You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 190.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi My Strong Friends,  I’m so happy to be back with you.  I took a pause from podcasting for my own Mental Health and energy management.

 

The podcast itself is great for my Mental Health.  I love being with you and talking about all things Business and Mental Health.

Before I jump into details and today’s episode, I want to give you a sneak peak at what’s coming in April on my podcast.  April is going to be all about Facebook Ads.  I help many of my clients with Facebook ads as part of their Sales Funnels.  I use Facebook ads for that too.  I’m going to share some tips and tricks that will lead to revenue generation. 

 

 I’m also going to reveal how you can use Facebook ads to buy data and answers.  Successfully designing your Business and Product/Services requires Market Research.  You don’t want to create something nobody wants to buy.  However, many people are resistant to Market Research because they find it uncomfortable.  Facebook Ads can replace the uncomfortable part of the research.

 

Messaging and copy writing is another sticking point for a business.  We do our best, or we hire a professional, just to hear crickets.  It’s so frustrating!  Facebook Ads can be used differently to test individual sentences and words so you know exactly what resonates with your ideal clients.

And finally, sales funnel optimization.  It’s great when all your funnel pieces are working on autopilot.  There’s a testing process to get it there.  It’s all data based.  Facebook ads help you get that data.

All of these podcast episodes are leading up to an amazing 3 day Business Summit in May.  I’m one of the presenters on how to use $4 Facebook Ads to Validate your Funnel Before you Build It.  Make sure to come back in April.  You don’t want to miss this.

 

Alright back to today’s episode and my podcast pause.  Over the course of 5 months I had a lot of Life Whammies happen all at the same time which challenged my Mental Health.  If you imagine that game at a carnival with the clowns that you knock over with a baseball, that’s how I felt.  At first, a clown got knocked down.  No biggie.  Then a couple clowns got knocked down…hey now.  Then almost every freaking clown got knocked down.  Whoa.  Not cool.  For the first several months I was able to manage it.  But as the Whammies kept coming it got to be too much.  I needed to create some compassionate space for me to process my feelings.

I also knew my very low emotional energy would come through my voice and possibly bring you down.  I don’t want that for you.  Way back in Podcast ep #18 Preserving Relationships when You're Both Triggered I suggested that when you recognize that you’re triggered, step away temporarily to regain your composure.

I just role modeled what that looks like.  I know you’ve heard messages that consistency is key to having a thriving business.  Taking a pause goes against that.  However, my True North Message is Mental Health is more Important than Anything.

 

Today’s episode is about Life Whammies and using them as an opportunity to Believe New Things.

 

What is a Life Whammy?

 

An unexpected event that triggers intense emotions.

 

I’ll share a few of mine to give you an idea:

 

Our septic system overflowed into our house. It made our bathrooms, dishwasher and washing machine unusable for a week.

My car developed a water leak through the sunroof which fried the electrical system.

2 months of unprecedented rainfall, floods and winds, sometimes knocking out the power for days.

 

Life tends to be 50/50 with positive and negative things.  However, when you have a Whammy it can feel like 100% negative. 

Often the whammies bring up more than one issue that needs to get resolved.  Each of those issues may have complexities that trigger even more negative emotions.

 

It can take longer to recover from a Life Whammy than a regular run of the mill trigger.

 

When you have a string of Life Whammies or a flood of them all at the same time, it can be emotionally debilitating.

 

For anyone else experiencing Life Whammies I feel for you.  I have a lot of compassion and love for you. 

 

What helped me get through months of Life Whammies was the thought “This is temporary”.

 

Use that thought as a Life Raft if you need to.  “This is temporary”

 

Life Whammies can have an upside.  They can be the catalyst to Believing New Things.

 

What do I mean by that?

When you get triggered, you discover your beliefs.  Your beliefs are the sentences that come into your mind when you’re triggered.

 

They can feel true.  You may even see a lot of evidence to support them.  

 

I discovered mine.  They were pretty sucky.  Those beliefs created more suffering than I wanted.

 

For example - One thought was “It’s impossible to find fix-it people on the coast.”

 

I also had a bunch of beliefs tied to money.

Everything that I was thinking was intensifying the negative feelings of the whammies.

 

I want to put my Mental Health first.

 

I know my thoughts and beliefs are optional.  Which means I can choose to think something different.

I can choose to Believe Anything I Want.

And I know once I believe something, my actions naturally bring about that reality.

 

However, coming up with the sentence I want to believe and actually believing it are 2 different things.

 

I needed a way that I could evolve into believing my new Belief.

 

I pulled out an old coaching workbook from 2018 called Believing New Things.  It’s a 30 day workbook that includes the same daily practice.

