Episode 16 Your ultimate superpower that you don't know you have.

In this episode, I talk about the power of State Change, 

I mention thought patterns, the stories we tell ourselves, my stories that share my movement in and out of disempowered states and into empowered ones.  I talk about my experience with the freeze and flight responses.  
I share actionable strategies that you can implement today that will help you feel calmer and more confident in your life.
This information can really empower you to change your life to one where you feel in the driver's seat! 

My website:  www.chloegrahammindsetcoach.com
Instagram @chloegrahamofficial

Transcript

chloe graham: 0:00

Hello my love's and welcome to episode 16 of the I'm proud of you Bay Podcast. Today we're going to be talking all about the power of state change. And the three or four guiding principles that make up that supercharged superpower have a strategy that I'm going to share with you today that will drastically change your life if you let it. Okay, just before we start, I am struggling with overthinking at the moment. And I've got the most amazing coach that I've just started with, with in in a mastermind actually with a whole bunch of ladies that are cheering me on and being amazing. And I am having some breakthroughs this week on the overthinking cycle and how much it's impacting my life, and how I'm going to get myself out of that loop. Because I've realised that overthinking is kind of part of the freeze response. And you know, my love for the nervous system work and how crucially important is for us, and I will talk about that in this episode, but it touches every area of our lives, it touches every area of where we get crossed with ourselves confused, upset, frustrated, and not quite understanding why we're not doing the things that we said we do. And for me, at the moment, overthinking definitely within my business, it's not showing up anywhere else, really. I'm sticking to my brand new exercise regime that I'm super proud of, and super happy with. But yeah, this I guess it's because it's the biggest risk in my life, putting all my content out there, putting myself out there and building something from scratch and trying to make a difference in the world. Even if it's just one person by one person, that's enough, you know, it's not like, Oh, I'm not helping 1000s. So I'm a failure. It's like hell no, all of the clients that I've helped with their transformations that is beyond amazing. And I'm so incredibly thankful to have done that already. In the last 18 months that I've been in business, like, I am grateful for every single second of transformation and connection that I've had in people's lives. So yeah, business building is scary. And I think you cannot even attempt this if you haven't done the mindset work before. So it's actually a gift that the business I've chosen to do is also mindset coaching, because it means that I expand and then can take you with me or as I learn a whole bunch of really cool stuff, then I can then pretty much almost in the moment, as it drops as I implement it as I embody it, I can then share that with you. And it's fresh and potent and strong, and amazing. And there's a real life, real life right now story that is attached with that, because we all know that we buy things and we are inspired by people's transformations and advertising. Everything works off stories. And the people you most admire in your life probably have a really frickin powerful story attached to why you love them so much. Anyway, overthinking freeze response. And I've been delving into that I'm still looking into it. And the answers are like, what am I not trusting myself with? What am I? Am I not listening to my intuition enough? Am I not trusting my intuition enough because I'd shut that down for years. Oh, my goodness, I had no way of listening to my inner self because it was just a drill sergeant barking at me and that was the only path I could hear. So learning to trust this softer, gentler intuition is really hard. And then the another part of it that comes into play is this freeze response. And that can be when we feel lazy or we procrastinate. Or we feel low, depressed, helpless, hopeless, trapped, stuck, disassociated numb. That's all the freeze response. And the ways that I know that help people get out of that movement. I was talking to the girls in the mastermind today about just the power of just going for a walk. And neither one is actually engaging your senses. So if you want to really shock yourself have a cold shower. That's not good for people who suffer from Anxiety, really, we need to it's very nuanced. But if you're feeling low and low energy, or you feel good and fine and powerful and relaxed, cold showers are for you, because they increase your window of tolerance, they increase your stress, ability to deal with stress and the window of your stress tolerance. So if you think of it like a graph with two lines, you've got a lower limit and an upper limit. If you haven't done much mindset work around your ability to hold stress, you'll ping into a burnout or overwhelm. You know, like, if you've got like an ECG line, you'll ping