Shift Your State to Change Your Life with Special Guest Sarah Fletcher

In this episode, I’m joined by Sarah Fletcher, NLP and mBIT coach and trainer, for a powerful conversation about the role our state plays in how we show up — in life, in leadership, and in business. We explore what it really means to “manage your state,” why awareness always comes before change, and how small shifts can create big results.

Sarah shares her journey into personal development and the tools that changed everything for her, including NLP and mBIT (multiple brain integration techniques). Together, we talk about the power of choice — the choice to shift your state, the choice to respond differently, and the choice to step into possibility rather than staying stuck.

We also touch on the ripple effect: how the way we manage our own state not only shapes our decisions and productivity, but also the energy we bring to our clients and loved ones.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in overwhelm, reacting instead of responding, or simply wanting to feel more in control of how you move through your day, this episode will give you insights and practical shifts to make lasting positive change.

Connect with Sarah:

Website: https://unlockingpossibilities.co.uk/

Connect on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/SarahFletcherCoachingandTraining

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahfletchercoaching/

Connect on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sarahfletchercoaching

Buy the book on Amazon:

KISS Your Life: The CALM guide to keeping your life successfully simple

About Your Host Libby Knight:

Hi, it's lovely to meet you.
I'm Libby, business strategy mentor and mindset coach.
I help ambitious and creative entrepreneurs to grow their service based businesses with confidence, in an environment where they can be seen and heard and feel safe.  My goal is to empower you to create a business on your terms so that you have the tools, skills and knowledge you need to build and grow your business in a way that makes you truly happy.
I teach effective mindset techniques that, together with the right business strategy, will empower you to overcome the limiting beliefs that hold you back.

This is feel-good business development!

Join my mailing list : HERE

How you can work with me:

1:1 mentoring  to dive deep into your beautiful business.  Together we will clear your blocks and create your growth plan so that you can take the next big leap in your business   https://www.libby-knight.com

The POP Business Boutique is a small mentoring membership with bi-monthly live coaching and a library of workshops that cover all areas of sales, marketing, growth and mindset.  Want a virtual tour to see if it's for you?  No problem.

For more information visit : https://libby-knight.com/online-group-mentoring/

Follow me on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/libbyknightmentor

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/libby.knight_

Transcript

Podcast Interview Sarah Fletcher

In today's episode we are focusing on the importance of being able to change your state, and I've brought in a very special guest because I have an expert friend who is, for me personally, the guru. Because although that's obviously what I do myself, we all have somebody who inspires us and Sarah's that person for me.

So I'm going to give you a little introduction before we let Sarah share why she does what she does. Sarah is an award-winning coach and trainer. She shares methodologies, from psychology, neuroscience, NLP, and coaching to help people to fulfil their highest potential.

She also provides accredited NLP and MBIT training. And if you listen to the podcast you will know MBIT is multiple brain integration techniques - using your three beautiful neural networks, or brains to help you in life, yo tap into that inner wisdom. And I trained with Sarah to become an mbit coach.

And as well as all that, Sarah is also a bestselling author of The Brilliant Kiss Your Life, which I highly recommend. And in the book, she helps you to apply powerful but simple changing practices to your daily life for more fulfilment, happiness, and success by keeping it successfully simple.

Love it. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Welcome. 

It does. Thank you, Libby. 

And the interesting thing is that in this online world, it brings people together from different parts of the country, because you are up in Blackpool and I'm down in the south in Kent. And we met online in a business mastermind.

Yeah. Isn't it great how we all come together in this day and age and meet people that we would never have come across? You are absolutely right, and I think that is such a beauty, isn't it, of being in business and doing what we do in this time, we've got so much choice and opportunity and possibility.

And I think sometimes, and I know we're gonna talk about this today, being in business can feel really hard and it can also feel quite lonely at times. And then when we remind ourselves of the vastness of opportunities that's available to us, we can get ourselves back into that state of excitement and possibility. And yeah. I love the way you've just introduced that 'cause you're right. And you never know who you're gonna meet and what opportunities are gonna become available to you, which is fabulous. So thank you for that introduction. 

That's right. And it was on that mastermind when you started to talk about the concept of the three brains, that really resonated for me. We are told to feel things in our body and then it all just fell into place when you talked about it in those terms, which was why I wanted to bring it into the work I do.

And I trained primarily for my own use, which has been invaluable. And the NLP that I picked up from you as well. That has also fed into the work because if it works for you, why on earth not share it? 

Absolutely. I'm a great believer in that and talking about that. That's why, I'm so passionate about NLP. So for me, NLP was that moment in my life where it changed everything. So back in 2002 as a newly qualified teacher in psychology and a new mum, my little boy was 18 months, two at the time. I'd been struggling myself with my own mental health and wellbeing as a new teacher. I was feeling totally out of my depth with some of the challenges that I was having to manage in the classroom that my teaching certificate didn't really teach me how to do. I'd actually just qualified as a psychotherapist.  I was deciding at that time which route I was gonna take, was I gonna go down the route of teaching psychology. I fancied going into mental health and doing psychotherapy. So I qualified as a psychotherapist and a hypnotherapist. And I'd started my own journey of personal growth and personal development.

