Cultivating a New Mindset

Wow Fam! It's Season 4 already and we have a doozy of an episode to kick things off for y’all. This week starts the year off right as we chat about how we can all cultivate a brand new mindset for the new year! In a nutshell, it's all about knowing what voices we let dominate in our heads then inviting different perspectives, new ideas and fresh conversations into your life to open up your mindset!  As always we encourage you to take what works for you and leave what doesn't so that you can curate the most diverse, rich and bubbling beauty of a life for 2022 and beyond. Let’s get to it fam! This is our year :)

Transcript

Cali  0:02  
Even me making coffee in the morning. It's not simple. I can spill at any point. I can pour the beans into the kettle that's

boiling the water on accident. I do press pot French press coffee. So you know I've got some steps that maybe that's the breakdown right there.

But like, I can fail in making coffee six ways to Sunday, so things are not even coffee making isn't even simple in life

Hey, clarity, fam, Welcome to Season Four kickoff. I'm Callie and I'm here with my co host, Barb, my clarity sister, two friends who just get together, talk about things in life as they come up and get a little clarity. Get a little calm. And we are so grateful for the outpouring of support. Everyone who's engaging on social, thank you so much. We just are in deep gratitude. Season Four like that is so exciting. And Barb, and I just want to thank you so much for helping us get here and for sharing the word sharing the podcast helping this little podcast grow. You're doing amazing. And we're grateful. And we're excited to kick off a new season. So in this episode, we are going to dive into how to move beyond our last episode of bringing calm and clarity into our internal voices and dialogue are going to take that next step about once we've dialed back some of those voices that may not be helping us how to bring in new conversations, new voices, new ideas and new ways of looking at things, both internally in our heads and externally through the people that we bring around us. And if you don't already know. I'm Kelly, and I'm here with my clarity sister, Barb, thanks for joining us today.

Barb  2:10  
Hey, Kelly, hey, clarity, fam. So excited to be starting the season with such a juicy topic? How do we curate these voices and really bring the voices that we want to bring in to our conversations into our heads and into our external conversations. And the first step in being empowered to do that is to recognize and acknowledge the fact that you get to make those choices. You know, when you're a little kid, and you're like, oh, I don't really want to play with that person, but like your teacher, or your mom or whatever says you got to go play with that person. Well, sometimes it's good for you, sometimes it's not. But as an adult, we've had much more experience curating these things. And so we now have the choices to make, to bring in those things that we see. And we might not get it right every time. That's okay. But we need to acknowledge that we actually have permission to do that, give ourselves permission to do that, and start kind of screening. In a way it's a little bit like hiring people for your company, I do have done a lot of that work in my life and, and being clear about, you know, what, what am I really looking for here, and what I always come down to is there's the skill sets, there's opinions, there's, you know, characteristics and experience. And then probably the most important thing is what I call the vibe, right, which is like, if I'm gonna bring somebody into my organization, whether it's a, whether it's a medical practice, or it's a, you know, marketing organization, or it's my head voices that I the conversations that I'm having internally and externally, I'm looking for the, the frequency and the supportive, and useful vibration that's coming with that voice. And you know what that is, we all know what our best highest vibration is.

Cali  4:15  
It's so fun, because our external world is kind of a representation of our internal world, and how we curate our internal world will kind of create our external world. So we've got some critical inner voices, we may find that we create critical or critical or IE, or critical, or however that word is said today, we're gonna have some critical people or voices that we've kind of externalized or created externally to represent that and sometimes we do that so we can learn to get some space from it and get some power back and have a dialogue externally rather than in our heads. So look around and just See if some of the players in your life represent the internal ecosystem of voices and conversations that are happening. That's a fun exercise. That's a journal prompt right there. For our fam that journals, that is a great topic, what external voices are represented by internal voices, and just looking at the relationship of God, but then today, we're gonna focus on the opposite, which is where, let's just say we've done some really good house cleaning. And we've decided that we'd like to learn new ways of relating to ourselves and thinking and perspectives. This is where diversity becomes such a massive asset to us. So thinking of all the different people in your lives, diversity in perspectives, and thoughts, and, you know, that goes towards making our community be a well rounded, really diverse community that can share with us different ways of looking at things and teach us different perspectives, and how to just acknowledge and be present for those perspectives. It'll help us acknowledge and be present for our perspectives, but also bring in new ideas, new thoughts, when I would build big corporate teams, I loved all the diversity of thought and perspectives and experiences that would be brought to the products that we would build and the different, you know, things that we were developing, because each person had such a different perspective that when we landed at that finished product that we were delivering all of everybody's thoughts and versation of how our users might look at stuff about how it had come to life and the growth that it had been through. And it was very, very valuable. Well, the same is true for our minds. You know, some of us may be big dreamers, or thinkers or visionaries, and some of us may feel like, gosh, my life's gotten a little stagnant. I'd like to think bigger, I'd like to think differently. We get that by having people externally who have those different ways of thinking, and we can start to bring in internalized some of those conversations.