outside of that window very, very easily, because it'll be a really narrow band of what you can handle. But if you do things that increase your self reliance, trust, stress tolerance, and there's a whole bunch of ways you can do that. And they're, yeah, they're dependent on freeze or flight, fight fawn responses, the nervous system, dysregulated states, you can widen that band, and then you can handle more that life throws at you. And you feel like you're taking it in your stride. And you're like, Ah, fuck, this might suck a bit, this might be tough, but you're not going into either shut down, or an anxious mess, not sleeping can't deal with it, it's, you know, you still feel in control if you have a wider stress tolerance. So for me, recently, for some reason, a combination of the freeze response, some stories, thought patterns that I'm still working through, have meant that my blog and my podcast, have gone into the freeze territory. And I need to bring them back out of there, through conscious focused work to be where my creating content for Instagram and Facebook were coaching clients on calls, talking about my business, that's all in my window of tolerance at the moment. So I just need to grab those to the blog on the podcast and bring them back into that window of tolerance, so that they don't feel sticky and yucky and hard to do. That's a massive detour about what I was actually going to talk about today. So let's move on to the pairing this beautifully with the superpower, the superpower that all of us have, and 1% of us use. And what I want to Tony Robbins is a huge fan of this, I am too. And it's the most powerful thing that we're not taught. We don't know about it, we never practice it. And you might be like everything, you're probably going to be a little bit shit to start with. But that is not my friend, a reason to give up. I'm practising it, I want you to practice it. I want you to get good at this. Because if there's anything that you could give yourself for the next year, is this gift of being able to use the superpower. So what is it it's the state change? It's if you understand a state is like a combination of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, feelings. People get a little bit confused. Feelings are sensations. They're like hotflush, cheeks, racing, heartbeat, numb legs, darting eyes, or eyes focused at the floor, feeling jumpy. You know, those are all feelings, feelings are in the body, emotions are in the body and the mind and thoughts are in the mind. So a state change is all of that. And when we're in a state of depression, we'll have certain thoughts, we'll have certain emotions and we'll have emotions or a story about a feeling. And then we will have feelings in our body that match up all together. It's this beautiful storm of depression. It's the same with anxiety, we will have this storm of anxiety, we won't be able to sit still will be in a complete panic. Our heart rate will be higher hands will be shaking. We'll be trying to do five things at once and probably spilling your drinks, dropping your phone, stubbing your toe on things, and you'll be saying a story to yourself that's bringing up this complete disempowerment of what you feel you're capable of. You'll be the opposite of a calm, Warrior, not warrior warrior like Viking warrior. So those are two examples of the states that you can be in. Now, that's imagine some good states, they can be peaceful, you know, when you've just had a massage, and hopefully again, mindset work can help you massages. So if you're really stressed and you go for a massage, if you don't know how to switch your mind off, you're going to be pissed off with yourself and unable to relax, because the whole time you're in the massage chair, your mind is going to be going 100 miles an hour, and you probably third or a quartering the benefit of that massage. So if those are reason to do mindset work, just that one is like, so you can enjoy your massage more anyway. So that feeling if you can relax in the massage, if you're sliding on the beach, and the sun is on you, you can feel the sand between your toes, you can hear the sea. And if we might have had a cocktail of something, and you're just like, and you've all you're reading a really good book, and you're like I am in heaven right now. Another one when you're watching your favourite TV show, and you just feel like you're perfect, you've got maybe a glass of wine or a hot chocolate, you're snuggled up under your favourite blanket, got your favourite leggings on. You've got your cosy jumper on you've got someone who you love next to you and your legs are intertwined or something or even better, he's giving you a foot massage, still trying to get my partner to give me and you're excited because there's a new episode of your show coming out, you can't wait to watch it, you've been looking forward to it all day. And you are just loving this moment. When you've got a good test result when you pass your driving test, well, that's probably people forget how probably empowering and exciting and that sense of freedom. And we don't capture it on paper or as a memory, that empowered feeling of when we first