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LEAD YOUR LIFE

Over our lifetimes, we’re joyfully given leadership roles as women personally and professionally we strive to obtain. We celebrate these promotions briefly to then only feel less than confident and qualified as we step into these roles. If that’s you, tune in today as I teach you how to own your power to authentically lead your life instead.

LEAD YOUR LIFE

Jun 7, 2021 | MINDSET | 0 comments

“In society, we’re shown messages of what leaders look like, what they do, and what they don’t do. You have to figure out who you are AUTHENTICALLY to be able to go and lead your life.”

Over our lifetimes, we’re joyfully given leadership roles as women personally and professionally we strive to obtain. We celebrate these promotions briefly to then only feel less than confident and qualified as we step into these roles.  

We think something has gone wrong to feel this way.  We think maybe we weren’t meant to be managers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, wives, teachers, leaders, mothers, and friends.

This is FAR from the truth.

The problem is that you just haven’t learned yet how to own your power to authentically lead your life instead.

Today that ends. Join me on this episode as I teach you how to powerfully and authentically lead your life so you feel better than ever AND create even MORE change in your life.

IN THIS EPISODE, I SPECIFICALLY COVER:

  • The #1 thing you must do to lead your life powerfully
  • How managing your emotions plays a part into leadership and why it’s so important
  • Why boundaries are the key to your success and what happens when you don’t lovingly enforce them
  • The plan even non-planners need to have in order to authentically lead and why this plan creates immense financial success for women
  • The kind of action you need to take in order to feel good as a leader

…and so much more

Tune into this powerful episode via the player at the top of this page now. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Apply to coach with me

Continue the conversation in my free online community

Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training 

MASSIVE VS. FRANTIC ACTION episode

3 Common Mistakes Driven Women Make

Full Transcript

Setting Boundaries in Relationships & at Work

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 115, LEAD
YOUR LIFE.


[music]


Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fearfacing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife,
mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived
through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear
the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join
me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman
you were meant to be. Let’s do this.


[music]

Hey there, my friend, welcome to another episode of the show, so happy to have you.
Today we’re going to be talking about leading your life. I’ve been doing a lot of work on
myself and in my business, I feel it’s continuous, but the past few months has been even
more intense. As I’ve been doing this work, I’ve realized it’s time for me to niche down a
bit. Now marketing, coaches, gurus, teachers, whatever you want to call them, teach this,
that you should start with a very defined niche from the beginning.


I’ve rebelled against that in many ways, and I’ve been more of a general life coach. Now
over the years, it’s niched down and saying I work with driven women and I help them
accomplish their dreams. I’ve niched down a little bit to say driven woman, or go-getter
woman is another term I’ve used. Now it’s time for me to niche down even more. I’ve just
felt it, that it’s time to really hone in on what is it that I do really well with my clients, and
who is it that I work really well with. Doing all this work, I’ve come to realize that what I
do best as a coach, and who I work best with are women who are ready to own their
power.


They want to own their power so they can lead their lives and their businesses, as the
leaders they know they want to be. Again, what is it that I do as a coach? I help driven
women own their power to become the leaders they know they can be in life and business.
My typical client, she is successful, but inside, she has a lot of doubts about herself, she
criticizes herself. Maybe she shows up in one area of her life pretty well, but she wants to
show up in all areas of her life pretty well. I help her authentically own her power, so that
she can lead her life, and make the money she wants to make, and have the relationship
she wants to have. Feel the way that she wants to feel, and do the things she wants to do.
Really not much has changed in regards to what I do to help my clients. In regards to the
coaching process, that has not changed at all, it’s still a nine-month simple success system,
that’s one-on-one. For three months, we go through the Become An Unstoppable Woman
course of mine, which is really like we’re clearing out all the blocks that are keeping them
from owning their power. The next three months, they’re figuring out who they are
authentically so they can really lead from that authentic place.


The last few months and beyond, if they choose to continue to work with me is really
going out there, and instilling that authentic life, and continually looking at their blocks,
and overcoming them. We call that living the dream. Again, none of that has changed, it’s
just now I’m really honing in is that I’m not really a life coach anymore, I’m a leadership
coach. That’s what I’m doing. Again, it’s just a very slight wording, a very slight title
change, but it makes a difference. It allows me to really hone in on one area that I become
a subject matter expert in and that’s what are the things that help or hone women from
owning their power?


It’s so funny because I just really came around this niche a few days ago as I had a
coaching session. That afternoon, there was an incident at my daughter’s school where
they were really getting on to the 4th-grade girls, because my daughter’s in 4th grade,
about their dress code and about shorts to be a certain length. They were talking to them
in front of the boys about it, and it’s like, “Girls, you really need to make sure it’s this
because you’ve got to honor your bodies and dah dah dah.” Granted, yes. Do we want to
dress professionally and present ourselves well? Absolutely.


It’s just little messages like that, especially doing it in front of males, that allows girls to
have these subtle beliefs that start to take hold in their minds of, “Be attractive, but not
too attractive,” or “Be visible, but not too visible.” The way a man reacts to my body or
somebody else reacts to my body is on me, it’s not on them, and their thoughts, and their
feelings. They start to hold back and they don’t shine as much.