 

I want to share it with you.  I think this can help you too.  I may not have the full reality of my new Belief yet, but I actually do believe it.  In the very beginning, I didn’t believe it.

 

GETTING STARTED

 

There’s 2 parts to this.  First is deciding which new Belief you Want.  The Second Part is the daily activity.

 

DECIDE THE NEW BELIEF

 

First, you have to decide which new Belief you Want.  It can be Anything.  You can make it anywhere from Practical to Delusional.  Don’t be afraid.  At first you may pick something that brings up excitement, but also shame.  It’s OK.  Part of the daily practice will resolve the shame or other obstacles.

Go ahead and dream.  What do you want to Believe?

Once you have a Belief in mind, imagine how you’ll feel when you believe it.

I want you to consider the intensity of that positive emotion.  Think of a scale from 0-10.  0 is neutral.  10 is the most positive you can ever imagine.

 

Think of that new belief again.  What is the intensity of the emotion you will feel when you experience it.  What number will you assign to that intensity?

 

Now, it’s time to get creative.  It’s time to bump up the intensity of the positive feelings.  Think of additions to your Belief that will add more positive emotions.

 

I’ll share mine so you get an idea of what this looks like.

 

I’m being a little vulnerable here by sharing.  But, I know if I go first, it will make it easier for you.

 

My New Belief started as:

I am generating $30k this month.

I never generated that much in one month from my business.  I wanted to generate that much so I could create my various business funds, retirement and emergency funds to cover Life Whammies.

A quick note on word choice here.  Originally I wrote this as “I will…”.  Then I remembered Bob Proctor.  He was big on “I am” statements.  I’ve just started listening to my first Bob Proctor book.  But, I know someone that wrote out her “I am” statements every morning.  She glows with positive energy as a result.  And I know that Law of Attraction works with higher frequency energy.

 

It’s funny how 1 word can make such a huge difference.  Try it out.  Use “I am” in your belief sentence.

Now the first day I wrote my belief sentence I had 0 belief about making $30k in 1 month.  But, I wanted to believe it.

 

I imagined I would feel relief once I believed that thought.  Relief has an emotional intensity score of 2-3.  At the time, that would be a huge step up from my negative emotions.

 

However, the process to believe new things requires a higher positive emotional intensity, like a 6 or higher.

 

I had to get creative.

 

I reflected back on my interview of Roberto Candelaria in Ep #178 The 100 Year Business Vision.  Roberto shared the story of Walt Disney.  Walt Disney, 100 years ago was at a rock bottom moment.  He had spent almost everything he had to get his business working.  Nothing worked.  And he had a lot of critics chiming in about throwing in the towel.  He ignored them and did the next big experiment.  That experiment worked, which became the Steamboat Willy movie.  That win started the unfolding of the winning journey of Disney that lead to a 100 year business with multiple theme parks, movies, tangible products and more.

 

Rock bottom.

 

That stood out to me.

 

With well over 20 Life Whammies in 3 months, I felt like I was at a rock bottom.

 

I combined that with a high intensity positive emotion I like to call - Inspired Elation

 

Inspired Elation is where you feel so much joy and celebration that you get inspired.  In fact, you start to believe it can be for you too.  Inspired Elation is a huge catalyst to action.

 

I evolved my Belief Sentence to “I am generating $30k this month to show people that it’s possible to spring from rock bottom just like Disney.”

 

My new belief became bigger than me.  It’s about me and everybody else that gets to observe my journey.

 

“I am generating $30k this month to show people that it’s possible to spring from rock bottom just like Disney.”

I knew I would share the lows and highs of my journey at some point.  I think it’s important to show our struggles and our successes.  Success doesn’t just magically happen overnight.  Every successful person has a ton of low points that led up to it.  It’s their choice if they want to share it or not.

 

I personally get a lot out of books that share all the rough patches. 

So, I wrote my New Belief.  Now I had to start the daily practice to actually believe it.

30 DAYS TO PRACTICE THE NEW BELIEF

 

Everyday there is 1 activity and 5 questions to answer.  I love the simplicity of this.  I could make this last 5 minutes or an hour.  It was my choice. 

It starts with 1 activity - Write down all the positive thoughts you have about yourself

 

This was different.  I was used to journaling all the negative thoughts I had.  I had never been prompted to start the day with all the positive thoughts I had.

 

Then I moved on to the 5 questions.

 

Question 1 - Write down the new Belief

 

Yep, everyday physically write that sentence

 

Question 2 - What feeling do I have when I think this Belief?

 

Ugh.  I wanted to write a whole novel here.  But, I read the question carefully.  What feeling.  A feeling is usually 1 word.  If there are several feelings, they are 1 word each.  The sentence “I feel this is impossible”  is not a feeling.  That is a thought.