got a car, and a car licence, and we're like, the world is my oyster. I can go anywhere I can do anything. Those are states that involve thoughts, feelings, emotion, beliefs, and feelings. Now, we think what the world gives us to them, but actually we curate them. And we can be the director of which ones come to us at which time. And I know that sounds woowoo or like, yeah, Chloe, like, I'm not going to feel like the world was my oyster when I'm just being fired? Well, actually, I think you probably could. But those are examples of bad states. Like, road rage is another bad one where you're like, and then all of those beautiful good states. And the more you're able to be present in those good states. And the more you're able to even journal about those good states, and be able to say, this was so pure, and so perfect. And I involved all of my senses. Write it down, capture it, you know, like that's what videos are better than photos and we love them and they forgot sound and you know, like, capture it capture that moment, just wrap it up and put it in a diary. Because we want to harness that. We want to be able to recreate it in 3d 4d Five D form when you need it. And when you want to change your state from one that's low and sad and heavy. So tell you a little bit about my story. You've probably heard a little bit if you've heard some of my other episodes, but I'm going to frame it in a state and state changes for the purposes of this episode. So when I was about 19 I finished school lost all of my routine habits, hobbies and fell apart. I had no idea what to do with all my free time. No one was saying hey, look, there's netball or hockey or tennis. Practice on now let's go exercise. And for it to all be self motivated. No one taught me about that. I didn't understand how to do it. And for some reason, it just didn't come naturally to me. So I stopped exercising. I stopped eating healthily. I got lost in my thoughts and the person I'd lost all of my identity You know, the identity of whoever I was in school and was getting good grades and captain at the sports teams and achieving all this stuff and a whiz kid on musical instruments and stuff, that it all gone. So I was a clean slate. But in a bad sense, I'd lost all of my, my guiding stars, all of the things that were keeping me doing healthy things. So my stories about myself got worse and worse and worse, I believed I could do less and less and less. And then as I put on weight, my confidence went down. As I didn't exercise, my fitness went down, I started walking slower, and slower and slower, I started moving less, I started hiding more from the world hiding from my family because I didn't have a good relationship with them. I felt like I was all on my own. And my body movements, stories, feelings, emotions, everything turned self sustaining around that my walls I put up were stone with barbed wire on top. I watched scary films to try and make myself tough. Because I thought am my mom is She'd cry watching a movie or if she was kind or soft. That was dangerous and bad. So I shut down all emotion on the outside. I shut down all connection with everyone because I didn't want to get hurt. And I hid and I would go to work, my career still took off. As a pilot. I could do that. But then when I came home, I didn't do anything but numbed out on films, scary films, or sad films where I would cry because I clearly needed to feel emotion. But it was this sort of victim martyr sadness, deep sadness that I was feeling that I could only express through watching films. I got nightmares. I would, I was convinced we were going to be burgled all the time, especially if I was staying in the house by myself. I would binge eat sugar as a hit of dopamine, and then come crashing down to try and starve myself fail at that. And it was just the worst cycle. And I can see how much my state was never a happy one. It felt unsafe. It was never an expansive one. It was never a confident one. It was just blame, blame the world blame myself. And I was stuck in every sense of the word. At 29, I reached out to a friend who I didn't really talk to, but I knew she was the most compassionate human being. And she would pick up and tap taught to me even though we hadn't talked for years, and I rang her up and I said, Katie, I can't live like this anymore. I'm too depressed. And she gave me a book. And it was the secret. But it doesn't really matter what book it was, it was just enough to shift me out of the state enough to get me moving. So I've read the book and it talked about the power of positivity and basically how we create our reality, the first inclination that I even had, that we create our reality, and that we create our emotions, not them just descend on us. And I thought that running to the the other side of the world would be a really good idea as I have family in New Zealand, so I moved from England to New Zealand. And yes, it gave me a fresh start. Yes, I had the thrill of adventure. I'm a Sagittarius rising. So the Wanderer and me I didn't know anything about astrology until four months ago and I am blown away by it. But the wonder of me mixed with the flight response, nervous system