And then I was introduced to NLP by a colleague who had said to me, I think you'll really love NLP, it's everything you talk about and more. It's the practical application of psychology. It's the how to rather than just the theory of psychology, and it will really help you understand those behaviours in the classroom.

And 'cause this colleague I was talking to knew that I was struggling in the classroom and I was like, oh my God, I'm never gonna be able to continue being a teacher. This is far too stressful. And it was knocking my own confidence. I was feeling not good, not good enough, which was one of my patterns I used to run.

So then going into a classroom of young people and feeling incompetent, even though I knew my subject, I was like, it's not just about my subject. It's a lot more than this. So that's where my journey started and I went on to the NLP diploma and it was just transformative. It was transformative for me personally, in my own way of thinking, my own beliefs. And it was transformative for my teaching. I carried on being a teacher for 18 years in, in the context of further education, higher education. I worked in educational diversity and it absolutely transformed how I taught because it gave me those skills to understand myself better, understand my thinking processes, my beliefs, my values, why I did things, how to change things.

That was the key for me. How can you actually change what you're doing to get a better result? I think that's where we sometimes struggle or we lack. You can read a book or you can listen to a podcast , and you get the knowledge, but actually what does it take to make those behavioural changes and do things different?

That's the key. NLP unlocked stuff that I didn't have previously. So it changed the trajectory of my own mental health, my own wellbeing, the way I was as a teacher and am, now as a trainer. And from that moment, Libby, I just knew I had to share it with more people because it was like, wow.

It felt like the best kept secret, even though NLP's been going now 50 years. It's not just something that's been, brought from nowhere and like a fad. It's been going for 50 years and has evolved over time. And of course now we've got the neuroscience evidence to prove what NLP has always said, that we didn't have back in the seventies. A bit of the bad press that NLP used to get - here's no scientific evidence and there's no nothing to support the evidence of it. Actually, NLPs about modelling excellence and we now have caught up. Science always stumbles across the truth. As we know from mbit.

Science always stumbles across the truth. And NLP, yes, it might not have had the scientific evidence back then. But it absolutely does have now and more. And of course has evolved into Mbit as well, which we can talk about. 

So that was where my journey started. And from that I taught in further education, higher education.

I used NLP in my teaching. I used it with young people helping them to manage their own state, feel more confident in their own education, help them to achieve their results, attend when they weren't feeling like attending. And also, the last part of my career at the college was to be the mental health specialist.

So I took over that role for a couple of years as well before I actually left formal teaching, and set up my training business. My training business started in 2018 and since then I've had the absolute pleasure of training certified NLP training to many people, leaders, coaches, educators, therapists, you name it. So that's where I currently am. 

And it was interesting when you were talking about education and I think this is also gonna come out in what we're talking about today - The energy and the example you set to those around you, so it's not just affecting you. By being an example and by affecting those around you, the positives are so more far reaching. Then we realize, because when we behave a certain way, we unconsciously affect the people around us. They're seeing how we are, and they, if it's positive, if it's empowering us, if they see us happy, strong, independent, then why would they not want more of that themselves?

The people in our vicinity are going to be affected by this work that we are doing on ourselves, and it has that knock on effect. And it has that sort of web of influence, doesn't it? 

It really does, and I have a core belief that the biggest gift you can give to yourself and others and to the world is your own personal development. Because it's that Gandhi quote, “be the change you wish to see in the world”. And so many of us, I think live life, sleepwalking. And feeling affected by external things. It's somebody else's fault that I'm feeling like this. Somebody's upset me, somebody's made me angry, somebody's caused me to feel like this or, I've got no control over my life, or I'm stuck in this job that I hate, or et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that gift of personal development that you give yourself then transmits out into the world and changes everything. And going back to just what you said there about affecting others, it changed how I parented. And I believe massively that the relationship I have with my three children is a different relationship than what it probably would've been had I not done NLP. 

Yeah, I know that when I found some of your free content, when I introduced that to my daughter as well ,it was wonderful to be able to share it with someone? So when you are making the change yourself, and you can share that with someone else, talk about it ,and they get it. They want the same things you want. That was with my daughter, but it can be with your community. Or the people that you've trained with, for example. Can't it?

And it's just so nice, because it is hard when you feel like it's just you, it feels isolating. Business can be a bit like that. And also in your self development, when you are approaching something that might be what people might call woo woo, which it obviously isn't.

Yeah. But to be able to share that with other like-minded people is so empowering and it just gives you that community of people to share with. You don't have that isolation. Don't feel like you're doing this on your own. Absolutely. One of the things that I say to my students, and you, for the Mbit as well as of the NLP, is the biggest marketing tool you've got for what you do is you and how you show up

As an NLP practitioner or coach, or as an mbit coach like you are, we are always communicating unconsciously whether we think we are or not. One of the presuppositions of NLP is that we're always communicating. So, people are watching, observing, listening, whether they realize they are or not.

