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Untapped Confidence
Untapped Confidence is a podcast for high-achieving women who want more than just surface-level self-improvement; they want to feel powerfully secure in who they are, no matter the situation.
Hosted by Raffaela Marie - speaker, mentor, and creator of the STRENGTH Method - who overcame chronic skin picking, selective mutism, social anxiety, and depression not by waiting for confidence to appear, but by building it with intention from the inside out.
Each episode explores what’s really going on beneath the surface when your confidence shrinks and offers science-based tools to help you let go of pressure, self-doubt, and performative patterns.
Authentic confidence isn’t one-size-fits-all. It isn’t about becoming louder, tougher, or more polished. It’s about becoming more you, feeling at home in yourself, and learning how to live, lead, and simply be from that place.
If you’re ready to reclaim your voice, your presence, and a deep sense of peace - this space is for you.
Untapped Confidence
76: Why Mindset Doesn’t Work And What to Focus on Instead | Blair Dunkley
We’ve all been told to “change our mindset,” but Blair Dunkley makes a strong case for why mindset doesn’t actually work in today’s world and what to focus on instead.
Blair has spent decades researching behaviour and creating mind models: practical, flexible tools that help people move forward, stop self-sabotage, and build resilience in the face of life’s challenges.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why “mindset” is outdated and how mind models offer a more effective path
- How to stop focusing on fixing weaknesses and instead build on your strengths
- A simple but powerful shift from judgment to evaluation that changes everything
- The role of labelling emotions and why it creates more clarity than certainty
- Practical exercises to build confidence, adaptability, and real resilience
This is a conversation filled with fresh perspectives and tools you can immediately apply in your own life.
Blair's resources:
🌟FREE Mind Model Masterclass
🌟Book - Ultimate Mind Hacking: 16 Highly Effective Ways to Smash Unhealthy Mindsets by Blair Dunkley
🌟FREE Weekly Training on Mind Models
🌟FREE Profiling Session with Blair Dunkley (book via LinkedIn)
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🌟Learn more about STRENGTH and apply to join us here!
🌟Join the FREE 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge
🌟Access the 3 Core Skills here!
Raffaela Marie is a leading coach in holistic healing from chronic skin picking and other body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs). Through her skin picking podcast, social media, and coaching programs, she provides guidance for high-achieving women and others seeking recovery from skin picking. Her approach goes beyond surface fixes, focusing on the root causes of BFRBs, emotional healing, and holistic recovery.
Listeners and clients learn strategies for overcoming skin picking, reducing urges, building resilience, and creating lasting freedom from body-focused repetitive behaviours. By combining tools for confidence, authenticity, and emotional well-being, Raffaela helps people achieve long-term healing and transformation.
This is episode 76 of Untapped Confidence. So many of us have been told to fix our mindset, to work on your mindset when things aren't working. But what if that's not the solution? What if changing your mindset is actually not going to help you to get you to where you want to go? What if there is a completely different new approach that will help you more than changing your mindset? In this episode, I sit down with Blair Dunkley, the creator of Mind Models, to explore a completely different way of understanding our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. We talk about why mindset is outdated, how to build resilience and why focusing on strengths is far more effective than trying to fix your weaknesses. Blair shares powerful stories from his own life practical tools you can start using right away and an empowering perspective shift that will change the way you see yourself and your growth. Blair Dunkley is the founder of Rewiring the Mind and creator of Mind Models. With over 40 years of experience as a behavioral researcher, profiler and trainer, blair has developed powerful tools to help people break through blocks, self-sabotage and create lasting change. His work has supported individuals, teams and organizations worldwide, always with a focus on practical strategies that build resilience, adaptability and empowerment.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you can imagine. Maybe you're getting the feeling this conversation is so incredible, so engaging. There's so much I personally took away from it myself and I'm sure there's so much value you're about to take away as well. If you don't know me yet, my name is Raffaella Murray. I'm your host, I'm a confidence coach and I've spent the past three years supporting incredible, high achieving women heal from something called dermatillomania or chronic skin picking, and the path that I've found that has been the most effective is building authentic confidence real true confidence, not bravado, not ego, but real, true, authentic confidence that really allows us to be who we are in any given situation. And every person I interview on this podcast, every conversation I have, everything that I share with you is to help you to deepen into yourself, into that confidence, to get to know yourself better and to gain practical tools to help you on your journey. With that being said, let's get into this amazing episode. What is profiling and what might people take away from this kind of information?
Speaker 2:Well, that's absolutely great because there's a lot to pull from profiling. It depends on where the person wants to be profiled, what area of their life. But okay, I'll go back to the beginning. Go back to the beginning. Um, I was working at well life skills colleges as um the person in charge of research and development at the college, and that was behavioral research. Um, so, fundamentally I I did research for six and a half years on stuff called question concepts that turned into mind models.
Speaker 2:Question concepts didn't turn into mind models. They're one of over 100 mind models which is not based on mindset. It's got nothing to do with mindset. In fact, I am an anti-mindset kind of guy. If people are taking mindset training, I actually did get trained up in mindset and my mindset broke when my dad went into a coma. He was in a coma for 14 years and so it didn't work for me.