Just from that one moment, I was able to speak up and be like, “Whoa, wait a second. Hey
daughter’s school we need to reframe the way that we’re doing this and the way we’re
approaching this.” Again, it’s just really helped me start to hone in on what is it I do in the
world. It’s so funny because I actually wrote down the notes for this episode days before I
came up with this new niche. I’m like, “Man, what a universe moment.” Like, I want to talk
about leadership more, and more, and more.


That’s what we’re doing today, we’re talking about how to lead your life effectively, and
lead it authentically. That’s the really big keyword here, is authentically, because so many
of us we are shown these messages of what leaders look like, and what they do and they
don’t do. Let’s face it, living in our society today, a lot of that is this white male image. Be
more masculine at work, and be hard-hitting, and dress a certain way, and act a certain
way, and talk about this, but don’t talk about that.


That’s why a lot of women that I work with, come to me and they say, “Lindsay, I have all
these things, and I’m doing all this, but I don’t feel fulfilled inside, I don’t feel good.” I’m
like, “Because you haven’t figured out who you are yet. You have to figure out who you are
authentically to be able to go and lead your life.”


One of my favorite stories of this is actually a client I have and still have to this day, where
she came to me. She had a really good life, career-wise things are going well, she felt
really in alignment there, and she was leading in that area, but in her personal life, she
was dating guys that she knew she was better than.


She really wanted to start a family and so she found herself sacrificing some of what she
wanted because she wanted a family so bad. As we worked together, she started to see
how she was getting into the societal belief that she needs to have a partner in order to
have a baby. As she was starting to shut those layers and really figure out what she wanted
in her life, she realized, “Hey, I want a baby right now.” She has taken the steps forward to
go and have that baby on her own. That is what I’m talking about with authentic
leadership, she had to find her authentic self in that to be able to go and lead her life the
way she wanted to because she just found herself sacrificing to get some things that she
wanted.


Now another story for you is obviously lots and lots of different business stories because
that tends to be where women come to me the most and say, “Lindsay, I’m just not leading
the way that I want to at work.” It goes back to again, is that we’ve been showing all these
messages of how white males act at work. Of course, we don’t feel fulfilled there because
we’re not white males. I’ve had to work with clients of how to lead in a very authentic and
feminine way to be able to still get what they want. I’ve had clients that come to me in
very, very dominant male industries like IT, oil and gas, finance.


We’re having to figure out ways for them to show up the way they want to show up but
still play the game of what they’re wanting at work. One client that comes to mind is one
who has said, “Listen, I am really good at what I do,” and she has told her job, “I want to
work from home. These are the amount of hours that I will go into the office, but this is
what I’m going to do at home.” Her having to stand up to the males in her industry too,
and showing her how to do that in a way, and shedding some layers of the thoughts of that
she’s a bitch. Or that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about when she really does, that
imposter syndrome is really what it goes back to.


Again, just by her doing that, now she’s in a new position where she’s getting what she
wants, or she’s working from home and doing what she wants. She’s standing up in a
whole new way, and she’s making a crap ton of more money in the process plus bonuses.
It’s like, “Oh my gosh, Lindsay, I can’t believe I’m making this much, and I’m working from
home and doing the things I want to do.” I’m like, “Yes, all you needed was again to figure
out how to own your power and go out there and authentically lead.”


Today, what I want to do is give you a taste of what that looks like for you so you can start
to go and implement some of these things in your life and lead your life in a very authentic
way. Many times as I said, we’re given leadership opportunities as women, especially now
post Me Too movement, and even if you’re a woman of color, this past year, especially
businesses are looking at like, “Oh shit, we need to diversify our leadership. Not just with
women, we need to have more people of color up leading.” We’re given these positions
and many times we don’t have these role models to look to have people that we admire
and trust and who we feel like, Oh yes, they’re doing it the way that I want to do it.


For me, I felt the same way as a business owner. When I stepped into my role seven years
ago and the business I have today, it was like, man, I just don’t see a lot of women leading
the way that I want to lead in my business. Not just as a coach, but in any area. Then for
me, I finally found Sarah Blakely, who is a leader of Spanx or the creator of Spanx. To me,
she really embodies a lot of the qualities that I want to have as a leader. She’s really
authentic. She just shows up messy sometimes, but yet she’s created this very powerful,
feminine brand and she treats what it looks like her employees very well.

She even walks us down memory lane she’s really into mindset work. Again, she has a lot
of these qualities. Once I was able to start to see her, I was able to start to visualize here’s
what I want to create. I started to do the work of what are the blocks keeping me from
stepping into that version of myself. Two, I don’t want to be just like Sarah, I want to be
authentically like me. It just really shows a lot of times where our growth is whenever
we’re given these leadership opportunities and what work we need to do to really step
into that next version of ourselves.


I’ll give you another story here is when the Capitol incident happened here in the US,
which was in January, 2021, if you just happen to not know about it, it’s when people
stormed the Capitol and protested that Donald Trump had won the election. There’s just
illegal activities that went with that and there was just the way that they acted were just
signs of racism. They had a noose and things of that sort and a Confederate flag. At the
time my social media manager came to me and said, “Hey, Lindsay, are you going to make
a comment about what happened at the Capitol?” I was like, “Oh man. I guess I should”
was my first thought.