Yeah. Unconsciously, we can feel energy even through a screen like this, so we can sense somebody else's energy. And we're always communicating. And one of the things with NLP, which is very much a communication tool. A language and communication tool and mbit, I always say to my students, if you want people to believe in what you do, then model it and be it.

So be that person. I'm not saying that means we have to be a perfect human being because we absolutely don't. That's not what it's about. What it is about is that you've got these tools in your toolkit to support you in showing up. In the best way that you possibly can, supporting, leading others.

And the best model that you've got is you of demonstrating to people how you do navigate those difficulties in life and business. How you do manage yourself when things have gone a little bit pear shaped. I was gonna swear then. When you are not where you want to be in your business and you're feeling the pressure or you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed.  You've got a toolkit like NLP and Mbit in your way of being.

'Because it's about embodying it and being it as well. Not just something you pull off the shelf and say, oh, today I'll use this. It's about being it. And when you've got that as part of who you are, because it's an identity thing as well, then you can model that consciously and unconsciously for others. 

And people see it and they go, oh, I want some of that. 'cause that person has challenges just like me. We know that people buy into people like them. The familiarity principle from psychology, it's like they get it, they're like me, they understand it, and they are able to navigate that. You're the model of excellence. 

Because people don't want to be lectured to do they, they don't wanna be told what to do.  

I introduced the idea of the fact that we always have choice to someone, and this person's very defensive.

They believe that no, I've never had choice. And they were absolutely adamant that life was not choice. That they had not had choice throughout their life. That everything has happened to them. And you can't try and change someone's mind when they're in that fixed mindset and there is so much defensiveness, you can't. So the best way to do it is then to show them, not in their face, but just be it. 

Yeah, absolutely. In NLP we talk about pacing and leading and meeting people in their map of the world. 

I love the concept of the map of the world. The idea that you can have the same experience, but you will both see it through a different lens. You both describe it differently. That's a good way of demonstrating this concept of we all have our different map of the world. 

We're all in the same world, but we've all got a different map of the world. It's all experience. Our experiences, exactly what we see, what we hear, what we notice. We can only take in so many bits of information at a time. We're all taking different bits of information based on our experiences and past. 

Absolutely. Which is why when we talk about the same thing, we'll have different memories of it. Yeah, absolutely. And when we're coaching others, like you do and like I do when we're coaching others, the skill of coaching is to be able to meet somebody in their experience of the world, to pace and lead them towards where they want to go. And like you've just said, people don't react don't respond to being told what to do. So a skilled coach like you and I, we meet people where they are to then support them in moving them to where they want to be. And we can only do that by really standing in somebody else's experience, listening to the language they're using, connecting with them at their place, and then showing them through, meeting them where they are, that there are other possibilities and opportunities available. To them, because you're right, Libby, lots of people feel that they don't have choice.

They feel affected by life. Like we mentioned before, life's happening to me, not for me. And that is a very common belief that people don't have choice. So, helping people to open up choice and possibility is a really skilful thing to do when you're coaching somebody to help people see, feel, experience something different than what they are currently experiencing. Because it's very disempowering, isn't it? To think that things are just happening to you and not seeing the opportunities and that perhaps things are happening for you. 

And even just that belief is very freeing, isn't it? And you were saying earlier about how people, feel like life's not fair, things are happening to them. But sometimes when, and this is where we're gonna start talking about this idea of setting your own state, some people are not even aware, are they, of the external forces that are dictating to them - what their day will be like, how they're going to feel, what they're going to prioritize that day, how they're going to be, distracted from their plan.

Some people are just not aware of that, not because they're in victim mode, but because they're just not aware. 

Yeah, exactly. They're not taking the time to think what's going on here. And I think that most people spend most of their lives and some people all their lives in that mode.

Entrepreneurship really. Is a world full of this different way of approaching life.  And this taking back control, because so much comes up from running your own business and it brings up a lot of demons or you suddenly become aware of your limits.

You really do.  So that's why I wanted to talk about this idea of taking control of your state. Consciously and intentionally deciding the take your day, not just in the morning at the beginning of the day, but when things start to go awry? And you take back control.

Take back that power. Stand in your power when you feel disempowered. To have that in your toolkit of life strategies and life techniques, to cope with whatever life throws at you. Not only in the moment, but also for maintenance. So that you are starting your day in a way that you choose, and that's where this choice comes in.

So, tell me a bit about, this idea of state. Positive states or helpful states and unhelpful states. And ways to approach that. 

So I'd like to circle back to something you just said a minute ago around being almost unconscious.

We are creatures of habits. We are, 95% unconsciously going about our day. And we are unself-aware for much of the time. We have thousands and thousands of thoughts worrying through our mind that we're not even aware of. We have daily habits in thinking and behaving that we're not aware of. 

And that's why one of the key things with NLP is, awareness precedes change. We can't change anything that we're not aware of. We don't know what we don't know. And I think, it's a really great place to start because this isn't about, bashing anybody, we don't know what we don't know.

