EP # 216 - Rewire Your Brain to Stop Working Against Your Business Success

Are you your own biggest obstacle to business success? In this game-changing episode, Maggie reveals why your brain's survival instinct is sabotaging your entrepreneurial dreams—and exactly how to rewire it to work FOR you instead of against you.

Discover the hidden mental patterns that keep ambitious business owners stuck, plus a proven 4-step process to transform self-sabotaging thoughts into success-driving actions.

What You'll Learn

• Why your brain fights your business goals (and it's not your fault—it's biology!)
• The survival vs. executive brain conflict that every entrepreneur faces
• The thought-feeling-action-result cycle and how to interrupt patterns that don't serve you
• Real client example: How changing one thought about presentations generated significantly more business
• 4 proven steps to build self-awareness and redirect non-serving thoughts
• The "future self" technique that creates the ultimate shortcut to your biggest goals

Key Insights

🧠 "We have to put intentional effort into having the whole of our brain work for us, not against us"

🧠 Your brain's default wiring prioritizes survival over success—but you can train it for success

🧠 Without self-awareness, you can't redirect your brain or influence your perspective

🧠 The more you practice the 4-step process, the faster you achieve your goals

The 4-Step Process to Rewire Your Brain

Step 1: Build self-awareness—pause before decisions and recognize your thoughts about circumstances

Step 2: Identify which thoughts serve you and which don't—redirect the ones that hold you back

Step 3: Take action from your new, more serving thoughts and feelings

Step 4: Practice consistently—the more you do it, the easier it becomes

Real Success Story
Hear how one client transformed two identical presentation opportunities by simply changing her perspective—resulting in significantly more business from the presentation she almost didn't prepare for!

Your Next Steps
Ready to stop working against yourself? Start with Step 1: Build self-awareness by pausing before your next business decision and asking, "What am I thinking about this situation?"

Want to accelerate your results? Book a complimentary consultation with Maggie to discover exactly how coaching can help you master this mindset and achieve goals faster. https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call

Resources Mentioned

🎧 Binge the Diamond Effect Podcast: 3+ years of episodes to help you think differently as a CEO

📅 Book Your Complimentary Consultation: https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call

Connect with Maggie

🌐 Website: https://stairwaytoleadership.com

📱 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-perotin-business-and-leadership-coach/

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggie.perotin.s2l/

Transcript

EP 216 - Making your brain work for you not against you

Audio Only - All Participants: [00:00:00] Mindset plays a critical role for every business owner, CEO in business success. How you think as a leader of your business really affects the decisions you make and therefore the actions you take, and through that, the results you create in your business. I talk about mindset here on this podcast quite often, and this episode is.

Another nugget for you to take and use in order to scale your business. Welcome to Diamond Effect Podcast, episode 216, where today I wanna talk about how to use your mind for you, not against you.

So let's start from the beginning. Why? Is our mind sometimes playing against us, so our dominant. Default wiring at our brain is survival. Our brain wants [00:01:00] to keep us alive and keep us safe. Therefore, for example, that's why it doesn't like change. It is scared to do anything new, anything that it doesn't know what it is.

Because whether it's true or not, the brain thinks if we go into the unknown, into the new, if we change something, we're gonna die. And that's where the self-sabotage happens. So we have an executive function of our brain where we dream, we have ideas, we are creative, right as human beings. And that part of the brain has vision, has mission, has dreams, but it's not a dominant part of the brain. So therefore, that part of our brain pulls us forward, wants us to have an impact, to create an amazing life, to make good money. At the same [00:02:00] time, the dominant part of our brain that controls most of our days and functions is scared to do what it takes to achieve those dreams.

It doesn't want to do those things because most often those things mean change. Those things mean learning new skills and with that, at first, not being good at it and failing a lot, and that part of the brain doesn't wanna do it. That is why as human beings, we're always drawn to quick fixes, magic solutions.

How can I get what I want without doing what's necessary to get what I want? So sometimes when I coach my clients and they realize this. tug of war, back and forth, right? Part of our brain wanting and dreaming and feeling the fulfillment and joy of life through it. And that primitive part of the brain just want to keep us small and safe and survive that sometimes we're [00:03:00] playing against it, right?

And. What I make my clients realize that we have to work at moving our brain towards the perspective and thinking that serves us. We have to put intentional effort into having the whole of our brain work for us, not against us in order to achieve big, scary and ambitious goals.

That's so true, especially in entrepreneurship because in order to be a successful business owner, a successful entrepreneur, you have to do things that you've never done before. You have to jump into a lot of unknown, take certain calculated risk, learn new skills, and not be good at them first go through failure and disappointment over and over to get to the point where you succeed, where you win, and that's hard to do.

So [00:04:00] I hope that this episode will make it a bit easier and help you with your mindset and think as a CEO of your business as an entrepreneur, not as an employee, and a scared one to be. So let me explain how as human beings we function and what happens. Okay? So we have circumstances in our life, things that are happening, whether because the result of our actions and decisions, or whether because we don't have anything to do with them, but they're happening.

