11. Mastering Mindfulness as a Spiritual Entrepreneur

Hi, I’m Natalie Ottosen and you’re listening to The Mindset School for Soulful Entrepreneurs episode number 11.

Welcome to The Mindset School podcast, a show for spiritual entrepreneurs who are ready to stop feeling stuck, reconnect to their soul’s purpose, and create a deeply fulfilling life and business. I’m Natalie Ottosen, transformational life coach, and reconnection healing foundational practitioner, and I can help you scale and grow a six-figure business from a place of inner authority, wisdom, knowledge, and truth.

If you are a spiritual entrepreneur and you are looking to take that first step towards your dream of running your own business, this is the show for you. Ready to step into your power and move forward with clarity and purpose? Let’s go.

Oh my gosh, you guys, it’s the last week of school. Two more days and then my son is out of middle school forever and will be going into high school. He's my baby. What is even happening? I can’t even believe it. So this last week has been really busy with all of the end of school year activities. Tomorrow he gets to go to an event center and play all day. He has his graduation tomorrow. And then we've also been wrapping up an incredibly intense soccer season as well. We've had a bunch of tournaments. And I am so excited to see him play for high school next year, but I cannot believe that tomorrow will be his last day of middle school.

I will have no more kids in the lower grade levels, only high school and then on to college, so nuts. I don't know if any of you can relate but I can't believe it.

Alright so let’s dive into the topic I want to talk about this week. So I ended up posting a webinar and as I was going through this webinar I realized that I have not talked about an important topic on the podcast yet because I’ve had so many delicious topics that I wanted to share with you guys. But this one is so good, and it really is kind of the foundation or cornerstone of my coaching practice and it's really how I work with my clients. So I thought, why don't I share it today. So I'm going to give you kind of a simplified version of this.

And if you want to understand this on a deeper level, hang out until the end and I will share with you what I'm going to be doing with this process and how you can learn it more. So this webinar that I did was called Unleash Inner Peace and Break Free From Overthinking. And it was all about talking about, are you tired of constant overthinking stealing your joy and causing unnecessary stress? It's time to reclaim your peace of mind. And I went through and talked about how to discover the power of mindfulness and reducing stress and improving focus.

How to learn effective techniques to stop overthinking and regain control of your thoughts. How to create a personalized mindfulness routine that suits your needs and lifestyle and how to cultivate self-compassion and embrace a positive mindset. So if you are interested in this webinar, I’ll put the link in the bio, and you can check it out. But I want to go through some of these topics on the podcast today and really focus on the stop overthinking piece so that you can start to regain that control of your thoughts.

So as you know, because I’ve talked about this before, mindfulness is a way of paying attention to what's happening right now in the present moment. It’s a way of being aware of our thoughts, feelings, surroundings without judging them as good or bad. So when we practice mindfulness, you learn to focus on one thing at a time and let go of distractions, because those distractions, they are what keep us overthinking, stuck on a hamster wheel. And getting off of that hamster wheel or looping, that's what helps us become calmer and happier and more in control of our emotions and our life.

So I know I've talked about this before and I’m going to talk about it again, but I want to talk about how a lack of mindfulness might be showing up for you in your life especially as a spiritual entrepreneur who is building their business. So you could be having constant multitasking without full focus. Maybe you are feeling overwhelmed by endless to-to lists and struggling to prioritize. You could be neglecting your self-care which could show up as exercise or healthy eating or rest. Maybe you’re engaging in negative self-talk and criticism.

You might have mental fog when it comes to making important decisions or even feeling high levels of stress or anxiety. Maybe you’re ignoring your personal boundaries and experiencing some burnout or neglecting personal relationships due to work preoccupation. You might also be allowing self-doubt to hinder your personal and business growth. You might be failing to recognize and celebrating your achievements. And you might also be feeling some impatience and frustration with slow progress. And as you know there are so many benefits to a mindfulness practice. And again, I've talked about this before, but I want to talk about it again because it's so important. And there’s a few that I really want to focus on today. So here are some of the benefits.