And I love that Maya Angelou quote of, “we do the best we can until we know better, then we can do better”. When we know things can be different, then we do have more choice. And NLP is very much about having more choice. But first of all, we need to understand why we feel that we've not got choice.

And what I often say to people is actually, it's not your fault. It's not your fault that you feel that you haven't got choice. Because we are creatures of habit. We are patterning systems. Our brain works on familiarity. It will seek familiarity, which means basically that it will continue to do the same things it's always done until we consciously choose to do something different. So that's a great starting place I think, with people, to say this isn't your fault, but what is your responsibility? 

When you do know more and you do know different things, then you can make other choices. And I think you're absolutely right with the state thing because it does all start with our state of being, because our state determines everything that we do, doesn't it? If you get up in the morning. And you open your eyes and you immediately start feeling anxious about the to-do list.

As an entrepreneur, we have a big to-do list. We never get to the bottom of that one.

But we're not supposed to because life keeps going and businesses keep growing. The fact that it's not supposed to end, and that's okay. 

So you wake up in the morning, you start to feel anxious about your to-do list. You start to tell yourself a story of being a failure because you've not got through the things you wanted to get to. You've missed that appointment or whatever. Or you've had to shift things about, that means that now you know, you've let people down or whatever it is that you start to say to yourself, and now you've got another million and one things to do, and oh my God, how am I gonna get that done?

So you wake up and your nervous system has already gone into chaos. You're feeling anxious and stressed. You're thinking-brain switches off because you get emotionally flooded. And then you go into, procrastination, fight, flight, freeze, and it's you know what, I'll just put the covers back over my head and just stay right where I am. Or you pick up your phone and you start to scroll through social media, which then makes you feel even worse. 'cause then you start comparing yourself to everybody else. Guess what I used to do? You start comparing yourself to everybody else and thinking, oh my God, look at them. They're doing this, they're doing that. Oh my. And it goes on and on. 

Your state is a combination of your thinking, your thoughts, your mental processing, the story that you tell yourself. What goes on, internally through your thoughts your pictures and images that you make, your feelings, your sensations in your body, your nervous system, and then ultimately combined, they then, that then impacts your decision making, your problem solving your behaviours.

Your responses to things, and again, like you've just said, Libby, so many of us are completely unaware of our state and how we've got control and power over our state. I think that's the key. Most of us feel beholden to our state and like it's something that we can't control because what we'll say, is things like, I feel like this because I've got a massive to-do list.

Or I'm anxious and overwhelmed because. I run a business and I haven't got time to do everything. So we attribute our state to external factors rather than pausing, checking in and saying, oh, okay, I can change how I feel about what's going on. And then I'll have a different response to what's going on.

Yes. Because people think that they've got to change the thing, but it's you. You are changing. How you're reacting to something, and responsibility is a big word that I’m really focusing on. It is your responsibility not to let external factors dictate to you.

And take responsibility for your state. And that's not to say it's simple. It can be simple. It doesn't mean that it's easy. 

Yeah, absolutely. And it might, take a little bit of time out to think about. To, like you say, to recognize what's going on for you. How are you reacting? How would you prefer to react?  How would you prefer to feel?  Because that's the choice you make, and then what are you gonna do to change that from within? And when you change from within, what happens on the outside also changes. 

That's something I was talking about that just last week, in the last episode, about identity, how when you change your experiences will change. Yeah, the results will change, but it starts from you. Whereas we are always waiting for something to give us permission or a sign that we are going to be different.  But it's us, that's what comes first. 

And one of the things that we talk a lot about in NLP, so we have something called the NLP presuppositions, which are like assumptions and principles of excellence really, they are the principles of success and assumptions and assumed truths. And if we experience the world through these assumed truths, then we are more likely to be successful and get the results that we want. And one of the presuppositions is that we always have choice and that can be challenging for people at first, because like we've just said, when people feel they haven't got choice, it is what do you even mean by that? I haven't got choice. This is happening in my life. That's happening in my life and I have to pay taxes and I have to step up when people need me and I have to, I have to. I have to. I have to. And where we then go is, we have choice about the thinking, the feeling and the responses to that.

We can't change other people. We can't change the fact that we've got to pay taxes. We can't change many external things around us, but we can absolutely change what goes on internally to then feel better, navigate things more successfully, and ultimately then build the business that we want, build the life that we want, and be happier, more content and more successful.

And it starts with being able to notice and understand your own state and choose the state that's most appropriate for the context in which you want it. Now, if I'm lying on a sunbed and I'm having a break from work, I don't want to be in a motivated, energized state. I want to be relaxed, yes? But if I'm at work and I've got things to do, I don't want to be distracted and relaxed. I want to be on point and focused and motivated. So again, it's about choosing this State that's most appropriate for the context in which you want it. And having choice and having, like you've just said, personal ownership and personal responsibility for that. And that is really, I feel, the biggest part of taking back your own power. 