I was really taken back because that was the first time somebody had asked me, are you
going to make a comment about this thing and history and that sense. I was like, “Oh wow,
you’re handing the mic to me. People want to hear what I have to say?” and then when I
made a comment some of the pushback that I got from that comment was “Lindsay, you’re
a leader. There are some holes in this argument and posting and you really need to make
sure that you’re leading authentically.”


By me stepping into that new version of myself, of being somebody who’s taking my
leadership to the next level again, it showed me where my growth is. It’s like, “Oh man,
you’re right. There are some holes in this argument that I need to do my work on.” That’s
when I then hired an anti-racism coach. Two, it showed me of, “Wow. I really am a leader.”
For a lot of women, it takes them by surprise of like, wow. People are listening to me and
people look up to me because again, this goes back to a patriarchal society of we’re just so
used to kind of being in the corner.


It goes back to what I said earlier with my daughter’s school of like, be visible, but not too
visible, lead, but don’t lead too much or otherwise you’re bossy and you’re bitchy. Again,
it’s allowed me to see where’s my growth at. Again, a lot of my clients, when they’re
coming to me, they’re like, “Oh, Lindsay, I’m just at this place where I’m just feeling stuck. I
know I need to step into this next version of myself, but I just can’t get there.” For some
women, it’s when they’re stepping into motherhood, even of wow, I’m officially a mom
now, or I’m about to become a mom. Or I’m just thinking about becoming a mom, which is
actually the biggest bucket of clients I get.


They’re like, “Man, I’m getting to the age, Lindsay where I think I’m going to become a
mom. I need to do some work.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so smart to do that work
before you become a mom because you have the time and the energy. If we look at it from
an epigenetic standpoint, meaning what you’re passing in your genes, the work that you’re
going to do right now is going to be passed off in your DNA to your children. They’re going
to get benefit of it.” Anyways, but really for them, it’s showing them how am I going to
lead as a mom? For a lot of them, they didn’t have parents necessarily that they want to
embody and envy.


Again, we’re having to do that work of shedding those layers, those beliefs that are
keeping them from owning their authentic power and leading in that area of their lives.
Let’s talk about what you need to do in order to start to lead your life in the way that you
want to lead. The first thing it’s going to be no surprise if you were an avid listener of the
show and especially if you’re a client of mine, but it’s manage your mind. Recently I had
some sessions with some older clients of mine.

Meaning they worked with me years ago and they came back and said, Hey, Lindsay, I’m
just hitting a funk a little bit. Let’s do a session. They came to me and they felt like they
had these really big problems. One of them came to me as like “Oh, I just don’t feel
confident at work anymore.” The other one came to me and said, “I’m leaving my day job
behind. I’m going all-in on my business.


Again, they came to me and were like, “What’s going on with me? Why do I feel like this?”
What happened during our session was, “Hey, you’re just not managing your mind. You’re
not staying on top of what’s going on in your head and because of that, things are starting
to snowball, meaning thoughts to make you start to just feel funky again it’s just like
working out. You’ve got to work out every so often to stay on top of your muscle mass and
your weight, if you’re tracking your weight or just your overall mindset. It’s the same with
your mind. It’s like, you’ve got to just stay on top of that. You’ve got to stay in a place
where you’re maintaining.”


How can you do that? I think the easiest and simplest way to start to manage your mind is
just to write down different circumstances that have happened. Then write down all your
thoughts. I tell this with my clients, we call it a thought download. Say, for example, you
think about you as a leader. I did this with one of my clients. We said her name as a
manager, what her role is and then we just wrote down all the thoughts of what she thinks
about her as a manager. That she’s not very good at it that she doesn’t have the right role
models. She had this huge long list of all of these thoughts. She thought about herself as a
manager.

I was like, “See, these are just the thoughts that are going on in your mind to cause you to
not feel confident to then take action from a place where you’re taking on way too much
work. You’re not delegating properly and then the result is that you feel really resentful
and you feel like you’re a bad leader.” You’ve just got to stay on top of these thoughts and
be aware, bring them to the conscious mind of what’s going on and you can change them.
It seems so silly. Of like, “Oh, we just find the thought Lindsay, and then we just change
it?” That’s really where it begins.


For her, she has this thought that “I’m not a very good manager.” What could she start to
intentionally tell herself every day to feel a little bit different. That’s a, just somewhat
believable. She might not be at a place yet where she’s saying, “Oh, I’m an amazing
manager.” For her, it was a thought of something like I’m a good enough manager. That
was believable enough to her to start to say that to herself intentionally every day. Again,
when I’m saying show up and say, these things intentionally to yourself is really, yes, start
your day with telling yourself intentionally the thoughts you want to think to go out and
then feel the feelings you want to feel.

Be it confidence, empowerment, authenticity, neutrality, joy, peace, whatever. Then you’re
going to take action from that place. I know it sounds so elementary. We just tell ourselves
what we want to think. It’s just like building any other habit in your life. When you learn to
type on a keyboard, you had to learn where the letter a was over and over and over and
over again. You just had to keep hitting that key until your brain got it. Where then it’s just
second nature to you. You don’t even think when you type anymore.