Instead my feelings ran through a full array of excited, doubtful, inspired, skeptical, scared, determined, sad, etc.

 

It was important to get specific on the feeling so I could answer the next question.

 

Question 3 - Why do I feel that way?  What is my brain coming up with?  What are the conflicting sentences?

 

Oh boy,  Here we have it.  All the obstacles.  Just like the Clarity Steps on Achieving Any Goal.  Empathic listening.  These are the things that have to get resolved for me to achieve the goal of believing the new thing.

 

I had so many things.  I wrote them down one line at a time.

 

I noticed that my positive feelings didn’t flow to this question.  When I had positive feelings I wasn’t having conflicting sentences or obstacles.  Instead I had SUPPORTING sentences.  So, I wrote those instead.

 

It was fascinating to see the day to day variation.  I ping ponged back and forth with my belief.

 

Question 4 - Answer each of those sentences with an alternative thought and a massive action to counter it.  List them here.

 

Massive action helps to provide proof that the sentence is true.  This section stumped me for many days.  Other days it felt overwhelming.  My plate was already full of action items for the day.  Adding daily massive actions didn’t seem doable.

 

So, I had to get creative.  What massive actions would support the new sentences and only take a small amount of time and effort.  What were the Mighty Mouse actions. Tiny investment, big punch.

 

Question 5 - Write a note to yourself from your future self who is already living this new belief.  What would you say to you today?

 

I felt so much relief and love with this question.  It comes from inevitability.  I’m already there.  There are no questions about it.  All the fear is vanquished because all the proof is around me.  I responded back with love and compassion.  I hugged myself, expressed empathy with my feelings and then shared the unexpected twists and turns that led to my final outcome.

I really love Future Me.  I appreciate her so much.  And Future Me appreciates Past Me and Today Me for everything we’re doing to move forward.

I did this 1 exercise and 5 questions everyday.

 

About 2 weeks in, I started to feel a little shift in my belief.  The door was opening.

 

And then I backslid.

 

Then I started to believe again for a few days, and then I backslid.

 

Luckily question #4 about the massive action was there.  What massive action would I take to believe all of the supporting questions.

 

Well, one of course was What are all the ways I could generate $30k in one month?

 

That got my creative juices flowing.  I had to think of other things and combinations to make that bigger number.

 

One creative idea was to offer a Lifetime Membership option for membership in the Unshakable Business Co-Lab.  I had to carefully evaluate it to make sure I wasn’t shooting myself in the foot.

 

I wouldn’t have considered that if I wasn’t exploring how to believe this new Belief.

 

Creativity is unleashed with better questions.

 

I’m now grateful to my Life Whammies.  If I hadn’t of had the Life Whammies I wouldn’t have tried this 30 day Believing New Things exercise.

 

It’s funny, there are components of The Clarity Steps in this.  The Clarity Steps is my process for achieving any goal.

 

It never occurred to me to have a New Belief as my Goal.

 

Now I see this is how we can start a Personal Reinvention.  We really can believe anything about ourselves.  It’s a goal just like anything else.

 

Find the obstacles that get in the way.  Experiment to resolve them.

 

Plus…throw in some advice from your Future Self.

 

I love it.

 

Now I have full belief that I can generate $30k in one month.  Have I done it yet?  No.  But, the revenue I generated from my Live Launch was 4x higher than my last Live Launch.  And additional revenue came from single sessions and Intensives which are relatively new offers.  And I was able to buy a new car as a self employed individual.  These were some huge wins.  No more rock bottom.  I’m headed in the right direction.

 

As Dr. Wayne Dyer says “When you Believe It, You’ll See It”.  I just needed to Believe it first.  This 30 day activity helped me.  I know it will help you too.

 

If you’d like help designing, building and optimizing your Business and handling Life Whammies, I can help.

 

I have some 1:1 and Intensive spots available.  1:1 sessions are 2 hours per week.  These are working sessions to get your business deliverables done + work on mindset and resolving emotional triggers.  Your business deliverables may include creating products/services, your sales funnel, processes and schedules.  And yes, Facebook Ads.

 

Intensive spots are extra special.  These are 8 hour sessions to make a huge amount of progress.  Intensives are available as 1 or 2 day options.

 

To get started, I invite you to schedule a free consultation.  Just go to my website at www.myfreedomgrove.com.  Go to the Contact Me tab to select a date/time that works for you.

 

My friend, I’m so happy to be back podcasting with you.  Next week I’m going to share about compassionate energy management so you can keep your business running even during the rough times.  And don’t forget, April we dive into Facebook ads.

 

Have a great week.  Bye bye.