Barb  7:28  
Yes, the diversity of ideas is so powerful, and can be a really great growth experience for people on all parts of the circle of ideas, right, because everyone is doing more listening, which was one of the things we talked about last season, and being able to truly listen. And you also we as individuals are able to curate that and be present neutral chill about hearing those perspectives. And as we've gone through and cultivated those tools, it becomes much easier for us to hear those things without the filter of a trigger or a judgement, and be able to incorporate those into the bigger picture. And that's where you come up with the amazing breakthroughs, whether those are emotional breakthroughs or breakthroughs in your relationship with your family, or breakthroughs at work or breakthroughs in a product, it's all sort of the same thing, because we're able to bring those other perspectives in, in a healthy supportive way. And so I love the idea, it's sort of like cooking, right? You're, you know, you open the refrigerator, and you look in the cupboard, and you're like, What do I have here. And turns out that it really doesn't matter so much what the individual ingredients are, as long as they're organic and healthy and you know, curated for your particular physical needs. But you can create an amazing array of different wonderful options. And it's, you know, if you like to cook that's like a really creative exercise. And what we're cooking up in our brains is a more robust and a healthier and a more supportive environment for us to go forward and do what our next things are that we need to do.

Cali  9:09  
If I wanted to step back to that a little bit about what you were saying and reflect on our episode about truly listening. And we brought that concept that listening is not a conversations is not a tennis match where the balls come over and you immediately have to respond. And when we can get neutral to the ball just going over and just letting that be is not a tennis game at all. And we can just let them be we don't have to fix it. We don't have to justify it, explain it, defend it, change it, judge it, we can just let it be and then take what works and leave what doesn't now want to say, sexist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic fly, and we're just going to sit there that is not the car we're having today. Not to say that is not what we're talking about that is a different conversation and definitely worth its own full robust conversation about how to handle that stuff. But this conversation is really about opening our minds up to looking at the types of conversations we're having and people are having around us. And just seeing it, there might be different example of how that can happen. So maybe there's a subject, maybe you get into art history, friends, maybe into art history, or actually, you may be into some other completely different hobby, sport or interest with your group of friends. So in order to fully geek out, maybe some of your friends will come along with you on that adventure. And maybe you might take a course or go somewhere, or start to get really involved with a museum or a way that you can study and learn and surround oneself with people who have perspectives on art history, who are educated self, or self educated, or otherwise as a matter but that have an interest that you can go out and give your ideas and have your conversations and listen to their ideas and their conversations. And then you're changing it up. So that's like a real kind of crisp example. But then when we think about our lives, and the different things we might be wanting to do, or move into or explore, think about who your Echo Chamber is of people, and just make sure that those are people that you really want to be having those conversations with.

Barb  11:39  
Yes, and the one thing I've observed recently in myself is that, you know, I You think I used to try more to bring people in and bring ideas in that, that were comfortable for me and familiar, and that I sort of already knew, but they were kind of reinforcing my existing belief system or my existing landscape. And, you know, when you think about, you know, bringing in people from the Art History world that has a different period of history, or a different school of art, can open up a huge amount of new information. And the thing for me was to be able to be comfortable with like, wow, that's not my particular area of interest right now. But I am totally cool with listening to it. And starting to experience it, I don't have to think I don't have to trade off the fact that I really love Renaissance to be studying modern art, I don't have to, it's not an either, or, it's an and, and all these ideas are and even if they don't become part of the core, the things you really love that you go to for your when you need a little break, but they can still enrich the whole environment. And so it's like your palette of flavors and colors and experiences can create so much more possibility lately,