At least I know it’s the same with your thoughts. If you want to think a certain way about
you as a leader, you start every day with saying that thought to yourself, and then you have
to spend a few seconds actually feeling the feeling of that. If you are saying to yourself,
“I’m a good enough leader.” Feel the feeling of that and even visualize what that looks and
feels like for you and then go on with your day. Then every day that you’re doing that, it’s
just going to build this brain wire and your brain to a point where you’re going to start to
say it. You’re like, “Whoa, I don’t even need to say this anymore. I just believe this to be
true,” because then the brain wire has been built around it.


Again, you’ve got to manage your mind. Obviously, this is something I do with my clients.
This is why my clients when they work with me beyond nine months, they’re wanting just
ongoing accountability and ongoing support to manage their mind and someone to hold
space for them to actually show up and do this. This is what I do with my own coaches is
I’m coming to them. I had a session this week with one of my coaches. I said, I keep seeing
this thought coming up for me, that I’m a bitch, I’m a bitch. I gave different examples of
what I’ve seen it come up for me.


We spent a whole hour just looking at that thought, if I’m a bitch, like where it came from,
what is it that I want to think instead? What is a bitch really mean to me? When does
something cross over to where I do feel like I’m bitchy versus me just standing up for
myself and just shifting that one thought it’s going to have a huge impact in my life. This is
what I’m doing all the time. As I’m getting coaches, I’m shifting these thoughts that aren’t
serving me to thoughts that are and allowing my brain to get on board with that by doing
things like where did this come from? When does it cross the line? What do I need to do, I
don’t cross that line and don’t become a “bitch” and all of that.


That’s what I’m doing to manage my mind. Again, you can hold space for yourself, and do
this for yourself and write down a circumstance be it, you as that part of yourself as a
leader, it could be whatever happened in the previous day, like, Tom, my boss said, “Hey,
you’re not turning in exceptional work,” and then write all your thoughts about that and it
just, that’s the way you start to manage your mind, my friend. That’s the biggest key to
start to changing the way that you’re showing up as a leader.


To know that again, we’re in this patriarchal white supremacy society, where white males,
they just don’t have to do as much work around this because society, has been traditionally
set up for them to just believe that they’re leaders. Believe, that they can go out and do
whatever they want to do and they don’t have to do as much mind management but as
women, especially if you’re a woman of color, then you have to do more mind
management. Again, society just hasn’t been set up at this time for you to go in and feel
really good about being all these different leaders in your life be it at work or at home.
Okay, that’s the first thing you need to do to lead your life.


The second thing beyond that is to regulate and process emotions. There was an article
once many years ago from the Harvard Business Review. They said, the number one key to
successful managers, which I consider just leaders, is that they are emotionally intelligent.
When I consider emotional intelligence is somebody who is in touch with their emotions,
and then they can process the emotions and hold space for other people to process their
emotions without diminishing them. That is such a powerful place to be. Funny as I work
with clients, they see me modeling how to hold space for people to feel feelings, and
process emotions.

Of course, they’re doing it on their own and they become powerful leaders, just from our
relationship and the work they’re doing on themselves because then they see,” “Oh, I know
how good this feels when somebody does this for me, and, oh, I’m not scared of feelings
anymore because now I know how to process my own feelings, and regulate my own body.
I’m not, emotionally triggered as much and not as anxious.” Then all of a sudden, they step
into this role as a more powerful leader. I’ll give you an example with one of my clients,
she’s a CEO of a small business, I think they have something like 20 to 40 employees.
Pretty small, but not super small.


She came to me, and she’s like, “Lindsay, my business is not doing well and I’ve got to do
something differently and I know, part of this is the way that I’m leading.” Over the past
few months, we’ve been looking at, what beliefs allowed her to be the leader she was
then. When we started, which was one where she was constantly walking on eggshells
with herself, because some leaders would tell her, “Hey, you can’t have a family, you need
to devote all your time to work.” Some leaders hold her you need to be friends, but not too
friendly with your employees. She just felt like she couldn’t win and she just again, felt like
she couldn’t be herself too.


As we started to shut those layers, she started to feel through some of the choices she’s
made in her life, like not starting a family because of what certain leaders have told her.
She’s been able to now step into this new role of her and this new version of herself, and
her business is doing better than ever. She’s feeling better than ever, and her business is
taking this turn. Hopefully, we’re still a few weeks, if not months away from her business
really taking off to a point where then she can sell it and move on with her life, which is
her ultimate goal.


That went back to us, really working on her learning how to regulate and process emotions
and now she shows up for employees too where she can hold space for them. Like they
come to her and they say, “Hey, something has happened at home.” She’s able to really sit
with them and not really even coddle them. It’s just like being able to acknowledge and
recognize what’s going on and then being able to still set loving and firm boundaries with
them moving forward versus before she would just avoid the whole thing together. Her
employees weren’t that happy. She wasn’t getting what she wanted out of them and it was
just this whole big kind of shit show.


It’s important for you to regulate and process your emotions. This is what I teach my
clients all day every day. One of the biggest ways that you can start to regulate your own
emotions is as simple as breathing. This goes back to the recent episode I did with Kaycee
Joy about bodywork, and how powerful breath is and just being able to when you’re feeling
something, taking a deep breath. [breathes in] Maybe a couple of deep breaths in and out
[breathes out] and then just starting to, again going back to manage your mind or what are
the thoughts that are coming up for me.

