your own, on an Island with all of the people that you've spent your whole life with, they're not going to have any new ideas for you.

You have to get your foot out there into other thought communities and give it a try.

Even if you just start as a fly on the wall. Just listening to the other people talk. What are they talking about? What does this do for you? This might elevate your feelings.

Instead of being a level 2 on the happiness scale, just being in the room with other people, you might change to a level 5 or 6. What happens if you stumble into one new thought community that all of a sudden you're at a level 10 on the happiness scale? You might think "Holy cow, what did I just step into? What was that experience?"

Why wouldn't you want to do that for yourself?

Why wouldn't you want to go out and experiment with all of these different places? All of these new people to see? You might find your new tribe.

You might find the people that you really want to be with.

Saying Goodbye to Thought Communities

Here's the other thing: Just because you've been in a thought community for a long time, doesn't mean you have to stay there.

All of our thought communities have served us in some way throughout our life. But there are times where you can decide it's not serving you anymore. Anytime you're there, you're at a level 2 on the happiness scale. It might drain you. You think to yourself... I'm going to try out these other ones. I might just stay. I might stay in these other ones. These ones feel a whole lot better. And it's okay to say goodbye to the other ones. It doesn't mean that you don't care about those people. It doesn't mean that you don't want to go back and visit them every once in a while. But it doesn't mean that you have to stay there for the rest of your life.

We get so comfortable with the Known, that the Unknown just seems so scary.

What if the unknown was magical?

What if it unlocked so much in you that you never knew was possible?

What would your life be like?

Business Change Announcement

I have absolutely loved having all of the programs that I've been creating over the last year and a half. I've loved having this podcast. I've loved having the unshakable groups, the men's feelings matter, all of this stuff. I was being a generalist in everything that I was talking about. I talk about how we can rise together in life, relationships and business.

What I discovered is that the people that come in to do the work all had a similar goal.

In the unshakable program, one of the courses that I have is unstoppable. It's the clarity steps on how to achieve any goal. People will come in and sometimes they'll dabble with, a relationship goal or a personal journey goal. But what they all start to do after a while was go for their business goals. I'm finding that most of the people that come my way are entrepreneurs. They want to learn. They like the concept of experimenting and understanding that there are obstacles that are going to get in the way and that there are all sorts of ways that we can resolve those obstacles so they can get to their end point.

What's fun when you're in a thought community of people that all have the same goal...It's a lot easier to make progress.

You get to hear what their ideas are. The things that they've tried. You can hear beliefs that might be holding them back. All of a sudden you're like, yeah, that was me. That was my belief too. And then everybody can relate and compassionately laugh about it. And then share a different belief that is helpful. They learn different ways to think about things. Those new thoughts move you forward.

As a business owner, one of the things that we need to stay aware of, is serving our clients in the best way possible. If I stayed a generalist, covering all of the different topics, then I can't serve these clients in the best way possible. They're still getting a lot of value. But when I can go deeper on those topics specific to them, they're going to be able to accelerate a lot faster.

In any type of new adventure that you're on, where you're trying to learn and do something new, you really need three different things to be super successful.

You need yourself as the client to be coachable. You're showing up, ready to learn, ready to try new things, ready to get out of your comfort zone.

You need to have a coach that has empathy and compassion for you. And has drive. A person that believes in you and can drive you forward. They've got all the tools, the techniques, and the experience.

There also needs to be the right content. The right plan to move you forward.

I have made a business decision that I'm going to develop a more structured plan specifically around being an entrepreneur.

If everybody's got the same goal, there's no need to leave a goal system open-ended. It will serve everybody so much better to have more structure for this one specific goal.

The programs that I have are going to evolve. They will be just for entrepreneurs. That way we have a concentrated thought community of entrepreneurs that are there to help each other a lot in business.

Now, obstacles are still going to come up. Life obstacles. Just because it's only for entrepreneurs doesn't mean we're not going to tackle the life obstacles. We absolutely are! Any obstacles getting in the way of you and your progress on your business, need to be resolved. We need to help you. And set you up for success.

In order for me to make sure that I develop the right kind of program, I need to create some time in my schedule. I've made an additional decision to take a one month pause on this podcast. I'm also closing enrollment for the unshakable programs. The folks that are in the program get to stay in the program. But we're not going to take on any new clients in those program. The one-on-ones are still available. I only have a couple of those spots available. If you're interested, just go over to the work with me and click on the personal journey. That's always open for you.

I have absolutely loved being of service to everybody. What you can look forward to in the future is more content that is specific to creating a business, keeping it going, staying viable and managing your mind through all of it. Also, interviews with guests that are within the entrepreneur community or business owners that help support entrepreneurs.

My friends, I love having you as part of my thought community. And I would love to interact more with all of you. You can always reach out to me through email. I would love to spend some time with you. You can just email me at [email protected]. That's how we can stay in touch.

I will wish you a wonderful month ahead. Get out there, meet some new people, learn some new thoughts, some new ideas, new beliefs, so that you can have an amazing life! Take care. Bye-bye.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast. I hope this podcast provided you some relief and some inspiration. If you know somebody else that can benefit from this podcast, please share the link with them. Together. I know we can make a difference. To access more podcasts and offerings, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com. Until next time, take care of yourself. This world needs you.