dysregulated state powerful, confident combination. I originally thought it was all flight response, until I figured out the wonder in my Sagittarius rising but the flight response is a higher energy one it's very often care coupled with fight. So the flight is when you have an argument and you storm out the door and go for a drive or you block them on social media or messaging after a fight or you know you have an argument with someone it it. Yeah, it's the Running away is the biggest sense. You're literally fleeing flight away from it. And it has the big energy anxiety, rage, anger, irritation, frustration and the fear and the anxiety. So I'd gone from an angry but low energy state to now a full blown fighter flight. So in a way it was good because it brings me closer to a normal functioning state. But you don't have to go straight. You don't have to go through the stages like that as you sort of reawaken to the world in your state changes. I'm just explaining that. This is how I, I got back to a spending the most of my time in a normal regulated state. And then it took a turn for the worse back towards threes when I had a breakup with someone at 33. And that was the first time that I ended up going and seeing a clinical psychologist, I thought just to get me over the heartbreak because I had struggled for the last decade to find a boyfriend because obviously I hit him up most of the time. And he told me that there was something not right with me and my core that he couldn't be with. And it's not about me, it's about him. I know that now. But at the time, it hit home, it made sense. I was just like, I'm broken, I'm evil. What's wrong with me, I need to fix this. And the hole in my heart, in my chest was like a black hole. I've never felt so. Just that gasping for air kind of feeling that you can't, you can't gasp that grief. That like a silent whale. You know, like when people you see them at funerals, or there's you find out someone has died. And it's that whale. This was a silent whale that I had in me of like, I'm going to be alone forever. But I went to her and she slowly worked through with me. The fact that I'm not actually evil and the stories that I'm telling myself have no proof and where they've come from. And it was nice, beautiful thing I could give myself. And that started me on the journey of starting to believe in myself, starting to be confident, starting to be kind to myself and others put down the shield, put down the armour smile first at people and let people in. Then, because I could see from the evidence because I put into work what she was telling me, I then worked with a mix of different kinds of mentors and coaches, and became fascinated by it. And my Scorpio pneus just went into the depths of research and learning and embodying and adoring, which then made me made no didn't make me it took me along the path to being a mindset coach where I am now and have been for the last 18 months since I started my business. And it is the most beautiful gift to be able to share these tools and strategies that I've learned and tried out along the way with other people and other women in my world. So the state change stuff. A big key is what are the stories that you're telling yourself? Write them down. The one of the best things when my mind is going crazy is I do a what's called a brain dump. And I had learned this actually from I can't remember his name, but the books called Getting Things Done. And he said, think of your phone like a thing of your brain like a phone. And it has a certain amount of memory. And if you try and hold all the thoughts in your head, you will reach capacity, like your phone, it will not store anything else. So if you write them down, if you write down every day a to do list upright and then prioritise them, check the stories that you're telling yourself about your ability to be able to do those tasks. See if there's any limiting belief work that needs to be around that and this can take Max 20 minutes and you will feel your brain being able to breathe. You've you've created some space, some memory for new thoughts, new beautiful thoughts that are not the same five radio stations going round and round again, of whatever they are. You create a new channel, you create space, you create peace. So the first thing is brain dump on paper in the morning, give yourself that space. Then write down the stories that are holding you back the most. Ask yourself why four times, and then a key again, write down the counter to that limiting belief. Like I'm, I'm having the thought that. Thank you, Jessica, for sharing that. I'm having the thought that I can't do this, and then you write down. But instead, I'm choosing to believe that I can, I'll keep trying, I'll keep learning, I'll keep adapting, I will not give up. I will keep doing this until it feels less hard. I believe in myself, I believe in taking the baby steps that are going to take me closer and closer to achieving this new reality that I know I'm worthy of that I know I can achieve. If I just keep saying to myself, I'm proud of you, babe, you can do this, you've got this I am with you. Beliefs, stories, internal mindset, internal stories, the