This recently happened to me in my own business, I had a client who sent me an email
that had a lot of what I consider very nasty thoughts to me. I felt my natural reaction was
this fight or flight. I started to get anxious and I sat there and I just breathed. I took deep
breaths, and I was like, “Okay, Lindsay, what’s going on in your mind?” Things that were
going on my mind is, “What if what she’s saying is true?” I just started to, then again, pull
forward all the thoughts that were going on to lead to my anxiety, and just continually
regulating breathing in, breathing out regulating my emotions.


Luckily, I was at a place where, her and I work face-to-face, because it is trickier when
you’re face-to-face, and you’re triggered by that. I can come to her and be like, “Hey, here’s
what we need to do moving forward, sending a loving firm boundary.” I’m not at a place
where I’m emotionally reactive. Instead, I’m emotionally responsive, which is a whole other
thing, we could do a whole podcast on that. That’s another thing I teach my clients and
that’s really what I’m asking you to do here is to start to be more emotionally responsive
versus reactive.


I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely had managers and leaders in the past that have
been reactive. It creates almost a toxic working environment. You can tell that you just
can’t come to them with things because you don’t know how they’re going to respond or
really react, as I said. You feel like you’re walking on eggshells, and then all of a sudden,
you’re like, “I got to get a new job, I got to get out of here.” If we look at it, from a personal
perspective, I know I’ve had personal relationships with people who do not know how to
emotionally regulate who are very blaming and reactive.


I don’t want to be around those people, as much as I love them and care for them. It’s just
really hard to be in a relationship like that. The more that you can become that person
who is regulated emotionally and processes your emotions, you’re not emotionally
triggered, you’re emotionally responsive versus reactive as I said. The more people want to
be around you and the stronger you’re going to become as a leader in all areas of your life.
The other thing that needs to happen for you to effectively lead your life is to become
what I call a boundaries badass. Again, this is something I work on with my clients, we
spend a whole week where they take a boundaries assessment, they’re given, I think it’s
like 20 different boundaries, that they need to be setting in their lives for them to really be
able to feel good and to get what they want out of life. For many women, myself included,
when I first took that assessment, it was mind-blowing to me to see Oh, my gosh, you
mean, I can set a boundary that people can’t talk me out of my truth?


That’s wild, you mean, I can set a boundary that I don’t have to continue in conversations
that I want to be over? When you realize that those are things that are emotionally healthy
for you to be setting, Holy moly, it changes the game, because anytime you’re allowing
someone to cross a boundary in your life, you take a ding for it. Those things add up and
they make you tired, and they weigh you down and then all of a sudden your emotions
start to snowball. You’re feeling overwhelmed and, ungrateful and all the things. All of a
sudden, those thoughts start coming up, and managing your mind becomes more difficult
because you’re worn down.


Your mind, in essence, has turned against you in some ways of like, well, you let people
walk all over you, or this job is way too hard for you see, I told you, you weren’t ready to be
a leader, or, you can’t be a business owner. This is way above your head, you should have
known better. Am I striking a chord here for you? For a lot of women, this is what their
mind is like myself included and it goes back to having those boundaries. Really setting
those loving but firm boundaries in your life all around you. Once you do that, and you
continually hold those boundaries, because it’s not just about you acknowledging and
being aware of what boundaries that is going to then have the courage to hold those
boundaries and continuously hold those boundaries. That’s when you start to lead
effectively.


I’ll give you an example. My personal life is just this weekend my husband and I were
talking about some financial stuff. He was like, “Oh my God, I’m just freaking out. We got
this coming up and this and this and I just feel like, we’re really struggling and I’ve been
asking you for money and I haven’t been getting it.” I was like “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back
this train up. First off, you’re defining this is that we’re struggling, we’re definitely not.
You’re trying to make it seem like as this is how I feel, is I’m not giving you money, but you
can’t just ask me for money. I have to plan things in my business around that if I’m going
to be giving you money.” I really have to set a boundary with him as like, “Listen, that story
that you are telling me right now about how we’re struggling is just not true. This is on
you. This is your mind that you need to go manage.” Because for him, he has some triggers
around finances, he grew up poor, in some ways. This is triggering for him and then he
starts to put that on me.


He wants to in essence, what it feels like throw anxiety on me, and I’m like, “Listen, dude,
no, no, no, no, no, that’s how we’re going.” Of course, it created tension for us that night. It
was on Friday night when it happened. Saturday, then he woke up and you could tell he
had a change of heart of, “Okay, Lindsay, yes, you’re right.” We talked it through and he’s
like, “Yes, this just goes back to my safety and security needs.” I was like, “Yes, it totally
does.”


I will tell you in that moment when I’m setting boundaries with someone, that’s where
thoughts come up for me, I’m like, “Lindsay, you’re such a bitch,” or “Lindsay, you’re high
maintenance,” or “Lindsay, you’re asking for too much,” or “Lindsay, why don’t you just let it
go.” That’s where as women, we really got to change the game there. Because if we
continuously have a voice like that, that’s where again, we take those dings on those
boundaries and then all of a sudden, we’re feeling antsy, and anxious and worn out. Then
all of a sudden, all those nasty thoughts start coming in our mind.


