Everything is Figureoutable

The brilliant entrepreneur Marie Forleo has recently released her book, Everything Is Figureoutable and I've been totally engrossed in it on the plane to Tenerife today.

The idea is simple: every problem is solvable. But Marie declares that taking on this one empowering belief can override all of your other unwanted beliefs.

HOWEVER – I would like to take Marie’s mantra one step further.

I now know that there is something even more powerful than beliefs: identity. Ever since I’ve overcome my fear of flying, I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the concept of identity. Your identity is a set of beliefs that define who you are. You have the power to change that identity by changing those beliefs.

I’ve also discovered that our results in life are tightly bound to our identity. Our identity (a set of beliefs) creates our thoughts, which creates our feelings, which creates our actions, which creates our results.

Beliefs > thoughts > feelings > actions > results

That means, not only should you take on the belief ‘Everything is Figureoutable’ – you should adopt the identity of “I can figure out anything.” Everything is no longer just figureoutable, YOU are the kind of person who can figure anything out. It’s not just a belief you hold, it’s who you are.

Everything is figureoutable is no longer just a belief, but an identity.

I can figure out anything!

I am enough

There are 4 words that can describe the root of so many of our problems: I am not enough.

Tonight I went to London to see Superstar, a play by actress Nicola Wren, about her desire for superstardom and her longing for her siblings’ admiration. (One of her siblings happens to be Chris Martin from ColdPlay – and the play is, in part, her “coming out” as Chris’ sister. Highly recommend it, it was brilliant).

The theme “I am not enough” came up time and time again.

From the age of 7, Nicola narrated a story inside her head that the way to get approval from her siblings, the way to receive their love, was to be a giant success as an actress, so they could say “I’m so proud of you!”

And the thing is, famous family member or not, we all want to feel like we are enough. Smart enough, beautiful enough, successful enough, wealthy enough... It’s not a quality we are born with, it’s one we adopt from an early age. Babies don’t come out of the womb believing they aren’t good enough, the feeling of inadequacy is indoctrinated into us. As renowned psychotherapist, Marisa Peer says: Babies don’t think “Oh, don’t look at me! I’m not beautiful enough! I’m not successful enough!” They feel 100% worthy of your attention, even when they cry and poop and make a complete mess. They believe they are worthy of love, just for existing.

And they are.

As time goes on, we begin to believe that we must earn love, by doing or being a certain way. And it’s a horrible lie.

So how do we get out of this awful predicament?

By changing the story in our heads from “I will when enough when...” to simply “I am enough.”

I am enough. I am enough. I am enough.

Be Your Own Lucky Charm

Did you ever see that 2006 Lindsay Lohan film, Just My Luck?

Okay, so Mean Girls gets most of the Lohan fan attention – and for good reason – but Just My Luck is highly underrated. Stay with me here, it’s worth it.

Here’s the deal:

New Yorker, Ashley, is a good luck charm. Everything goes her way, all of the time. Like, always. She’s just always lucky. Voted prom queen – at a school she didn’t even attend, wins every time on lotto scratchies, pouring rain turns to sunshine the moment she steps outside.

Even when it seems like something has gone wrong (aka, dry cleaning mix up right before an important event), it turns out to be a blessing in disguise (aka, mix up was with Sarah Jessica-Parker’s dress, so she gets to wear that instead).

Of course, she has a fateful kiss with a perpetually unlucky stranger (hello, Chris Pine), and ends up switching her luck with him and everything goes horribly wrong. It’s a brilliant girls night in film, watch the trailer if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I digress. The point is, we should all take a leaf out of Ashley’s book. You know when things just go right? The traffic lights go all green? You find $20 in a coat you totally forgot you had? You get unexpected good news?

For that moment, you feel like the luckiest girl (or guy) on the PLANET.

But guess what? Good luck is happening all around you, all the time, you’re just not noticing it because it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.

• There’s exactly the right amount of oat milk left for a cup of tea. Nice.

• You were running late to work but your boss was even later. Phew.

• Your phone is on 1% but somehow lasts for another 15 minutes. Yas.

Even things that seem like they aren’t good luck initially can actually turn out to be good luck. For example, missing the bus but meeting someone amazing at the bus stop, or dropping your half-eaten icecream and being gifted a whole new one for free.