Speaker 2:I have science now that supports that thesis, but profiling sorry, it's a long way around to say, okay, what people can get from profiling is quite simply this they can find and get affirmations, not affirmations per se, but affirming language that shows them where they're stuck, how that presents, and if they're interested, I can give them mind models, almost prescriptively, to say okay, this is how you can get unstuck and move forward. So if you're having relationship issues, I can work on those. If you're having let's say you're self-sabotaging, that can be overcome with this process. Well, first of all, I will probably be able to say this is what I'm hearing in your language pattern. You're probably self-sabotaging here and here.
Speaker 2:If you go, yeah, I am, then if you want to overcome that, I can do that. However, sometimes people just want to know what can you read about me? How can you get me? Because a lot of people just want to be understood and a lot of people are not understood and so when I work with them and they feel understood, that's a huge relief for them and they go yeah, somebody saw me, like I was seen, and who for who and what I am, and that's exactly what I wanted to have happen. So it's a range of different things. It can be from stuck states to acknowledgements of where people are. Also, a lot of the time, it's telling people what they're actually doing. That's highly effective, because people see their own strengths.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:We're our own greatest critic, right yeah absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I hate to say this, but it's something that might pop up in your profile. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe, yeah, yeah, it might, yeah. But I think that's really powerful. Just that giving people the opportunity to feel seen and understood just that in itself is so powerful. It really it's.
Speaker 2:I think it's such a gift to be able to give to someone it is, it really is, and then saying, okay, here are your strengths and here's how you might improve on them, as opposed to here are things that are broken. This is how you fix them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what? It works way better if you build on your strengths, not on your weaknesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's speaking to my soul. I so agree with you and I really think it, just because when we just focus on the problem and looking for solutions, it just reaffirms the fact that we feel like we're broken, we need fixing, whereas if we focus on what strengths we have and how we can improve on them, it makes us feel like we're already whole, like there's just improvement to be done, there isn't anything that needs to be fixed, and I think that's a really beautiful mindset shift. Not that you're really into mindset, and I think that's a really beautiful mindset shift not that you're really into mindset, but I think there's a beautiful perspective shift. Thank you, let's put it that way really appreciate, yes yeah, yeah, it really is a perspective.
Speaker 2:It's not mindset, it's a perspective. Yeah, because you know what? Though?
Speaker 1:what you believe, it's how you perceive yes, that's true, that's true, and I'm really intrigued by your perspective on mindset. I love to hear more about that sure?
Speaker 2:um, well, first of all, I was trained up um decades ago in mindset. Um, the history of mindset came out of the industrial revolution. It's an antique, literally. Okay, it's been glossed up and mindset 2.0 and you know new mindset and everything else, but honestly, it came out of the industrial revolution and that came out of because people needed to move people from the People, needed to move people from the agricultural mindset or way of thinking, the lifestyle of that, into factories in Europe and primarily England, but mostly Europe as well. So as the Industrial Revolution happened. But we're so many revolutions or we've evolved so far from that so many revolutions or evolve, we've evolved so far from that.
Speaker 1:Yet we're hanging on to this structure called mindset because it came up in the um 17, 1800s, like that's how interesting and and did it come up then to help people to cope with the harsh conditions that they were living under, like the severe neglect it.
Speaker 2:actually it's more I hate to say this insidious, but it is a little bit more insidious because Quick break On the topic of mindset and perspective shifting.
Speaker 1:This is actually a key part of the work that I do to help people heal from chronic skin picking. It's changing our perspective on what it means to heal. It's changing our perspective on how we heal because a lot of us are stuck in a rigid mindset. We're trying to use willpower, we're trying to use tools, we're trying to avoid, we're trying to just make it go away. And if that worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now, I wouldn't have started a podcast on this topic, I wouldn't have built many free resources to help people in the healing, I wouldn't have built a program to support people on the deeper journey in healing from chronic skin picking and building their confidence and connecting more deeply to their authenticity. None of that would have been necessary if willpower and rigid mindsets worked in helping us heal. So if you want support in shifting your perspective, in opening your mind to the possibilities, in exploring your capacity to grow and learn and change, then I invite you to join my free seven-day challenge.
Speaker 1:This challenge will open your mind. It will change your perspective on how we can heal from chronic skin picking. It will empower you and inspire you, and not only that. It will give you tangible tools that you can implement today, this week, that will help you create long-term lasting results in how you manage chronic skin picking and how you feel about it and how you respond to the urge to pick. It'll help you to feel like you're moving forward. So come join us in the 7-Day Healing Loop Challenge. You'll find the link in the show notes. I would love to see you there. It is totally free for the time being. It won't be free for much longer, but anyone who joins now will get lifetime free access. So go ahead and click on the link in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there.