And then those circumstances, we have thoughts about it, right? The point of view, how we think about the circumstances affect how we feel, what kind of feelings and emotions come up in our bodies, feelings and emotions. It's a chemical reaction that our body feels.

In response to what the brain is thinking, if you well, [00:05:00] and then those feelings drive our actions. Okay? So when you hear that, oh, you can't be feeling anything and you have to take your, you take actions, cold Turkey, that's not true. We always. Have a feeling first, and that drives certain actions.

And that feeling in response is to what we think, how we know it's true. There've been studies done. On human beings whose emotional part of the brain was damaged due to an accident or some unfortunate event. And those human beings, even though they remembered everything and they could communicate well, and they could dream and be creative and so on, they could not function day to day because they were unable to make decisions and they were unable to act,

to decide what they were gonna wear this day, where they would go and so on. So they couldn't function because [00:06:00] it's, that's how it was discovered. That is the motions that drive our actions, right? So how we feel drives what we do. And of course, what we do creates the results we have in our businesses and our lives.

So the key thing you wanna understand is that we can choose what we think about different circumstances. We don't have to go with the default that our brain suggests first, because that default usually most of the time doesn't serve us. It's based on our past experiences that maybe weren't great, maybe some beliefs that we developed most of them up until we were seven.

So from zero to seven, which were mostly the beliefs of our surroundings, our. Parents, teachers, and so on. And a lot of it doesn't serve us, but when we're self-aware, we can choose what we think. That then changes how we feel about things and [00:07:00] then changes the actions we take and therefore the results. So let me give you a concrete example from one of my clients that was coaching a while ago where similar circumstance.

Provoked different thinking for her about it, and it would've created very different results. But of course I coached her on it. So she ended up, she ended up doing something that served her. So my client. Was preparing for two presentations. One was for collaborative, for some strategic partners that she's already worked for, and one for some new potential strategic partners that could turn into clients.

And funny that if you think about, okay I'm preparing for two presentations. It's the same circumstance. It could be different people, but the act, what I need to do is the same. I need to prepare to talk to. Two different group of people about what I do, [00:08:00] and yet with one of those, for the group of new people, she was super excited, couldn't wait.

Was preparing for it, and for the other group that she's already worked with, she could not get herself to prepare for the presentation. She was procrastinating, what was different was the way she thought about those two presentations.

In the first example, her thinking was not serving her. She was thinking, okay, I've already presented for those people. They never listened to me. Nothing ever amounts to this. What's the point of me preparing? It's gonna go all to waste? So because she was thinking that way, she was feeling discouraged.

Disen gate, and therefore her actions was, she was procrastinating, wasn't preparing, wasn't putting her best effort in order to prepare for the presentation as supposed to with the new people. She [00:09:00] was like, oh, it's a new opportunity. They don't know what I do. I'm excited to teach them. Maybe something will come out of it.

We could work together. My business can make some contracts, money, blah, blah, blah. So she was. Excited, expecting some great results and therefore was really preparing well, putting her best effort. Now, I challenged her on that thinking because. What she thought. Didn't rly mean that this was the truth?

When we present in front of new people, we don't know if any business will come out of it, it could be that it will, but equally it could be that it won't. So her excitement might have been a bit exaggerated because our brain loves novelty, like loves like new things and learn. Even though I said we don't like change, but it likes, oh, new shiny objects, let's just say, right?

The brain like to get distracted. New shiny object and it was getting [00:10:00] overexcited where the chances of her doing business with them were 50 50. We didn't know. Whereas with the previous group she's already worked with and gotten a lot of business. But because her brain was expecting more, it was diminishing the results she's already had.

It was saying, that's not enough. They know about me. They should be giving me more business. So it was almost forgetting that she already did the business. So my challenge for her was to change the thinking to this is another opportunity for me to educate those people on what I do.

There are new people who don't know. The more I educate them, the more business they give me. This can turn to even more business. So once she changed that perspective, once she saw the difference and understood. Not only she changed how she felt about the first presentation, but also she got some [00:11:00] creative ideas.

How differently can she prepare and what else she can talk about to the people who already knew her. And guess what? That one presentation actually generated way more business for her. Were the third, the second one. Didn't amount to anything right away. It did like later on, but not right away. And.

If, however, if she didn't change how she thought about it, maybe that would not have amount to more new business, right? Because she did, she wouldn't have come up with those creative ideas to talk about her and what she did differently to talk about her value differently. So then those people who are there wouldn't have come up with the opportunities to do business together.

So how we think about circumstances that are in front of us about situations that are happening is key to us to do what it takes to achieve goals, to overcome challenges that are in front of us to achieve goals.

How we think about challenges is important [00:12:00] because either we give up, oh, I tried to achieve my goals, or I tried to do this in my business. I, encountered some first challenges and many people give up, but how you think about it can help you keep going, pushing through, and not giving up, right?