I like to imagine that, just like Ashley, I too only ever have good luck. I pretend, for a few hours, that I am the luckiest girl in the world. During that time, no matter what happens, I imagine I’ve just rolled a 6 at life.

Even if it seems bad, I try to feel lucky. Because even the bad things in life can be good if you look at them in a different light.

It’s kind of an alternative way to practice gratitude. Plus, it feels SO good, walking around feeling like the luckiest person in the world – choosing to feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Someone has to be the luckiest person in the world. Why can’t it be you?

P.S. If you need some inspiration for your Luckiest Person in the World Gratitude Practice (I can trademark that mouthful, surely?), check out the whole movie here.

P.P.S. The Luckiest Person in the World Gratitude Practice (man, it needs a better name), is in action in another phenomenal movie, Legally Blonde, as seen below:

The Self-Coaching Model

Every once in awhile I come across a universal truth that makes me think, “Yes! This is exactly what I’ve been thinking, only this person has said it so much more eloquently – why didn’t I think of that?!”

This Self Coaching Model, formulated by Master Coach, Brooke Castillo, is one of those truths. It’s a formula used to solve any problem.

I just can’t deny the beauty of it.

Your circumstances affect your thoughts, which affect your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results.

Here is what Brooke shares about each of those:

• A circumstance is a neutral fact.

• A thought is a sentence in your head about a circumstance.

• A feeling is a vibration in your body caused by a thought.

• An action is what your feelings cause you to do.

• A result is the consequence of your action.

You can’t change a fact. But you can change a thought. That means, in order to get different results in your life, changing your thoughts will automatically affect your results (because it affects your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results).

Therefore, if you want to change the results you are getting in your life, you have to change your THOUGHTS. So much of the time, we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts, so our results don’t change.

Think about it in terms of smoking. So many people try to quit smoking by changing their actions. But if they haven’t changed their thoughts.

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: Even if I stop, it won’t make a difference.
Feeling: Lethargic.
Action: Don’t stop smoking.
Result: No difference is made.

Results don’t change by action alone. They need the thoughts to be aligned with the action.

What if instead, the model looked like this:

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: I can go without a cigarette for a day.
Feeling: Determined.
Action: Doesn’t have a cigarette today.
Result: A difference is made – a day without smoking.

The elegance of this model is the simplicity. It works every time to change your results.

Change your thoughts, change your life.

Golden Lining

Sometimes a collapse is a catalyst for change we didn’t even know we needed.

Yesterday our kitchen cupboard collapsed onto itself, and we were irritated because we had work cut out for us that we didn’t intend to have. 

However, we were forced to discover what was actually inside that cupboard. I had no idea we were hoarding 13 empty pickle jars.

Now it’s completely clear and the sense of satisfaction I get from being able to see every item of food we have is unexpectedly brilliant. 

Of course, the cupboard is just the starting point. It got me thinking, what if with every collapse that occurs in our lives, we didn’t just look for a silver lining, but also a giant benefit?

The Importance of Personal Development

Personal development gets given a bad wrap. I’ve had people tell me it’s selfish, self-indulgent and even superficial. I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it has permeated our culture so deeply that we feel guilty for the slightest self-care.

Personal development isn’t the selfish pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others. Personal development is about building up the human strengths that buffer against mental illness in order to increase fulfilment in life.

One way to explain mental health and illness is by using a number line from -10 to +10, where the negative numbers represent degree of mental illness such as anxiety or depression, and the positive numbers represent degree of mental strength. We want our baseline (the number we’re on) to be as high as it can be, right? However, with the current disease model, we’re only expected to get help when we’re ill. We’re led to believe if you’re not sick, there’s no reason to focus on personal development at all.

Not-sick sounds good in theory, but it means our baseline is at zero. Zero mental illness – but also zero mental strength. At zero, if we take a hit (a breakup or job loss, for example), we’re at serious risk of dropping into the negative, into mental illness. However, if our baseline is at say, +6, and now we take a hit, we’ve got a much better chance at coping with it, and we may only drop to say, a +3 – still quite mentally strong. Therefore, increasing our mental strength is an incredibly effective preventative measure to protect against anxiety and depression.