And it's the more you do it and the more ways you find to do it, over time - we're talking months - the whole of life just changes with it, Doesn't it, because your nervous system is in a calmer state for longer periods of time. Or you can bring it back down quite quickly. 

Yes, you can do your balanced breathing, you are not going to those extreme ends of the scale. You are in more coherence, as we say. You're, more balanced. For a bigger proportion of life in general, because you are more laid back.

It's not about taking your foot off the gas, it's about just being okay with how life is and having that different set point. You're not as reactive. You're not as affected by external stimuli and things that could have set you off before. Now you are dealing with life's challenges and just everyday life on a whole different level and that builds up incrementally over time.

I would say probably I'm, where I am thinking back a good probably year and a half, but. It's funny how it manifests. I went on a flight recently and I am scared of flying. I used to have a full on phobia. I've been on a fear of flying course, had a horrible flight, came out of our seats. It was just awful. And I've always had a fear of flying.

I went on this flight this time, and the minute I started my balanced breathing, it was instantaneous calm. It's just having those tools. And obviously if I'd have done that breathing a year ago, it wouldn't have had the same effect. What it triggered was this calm. But again, it's habits, isn't it? It's instilling unconscious new ways of being. 

Absolutely. And I think you've hit a really good point there because we all have a baseline state. And our baseline state is basically what we've been programmed with through our childhood, much of which of course is out of our control. And that baseline state then becomes our familiar pattern. For example, you might be somebody who's got a baseline state of stress and drama because that's what you were conditioned into, or trauma, through your life you might have a baseline state of being really laid back and lethargic and struggle to get going, and your nervous system will seek to keep that familiar pattern going.

And then when it isn't familiar, it will unconsciously create something externally or internally to put the system back into what it's used to, what its familiar pattern is. And I love what you've just said there 'cause that's exactly what's happened for me over the years. I was very much a sympathetic nervous system and still can very quickly go into that. And my life was sympathetic, it was like. I was a teacher and I worked ridiculous hours. I never sat down to relax. I had a belief, ‘Don't sit down and relax. That's for lazy people’. You've gotta keep going. You've gotta keep going. I wore that busy badge of honour.

Just to interject, and to put it into context for people that don’t know about the nervous system. And I love this that you said once, sympathetic S is the stress end and parasympathetic P is the peace end. Obviously there's more to it, but that's how I always remember which is which. I just wanted to put that into context for people.

So for me, the peace end of the nervous system was alien for me. I've got a best friend who lives in Manchester and she loves sitting and reading books, which I do nowadays, but she would sit and read a book while her house was a mess. And I'd be like, how can she even do that? She's ‘I don't care’. And I'm like, what? And it is, it's all that kind of patterning that we've had through our life. And so going back to the baselines State and what that means and what it is. Your nervous system, your state, is unconsciously programmed and like you've just said there about your experience with the flying, you had programmed your nervous system and your state to, in that context, respond in a certain way. And through your mbit that you've learned, through balanced breathing, through resetting your nervous system to a different point. I was similar to you with the flying and it's just not even an issue now. And you could get on that plane and do your balanced breathing and immediately your nervous system is now set at a different point.

Yes, because it used to switch on like that, the fear would switch on. I'd sit down, I'd hear the engines, and it was just boom, there it was. Whereas this time I could start my balanced breathing  and I was like ‘We’re Off’, even though I was on my own because I went on a solo holiday to Croatia and had the best time ever.

Oh, lovely. 

My unconscious brain went, Woohoo, here we go. Whereas before it would've been like, holy crap. It surprised me. Yeah. Really shocked me. The knock on effect of all the work that I've done, how it manifested in that millisecond.

And that was like, wow, that's amazing. That's so impressive. And it's just sometimes you don't realize how far you've come until a moment like that where it's holy wow! And I just felt amazing for it. And then that encourages you because you know you have made that much progress and you have these skills and these abilities that you can just utilize at the drop of a hat.

So, you know, all of these skills, like setting your own state or, learning to calm your nervous system. All of these are, well you tell me, how does that manifest? 

So again, if we go back to what we were saying about, getting out of bed in the morning. Interestingly, your brain is more likely to be programmed as soon as you wake up in the morning and last thing at night. And not just your brain, but your nervous system and your state, your body as well. 

So if you think about that, we wake up in the morning and we're in that place of anxiety, stress, overwhelm. Basically, like you said before, setting yourself up then for that to be your day, because you have primed your brain and nervous system to respect, to respond, and react to that throughout the day without even realizing. So, if we're talking about setting our day up intentionally from a perspective of being in business, wanting to be productive, effective, get the things done that we want to get done, feel motivated, all the things that you've gotta lead yourself with when you're a business owner, 'cause nobody's there telling you to do things. You've gotta find that motivation and inspiration. You've gotta dig deep.  And setting your day up intentionally, I feel it's again, one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself as a business owner.