You can reduce your stress and anxiety because mindfulness promotes relaxation, and it reduces that negative thought pattern and helps increase self-awareness. It can help reduce depression and insomnia and even addiction. It also deals with difficulty managing emotions. So mindfulness can really help increase emotional regulation by promoting self-awareness and by reducing reactive response. So really helping go in and calm that nervous system especially when we go into that fight, flight, and freeze.

Also, negative thinking patterns, mindfulness can help us break that negative thinking pattern and promote more positive outlook on life. And this is the one that I really want to focus on and talk about today. So speaking of this negative thinking pattern, having a mindfulness practice is a brilliant way to show us that our thoughts are just that, thoughts. And just because we have them, doesn't mean that we have to believe them or get attached to them.

We have somewhere around 60,000 thoughts a day, on average 80% of them are negative and 92% of those thoughts are the thoughts that we thought yesterday. So fascinating. This is why a mindfulness practice and morning routine is so important. And I want to help you build your own mindfulness routine. So if you're interested in doing that I really do encourage you to check out this webinar because I kind of go through this process on there and you get a workbook as well. My mindfulness practice and morning routine consists of five things.

So, it’s meditation, it’s gratitude, it’s positive affirmations and it’s positive reading. And I really dive into those things in the first three episodes of the podcast. So go check out episode one, two and three to go more in depth there. But the last piece and the one I want to focus on now is the self-coaching piece. So this self-coaching piece. It starts with thought downloads. And I didn’t make this up. This was presented to me through my coaching program by my mentor, Brooke Castillo.

So after I do my meditation and my gratitude and my positive reading and my affirmation I grab my journal and I do a thought download. I take everything that's in my brain and I write it all out on a piece of paper for 5 to 10 minutes. If there’s something specific that I want to address then I will do a specific thought download around that. But I put that at the top of the paper and then I write everything that comes up for me. So it could be something like I'm feeling anxiety or fear or self-doubt or whatever it looks like.

And there are a few reasons why I do this. Number one, it helps me process what’s coming up. It also helps me get it out of my brain. The getting out of the brain thing, this is actually something I use with my clients as well when we’re setting goals because sometimes we just have to get everything out of the brain so that it can get out and we stop ruminating on it. So it helps me get it out of my brain which then frees up my brain and allows me to be more present in the moment.

And I'm also able to pull any of these circumstances or thoughts or feelings or actions result or results and self-coach on them. So the self-coaching tool that I use is called The Model. And again, I didn't create this. This was created by my mentor, Brooke Castillo, but let me break it down for you. So we call it CTFAR. So we have circumstances. We have thoughts. We have feelings. We have actions and we have results. So circumstances, they trigger our thoughts. And then those thoughts, they create feelings. And then those feelings, they drive our actions and then our actions ultimately give us our results.

So we think that our circumstances, the situations in our life are what cause our results, but the truth is, it's our thoughts that create our results because our thoughts are driving feelings and those feelings are driving actions or inactions and those actions are ultimately giving us a result. So I want to break this down just a little bit further.

So circumstances are just things that are out of our control like other people's behavior, our past, the weather, what somebody said to us. They are facts about a situation that every single person would agree upon. And I’ll use an example of starting my podcast. So my circumstance was my podcast launch. And by the way, this is a great topic to do a thought download on. You can put podcast launch at the top of the paper and write everything that comes up for you, just like I did. So all the thoughts, the feelings, all of it. That’s just a little sidenote.

So sometimes we forget this fun little fact and we think that our thoughts are facts, but our thoughts, which are not facts, are just a response to a circumstance. We have this situation or circumstance like launching a podcast happen and then we have a thought about it. And thoughts, those are just sentences that are constantly running through our brain. So I want to go back to the 60,000 thought a day concept. So we have 60,000 thoughts a day, 80% of them are negative. Our brain is wired this way. It wants it to be easy. It wants it to be comfortable. It wants it to be familiar.

And I don't know if you remember that stat, that 92% of what we’re thinking today is the same thing that we thought yesterday. So unless we’re actively working to change the thoughts in our brain we’re just repeating the same thoughts that we had yesterday, whether they're ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ whether they serve us or whether or not we even want to be thinking it. So my thought about this podcast was that no one was going to listen to my podcast. And honestly, of all the thoughts to think, this is the one that my brain came up with, but for very good reason.