Speaker 2:Factories needed to recruit employees, and they needed to get some employees that showed the leadership potential and brought them in to become managers, and so they needed to adopt a more for lack of a better word, I'm going to use a class structure, sort of like an upper class mindset of how people believed, so that how you believe was important back then. So if you believe you're poor, you'll stay poor. Well, that belief could operate as a belief, and that belief would impact behaviors. Yeah, that's not exactly how they work. Now, if you do good research or look this stuff up with neuroscience or whatever, that's not how it actually physiologically works, but it stuck, and it stuck well, because people could control people with what to think. I'll tell you what to think. You do it, you know. I'll tell you what to believe. You believe it, okay, and you, your life will be fine right.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of like getting people to fit into a cog in the machine, like this is your space in the machine and it's like yeah because you know back in the day as well.
Speaker 2:This is where the whole thing of clarity versus certainty. People wanted certainty back in the day. That's when certainty actually worked. Because you said cog in a machine. Well, if you had a cog, a broken sprocket on a wheel, just one of those gear teeth thing broken off, you could look at it and for certain, yeah it was broken because it was broken.
Speaker 2:But you know, on my phone Eight billion of them, one of them fries, which they do from time to time. You don't know which one, so you throw out the whole thing, but you can't see that it's broken without a scanning electron microscope. You know. You can't know for certain that it is or which one it is, because it could be a bunch but it is broken. But you don't have certainty. But you can have clarity, right, and in today's world, with the way that we process information, we need clarity, not certainty.
Speaker 1:So what we need has changed. We're still using an old model.
Speaker 2:And how we think and process. The old models have to be updated.
Speaker 1:Right, that's really interesting. So it's updating as the societal cognitive function, I guess, increases or expands or evolves.
Speaker 2:Evolves, so do the models that we use Evolves. It doesn't expand, but it evolves substantially as well. So I mean, we are not who we were before. Our brains are evolving. Our language is actually evolving. How we do things, like we process everything through question concepts A who, what, when, where, why and how. That's one of those six question concepts. But where is evolving? And who is evolving as well, by the way? Uh, as we speak? But you know, with robots and um ai and all the rest of it, that who is going to evolve and is evolving?
Speaker 2:right now, people are naming their, their ai, like they're naming their chat g pts, you know, like calling them steve or whatever, like I talked with steve, giving them personality, that's right and so yeah, and you can select a personality or tell it to have a personality, so you know it's, it's becoming personified, so it's becoming person, like, but before it was where, like when I was, this dates me, like I am 70, so I should be dated, but anyway, best before you know anyway. Um, the point being here is I got a cell phone, but my cell phone was a brick suitcase side size thing that went in my car. So car phone basically, and when I picked it up it was one of those old phones that was like.
Speaker 2:You know the type that you see super old school, yeah old school, like that sort of thing you know yeah yeah, you see it in movies. That's was literally in my car, so I had a car phone. You know like you pick it up that's so funny yeah I know and so like something that doesn't fit in your pocket. No, it couldn't. It was, I don't know, a lot of pounds, maybe seven, eight pounds, in the trunk you know.
Speaker 2:So these things were were bricks that were put in there um, but they worked and, and at the end of the day, it was amazing to me to have that. But the problem was I was married at the time and my wife called me up and said Blair, where are you? And it was oh my God, how do I not lie to my wife but I'm now driving than my wife. But I'm now driving, I'm going on Stony Plain Road. I'm passing, you know, 103rd, 104th Avenue, like you know, on and on and on. And I'm telling her this. And she said well, have you gone past Safeways? Yes, well, when I started I hadn't. But by the time I figured out how to tell her where I was, I hadn't. And she said can you go pick up you know some milk and bread? And I go, yes, I can, but you know, like I, I my mind blew a few. Yeah, because I didn't know how to answer her yeah, yeah, it's a totally different way of thinking.
Speaker 1:I've seen that as well. There's when phones first became. A thing I've heard of is that people didn't know how to talk on the phone. It was very robotic. They didn't know how to have a flowing conversation. And now people can have very flowing and easy conversations on the phone because we've adapted, we've evolved to know how to communicate properly or clearly through a telephone, and now the next stage in that is these kind of conversations where we're looking at each other and we're having a conversation like this because I definitely, but this is around the world simultaneously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So we're evolving with changes as well, and you're in Switzerland.
Speaker 2:Yes, so there you go Like hello, yeah, hello, from the other side of the world.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. And just bringing it back to the mindset, what stands out to me and what you were saying is mindset sounds like it was bred in a time or it was needed to help people cope with hostile environments. Now, though, we're all Well, not necessarily I wouldn't say it's hostile.
Speaker 2:I would say a complete shift of an environment we never had like. If you go back to well, I wasn't there, that's beyond my time, but just by a little bit.
Speaker 1:So a complete shift in environment. What do you mean by that? Is that the industrial revolution? Absolutely so you had to. How to cope with that change?
Speaker 2:how, how to cope and how to yeah, change how people thought right like what they thought it functioned. What they thought about was planting and building, having crops and everything else. Now it was making something. They were very resourceful because farmers are very handy but they have to fix things and they have to do this. But they would have a different task every single day. Now they have to get the farm workers coming in there and doing the same task day in, day out, every single day, Right?
Speaker 1:and that definitely requires a pretty strong mindset shift to make that happen. So then now, what do you call it now?
Speaker 2:Because mindset like set it to do repetitive stuff over and over and over again. We don't need our mindset, we need mind flexibility or we need models to be able to adapt, not set things in place.