Having that awareness of, when I open my eyes, how am I thinking, how am I feeling? What am I experiencing? What am my behaviours? What am I doing? Do you open your eyes and go straight onto your emails or your socials or do you open your eyes and immediately go into sympathetic nervous system. Oh my God, I didn't get this done. I didn't get that done. How am I gonna get everything done today? What are you doing as soon as you open your eyes?. 

Breathing, your balanced breathing that we do in Mbit is breathing in for six. Breathing out for six. Really simple. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Six seconds in, six seconds out, two minutes. Really simple, effective breathing that settles the nervous system, brings it back into coherence. Then you can start. With your day. Or, you might get up and do some yoga, some stretching, some flow to move the body into, into action, but in, again, a coherent way. Or you might, I don't know, some people might wake up and listen to a meditation. Yeah, I know lots of people do who do that. Whatever it is though, how is it setting you up? I think that's the key thing. I don't think there's any right or wrong in what it is. Some people get up and go straight to the gym.

It's about intentionally setting it up with how you want your state to be set up and ready for the day. 

So here's a question for you. We talk about productivity. And for a lot of people, they have a definition. My definition, because I'm trying to redefine productivity for people so that they feel more empowered and it's not a stress association or a busy association. It's ‘doing the right thing at the right time with the right energy’. And it's also not doing when it's time not to do.  And the thing you’re doing might be going for a walk or it could be getting in the hot tub, or it could equally be sitting down, setting a timer and doing some focused work.

So if we want to redefine productivity so that it has a more helpful definition, and it's not associated with those traditional definitions anymore, which can be quite triggering, how can we utilize the concept of setting your state? To ensure that you are not triggered by what you've always been told, and you can tap into your own new more helpful definition of what productivity is.

I love that. So, I'm gonna use an NLP frame.

 I would say start with the end in mind. What's your outcome? So, I think, first of all, let's jump to the outcome. What is it that you want? And what is it that you're working towards or what are you moving away from? Because that can be sometimes as helpful to say, I'm moving away from. 

I loved wearing the busy badge of honor. I wanted to move away from that. 

So what are you moving away from, and then what is it that you are actually working towards? So the NLP frame is, present state to desired State. So where are you currently? And then where is it that you want to get to?

And then work backwards. What is it that you need to do, or how do you need to feel? Or what do you need to be thinking? If you think about your state what are your beliefs? What's your identity? What do you want, what's your energy? How do you want to think, in order to get you to where you want to be? So for me that productivity is also contextual. 'cause it depends on what it is. And what it is that you are currently doing or working on or, so start with the end in mind. Reverse engineer, work backwards.

And then from that place, what do I need to think, feel believe embody, to get me to where I want to get to. And that will be different depending on the context. 

Exactly. You can have an overarching definition, can't you? Like I have this one that I now use, but you can also create a kind of a sub definition dependent on what you are doing. Because I think this is the thing, we are so stuck on one possibility that it almost has to fit. It's like we've gotta have a one fits all definition. And ultimately it, again, this phrase, which I absolutely love, was, is it helpful? 

What is helpful at that point in time? If that definition doesn't work, then create something that works for the task that is right in front of you, or the day that's right in front of you. What is productivity today?  So that I get to the end of the day having achieved what I want to achieve, feeling how I want to feel at the end because it's not only about what we're doing, but about what we're feeling, isn't it? Because that is pivotal. Which is why I think it's also good to have some flexibility in life. I always say when I'm helping people to plan their time and their diaries and their calendars, is there enough flexibility? It doesn't work for everybody because, and I want to touch on this in a minute, about different people, different ways. Because we do have to be inclusive in the fact that some people need to identify how they need to work. 

Absolutely. 

But if you feel like a failure because you haven't kept to the exact schedule and something ran over and then something changed and, oh, I didn't get that done today. For me, there's a flexibility in saying as long as by the end of the week it's all ticked off,  if we have to shift it around, then that's okay. 

And in NLP we talk about language, because the L of NLP is language, and productivity is what we call a nominalization. It means different things to different people.

So again, I think one of the things you're doing is you’re outcome setting What does productivity even mean to me?  And what does it look like when I'm productive in this context? What does it feel like when I'm productive in this context? What will I see, hear and feel myself achieving? So we look at the success criteria. How will I know I've been successful? How will I know I've been productive? What will I see hear and feel as my evidence criteria for being productive? And that's all very subjective. 

And I think what that almost does as well, when you've recognized that, in time you will automatically do the things that take you to that state. Once you've created that state and lived it enough, It'll become unconscious. 

You have to start to train yourself, but then it'll become totally natural. Yeah, exactly. And on that kind of, that learning ladder, if you like, we've got the unconscious incompetence. We don't know what we don't know. Then we've got the conscious incompetence where we start to do something.

Think about driving a car, we start to do something and we know we're not that good at it. Then we have to consciously think a lot about it, don't we? We have to really focus and concentrate on what we're doing. Then conscious competence is where we start to feel better and we go, yes, I'm getting good at this, I'm getting more competent.