It was doing its very best to keep me safe. And can we just thank our brain for that? Our brain is brilliant, you guys. It is always trying to keep us safe and go down the path of the least resistance. So anyways, so once we have those thoughts, those thoughts then create our feelings which are just emotions, sensations, vibrations in the body. So the thought, no one is going to listen to my podcast made me feel self-doubt. And self-doubt is just an emotion like fear and anxiety, love, joy, happiness and even sadness. So once we have an emotion that then drives all of our actions and inactions.

So going back to this example of feeling self-doubt because I was thinking no one wanted to listen to my podcast, that went in and started driving all of my actions. So my actions were, I would find all of the reasons that it wouldn't work. I even met with people but then didn’t follow through. I distracted myself with other things like social media, busy work, other tasks, programs, courses, talking with friends or family. I didn't make a plan to start my podcast. I don't set a date to start my podcast. I don't get started. I don't write out episodes.

I ruminate and even judge myself which is ultimately giving me a result that I make it impossible and inevitable to launch a podcast. So this model, this unintentional model of having the circumstance of a podcast and then thinking, having this T-Line, thinking no one's going to listen to the podcast. That made me feel the self-doubt and that self-doubt ended up driving all of these actions that ultimately made it impossible for me to ever complete a podcast. So this is what we call an unintentional model. And we have all of these unintentional models running through our brain all day long.

And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, an unmanaged mind equals an unmanaged life. So as long as I wasn't managing my brain I wasn't getting the result that I wanted, which was launching this podcast. Instead I was thinking the thought that no one wanted to listen to this, feeling the self-doubt and sabotaging myself. And there was a lot of other models that were running through my head as well like who do you think you are, you can’t do this, you can’t write. Because you have to write the copy in order to record the episode, at least initially that's how I've done it, etc., etc., etc.

So I had all of these different models running in my head about how I couldn't do it and how I wasn’t capable. The model that I needed to move into in order to launch this podcast looked very different. And if you want to understand why you're not getting a result in your life, look at what you're feeling about it. So in this case I was feeling a lot of fear, I was feeling self-doubt, I was feeling inadequate, which was causing all of the action that was giving me the result. And what I needed to think about it was, I am capable.

And when I was feeling capable, so that was my thought, I am capable, which was making me feel determined. And when I was feeling determined I scheduled a consult with my amazing podcast company. I was breaking my podcast down into small steps. I was setting a date. I was focusing on the first episode only. I was brainstorming new ideas. I was writing down ideas. I was taking all the steps that I needed to do to get the podcast going, which ultimately gave me the result of launching my podcast, of achieving this goal and this dream that I've always wanted to do.

So again, if we’re able to use a tool like this and the thought download to start recognizing what we’re thinking and how we’re thinking, that gives us the opportunity to start shifting and changing our mind in positive ways. So I'm going to be running a six week program on mastering your mindset. This beautiful tool, The Model, what is so brilliant about it is that you can take any circumstance, you can take any thought, you can take any feeling, you can take any action and you can take any result and plug it into The Model. And then you can learn how to coach yourself through this process.

And what I'm going to be doing is taking you through this mastery over the next six weeks and show you how you can create the results that you want in your life by your thinking. So if you have any interest in this, reach out to me @soulsistercoaching on Instagram, or you can email me or message me on my website at www.soulsistercoaching.com. And let me know if you have any interest. I’m also going to be sending out an email about this as well. So if you want to jump on my email list, you can do that as well on my website or on any of my social media platforms. I’ve got the link in the bio.

But I’m going to be taking you through the self-mastery program where you can master The Model and master your mindset. And really learn how your circumstances, which are just neutral, are not creating the results in your life, but your thoughts are. And we’ll really dive into that process and how you can really start creating your life and your business that you want to be creating for yourself.

So I hope this information was helpful. Again, I know it was a very simplified version of this and I am going to be going deeper into this into the six week program. So if you have any interest on diving deeper, message me and I will see you next week. All my love.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Mindset School. Ready to dive deeper into finding your purpose and create a deeply fulfilling life? Visit soulsistercoaching.com for more guidance and resources. See you next week.