Speaker 1:Right, so that's where perspective comes in. So how would you describe the way, rather than mindset, what is it that we need today?
Speaker 2:We need flexibility, we need adaptability, we need resilience and we need mind models, because we need to have models to adapt rapidly and stay resilient.
Speaker 1:Can you give examples? Sure For those One of the most common mind models.
Speaker 2:I package these in three, so I call them the three E's, because the first one is a letter E in each of these. So the first one of the three E's is effective versus ineffective. And, by the way, I'll send you a link that you can give to your listeners if they like, or they could just jump on a website and get it for free of mine, and tell me what you want and I'll do it. Okay, so that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Appreciate that yeah so anyway, um, it's a little five-page booklet on the three years plus an hour and 20 minute sort of master class, so people can figure this stuff out anyway first one is effective and ineffective. Effective versus ineffective. By the way, it's based on learning. As adults, we use compare and contrast learning. So if you have something to compare one thing against another, that's what we're doing here, with figuring things out. So effective versus ineffective as opposed to right, wrong, good or bad. So if that's.
Speaker 1:That's where the flexibility is coming in. Well rather than black and white, good and bad, right and wrong it's exactly becoming more flexible.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not just more flexible, it's more accurate for where you are. Is it effective? Like even if something isn't perfect. If it's not perfect, you'd say that's wrong, you know. But if you look at it as well, that works mostly. By the way, my research shows you can swap out, works for effective and doesn't work for ineffective. So it depends on where you want to play with it. But so does that work for you and you go. It sort of does Okay. So there's more. There's that flexibility as opposed to that.
Speaker 2:Well, not completely, so it must be wrong. If it's not perfectly right, it's wrong, so that's that adaptability as well, coming into that as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you there's and resilience and all kinds of things. And then we come into externally verifiable versus internally verifiable. So if we have things that are externally verifiable, it's somebody else can see what we see, so you could record it, you could, you know, tape it, you could do whatever. And and it is now externally verifiable, and with it being externally verifiable as opposed to internally verifiable, internally verifiable it's just your opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can get really lost in that, can't we as well? If we're just internal, it's just, you get caught in a loop and go a little bit nuts, a bit crazy, things get blown out of proportion. And then when you finally say it out loud, you're like, oh, that sounds a little bit unhinged.
Speaker 2:And then you get perspective that's right, right and back to our word of the day perspective. Yeah, and once you've got you know effective and external, then you can go into an evaluation.
Speaker 2:Now some people go effective, external, but then they judge it and they just beat themselves up because they threw the baby out with the bathwater and say this is not working for me. I don't like this. This isn't perfect yet, that's all. Their perfectionism is getting in their way and I go hold it back off, slow down. But what if you evaluated? And what if you started evaluating and just started with something that worked? Oh well, you know the funny thing is with evaluation, there's always something that works when you evaluate, always 100% of the time, it's never 100% negative. How do you know? Because the first thing that you did that was effective is you evaluated, you looked at it and everything else could be screwed up and ineffective. But this thing that you're doing is you're now looking at it so you can make an improvement. It's one of the other mind rules.
Speaker 1:And that's as well. It's called what sir FAIL.
Speaker 2:F-A-I-L FAIL First Attempted Learning.
Speaker 1:And what I really like about that is that it is so empowering because, again, it's looking at where can I move forward. It's looking at what is available. It's not closing doors, it's looking at where is there an opening, and I feel like it just makes that way of thinking really makes us feel capable.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because we're not looking at all the ways we can't do it. We're focusing on, even if there's just a couple of ways, even if, even if there's just one, just seeing one way. This is my one way that I can move forward with this.
Speaker 2:Well, even if it's part of one way, you've got a little piece that you already know. This is a piece of the puzzle and I can now find other pieces of the puzzle and move this forward, so long as I remember to hold on to this piece, put it in my pocket. Then I can find another piece, put it in my pocket and then get another piece and then see if any of those three pieces fit together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because now we're in, and when you?
Speaker 1:do. Sorry, so I was going to say and then over time, when you do that, over time you collect a lot of puzzle pieces and then that's when you look back and you realize you've changed a lot. You've come a long way. That's when you look back and you realize you've changed a lot. You've come a long way. Things are so much more different than they were and it wasn't. This is what I say a lot to my clients, that it's not going to be one big bang and everything's different. It's going to be lots of little things that come together over a period of time and then you'll just have a moment on a random day where you'll think, wow, things are really different than they were before. But there's not really. We can have these big aha moments, but they're usually not the ones that create the big change. They just help us to continue in the direction that we want to go.
Speaker 2:It's usually a summation of a lot of little changes. When you get that whoa, I see it all. It's just like the last piece of the puzzle dropped in. It's done. It's amazing, it's there Like aha, I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good way of putting it.
Speaker 2:But you need all those other little pieces, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:This has been a really interesting conversation on mindset and I honestly, I'm going to change the way I talk about it. I'm going to use perspective because I like that. I like that. It's much more flexible. I think, it's much more forgiving and it's much more helpful than feeling like well, I need to change a mindset, I need to reset my brain. It's like well, it's about learning, like you said.