That’s great on a personal level – but what about other people? Isn’t it selfish to spend so much time on our own mental state when we could be helping others? Well, no. When you’re sick, you demand not only your own attention but the attention of others too. Ever heard the phrase, ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’? To give, you must fill up your own cup, and then you’re in a much better position to help the world.

As a High Performance Coach, that’s what I help people do – heighten and sustain their mental strength so they can make an impact that truly matters in the world. I help them push their own limits and rewire their thinking, using their own life as a training gym.

And how do I actually do that?

By having deep conversations, sometimes face-to-face, but mostly on Skype, and asking a lot of questions. I ask questions you’ve never thought about the answers to, until you begin to think differently, and you discover new ways of handling life’s lemons. Most of the work happens outside the conversation – when you go and apply your strengthened mindset to all the different areas of your life and watch what happens. I also have my clients set commitments and then fulfill them by a deadline they set for themselves. I push them to reach their mental potential in the most supportive way possible – like a personal trainer.

To be physically strong, you don’t need a personal trainer, but you do need to exercise your body. Similarly, to be mentally strong, you don’t need a coach, but you do need to exercise your mind. A coach is one way you can do that more effectively, but you can also read personal development books, take courses, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries and cultivate growth-friendships.

The point is, we shouldn’t take developing mental strength for granted – it’s not self-indulgent, selfish or superficial. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, because when we are mentally strong we have the capacity to help others and contribute to the world in a way that we can’t when we’re stuck in a cycle of dropping from neutral to negative and back again. Personal development is a worthy pursuit.

What you think, you become

What’s your desired outcome?
Stop smoking? Lose weight? More money? Better relationships?

Your thoughts create your feelings, which create your actions, which create your results.
think > feel > act > get

That is the meaning of the saying “What you think, you become.”

The reason we don’t get what we want is that we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts. You’ve seen it. The person who tries to stop smoking, and says they will – but hasn’t changed their beliefs, their identity, their THOUGHTS. They fail and they can’t understand why. Changing things at the action level alone won’t work. You have to change your thoughts first.

Ask yourself, “Now that I have (insert desired outcome), what do I believe, what do I think?”

Start there. See how it ripples out to your actions.

Handling Criticism

Brooke Castillo said (and I paraphrase), if someone told you “I hate your blue hair” it doesn’t hurt, right? Because you don’t have blue hair. That’s not offensive. You just think “Um, okay?”

Criticism only hurts if part of you believes it.

If you believe you’re not good enough, and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it will hurt. But if you believe you are good enough and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it won’t hurt (Unless there’s a tiny part of you that still believes you’re not).

Your beliefs determine your feelings, not other people.

How to handle criticism? Examine the part of you that believes it, and find out why. Then instead of leaning into your anger or upset, spend your energy working on changing those beliefs.

Hell yeah or no

Hell yeah or no.

High performer and brilliant mind Derek Sivers invented a genius cure for overcommitment:

When you've got a decision to make, if you don't think HELL YEAH! at the idea, then say no.

If you say no to almost everything, then when a truly incredible opportunity comes along that makes you think HELL YEAH, you have the time, energy and space in your life to fully commit to it.

Too many of us take on far too many things at once to function at peak performance.
Say hell yeah, or no.

Choosing happiness – now

I haven’t been posting photos of me for a while, because I haven’t felt compelled to take them. I don’t want to take photos that seem ‘aspirational’ just for the sake of making things look good. Things ARE good. I don’t want feel the need to show that they’re good by post a selfie right now. More thoughts on this to come.

The past few days have been a time of unexpected awakening, and I think I’ve been jolted out of another layer of the matrix (hey, not trying to get too woo-woo, but you gotta love the film the matrix). I feel like I’ve realised I’m on the right path, I’m doing the things I want to be doing, but I’m in the wrong vehicle. I’m not sure what exact vehicle I would like to be in yet, but I know what I’ve been doing doesn’t feel quite right. I’ve been struggling, and all because of my own mentality. Right now, I choose maximum happiness. I’m finished with the struggle of being here and wanting to be there.

Instead, I choose to want to be here, right now. I choose to want my life exactly as it is right now.

I choose to be 10/10 happy with my life. Someone has to be the happiest person in the world, right? Why can’t it be me? Or you?