Just when you are setting that boundary with him on Friday, that changed the entire
progression of what was going to happen in my mind next. Instead, I put that back on him
of like, “Whoa, dude, this is on you, we are definitely not struggling. There’s definitely
nothing going on in my business. You got to change that.” Then that negative voice in my
head wasn’t beating me up for not standing up for myself, when I intuitively I knew I
needed to, instead it was on him of, “Whoa, babe, this is yours.”


Then too when I had thoughts pop up of maybe I wanted to be overly mad at him or blame
him I call myself with like, “Listen, Lindsay, this is his own work, have compassion for that.
It’s okay.” Are you following me here? I hope so. Boundaries are really the starting line of
all the things that you need to start to set in your life to really show up as a powerful
leader.


The next thing I want to tell you in order to lead your life is to know the difference
between what I call your inner mean girl voice, and your authentic self voice, and what the
behaviors are of those two. Again, this is something I do with my clients.
Many times women come to me. Now granted, most people, they’ve listened to the
podcast, they know what an inner mean girl is, and stuff. Most women, they don’t know,
just off the streets of that they have this voice called the inner mean girl. In the psyche
world, it’s called ego. Many people call it the false self, the lizard brain, so many different
names for it. Really, it’s just the primitive, highly emotional part of your brain, that’s pure
function is to keep you safe and secure. It’s constantly looking at everything in a negative
light, because that’s just going to keep you safe. Like, “Oh, my gosh, look at that car over
there, stay on the sidewalk.


Oh, my gosh, don’t go talk to that person, they’re way more, “successful” than you and you
don’t want to be rejected by them, because that’s going to hurt really bad.” That’s what
that voice is telling you all the time. You’ve got to know the difference between those
voices so that you can diminish that inner mean girl voice, and then start to give more
power, and more of a mic, in a sense, to that authentic self voice. Just by doing that, whoo,
man, that’s when you start to feel really good in life and that’s where you start to lead your
life in a very authentic way.


Because think about it, if you’re giving power to your authentic self, that’s your authentic
you. That’s the version of you, before society programmed in all this crap to make you not
feel like you’re living at your highest self. Again, this goes back to everything else I’ve
already said. It’s like, how do you diminish the inner mean girl voice? You set boundaries.
You regulate and process emotions because that inner mean girl is very emotional.
Sometimes you just need to feel through the emotions of something. Like, whoo, man, this
felt really hard and really icky.

I’ll give you an example in my own life right now, as I mentioned earlier, I had a client
recently who sent me an email that I thought was really nasty. I had to sit and really
process my emotions. I even had to have a coaching session with my coach of like, “Wow, I
can’t believe somebody would speak to me this way. Especially somebody who I feel like
I’ve taught better than this.” I could tell she was just really triggered by something I said,
when she went off on me. Then my inner mean girl is coming out, and like, “How could she
be right? She said this, could this be right? Could that be right?” Looking at all these
different ways.


I had to go and regulate and process my emotions to diminish that inner mean girl voice to
then get a handle on my mind, because I could just feel that voice really starting to gain
power. Because I hadn’t done the work yet to really process and manage my mind through
that experience. This is what we’re doing all the time, is I talked about, I recently wrote an
article for a site, I’ll link it in the show notes, I forget the name of the site. That’s so bad. I
recently wrote the three biggest mistakes striven women make. On that article, I said, one
of is not prioritizing mental health, and thinking that you have to do it all alone.
All these women are walking around, they’re wanting to break all these barriers in their
life. They’re wanting to live their life authentically and then they’re like, “Man, why do I
feel so crappy in the process?” Because it’s like, hello, we’re at the stage now in
development as humans, especially as women, that we have to manage our minds in the
process of that. We can’t just put that stuff on the backburner anymore, we have to bring it
front and center and prioritize this stuff, because otherwise, it’s just too much.


If we want to continuously grow in our life, and we want to contribute in ways and we
want to have deep love and connection that requires us to manage our mind. There’s really
no way around it. That’s just again, where we are in our human development is that many
of us have had our basic needs met. We have a roof over our head, we have got food in our
mouth, all those things that now it’s like, okay, what’s next, in order to progress the human
race, especially women, is for us to go in and learn how to actually use our minds to help
us versus to hinder us.


For many women, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to hire a coach,” or “I’m going to go
do this other mental health stuff, oh, what’s wrong with me?” Nothing. There is nothing
wrong with you. It’s just the smartest choice you can ever make. It’s just that generations
before you likely did not make that choice. They’ve deemed it as like, “Oh, you don’t need
that, just buckle up and toughen up. You can do all this,” but look at their lives, many of
them are very unhappy. You’re at a place now where you can truly have it all and by
having it all you’ve got to go in, manage your mind, know the things like the difference
between inner mean girl and authentic self.