Speaker 2:And being resilient, adaptable and flexible. If you focus on those things, life tends to get easier. And yet when you focus on mindset, you're telling your brain okay, we behave to the meanings of our words and mindset is mind set. In other words, it's not mind flexibility, it's mindset.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, and do you want to set your mind and try and live to that standard when that standard is changing so rapidly, daily, in fact parts of days, man? I mean, everything changes so fast and stuff.
Speaker 1:So I mean, and that's yeah, and it does change so fast. And when you live through the mindset it sounds like that's a very rigid way of living and it will be hard to really thrive, especially in modern society, with that rigid way of thinking. It works momentarily very hard to adapt, yeah, yeah very hard to adapt because you're living with it.
Speaker 2:It works. In one moment, like I had a great mindset for about three years and my dad went into a coma and my mindset broke. And I went back to my trainer and, like, my dad was in a coma and she told me, like I was training this at the college, you know life skills and mindset and some of my mind models and you know, she told me, blair, you just don't believe enough. That's literally what she said to me. You don't believe enough enough. That's literally what she said to me. You don't believe enough. And I knew at that moment that if I told that to our students at the college with 80% of them being potentially suicidal, somebody would die.
Speaker 2:Therefore, this mindset bullshit is broken. It is a flawed system. It does not work when you need it most and mind models were developed that you don't need to believe in them. You just have to do them, you just have to use them and they work. The first time you use it, it it'll work 80% of the time. After that it approaches 100% and it's just user error. If you don't do it effectively, then fine, then redo it, test it, but evaluate it and you'll probably fix it yourself for the mind model. You'll have enough data points to shift yourself.
Speaker 1:That's really incredible and you have a really powerful story behind that too. You don't mind me asking can you give a real life example of how that resilience, adaptability and flexibility, how that shows up, how can you recognize it? How did that help you?
Speaker 2:Well, sorry the response. I was going to say when, hasn't it Okay? So, um, I'm going through a lot in my life right now. Okay, so how would you see me? What kind of guy am I to you? Happy, sad, depressed, what what's? How would you see me?
Speaker 1:Good question. I would see you as very what's the word? Very open, very caring, very there's a word I'm looking for charismatic. Thank you, yeah, okay, and from from the, the way you bring yourself forward, you seem like you're generally quite happy with yourself and your life. Of course, beneath that, we all have our stuff going on, but that's what I get from you, and you're very passionate as well. I get you're a very passionate person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am very.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've gone through in the last um, two years and a little bit. I've gone through cancer, I've got, I'm going through, a hip replacement due to the radiation treatment that was in happened to me when I went through my cancer operation. Um, I'm I'm overcoming that and I'm still showing up and doing things the way that I would normally do them. I'm overcoming it. I did my 30 minutes of exercise this morning, worked on that, met with a client this morning, got an introduction to a billionaire. We'll see where that goes and you know, you know stuff like that. So life is good, but I could focus on what isn't good, because I could. I could spiral down. Where do I want to put my mind? Where do I want to put my attention? How do I want to manage myself? Well, I like the mind models to be able to say what's effective. Well, everything I was doing is effective. How was my exercise this morning? I'm, pardon me, moderately effective. It isn't where I want to be. But if I evaluate myself now and go, how am I doing eight weeks post-hip surgery? Quite well overall. Is my hip perfect? Hell, no, I still need a cane and doing that, but I'm not using crutches. You know I'm moving forward. So I evaluate and I notice the incremental improvement that I'm making, and do I expect it to just go up all the time?
Speaker 2:No, yesterday was not a great day for my hip, so it was. There was more pain with it than I would have liked. So what did I do? I went for a walk anyway to see how far I could get reasonably with moderate pain, minor, well, mild to moderate, and about two thirds, in fact about halfway through, the pain went away because it's muscular. It's not in the joint, because the joint is now metal and plastic. So that's not the issue. The issue is the muscle tissue around the hip replacement.
Speaker 2:And so I take a look at what is not what I want or what I would like to have. I take a look at what is and say what might I do differently in my life about this right now? Rfn, okay. And then I'm back in control of my life. I don't feel out of control. I've had lots of things that happened to me, like my dad going into a coma for 14 years. I could not control that, but that was the impetus for me to create mind models. You know, I needed to understand myself, I needed to pivot myself so that I can do that, and then I could either self-sabotage or have a pity party, or I could say yeah this is sad, and describe my feelings, acknowledge my feelings and go okay, is this where I want to live or what might I do differently?
Speaker 2:And, by the way, there's two different types of feelings. Nobody else does what I do here. My research shows that there's two fundamental ways we process our emotions. We process them through what I'm feeling. You name and label it. And, by the way, if you name and label your feelings and go like when I was a little boy, my Uncle Joe took me out to the Back Forty and I live here in northern Canada, so the sun goes down very slowly and doesn't get dark until like 10.30, 11, well, 10.30-ish at night, quarter to 11 at night. It's dark by then, but we went out to get the cows and it started getting dim. So headed out at quarter to 10 and I walked out there. But I was a little boy and I heard these rustling and we're going through the woods and to the back 40, to the pasture, and I'm scared and I'm grabbing my Uncle Joe's hand and going.
