Cutting the Mind Drama Framework with Jennifer Watson

Jennifer Watson explains how the cutting the mind drama framework changed her life professionally and personally. She will be guiding participants through this model in the upcoming The Confident You - Beach Retreat. 

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Transcript

0:00

I'm Jada Willis and this is the Back to Business podcast made for business owners, CEOs and high achievers that are ready to leave their BS excuses behind, get more out of life and see business growth like never before. Let's take the road less traveled and tackle the hard. Are you ready to get back to business. I'm joined today by one of my favorite humans. I'm not joking. Jennifer Watson is a powerhouse. She is a leadership coach. I mean, I may bend her ear probably too much with my issues, but she's also a VP of HR. Most importantly, she's one of the guest speakers in our upcoming retreat, the Confident U Beach Retreat. So let's welcome Jennifer Watson. Thanks, Jada. You're one of my favorite humans as well, so this is fun. Yay, you are. I mean, our synergy just speaks for itself. I know that we're not here to talk about each other this time. But why? How can you be so fun? Lovefest. Lovefest, we're really good at that. If anyone else wants to listen to our other episodes, please feel free. It's just ongoing Lovefest. But you are really talented, and I get to say that from a place of I've been able to watch you in action. We've met, I mean, are we coming up on a year anniversary yet? We're getting close. We're getting close. And you just, you really are an amazing professional, but one of the things that you offer is this upcoming session that you're going to offer to our participants. So can you just tell us a little bit about the session that you're offering and what it is and all that good stuff? Yeah, so the focus of it really is how do you take a business problem that you probably face every single day and use this framework, which I've named Bingo, to really process through it in a meaningful way so that you can structure your thoughts and not just get caught up in the day-to-day putting out fires and then feel like you're not actually dealing with the root issue. Oh, wow. So, yeah, that's kind of the overview, but there's a lot that goes into it. So you just tell me how deep you want me to go. It's cutting through the mind drama. Am I saying that correctly? Yes, absolutely. So why is that the name? And I can give a few reasons, but what's the title all about? Yeah, so before we started, I told you that I was laying in bed last night from midnight till 3 a.m. running through the list of things that I had to do and all the things that had to go along with it. And I think that's the epitome of how our brains work. Every day we have 60,000 thoughts that go through our brain and I bet that number surprises you because most of us don't think that is what we have going on. All of our thoughts are unsupervised for the most part. I like to equate it to like that really annoying roommate that you had a lot of the times, you know, leaving college or after college who, you know, always has opinions about something, always wants to tell you what to do, but you really didn't ask for their opinion in the first place. That's how I think about your mind, is it's always running, it's always going, whether you want it to or not. So how do you figure out how to use what your thoughts are in an intentional way and make it work for you? You're never gonna be able to do it perfectly, but how do you at least start to structure that a little bit? A long time ago, I learned the power of thoughts and the power of words. First I started with the power of words, and then what's really popular right now is to talk about the power of thoughts. Now, what's neat is, what you're saying is we can put a structure to this so we can essentially supervise our thoughts. I like that, unsupervised thoughts. I'm an overthinker. I'm like, self-proclaimed. Hi, my name's Jennifer. I'm an over thinker. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. I'm an over thinker, and with that, I can go into these like spiral moments of if there's a problem. So I was talking to a CEO recently, and she's like, I'm playing whack-a-mole with all of my problems with my business. So with that, what's fun about that is that, and then you can start thinking and obsessing about the problem, and then it goes down this like, oh my goodness, this spiral. And then you even kind of like make up stories in your head. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we all have our version of how everybody else is processing the things around us. When that might not absolutely be true. So I think we have these ideas in our head about how everything is going or what is actually happening. And I think, I don't know about you with the overthinking, but nine times out of 10, I feel things, like I feel my chest getting tight before I know I actually have a problem, or before I actually know I'm getting stressed. And so how do you identify those moments when you're doing the whack-a-mole to say, hey, I'm feeling something right now, I need to use this framework to really process through it as opposed to like, you get to the end of the day, you have no idea what you accomplished, you're stressed to all end, and you haven't really solved any of the problems. So it's like identifying those triggers for you to say, okay, this is when I know I'm getting to my threshold or stressed, and then how do I really process through that in a meaningful way so that I can solve the problem as opposed to just pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. That's so powerful. powerful and I really wish maybe I had this structure at the beginning of starting a business and you know now I've sold my business but it's still going to be extremely helpful because I you know I think I've gotten a little bit better and about you know processing some of those triggers that you say but I think let's take a different lens of what happens whenever we're not intentional at all in supervising our thoughts. I love that comment, what you said. But what happens is, I mean, in my opinion, poor decision-making. You make emotional reactions that maybe are not even rational. You're always going to, because of how you were brought up, because of where you were raised, because of thoughts that were put in your head before you probably even remember, that is what is always going to come to the forefront during those unsupervised thoughts, because that's how your brain's trained. Like the military, they say