All right. Let me give you a few other things to do as leaders to really lead your life
authentically. You will see that really, the biggest thing here that I keep going back to is
that very first thing I said is managing your mind, manage your mind. That’s the first step
to change. Here are some others, is that you need to know your authentic life plan of not
only who is your authentic self, but what is it that you want to do in this world. Once you
start to have that plan, which again, is something I create with my clients, then you go out
and you start to live it. Then you know, okay, is this on my authentic life plan or not?
I know, for many clients, they don’t like to have a very structured plan. I’m that way too.
People ask me all the time, “Where do you want your business in 5 years, 10 years?” I’m
like, “I thought I’d have an idea but I really don’t know, I’m just living for today. I have a
vision for this next year and then let’s see where I end up this next year. Then I’ll have a
vision for the next year.” Just know, if you don’t like somebody that or don’t like something
that’s a very big plan, it still works. It works in essence of like, it keeps your focus just
enough to know what is it that I’m saying yes to right now in my life and what is it that I’m
saying no to.


Because for so many women I work with, they’re just saying yes to so much. They’re
getting overwhelmed, and they don’t know where to focus. It’s like, “Is this even leading
me to where I want to go? Is this really what I want? Is this going to make me happy?” On
days, when they’re not happy, they’re like, “Well, is it because of my job or because of my
marriage, or my kids?” Or whatever. When in essence, sometimes it’s just something way
different, then those external circumstances. It’s something they just need to process
internally.

Once you have that life plan or that authentic plan, you’re like, “Oh, okay, this is just a bad
day. Nothing’s really gone wrong here. This just me needing to process feelings and
manage my mind. It’s not anything bigger than that.” It just takes a lot of stress off your
plate. Again, it allows you to create massive action and massive momentum moving
forward in your life. This is why many of my clients, they just start making more and more
and more money because they know what it is they’re good at, they know what it is they
want to focus in on. They just start to bring that in their life.

Once they’re focused in on that, and they know that they’re really good at those things,
they create massive, massive results. Two other tips I want to give you is to trust your
intuition and decide. Have your own back. This goes back to knowing your authentic self
and of course, managing your mind and all the things so you can find that intuition. As I
work with so many women, and I’m helping them tap into their own intuition as we work
together, there’s this period of time where they say, “Oh Lindsay, my intuition was always
there, I just didn’t trust it.”


Because it was like this muscle that they didn’t know they had. As they go and find it more
with me, they’re like, “Yes, Oh, now I know all those messages that I’ve had in the past was
my intuition and I didn’t listen”. Now what’s so great is moving forward, they know what
that intuition feels like. They can go and trust that, hopefully fingers crossed. Because that
takes courage and ongoing mind management and such, but then they have to have the
ability to decide. So many women, even if they get those messages, they start to be to
second, guess it, they start to talk themselves out of it.


They won’t make a firm decision out of abundance versus scarcity, which again can be a
whole other podcast topic because I even catch myself all the time making decisions out
of scarcity versus abundance. You’ve got to be in a place to where again, you’re managing
your mind, you’re processing your emotions. You know the difference between IMG and AS
because I am just going to be out of scarcity of like, “Oh, let’s just take the safe route, let’s
take this job that I know is not a “hell yes” job for you, but let’s just do it now and fill in the
gap”. This is something I’m coaching my clients on all the time.


I just had a client who just finished up her master’s degree. She’s in her mid entering late
twenties, I think now. She came to me and she’s like, Lindsay, I want a killer first job, in
essence, like she’s had jobs, really this is her corporate job. This is what I want to make.
This is what I want to have. This is what I want to do. I’ll say “Great, let’s do it.” It took us a
couple months to do the work of clearing out all the beliefs that were holding her back.
She got to a space about four months into the coaching process where she started
applying and she started getting job offers, but they weren’t her hell, yes offer. She wanted
to take them.


I was like, “Listen, you can do whatever you want, but I just really want to encourage you
to wait for that, hell yes offer, you know what it is, you know what it is you want.” Luckily
she trusted me, then just a couple days later, she got her hell yes offer for what she
wanted and more. Now as she’s starting this job, she’s like, “I’m so glad I didn’t decide from
scarcity.” That it said, I trusted my intuition. I really listened to that place of abundance
that I could get my hell yes offer and more. Now I’m at a place where I feel like I can grow
even on top of this, because that’s what we do sometimes as women. We just think, “Oh,
I’m just going to take what I can get.”


I even just had another coaching call with a client where she’s talking about relationships
in our life. We spent the whole session, her getting very clear on the quality she wants on
people and her life, not just with a dating relationship, but friendships and working
relationships. As we sat there, we made this list, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this list is so
good. It’s giving me life. She’s just really good at articulating stuff. She said, “Well, okay,
let’s talk about the thoughts now that I have about this, that these people aren’t out there,
these people aren’t going to be attracted to me and come to me.”


I’m like, “Whoa, Whoa, let’s manage that a second because these people are definitely out
there and they’re definitely going to come to you if you believe it to be so, but right now
you’re not believing that. You’re bringing in a whole other batch of people.” Intuitively, you
know what you want. You’ve got to now have the courage to decide and decide from
abundance to go forward in that way. What’s going to be cool is that as she makes that
decision, hopefully, and she moves forward with that. That’s when women that I coach
gain power and they’re like, “Wow, I’m actually getting what I wanted more?”


It just like builds this whole other layer of leadership in their life of, “Wow. Look at what
I’ve created. Look at what I’ve done.” They’re stepping into their power of, wow, this is so
incredible versus shrinking and settling and saying, “Oh, maybe I should’ve, could’ve just
would kind of stuff.” Instead of like, “Yes, I’m claiming what I want and I’ve gone after it.”
Trust, trust, trust that intuition, and then decide from that place and then have your own
back in the process. Having your own back is something we’re going to do on a whole
other episode too. If that doesn’t make sense to you, but really it’s saying, decide from
what it is you want and then do whatever work you need to do to continually show up for
yourself in that decision.