Speaker 1:Uncle Joe, uncle Joe what's that sound?
Speaker 2:What's that sound? I said shh, watch down there. And a little mouse scampered across the path and he said that's that sound. What's that sound? I said shh, blair, watch down there. And a little mouse scampered across the path and he said that's the sound the mouse makes.
Speaker 2:Oh, uncle Joe, that's amazing. Then I heard this screech, this amazing scream which just freaked me out Uncle Joe, uncle Joe, what's that? And he said, blair, that's a screech. And it swooped down, but it missed the mouse, thank god. And then I heard coyotes yipping, but I didn't know what they were. I was like five or six years old five years old and I heard these howlings and, like you, sound pretty spooky when you're in a forest and it's dark out, or getting darker out and you hear that and you go oh Joe, what's that?
Speaker 2:You know, that was the sound that the coyotes make, talking to themselves. They're howling. Well, coming back the other way I heard the same coyotes and I would proudly say, uncle Joe, those are coyotes. And he said, yes, blair. Then I heard the screech owl. Sure enough, that was the screech owl and the mouse scampering. I could name and label what was causing that stuff and I wasn't afraid because I named and labeled what I heard, what was there, and the fear left. So when we name and label things, life can change One of the mind, models, naming and labeling. And if you do, that to your emotions.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, so powerful, so simple and so powerful, but just let it be and don't attach a story to it, like a lot of people say. Well, I feel that you blah, blah, blah and all of a sudden there's blame, and projecting all of their emotion onto somebody else yeah, that's why.
Speaker 1:And then it just spirals and it builds and it turns into this monster.
Speaker 2:You got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And the other person asked.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and first of all, I love the analogy that you had to go with that, because it's just it, really it's.
Speaker 1:It brings, it makes it far more tangible to really understand what was actually happening when we do that. And I also really just want to quickly return back to what you shared about your cancer journey and your hip replacement and I first want to say I really appreciate how deep and how open you're willing to go in this conversation and I appreciate you sharing so much of yourself and it's also I'm glad to see as well that you're doing better in relation to how you've probably been, absolutely. And yeah, and what stood out to me is because I think people get resilience mixed up. Sometimes. They think resilience is just grit and drive and push through, shove it down, see how much shit you can take without breaking, push through, shove it down, see how much shit you can take without breaking. But the resilience that I see you demonstrating in sharing your story is you were working through these really challenging times that you didn't have control over, but you were also able to still find joy and peace in your life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that's to me real resilience.
Speaker 2:That's what resilient is. You weren't surviving?
Speaker 1:You weren't. Yeah, you weren't surviving. You were still thriving, despite the challenges that you were facing Bingo.
Speaker 2:We all have challenges all the time. You know, I don't know when is your life perfect? I mean 100% perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like. For me it's like almost never, if not like. I have moments, you know, a birthday celebration and everything's like yeah little moments. Or, you know, a birthday celebration and everything's like, yeah, little moments yeah, or you know something like that um, you know the perfect hug, the perfect kiss, the perfect meal, whatever these are like fleeting and poof, they're gone yeah but resilience I I can live with in resilience all day, most days.
Speaker 1:And it makes those days far more enjoyable that you can actually relax into them and get the most out of them. Because what you're describing there, with those little moments of perfect, so many people are striving to have that, just that. That's their ultimate goal, to have that. And when I have that, I've arrived. That's the arrival fallacy I forget it's been something, is the guy who coined it but this constant feeling of I'm not there yet because I don't have this perfect feeling. What you described is those are just little moments that happen, but everything else in between our life is generally not going to be perfect most of the time exactly but I don't want to be perfect yeah, it's finding peace in the chaos through resilience yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't want perfect all the time because it would get boring really fast. Happiness is generated Like there's a lot of science around this and neuroscience around this that if you are having this perfect, whatever, all the time you don't feel that happy, your whole thing starts going down. How come?
Speaker 1:Quick break If you've already done a lot of work on yourself. Already you understand yourself quite well, you understand your triggers, you've read a lot of books, you've possibly been to courses, already had therapists and coaches, you listen to podcasts on personal development, and yet you're still struggling with skin picking. So what's missing? Where's the gap? Let me tell you that the work we do in the 7 Day Challenge is designed to help you to close that gap. There's a lady who recently completed this free 7 Day Challenge and this is what she had to say.
Speaker 1:At first I thought inner critic, mindfulness, self-compassion I already know all this. None of it felt new. Yet here I am, still picking. I wondered will this actually help? But by the end of the lessons I realized that while I understood these concepts intellectually, I had never actually applied them to skin picking. More importantly, I didn't know how to use this knowledge in a targeted way for my own struggles. So, even though I was familiar with the ideas, I lacked the practical application to skin picking itself. That is what resonated with me the deepest.
Speaker 1:The 7-Day Healing Loop Challenge is incredibly powerful because it has been created in the context of skin picking in a way that helps you to shift your perspective on it. It allows you to apply what you already know in a really practical way that makes sense. It's filling that gap of having the knowledge and then also implementing it into your life in a way that works. So if you resonate with this incredible lady's words, come join us in the 7 Day Healing Loop Challenge. It's free for the time being. Anyone who joins now gets lifetime free access.