How you think is allows, for example. Not let the fear stop you. So here is four steps that I want to leave you with in order for you to practice how you think about things in order for you to use your brain for you, not against you.

Step one is you need to build self-awareness. So you need to allow yourself to pause before you make decisions, before you take actions in your business. Like that client, when preparing for the presentation to really understand what am I [00:13:00] thinking about that particular circumstance. So for example, I just recently had a conversation with a client who is really resisting. Being present on social media, building a personal brand and using social media to the benefit of their business, right? We were diving deep into what are they thinking about social media that is creating that resistance. This feeling of resistance, the feeling of

I don't wanna do this. And then of course, the result is they're not utilizing the power of social media to grow their business. So you want to be able to recognize when you are in front of an important decision and for whatever reason, you're not making that decision or you're not taking action on something that ultimately you would like to.

So you're. Executive brain is telling you this is good for you. You should do it, and somehow you're not doing it. [00:14:00] You wanna develop a self-awareness to understand why. What am I thinking about that circumstance that creates the resistance that makes me not want to do it. The more self-awareness you build, the more power you'll have in influencing your perspective in creating the perspective that serves you.

Without self-awareness, you can't redirect your thought or your brain, right? You can't direct your brain how to think about it because you're not realizing what you're thinking. What is your perspective? So once you build self-awareness, then you practice recognizing which. Thinking serves me and which doesn't, and the one that doesn't, how can I redirect it to something that does?

And this is not about some delusional positivity and always being positive, even if times are hard and so on. But this is to use the power of your [00:15:00] brain, the power that's within you as a human to achieve things you wanna achieve. Because thinking of. This is a waste of time. I don't wanna do this presentation because nothing will amount to it definitely doesn't serve you and you're losing on a valuable opportunity.

But thinking about what else can I do to educate them? I've already done business with them. Let me see if I can do more. Let me see. Let me be curious. What else can I do?

That then drives a very different action now in the beginning to build that self-awareness, to create some different perspective. It's hard to do on your own. That's why coaching is so powerful because I as a coach, can spot nons serving thinking in my clients very fast, even by the way they say things.

I see that the way they think about circumstances not [00:16:00] serving them, and I will coach them before they ever will, but the more we practice that together, the more self-awareness they develop. So that's why coaching is very powerful to develop the skillset.

Then the third step is of course, is once you practice, number one, self-awareness. Then two, redirecting the thinking that doesn't serve you. Two, the thinking that serves you better. Then taking action from that thinking and more serving feelings, right? So from. Thinking I can do this, for example, I can figure it out, feeling motivated, feeling grounded, and, ready to act and taking actions from that place, right?

So the more you do, 1, 2, 3. I'm self-aware. I redirect my thoughts. If there, if I have the ones that don't serve me, I feel better about it, and then I take action. The faster you go, the faster you [00:17:00] achieve your goals.

And depending on the challenges you're dealing with your business, sometimes you need to go through that pattern multiple times in order to take the action that you really can stand behind. I have a client that you know is having a difficult team or team member situation within her team, right? So she's in that one two pattern, one to one, two.

And like being self-aware what she's thinking, trying different perspective of what she would do. We're brainstorming a lot back and forth so she can choose of course, the best course of action for her business. But sometimes

when the situation is more complex and there is some emotional attachments or some, habits that we've developed over time, it might take. A few sessions, even in coaching or if you're doing it alone, some [00:18:00] time to back and forth to really take powerful action from the new way of thinking. But the more you do it, the easier it gets, right?

The practice makes master, the more you practice, the easier it gets. And to think the seal to think from. More powerful perspective and therefore take more powerful actions to create the desired results. And once you become proficient at it, then the next level of that is putting yourself in your future self shoes.

What we did with my clients on 10 x expansion retreat and really understanding who am I? After I've achieved certain goals that I have, how am I thinking? How am I feeling, what actions I'm taking, and then taking those actions now, that is the ultimate shortcut. Even though there are [00:19:00] no shortcuts, that is the ultimate shortcut to create the biggest goals and the best life you can and the biggest, best business you can.

Now before we finish, I wanted to tell you that this podcast, diamond Effect has a lot of perspectives that you might not have. So if you listen to the episodes you have over three years, if or more worth of episode, and learn how you can think differently as a CEO of your business. It'll help you find more serving thoughts, right?

It'll help you find more serving perspective from which you then can assess your circumstances and decide what type of actions you wanna take. So even if you might not be ready to coach with me. You can binge the podcast and get a lot of [00:20:00] value from that, which I really encourage you to do. So subscribe and then start listening.

And if you're ready to speed up your results creation to really scale your business and shorten the timeline, then coaching is very powerful. And especially my top co formula and how I can help you, I can tell you exactly when we meet in a complimentary consultation that you can book through the link in the show notes.