Saying Yes or No? What is your default?
By changing just a few words in your default vocabulary you can positively shift your frame of mind.
Yes! No! Should? Could?
Allow yourself to be responsible for your own happiness, and acknowledge the impact of just a few small words.
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Hi, Christie here recording on the 14th of December 2020, ready for tomorrow.
I’m going to chat about how just a few words said differently, or thought about differently, can really make a massive shift to your mindset.
Quick intro.
I put my Christmas tree and decorations up this week in the UK. It’s that time of year. Some people have had the lights up for weeks and weeks and weeks, I think after lockdown and all the things that have gone on in 2020 people want to be a bit brightened up a bit early.
I’ve been getting up at 6:00 AM to do dictation, which is really helping chip away at my novel. And hopefully I’ll soon be done with the first draft, by the end of the year.
I’ve been reading quite a lot of audio books on a target for 50 books by the end of 2020, I always keep a tally on Goodreads, so join me over there, I’ve not done very well this year. I’ve only read 35 books, I think because we’ve not done much traveling, as when I’m traveling I read a lot, and I’ve been working a lot this year. I think that’s the difference.
Let me know if you’ve got any book recommendations and how your reading habits have changed over the past six months. I’d like to hear about that.
Now…into the empowerment through words session.
I’ll start it with a really good quote, I love her quotes, Maya Angelou. If you’ve not read any of her books, please do because she was a brilliant writer, a very wise woman.
‘Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.’
How good is that quote? I really like that one.
It’s all about loving yourself. So many people have difficulty getting to that stage in their life, which I think is quite sad. I do think midlife is a time where you can sit back and reassess.
It’s often the first time that you have a bit of time on your hands to do that as well.
Think about that quote.
What I want to come on to in this session is about recognising your fear and empowerment.
Recognising fear is something, I think in Western society, looked on as something you shouldn’t admit to. You shouldn’t be admitting that you’re scared. You should put on a brave face, chin up, you know, head forward and crack on. That’s a good philosophy to have in certain cases, but there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re scared.
Fear itself isn’t something to fear. You should be able to manage it.
That’s the problem, some people just don’t know how to manage it. They’ve always been brought it with the attitude of ‘no, no, you can’t be scared.’
They haven’t learned to acknowledge fear. This is what I’m going to discuss.
Recognising fear is okay, it’s fine to be scared. It’s how you manage that fear and how you shift your mind past that fear and just move forward.
The words I think can shift your mindset, just a couple of them, are…SHOULD or COULD.
‘I should really be doing that?’ ‘Well, I could do that.’ They’re very negative words, aren’t they, they don’t give you any sort of power to move through whatever issue you’re facing. ‘I should be really writing’ or ‘I could go and do that, but’ and there’s always a BUT there isn’t there.
Try to stop saying should or could and change them to I will, or I am.
Just one shift in a word from, ‘I should be doing that’ to ‘I will do that.’
It’s got a real positive energy behind it.
‘I could do that’ or ‘I’m going to do that’ There’s a very different mindset behind it.
Allow yourself to not sound arrogant. Some people think it’s a little bit arrogant especially in the British culture, we were brought up to be so polite. Sometimes we need to have a little bit of confidence about ourselves and give confidence toward the people through your own confidence. You know, if you’re a parent and you speak to your children. If they’ve got a fear of whatever it may be, you would always be very confident, and the confidence you have spreads to them and gives them confidence.
What’s wrong with being like that as well as a grown-up, so let yourself be more confident. It’s okay. Be scared, but just work your way through it.
I bet you can guess the next two words that I’m going to come on to.
YES and NO.
Two tiny, tiny words in the English language that are so powerful.
Do you sometimes default to no?
Somebody says, ‘Oh, would you like to try it now?’ ‘Would you like it now?’ If it’s something new, sometimes it’s difficult to get into the mindset of saying, ‘Yes, go on then.’ ‘Yeah. I’ll give that a go.’
It might take a few seconds to come to that mindset. Obviously we say no for some really good reasons. I’m not saying never say it, but you might be on an automatic default to no.
So just think about that.
You get an offer of an adventure or a business proposition. Just think about it a little bit before you click into your default answer.
Do you say yes too often? Are you a default ‘yes-ser?’
Are you somebody that if someone asks you a favour, they really don’t even have to ask you. They just know that you’ll say yes. They make assumptions about your behaviour and you’re beginning to feel put on or taken advantage of. Think about your default yeses and don’t be frightened to sometimes say,
‘No, sorry, I can’t do that.’ You might need to explain it. You might even need to practice this in a mirror, which sounds crazy, but if you stand in your bathroom and look in the mirror and say, ‘No, thank you.’ Or ‘No, actually I’m a bit too busy this week.’
Just give it a go and see how you feel.
I’d like to know, are you a default YES or No person.
It’s okay to try new things and fail. Obviously, if you do parachuting, it’s not a good thing to fail on, but go with people you trust and have a go at parachuting. Why not? It comes back to that fear again.
If I don’t try, then I can’t fail at it. If that’s your default position, try to shift that. You can do it very slowly at first with tiny steps, as long as the steps are in the right direction, they’re always steps. Aren’t they?
Have a think about what you’ve been scared to fail at, but you still really want to do, even just writing your book.
You know, I’m on a mission to get a bit of writing. I hear so many people who’re frightened to write a book because what will people think? Well, to be honest, it doesn’t really matter.
I’ve read some amazing books and I’ve read some really dreadful books, both of which have been bestsellers. There are plenty of books out there that aren’t my taste.
If somebody loves your book, great, if they don’t, that’s fine as well. There’s nothing to be scared of to put your words down. Even if you can’t spell it doesn’t matter. Other people don’t even have to read it. You can put it through a spellchecker. So get past your fear about small things, but also know that it will help you move towards the bigger things as well.
It might be that you’re actually in a relationship, not necessarily in your home, that’s bordering on abusive. Where you really do need to move away from it and getting this small steps of empowerment towards it can really help. Make sure, as I always say, you reach out to the experts or just reach out.
If you need help in that position, there’s always help out there. The other thing is don’t be arrogant with your answers. I’m not saying to just suddenly become selfish and do everything to suit you.
We’re in a community. And especially this year more than ever, the global community has had to really pull together, and locally. Be kind, be honest, not brutally honest, you can still be kind and honest at the same time. Little white lies are okay, in the right situation.
I hope that’s helped to make you just think about what is your default response when people ask you questions.
My book recommendation this week is A Year of Yes, by Shonda Rhimes. You’ll probably recognise her name. She wrote Grey’s anatomy and scandal and some absolutely brilliant TV dramas. She’s the absolute queen of writing monologues. If you’ve not watched any of her dramas, I would definitely recommend them.
Her book is non-fiction, she’d realised that her default response was no. So she challenged herself to have a year of yes. It’s a really interesting read, to see how her mindset shifted. She didn’t actually say yes to everything, but the mindset shift was there.
I’ll put the links in the show notes.
This week I would like you to look at letting something go and trying something new.
So that’s not that hard. Is it?
Say no to something and say yes to something.
Have a lovely week stay. Well, bye.