Speaker 1:You'll find the link in the show notes, so go ahead and click on that. Come and join us. And also, just to say, this challenge isn't something that's super overwhelming and really time consuming. It's a very gentle challenge, one that can very easily be fit into a busy schedule, because most of the people who join this challenge are busy, they're high, achieving, they're driven, they've already got quite a lot going on in their life, but they also are passionate about personal development and growing, are passionate about personal development and growing, and so this challenge is designed in a way that is gentle, it's practical, it's deep and it's powerful. So click on the link in the show notes and come join us in the seven day challenge.
Speaker 2:Because your brain, from a neuro peptide point of view, produces neuro peptides and what you wind up doing is you work on a mostly a 60 to 90 day moving average. If you know what like, look it up on a moving average but your neuropeptides sort of go on the last 60 to 90 days. If you've been up or down, your brain sort of lags, whatever it is. So this is your normal, but you're going into a depression. Now if you start coming up and and you start noticing now you're really happy, but you were down here, now you feel really happy, but your happiness comes up. And if you get up close to this, then you're not as happy because you're back to normal but it's your normal now exactly and so you need more to be happy.
Speaker 1:That's okay. I just want to just to make sure the listeners have grasped that. So, essentially, we need these ups and downs because our normal is where we find the, where it would be the average of our ups and downs. So it's the, it's the middle point. So that's how we can know that we're really happy is because we are above average. We can know that we're really sad because we're below average. But if we are constantly super happy, then that's going to become our normal and what used to make us really happy just won't cut it anymore.
Speaker 1:We need more this is kind of this is essentially sounds like addiction, basically.
Speaker 2:Yep Usually more, more, more.
Speaker 1:it's the consumer, consumer, the consumer um, ah, what's the word the consumer? I guess you could say trap. That's not the word that I wanted to use. There's a word for it, but it's consumerism essentially yeah, it's more, more, more or consumer culture yeah, yeah, exactly, and that they.
Speaker 1:you probably heard of this, um, but they did a study. This is quite old now. Rat paradise Does that ring a bell? Someone created a rat paradise where every single need of the rat was catered for Right, clean, they just had, they had enough food and water and they had friends and they didn't have to do anything but exist. And the rats in that rat paradise they ended up kind of divulging into.
Speaker 1:I think they end up killing each other yeah rats, yeah, and the rats in the regular rat space, where they had to clean and you know they had essentially what you could, what you could call purpose. They thrived much more than the ones that were in paradise exactly.
Speaker 2:And the um, when you isolated one of those rats and gave them everything, perfect but and partners and they could go see each other and whatnot, but they had their own space and everything else, they actually lived shorter lives.
Speaker 2:They didn't live longer, they lived shorter lives very interesting because we need struggle in our life so that we have, like you said, purpose, yes, but purpose, um. People go. Why am I alive? And I hate that question. Or why am I here? Again, it's what do you want to do with your time? What is your big purpose? Not, what is your big why? What do you want to do with it?
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I want to connect. I want to connect with people. That's my purpose. I want to share mind models with people. For me, that's it. I want to help people find their purpose and find connection. That's it.
Speaker 1:It's not big, but it's huge all at the same time so yeah, I really feel that and it's really it's very personal to you very which makes it huge yes yeah and then it's it's identifiable, repeatable and duplicatable, yeah, and that gives me a lot of pleasure.
Speaker 2:So I can help people feel and be better, like, perform better, be able to handle it. Okay, I've made. I can't say I've made, but I've facilitated individuals going from very low amounts of money to a lot of money, low amounts of money to a lot of money. Like going from, you know, um doing like 400,000, 40, 40 in his business for 400,000 a year and 40,000 take home. To now I don't know what his take home is, but he's doing in excess of 100 million a year and this is 17 years later. So, like he was in his, that's incredible, yeah, young, 23, 24, and now he's, 17 years later, um doing a hundred, uh in excess of 100 million in one of his companies and the other one he could cash out when it the time comes for half a billion. Um, I'm going he's probably the first person I facilitated into being a billionaire, knocked on wood.
Speaker 2:Um, that's another young man who's 26. Same thing, you know, like he's um facilitate, like I helped him, he's already gone into multi-millionaire status, um, you know, and sold the company and building others and hired me to train other people his age to get their heads wrapped around with mind models, because he's been leveraged by the mind models. He wants me to leverage others, so that's what I do with him, um, and I'd like to get other clients that do that or other people that want to, but they're all in their 20s, you know, sometimes late 20s, early 30s, but they're all in that category and they need to understand how to think differently. They've got a great mind Don't get me wrong, nothing about their thinking, but they don't know how to structure, how they look at themselves and how they are in business. He was so stuck in self-sabotage and couldn't break out of it and second-guessing himself like crazy. Okay, he's running a $200 million farm at 24 with 140 or 160 employees.