internal programme that is running your brain is one huge way to change your state from one that is filled with either depressive thoughts or anxious thoughts, to one of I seem to really adore the metaphor of using the warrior like a Viking warrior. I swear I was one in a past life. But the connection I feel is just huge. And I love the programme Vikings with VloggerFair, and all of those. So whenever I'm feeling that I can't quite a harness what I want to harness, I think about the warriors of the past, I think about the warrior that I probably was in the past. And I said this on my blog that I wrote yesterday, there's probably a good chance that you had a warrior in your ancestry or you were one in a past life. And that DNA is in your DNA, that blood is in your blood. And if you can just think about rising up being Joan of Huck, being the people, whoever it is, or there are most resilient, powerful people that do do it from a place of joy and strength, not just resilience to survive, because I don't want you to just survive. I want you to be able to state change so that you thrive. So that you actually enjoy your life, you have the thrill of learning new things getting better, just evolving, rather than just hopefully waiting until the stress goes away, hopefully waiting until you feel better. Hopefully waiting until this depressive episode ends, this anxiety attack goes away. It's a message. It's not being inflicted on you. And you have the power in every moment to listen to the message if there is one. Anger has a lot of messages in it, who I won't get into that. Now those won't be here forever. But anger has a lot of messages. If there's a message, listen to it, act on that message. The next thing is your physiology. So I mentioned when I was in my 20s I stopped moving I made myself smaller and smaller and stiffer and stiffer and slower. So when you're thinking about your happy memories, your most powerful memories that day when you got your driver's licence that day will you pass an exam that day where you received a big paycheck the that feeling in the body, you can replicate that you can take that out of that time and put it into the present lack of cloak where it round your shoulders, put your shoulder back, your chin up. If you're scared or depress, your eyes will probably be always looking low. Like I'd make point when I'm walking down the street and I'm going for a walk. I look up a look around or look at the trees or look at the sky or look distance down the road. Rather than running a walking where you're looking at the pavement ahead of you. It trains you to believe I can deal with whatever comes my way. I'm confident and empowered. I see no danger. I see no threat. I am safe. That is the state that you want to embody so that you're not jumping Have everything so that you're not anxious or depressed. It's all of those things that you can see and other people who are confident, if you've smile, even if it's a fake smile, your body can't tell whether it's a real or a fake one. And you'll feel better. If you put your shoulders back and your chin up and you look out of the window, you will feel more capable. If you're at work, and you're struggling, and you're feeling overwhelmed, get up, shoulders back, go for a walk, and look as far into the distance as possible with your chin up. Breathing deeply. Breath is the number one thing, actually, and I should have mentioned earlier, learning how to breathe deeply from your stomach, even if it means pushing out your stomach, I don't care. If you think you look fat. This is the biggest way that can change your mood, your mind your experience in life, and actually, ironically, will help you on your diet if you're on one and then you will lose weight and probably look thinner. So sticking your tummy out now will actually mean you lose more weight. I'm so weird. But deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic means chill, calm, I've got this. Whereas when you're anxious or depressed, you'll have really shallow High Breathing. That means your blood is less oxygen oxygenated. That means that the cognitive thinking part of your brain has been given less oxygen, which means it's less likely to work. When you're in total panic, it goes offline completely. You cannot think logically, you cannot deal with the situation you are checked out. How do you bring it back? You change your state by changing your breathing. Deep breath in from your belly, hold it for twice as long. And then blow out as far as you can do the same. Pair them if you can. And I was thinking how do I do this. And I think if I'm preparing my breakfast, lunch and dinner, that could be a good time to do them. If you can get another round in or if it works better when your breathing break. Can't talk, brushing your teeth or when you first wake up in the morning. Alarm panic is a big one. So if you panic when your alarm goes off, I used to have this kind of rushing mind of like a million thoughts going a million miles an hour as soon as I wake up and the alarm goes off. This is the perfect time to reset. Get up in the morning. I love it. It's called My My kind of my star shape. I don't know what to