you always fall to the level of your training, which is absolutely true. So why wouldn't you train your brain to have a better first initial thought? And so the way I think of it is with every problem, you have an immediate thought. And the only thing that you can change, you can't change a business problem, you can't change a circumstance, you can't change a screaming kids in the background, you can't change a hundred people asking for you at one time. What you can change is what you are thinking, which will then change how you feel, which will then change your outcome and your actions. So the only thing that you're doing is pausing in the moment to change the thought that comes in your head. And that takes time, and that takes intentional thought because otherwise you're gonna always fall to exactly who you are programmed to be based on your background. That's just how your team is. Key of what you just said was programmed to be. So what you're also saying is that we're reprogramming. Absolutely. That's gonna be a big part of what you provide participants in the Confident U Beach Retreat, right? Absolutely, and I think when you go through a session where you are realizing what your program is, nine times out of 10, you're gonna say, I don't like all of that. There's some of obviously that we love and we ignore about ourselves, but there is something that you're probably thinking you initially think that you don't want as a part of your programming. And so yes, this session at the retreat is to teach you how to reprogram your thoughts so you get the outcomes you want. When you have unintentional thoughts, then you get to the outcome and you're like, I didn't want that. That's not everything, and parts maybe, but that's not what I want to be or where I want to be or how I wanted that to happen. And so once you realize that and you're able to pause and process it, sometimes you do it after, but this really will help you figure out in the moment, how do I change my actions, my thoughts, my feelings, so I get a different outcome? Because that's essentially the only way you're going to make a difference for your future. Exactly right. And the people around you. I want to kind of use myself as a guinea pig here, is that I got to admit, I can go from zero to 100 real quick. And I've gotten a lot better and it's through intentional work and being very thoughtful about my actions and what my output is, right? But I found out that one thing is that whenever someone questions either my integrity or my toxic character, now I can deep dive into all the reasons on why, but most people would I'd be pretty upset, right, if that's in question. But you're telling me that with this framework, I can even break that down further. Maybe I don't go from 0 to 100. Maybe I even go 0 to 50. Yeah, I'll tell you one of mine. Exactly, and I'll share one of the things that I worked on. So when I first was a leader, I was raised that home was home and business was business and you did not mix the two and so my problem was that I found that my team wasn't sharing who they were with me and Of course through some work. I realized that it's because I wasn't sharing I had this programming that I had to be a certain way at work and I was still myself But like I didn't share anything about my family my kids what I was going through what I was working on at work, anything like that. And so I had to really take a step back and say, okay, I'm getting a team, my outcome is I'm getting a team that is surface level. Is that what I want? It's not what I want. Okay, so same team, different outcome. I want the same team, I have the same people. I want a team that's engaged, connected, feels like they can be their authentic self. So what do I change in the middle? I need to change me. I need to be more intentional about what I share. I need to be more intentional about what I'm working on and my struggles and who I am. That was the only thing I changed. And literally within three months, the engagement from my team was 180 degrees. And it wasn't inauthentic that I was word vomiting all the time, but I started to share like, hey, I'm not understanding this because I'm not strong at looking at the numbers. Can you explain this to me? This is something I'm working on, so can you take the time to explain it to me?" And just that vulnerability helped my team to be more engaged with me. So all I did was change my way of programming and thinking about the conversations. That's it. So that's also an example. That's so interesting. Well, okay, so flip side, we're just going to share our problems. But one thing, how I relate to this is that, I say that person, 0 to 100, well, a lot of entrepreneurs are very fast-paced. If you look at the disk profile, very D-oriented, very dominant. That means we move very quickly. So that being the case, I don't think that I have the same value for folks that were, again, follow disk, it's more C. They are more analytical in nature, or it's a slower approach. But I think that whenever I start looking at even how I thought and how I viewed those individuals and those team members, it helps me to create the pause. So it's really the power of the pause, right, that is then looking at, you know, all the things I think, feel, and trying to make it a holistic picture instead of, I mean, I'm not the expert here on this roadmap, but that's how I relate it. Well, and I bet something so interesting, Jada, I bet you found value in people that function similar to you. So I bet you connected with them because you felt like they already had the same values, they function the same way, which is so human, right? Again, your thought was these people get stuff done because they function like me, because I get stuff done. When that might not be the case, so taking that moment, that power of the pause to really reflect and say, is this how I want to be showing up? That's incredible, and I bet I can't imagine all the outcomes that you've seen change since you really started focusing on that. That's right. So from a thought perspective, it led to judgment, it led to different hiring decisions and performance review. Literally, if I had your framework, we'd step it back to say, all right, well, how do I process this thought? And then how does that relate to what's happening? And I see from a business standpoint. So what we're talking about is really the meat in the middle. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's so interesting because to the point about mind drama, I bet, before you really started, your brain feels like those scribblies on the middle of the page where you can't even figure out where it starts and where it ends and where you should even start processing. And so I think the great thing about doing this work with someone who has worked through it or who has helped people through it is they're able to guide you. Because at the beginning it's so hard. You're like, no, no, no, that's not the thought. And then you write it down. You're like, oh my gosh, I have this thought. This is crazy. I never would want that. That's just how it is. And that's kind of the spiral that happens. So getting with someone or a team or anyone who can help you start that process and just to recognize it is always the first step. And then you're able to do it on your own as you get better at it. Well, thankfully, our participants will have this safe, judgment-free place of how to process you as an expert guiding us through, expert Jennifer Watson, guiding us through how to cut that mind drama. And that's going to be, I mean, I know that even though I've done some of the work here, there's a lot more. There's a lot more to do. It never ends. I'll tell you, I still, like, I literally have a post-it that sits on my computer that says, bingo, B-I-N-G-O. And whenever I'm feeling like super anxious, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to write it out. So I've been doing this for a long time and I still use the framework when I'm feeling out of control because I just think it's constant self-work and you always are discovering new things. You can work the model with the same business problem 10 different times, with 10 different thoughts, with 10 different outcomes. Exactly. And it's all just deciding what you want. So it never ends. I hate to say that, but getting started is always the hardest part. It's the practice, but you're going to get better. Never mind. And that's big. I mean, there are so many people walking around that don't have the tools. They're really just they're overthinking the going to the spiral. They're not living from a intentional Place tend to a thought place and and that's that's a bigger problem. So I do agree getting started Yeah, I've shared with you before that I am obsessed with sales and marketing. I just enjoy the process or psychology of it so whenever I start thinking about Retreats such as ours. I start thinking about ideal avatar ideal profile. Who is this really for, right? And so I wanted each of us to give an example of the first person that pops in your head of, for this session, who do you think is the ideal participant? Yeah, I think the ideal participant is someone who is in the middle of their career, who is kind of on the edge of breaking through to that next level, you've obviously gotten rid this far because you're a wonderful individual contributor who works their butt off and can do it on their own. But you're about to go into that next level, which takes a different skill and different mindset. So I really think that that person who is about to break through to management or has just started management is probably the best place. Now, I want to say that with a disclaimer because I guarantee you 90% of leaders have never done this work. So, just because I'm saying that as the ideal profile, I think everybody can benefit from this, but I do think pretty much anybody who feels overwhelmed by a problem on a daily basis, which I know doesn't necessarily zone in, but I had to throw that in there because I feel like it's so important. No, absolutely. And then whenever I think about this session in particular, I start thinking about the CEOs, the business owners, because you know the folks that are, I mean, well you stayed up all night as well, but I mean like non-stop problems because they're in the weeds of the business and need to take a step back, but they're not being intentional with their thoughts. They're not really just spending the time understanding their thoughts and what they're also creating around them. And so, and here's the really, really good news. We're both right. Well, I want to add one thing to that. I think for both of these people that we just described, they cannot afford to not come to this retreat because the trajectory that you're on right now is not sustainable. It's just not. Unless you take a moment for yourself to really dive into this, you're never going to break the cycle of stress, of overwhelm, of sire putting out every single day of whack-a-mole. You're just not. You have to do this. It will change every part of your life. I can guarantee that. 100% agree and I let out a really big sigh that probably our audio only listeners will be like yeah I feel that. I feel it on a very deep level. This is 100% relatable and like my wish is I want to get this to the masses. I really really do. Now unfortunately we only have a few spots left in the Confidential Retreat and so I'm gonna we're gonna link that at the bottom as of course your information as well You're LinkedIn profile because I need I want everyone to understand that you were just you're just as powerful for us at bare minimum they have to connect with you that to follow you and You know, you're also by my side. I'm not I Where you see me you're gonna see Jennifer We're the dynamic deal. That's what we say. Okay, I want to go in free. Love it. So with that, and I also I have to I have to send you a special congratulations because I think I heard recently that you you just got engaged. I did. I did. I got engaged. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. And I know this is gonna sound like a plug but it's not. But I promise you like I would not be with this wonderful man after divorce with two children if I had not started working on myself. That was a life-changing thing for me. And so the engagement is so exciting. But my coach, I called her and I was like, I would not be here if it was not for you helping me work on my mind. So that was my first call actually. So I know it's so lame. But leave it with that. That's a really good point though. I mean, like it impacts your personal life professional life, and I mean you as a person, but you bare minimum you feel better Oh gosh, I mean I've ever been in years We can talk about this forever, but unfortunately we've reached our time, and I can't wait to see you I can't wait to see you in South Carolina September 17th through the 19th. If anyone else has listened to this and you, I mean, you just can't wait to meet Jennifer Watson. Have her guide us through just cutting the mind drama. I can guarantee you just this session is worth the entire retreat. But good news is we have several other sessions and it will be life changing. Thank you so much. Thanks.