Cali  12:58  
that part about possibilities can come also just when we think about working with my dogs in different dogs, sports, and there's some sports that I'm new in and don't know very much about. And then there's sports that I've been doing a while. And I kind of have my own way of training. But I still go and see different teachers or different seminars and different perspectives, because I always come at that with the take what works leave what doesn't approach. So I don't have to worry that I'm going to go in there and have to throw out everything that I've developed over the years, because now I'm going to just 100% follow someone else's perspective on training in that sport is that there'll be a few tips or things that I really love and can work that out and realize that there's no one right way to do things. And there's multiple right ways to do things. And I can get more dynamic and how I do that training. Now for some of us, and I know in the beginning, I was frankly a little more arrogant. And where I learned about certain sports, the less arrogant I get, I think I realized the more you know, the more you don't know. But I might get a little irritated. Because these teachers might be watching us do different things and say different, you know, well, you should do this, the dog should do that with your dog. And I might in my head be like, well, you don't know the history of the five different things I've already tried with this dog or whatever. And so I can say that it wasn't always easy for me to take in different perspectives without getting into this game. Judgment, I guess on? Well, if that's their perspective, than I need to decide if what I'm doing is right or wrong, bad or good. Then it got into like a much more personal thing. Whereas, you know, over time, I've developed the ability to be able to listen to these other perspectives. I might try what they're saying, I might not try what they're saying. I feel fully empowered to do either of those things. But I don't have to go through a kind of internal little emotional thing over someone having a differing opinion.

Barb  15:08  
Indeed, this, it's so much less energy, right? Where do we want to put our energy on kind of learning new things and, and maybe those are going to be things as you say that you're going to bring into your repertoire, but maybe they're just going to be things you're going to know. And you might extrapolate something from one of those things, and then it becomes one of your things, and then you share it with someone else who extrapolates it a different way. And that's the beauty and value of exchanging ideas and bringing in other voices. And so I think one of the things that's happened to us as a culture is that while we have wonderful tools, and social media and technology that allow all of us to communicate, you know, so much better with each other, in many ways, we can reach out to the clarity, fam, and you guys can reach out back to us. But on the other hand, we tend to all our feeds are curated to the things that we've already liked. So technology's kind of reflecting on the outside that tendency that we have to just gather the things that we that we like and sort of agree with our, our value systems. And again, this is not to say, you know, there, I believe that, you know, we all have our own ethical frameworks. And those are very set. But this is about ideas and what ideas you could expose to and, and how much you can listen to them. And that's part of, again, being able to be comfortable enough, give yourself permission to listen and understand without having to immediately judge whether or not you're going to use that just let it be, as the Beatles told us.

Cali  16:39  
Well, Barb, you went there. And so now that we're here, they're where you went. I'll just wanted to just go back to that. Social media. Mm hmm. And a couple things that came to mind. One is, I think somewhere subconsciously, many of us may feel like, we may not even have thought it this way. But the if somebody puts a different idea out there, we're gonna have to make a decision. And there's some kind of weird thing like, well, this person has this opinion. And my opinion may be different. I'm have to make decision bad or good, right or wrong, because the brain likes to do simple things. But we know nothing in life is really simple. Even me making coffee in the morning, it's not simple, I can spill at any point, I can pour the beans into the kettle, that's boiling the water on accident, I do press pot, French press coffee. So you know, I've got some steps that maybe that's the breakdown right there. But like I can, I can fail and making coffee six ways to Sunday. So things are not even coffee making isn't even simple in life. But so, but the brain likes to try to simplify things into you know, binary. And that is something that if we can peel back the onion a little bit and say I don't have to make a decision on someone's opinion, I can just let that be, then it can give us some freedom to let those opinions go. And so with that, our next episode is going to be about decisions and decision fatigue. So these two topics kind of fit beautifully. But I want to but before we get to next episode, I want to just kind of start to close us out by focusing for a moment on where we have gotten external voices that have played into our own. So for example, a lot of times in life, I've had different mentors along the way that gave me new perspectives and helped me think through how I was looking at something and gave me the gift of an alternative response, action or perception. And it's one of the most beautiful gifts that can be given. And actually feedback is also a beautiful gift. I think we should totally do a podcast on that, right? Because someone cares about us enough to actually take the time to take the potential heat of giving us feedback. That's a frickin gift. That's better than you know, that's more care than someone's like, oh, I don't really care about that person. I'm gonna get to tell them that they've offended everybody. And they didn't even know it and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever that game is, you know, so. But that voice right, Barb, I'd love to hear a little bit about mentors in your life and how you curated a different perspective, a different voice and what that's been like for you.