And then we have our unconscious competence where it becomes unconscious, and we don't have to think about it. So when we're learning new things and we're resetting our state, or we're resetting our ways of doing things, perhaps new habits. New thinking habits, new behaviour habits. There's a journey that we go through, a process that we go through to get from being consciously incompetent, going, oh, I'm not so good at this yet, to then it becoming our automatic unconscious way of being, like you were saying before about the airplane example, the flying example, your unconscious way of responding previously was to go into panic.

And now you were consciously aware that you were doing something really different, which will then become your unconscious way of flying. Yeah, exactly. That's what happens with any habit change or behaviour change. 

And you said something key there about behavioural flexibility. That's actually one of our key success principles of NLP - behavioural flexibility. If what you're doing isn't working, do something different. And being Okay with changing, if something needs to change rather than, oh, I'm a failure, or it went wrong. And we tell ourselves a story. It's the story that we tell ourselves that's actually the problem, not the actual thing.

And again, it's that choice, isn't it? It is recognizing that if 10 of us all had the same instruction, but we all did it in 10 different ways, that's just proof that there is choice out there and that there isn't just one way. That the way we've always done it or the way we were taught to do it or the way we feel other people were to approve of is not the only way because other people are making different choices and doing things differently everywhere in the world, so the evidence is there that we don't have to stick to the same way we've always done it. But people do and they're not happy doing that, but they feel stuck in it. They don't think about the fact that actually there's evidence all around them that there are 1,000,001 ways of either doing it or feeling it or reacting to it. When we look for the evidence that things can be different, that we can do things differently, that we can make different choices, the evidence is there all around us, but we are so programmed to do things a certain way and we have that little voice, maybe a parent or somebody, over our shoulder and we’re thinking what would they think if we changed the way they taught us? That sort of thing. 

Yeah, so I think again, it's this empowerment of asking yourself the questions. Is this helpful? Is there another way? And also just trying something new, not having to know what the outcome will be. We become attached, don't we, to the outcome.

We become attached to something being a certain way, and then when it's not a certain way, then we feel disappointed or let down, or annoyed with ourselves or cross with ourselves.  And I think that's a big thing as well in what we teach and share with people, is, you've gotta let go of that attachment to the end result because it might change. And it probably will change actually. 

And it's also not a reflection on our self-worth. People attach so much of this of self-worth. Something goes wrong and it is a reflection on them and it's not. Yeah. It's because it's what you make it. Do you make it about a reflection of you or do you make it about a learning opportunity to say, yes, this has happened. What can I take from it?  No failure. Only feedback. 

Absolutely. It’s, what feedback can I give myself? How can I learn from this? What opportunities did it present me with that I've maybe not even noticed? What don't I want to do again? Yeah, it's all of that, isn't it? It's all feedback.

It's what did I learn? What do I want to repeat? What don't I want to repeat? What, worked well, what didn't work well? 

Yeah. It's all about feedback and that's a key skill as a business owner. To be able to give yourself really useful feedback. Know if you are moving in the right direction, the the direction that you want to go in or not.

And there are clues aren't there everywhere. And the more you do try new things, the more curious you are. The more you treat things as a bit of an experiment, the more feedback and the more information you've got to make different choices in future. 

We tend to be quite hard on ourselves. We throw ourselves into something, it becomes very scary. It becomes hard. Maybe we even stop, we don't even finish the thing we started because it just becomes too much. 

If we look at it without that attachment, and we just look at it with curiosity and treat it like an experiment, then you can take that self-judgment out of it completely because it's not about you, it's about growth. 

I think there's a few key things there that you said as well, Libby, about being a successful business owner being able to take all that stuff out. The judgment. The failure, the feelings of not good enough.

They are actually really detrimental things for running a successful business. And that is why the personal development work is really important.  Because inevitably being a business owner brings those things up. I'm not good enough. Other people are doing it better than me. Can I really do this? Self-doubt. Fear. 

You've gotta take courageous action, and yet you're absolutely petrified of taking that action. You've gotta take risks. You're petrified of taking those risks. You doubt yourself. You judge yourself. You compare yourself. That's the nature of the beast of being in business, and that's why the personal development work is so important. It's part and parcel of being a business owner. If you're not prepared to be coached and coach yourself as a business owner, you're not gonna get very far. 

And you've also got to recognize that once you've started to make progress and you feel like oh yeah, I'm really feeling confident, I'm really good at this now. And then something else comes along, doesn't it? 

Yeah. But that is always going to happen. Because each step you take, a new challenge is gonna come. The more you try and put yourself out there, something else will come along. So it's about having that toolkit of techniques and ways, things that you can draw on to manage those situations, isn't it? 

And going back to what we started with, that everything is dependent upon your state. So yeah, anything that happens in your business, the way that you think and feel about that will impact how you respond to it. And that's about state. 

So going to Mbit to finish off on. Mbit is about using these amazing neural networks that you have, that are feeding you information all the time. 

So we tend to live in our heads and we're overthinkers. And we try to analyse , and we try to plan everything. And then somebody says to us, when we do a meditation, they ask, where do you feel it in your body? And for some people, it takes a while to feel it. But what's happening when you're feeling it in your body is you’re using your three brains, you realize that these are messages, that this is information that is coming to you.