In essence, my client, who said, I want that hell yes’ offer. There were a couple of days, I
think even maybe weeks where it was like, “Oh my gosh, did I make the right choice?” She
was having some anxiety about it, but she just kept having her own back. Is like, no, I’m
going to get my hell yes offer and more. It goes back to her manage your mind, saying
intentionally what she wants to think and then boom, she got it. Last tip, I want to give
you here. This is a whole episode I’ve done in the past. I’ll link it in the show notes, but it’s
to get out of frantic action into massive action instead. If you don’t know what I’m talking
about, you haven’t listened to that episode. Go listen to it. It’s a great one.


In essence, what frantic action is, is when you’re taking action from a really anxious place
of like, “Ooh, I just need to get this offer. I just need to get this friendship or I just need to
find whatever guy can get so I can have a baby”. Instead, you’re taking massive actions.
You’re taking action from this intentional place, you know who you are, you know what you
want and you show up continuously from that abundant headspace to get what you want.
I’ll give you an example in my own life. As I’m niching down more in my business, I know
who I work really well with and who I work okay with. I currently have 100% client
satisfaction rates. I haven’t had any “failure clients.”


Now you’ve heard me tell some stories on the podcast of clients who like one recently left
unhappily, but we’ve been working together long-term. She just hit a trigger and wanted
to blame me instead of taking ownership for it really, but she’ll figure it out in time.
Anyway, she’s still happy. She’s just not happy with me right now. Going back to that, is I
know who I work really well with. I know who gets exceptional results from working with
me. I know who we’re going to have a lot of fun in the process with. I’ve had to say no to a
lot more people recently who come to me and say, “Lindsay, I’m ready for our consults or
ready to work with you.”


That gets me in my mind a little bit freaked out at times of like, “Lindsay, what are you
doing, you’re saying no to money, you haven’t hit your annual goal yet, Are you going to be
able to hit it If you’re making these changes and all of that.” Again, I’m managing my mind
through that. I’m getting back to a place of massive action, feeling my feelings, doing all
the things I told you, setting those boundaries. I’m like, “No, I know who I work really,
really well with, I know what I do really well with, and I am committed 100% to taking
massive action this year toward that vision and not getting overly anxious about it and
getting in scarcity mindset so that I create what I want with those types of clients.”


Again, it’s just me continuously going back to that over and over again. Even there’s times I
have a massive versus frantic action image that you’ll see on the episode show notes of
that other episode that I’m talking about massive versus frantic action. Sometimes I’ll just
look at that image, sometimes and be like, “Okay, how am I in frantic action today? How
can I get back into massive action?” Really massive action too is going all in and saying, “I
am committed that this is going to happen.” Going back to the client, I was talking about
with what she wanted in that job” She wanted to talk herself out of it at times, but she
kept going back of, “No, I am all in, this is what I’m taking action from.”


She wasn’t applying for jobs that she knew she could get in the meantime anymore. She
was only applying for and interviewing for jobs that she knew would meet the criteria of
what she wanted. That’s massive action. Same with what I’m doing in my business. I’m
only reaching out and networking groups and such that I know where my ideal clients are
hanging out. I’m no longer entertaining the idea of hanging out in groups where my ideal
client is not there. A lot I gave you today. I hope you have some nuggets that you can start
to go and use in your life.


Of course, the way to get the most massive and the fastest change to be able to lead your
life is to work with me. Reach out, the first step is to apply for a free consult. You just go to
Lindsayepreston.com/apply. Link is always in the show notes as well. Let’s get this ball
moving so that you can lead your life effectively. I will be there every step of the way to
help you do that. To help you manage your mind regularly and process emotions, set those
boundaries to say for inner mean girl from authentic self, decide on your authentic plan,
trust your intuition, and have your own back.


Get out of frantic action into massive action. Then this next bonus I’m giving you is
realizing that support is part of the process. Again, it goes back to what I said earlier is
we’re just hitting a time in our society where women are realizing, “Whew, I need some
extra help, I can’t do this all on my own”. There’s a little bit less stigma of going and doing
that. It’s becoming a thing now where the most successful people are talking about, “I have
a coach or I have a coach and a therapist, or this is what I do for my management. I’m
meditating, or I’m doing that.” You’ve got to be doing something.


For me, I always just go back to coaching. That’s my go-to obviously too, I do my own mind
management. I’m doing meditation, all of that stuff, but that’s just, what’s worked really
well for me. Maybe the same for you. Reach out if that’s you and thanks for tuning in for
this episode, always so grateful to have you and I will see you on the next one. Bye. My
friend.


[music]

Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed
it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on
social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on
how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish
your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.


In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is
to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get
started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can
be, so believe in yourself. You got this.

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Hi! I'm Lindsay

Hi! I’m Lindsay Elizabeth Preston. I’m a certified & trauma-informed life & leadership coach who has spent the last decade helping successful women create lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside by using my neuroscience-backed coaching process called, Awakened Woman.


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