call it starfish star shape. But when you get up in the morning, breathe deeply and stand in the shape of a starfish. I want you to make yourself as big as possible. Because it also means you're making yourself feel as capable and as strong as possible is the opposite of cowering in the corner is the opposite of saying I can't do this, I can't deal with this. So if you can make yourself as big as possible, breathe deeply, you've set yourself up physiologically for your ability to be able to deal with stress and the day so much more. Another thing I want to talk about is I'll do it in relationship to a diet because I think we've always all experienced it and the drama I had with trying to lose weight and the diets that I went on the next part so we've talked about the stories, the beliefs, and how that can affect affect our actions. I've shared with you about how to change your physiology in the moment that can drastically change and they're all a loop together the thoughts and the physiology can drastically change your experience in the moment. The next big part I want to share with you is this when you start a diet you I'll share a story the night before I would always plan it out on a notepad in my calendar and I write all the weights on all the weeks you know like on this day I will be this way on this day I will be this way and then they will always drastic I'm talking crash diet central crazy exercise crazy diet like eating five to 800 calories a day. And then I would be giddy with excitement thinking about how happy I would be to be at my goal weight. How excited I'd be to get there all the clothes that I could buy all the socialising that I would do all the clothes ways that I could throw out. But I was also stuffing my face with cookies as I was doing this, but I was in the state of believing I could do it. I was excited, motivated. I've got this. I need what I did wrong is I didn't take that state with me into the diet. As soon as the diet started, I would go into victim state victim mentality. It was oh my god, this is horrible. I hate this. This food tastes disgusting. Why can't I just have a biscuit? Why is this so hard? Why have I have to do this? It is so not fair. Maybe I should start tomorrow? Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow and then I'll have a good chance. Fuck this. Fuck the world. Fuck this shit. It's not fair. Why do I need to do this? Lettuce and salad with a shitty cheap dressing tastes just fucking disgusting. I don't want it. I don't want it. I want pizza. What happens? I have made myself this mopey, whiny little shit. That is the opposite of a confident, confident, powerful, driven, passionate woman. So when you start your diet, if you focus on the pain of the diet, about everything you can't have. If you focus on how not fair it is, you are putting yourself in the most disempowered and resourceful state ever. And the chances of you quitting that diet are pretty much a foregone conclusion. You will not manage it. The stories, the physiology, everything becomes this bratty whiny teenager of you going I don't want to do this. Rather than instead again, thinking of how much a warrior you are thinking about the pleasure of, you're actually doing something about it. You're no longer damaging yourself, you're no longer hurting yourself, you're no longer making a complete mess of your life. You're actioning it. This is how you're going to succeed on a diet, telling yourself you're proud telling yourself you can do this telling yourself you're gonna do it until it feels less hard. And it will like anything. That's the first five minutes of a run. It's the first week of a diet until the sugar cravings go away. It's the first anything of any habit hobby, anything, it feels better. But if you're like in a resourceful empowered state, Hell, yes. You're going to be able to follow through on what you wanted, and eat healthily and look after yourself. Can you see the difference between that mindset and the victim that I think the dye industry and the health industry really needs to shine a spotlight on because man, it's powerful. So those are what I would want. That's what I want to say about state state change my stories. I would love it if you would share this on your stories because it would mean the world to me for more people who are trying to diet trying to pull themselves out of depression pull themselves out of anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, procrastination, this will help anyone. So if you could share it on your stories, you've done your good deed for the day already. You've helped other people. And I hope you also help yourself with this. I hope you action some of the things even if it's just fake smiling at yourself in the mirror. Don't be sarcastic about it. Like really fake smile and think. Oh, hi, Chloe. Hi, Katie. whatever your name is. It's nice to see you smile. Thank you for smiling at me today. And then tell yourself I'm proud of you. You are getting there. You can do this. You have the power to change your state. You have the power to change your story, your beliefs, your emotions, your feelings and your life. I love you. Until next time, Chloe