Barb  19:42  
Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is early in my career, I went to work at IBM, which is a wonderful company and was one of the, you know, early tech companies. And it had a very structured way of, of molding people. You know, this goes back, you know, when there were things like sort of dress codes in the corporate world. And, you know, those are not so strict anymore, but they still exist, right? We all know that you want to fit in with people. And I remember looking at various people, particularly women and saying don't want to be that want to be that don't want to be that. And, and my perspective on all that now is, is that what I did was I, I cultivated conversations with the people that I was resistant to, and that, you know, the people that I, the women that I thought were sacrificing something of themselves to be to fit in in that world, I decided I wanted to understand why and how they were doing that, without necessarily taking it on for myself, my first reaction was, I don't want to be that I don't want to interact with that person. Then as I got to know the person, I realized, Oh, they've made certain decisions for them. And I can actually understand them and listen to them without having to become that. Because when you're particularly I think when you first start having mentors, you're like, oh, how can I become that person? I admire that person. Whereas the real mentoring teaching relationship is I'm you I'm, I'm myself and you, were you, and how are we exchanging information to make, both of us have a richer life and experience. And that's sort of really how we curate those external voices and internal voices, without taking them on as judgment or as I

Cali  21:26  
Barb, I just want to call out to, there's like that formal mentoring relationship. And then there's also that in my world, I have surrounded myself by people who have perspectives that I admire, and I respect and people that know, things that I don't know, or know more things about certain things that I don't know, but want to learn. And it's really fun to have those different conversations throughout my week. And I really invest in those relationships, because it's important to me to spend time and be present in those relationships. And absolutely, you are one of them, you know, you're one of my clarity sisters, and my you know, you have perspectives. And though we see a lot of things, similarly, we have a very different lives, and very different experiences and learning about your life and your stories, again, with anything, take what works, leave what doesn't, but being able to share in those types of conversations, helps my mindset grow, without any judgment, that I should be like you or be like your life or comparing, like, my life's not like your life, then it's blah, blah, blah, none of that game more just listening to the robustness of that story, the beauty of your story, and enjoying the conversation and the ride. So actively having people in our lives that can be clarity, sisters, and brothers and family is really important to growing, learning and healing. So I want to call that out as well. And, and then sometimes, maybe I don't know, someone that is in that world, or that realm of something I want to learn or know more about. And I listen to podcasts, I listen to podcasts, you know, I love just a beautiful example. And it's in our list for season four Brene Brown, she's got an awesome frickin perspective Brene Brown has, and her research and her authenticity is lovely. And so when I want to learn more about the studies that she does on vulnerability, shame, and guilt and healing, and clarity and living with a whole heart, I can tune in and have that voice become part of my own inner dialogue and how I might look at some of the things going on internally. So that I'm not just here doing it all in my head and trying to, you know, be the patient and the therapist kind of thing. So we don't have to know the people is my point.

Barb  24:15  
100% Absolutely. And I mean, from from however you get your information as a child, I've read books, I read a lot of books and you know, you learn things from from autobiographical and biographies and fiction and history and all those things. And of course, you're not going to agree with history, but you can still learn from it, and have you know, a perspective and have it enrich your perspective. So it's a very good point. This has been, I think, a great conversation, to talk about how we start to make conscious decisions about what we bring into our mindset and what we bring into our environment. And it will sort of help follow us into next episode where we're going to talk about this decision fatigue, because we're called on to make so many decisions in our lives daily, and how we can learn to, you know, not waste our decision making capabilities by being in judgment and being triggered, then that will help us better curate all those voices that participate in our lives and also excited about hearing, like clarity, fans reactions and comments on this episode and on any other episodes that you might listen to or want to re listen to. We really appreciate all the sharing we appreciate the likes and appreciate reviews, please share our podcast with the people that you care about or the people who you think and the people who you think might be helped by it and might find some use in it. That's what keeps us alive as a podcast. We want to keep being able to bring all this cool stuff to the to the surface. So please support us by leaving us reviews sharing, commenting, and overall supporting us social. As always take what works for you. Let go of the rest, lighten your load and be well