Your brain is just one part of the puzzle. Yes, it has a function. Your heart has a function, your gut has a function. When you understand what they're doing and the roles they're playing, then you can use that information. 

The head usually leads, but let the head play just its part, which is to use the information that's coming and analyze it, make decisions or whatever.  

But start with the heart.

And I do this a lot with people by getting them to put their hand on their heart, closing their eyes and actually pulling  it down into the heart. This is so powerful. Really. And especially with decision making where you are juggling two things.  Is it one or the other. 

And when you do it with your head, you are gonna be asking that question ad infinitum, you'll be asking it next year. And you won't take action because you'll still be asking yourself the question. Instead ask the heart and you've got an answer just like that.  So many people go, oh yeah, I don't want to do that at all. But they would've still been debating it internally forever. 

So when it comes to choosing your state, what sort of questions can we ask? Because obviously we're not gonna go into the whole thing now, but they could use the technique that I used on the last  episode.  I did a visualization exercise where we did go in, so if you haven't done that, go and do that, and this will make more sense. 

But what is a technique that you use and how do you tap into the wisdom if someone's a beginner?

Yeah, lovely.  I think the first thing is to recognize with self-awareness what's happening. So I'll often ask my clients questions like, have you ever found yourself stuck in overthinking? Have you ever, tried to logically rationally think something through, but yet in your heart it doesn't feel right. Or have you ever felt really passionate about something but then not taking action on it? You know you're procrastinating or you feel scared to take action on it, or do you feel disconnected from something? Maybe you're in your business and you've got this goal and you've decided right by the end of this year, I'm gonna do this, and this. But actually in your heart, you're thinking, this actually isn't important enough to me. I don't want to actually do this. But you keep doing it anyway. 'cause that's what you've said you're gonna do. And you've gotta stop to ask yourself that, haven't you? Because otherwise you could get months in and say, why haven’t I done this? Why didn't I ever fulfill this? Why didn't you finish this? Why did I think this was so exciting and such an amazing idea? Why on earth, didn't I do it? And this is where this comes into play, isn't it? Yes, 100%. So we start to have that conversation first to really explore and get people to understand that, there is conflict in, in these brains.

My head is trying to rationalize and overthink it. My heart feels disconnected or it feels really passionate, but I'm not taking action 'cause my gut is scared and fearful and doesn't believe it's possible. So you start to get that reference structure so that people actually feel it in their body and understand what's happening for them.

And then one of the things I would then say is, so what is the current problem or the current issue? Just to so that we can work on something specific. Then get into the balance breathing like we've already talked about, so that the nervous system is aligned and the brains are aligned. We're in coherence. 

And then asking really simple questions. As a beginner going to the heart first. What do I really, truly desire in this context, in this situation? What's really important to me about it? And then moving up into the head and saying, what does my head really think about this? What are the possibilities and opportunities that are available to me? What does it really know? What does it really think? And then back into the heart and say, and what does my heart feel about that? What does my heart feel about what my head's just said? That it wants to do? What's, the options, the possibilities, the choices? And then down into the gut.And what does my gut want to do to take an action towards this? Or what do I need to release and let go of? So that I can take action, so that I can do something with this. 

Who do I need to be? 

Who do I need to be? Yes. Who do I need to be to do it? Identity? Who do I need to be able to take action on this thing? And this might be one step. This isn't necessarily a whole thing. This just might be one step towards it. Who do I need to be to take that one step? What do I need to release and let go of, fear, anxiety, whatever it is to take this next step and what is truly important to me about it. 

As Simon Sinek says, start with why.

Is this really important to you? What's your values? What drives you? 

So just keeping it really simple. Thinking about the context that you are working in or you are working on and starting with the heart, what's really important? What's truly important to me? What does my head really know about this? And what does it think?

What does my gut want to move? What does my gut need to release and let go of, or who do I need to be? And just really working with each of those intelligences to start to listen. 

And I think more than anything, the most important thing we need to be able to do this, we need to give ourselves space and time to go inside.  I feel every day we should prioritize time to go inside. And listen. And hear our wisdom internally, like you said before Libby, about the messages. What are the messages that we are being given that we're not listening to?

Yeah. Because we're too busy or we're logically trying to overthink something or rationalize it. Go inside every single day and listen deeply to what your internal wisdom has to give you. And I think just don't overlook. Because people say they know that they're feeling something in the body. But then they're just thinking, oh, it's just a feeling. They're not realizing that actually there is a message. It's information, it's data. 

Absolutely. But I think that if somebody is a real beginner I think as a real first step just ask the heart  how am I feeling right now? If somebody's struggling, because this is so new that will be the first step. Get out of your head, stop overthinking it, and just get into the heart. Just by closing the eyes, hands on the heart and asking that question. Now how is this making me feel? How do I want to feel? And I think that can be just a first practice to get into. 

Gorgeous. I love it, and we love mbit, don't we?