Speaker 1:A lot of pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he is not a farmer. Okay, he is a tech guy. He's brilliant. He's got his own servers Like he's got he does. He's a software architect Like he's brilliant, and he can put things together and understand how to organize the farm, and he does that. But he doesn't have to know how to farm. He has 160 people that know how to do that. What he has to do is manage those people to get the most out of them and getting him to stop second guessing and stop self-sabotaging. I was able to help him do that in quite literally 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:I mean that's pretty incredible because that's, you know, self-sabotage, self-doubt, all that stuff. I think that's something that pretty much every single person struggles With. Anyone that wants to do anything a bit different, that's outside the norm, they're going to be hit with a wall of self-doubt and self-sabotage. I feel like it's kind of like a rite of passage into doing anything. If it's creative, if it's with business, if it's with I don't know your parenting style, if you're doing anything that is outside the norm, that people might judge you for, you're going to have to work through that.
Speaker 2:Correct On some level, but would you like to be able to stop the internal self-judgment that other people have put on you? Yeah, for sure, and would you like to? Know how to do that almost instantly with a few mind models and then being able to test it and check it so you can stop it. That's what I do. It's very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I do very, very cool what you do? We didn't profile you, though, like that pun no, I was literally just about to ask you. Okay, the conversation has just been so, so engaging, but yeah, do we have time? Do, do we have time? I'm good, I'm good too.
Speaker 2:I'll just double check. I'm not sure how long this takes. Yeah, I've got time. I've definitely got time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what do you want to?
Speaker 2:know about yourself. I've got. Oh gosh, sorry, my brain hurts because I've got. I like doing this when I don't know somebody, like 10 to 30 seconds, so that I don't have to throw out all this, this like big stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you've gained a lot of information now through the conversation and I go holy crap now I got to really work at it.
Speaker 2:I'll do it, but I mean, it's like so much easier because I just have to figure out the meta patterns and then apply those and make high probability guesses. That's what I do, okay, and I also have to learn how to get myself out of the way, which I've done, so I know my stuff, what's me and what's you, and then give you more or less based on your meta patterns. But now I have to really think about it okay, so you're picking the area you like you want me to talk about pick an area, oh, um, well, I guess.
Speaker 1:I guess I mean mean, like you said before, I think it'd be really cool to hear affirming things of the strengths that I have, but then also we're talking about self-sabotage, which is something a lot of people struggle with. So what have you picked up? Is that specific enough for you, would you like?
Speaker 2:me to be a bit more specific. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Or would you like me to be a bit more specific? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:One of the things that you do is like you're hot and cold on identifying your own strengths. Some days you can do it really easily and other days not so, because you sort of slide and you get self-doubt kicking in there because you haven't been able to test your process of are you actually judging yourself or are you evaluating and you slide into. Why did I do that, I wonder. And then you run down this little slippery rabbit hole of why, down this little slippery rabbit hole of why? And you try and answer that why. But it was to start it off. It was disguised, what well, you were looking for what? But it turned into why? Because you stumbled across feelings on there and that that feeling started going. That was, that doesn't feel so good. And then you go yeah, I'm wondering why. And then it just turns into mush and it's not there and you get mushy inside and it just doesn't work for you because it all just sort of goes. And then you just get really momentarily disgusted and then you try and shake it off and park yourself and move on like that. That's what you like, that's high probability, your model of getting, just parking it and then thing, let's drop that and let's start paying attention to what I actually know about myself and go back to what do I actually know, see, and then you flipped out of your why into a what, and you didn't know, because you didn't name and label what you did differently. You just did something differently, and so you couldn't stop it because you didn't know that you were stuck in your why, and so it's all this sort of subconscious mumbo jumbo that you play with yourself, and it messes you up unintentionally, but you don't find your strengths as consistently as you could. You're smart, you're intelligent, you're connected to yourself and to others, and you connect well with others. You are an introvert by nature, but you've learned how to become extrovert and get out there and meet people, and you push yourself sometimes quite hard to actually go out there and connect with people, which is great, but it's that self-doubt in yourself that creeps in and you go okay, how did that happen? Okay, so you know. You said we all have it. Yeah, we have. What we have to some degree, though, is do we know how to get ourselves out of it? Almost as fast as we get ourselves into it, and you don't consistently know how to do that. So that's a bit of a gap, but your strength is kindness, care and concern, focus on others. You do that.
Speaker 2:You also have a tendency to wear your heart on your sleeve and that has got you into problems before in personal relationships. And that's okay because that is part of who you are and you want to feel in those relationships and you want to share and you want to be vulnerable with somebody and around somebody. And you don't always evaluate them. You sometimes set your own um, you set your own expectations of what you think should happen rather than what's possible to happen. And so you know and and this happens a lot you know age range and whatnot.
Speaker 2:You look at building out opportunities and that opportunity is based on suppositions and hopes, dreams and desires and not necessarily on what is. And I'm not talking about you know, making things up. I'm talking about do you ask the questions to explore the emotions, but you don't. You try and observe the emotions as opposed to confirm the emotions verbally, so like getting other people to describe their feelings. This actually applies in both work and personal life. So you see somebody and you go.
Speaker 2:They have potential and you see the potential. You don't necessarily confirm the potential, but you see the potential. You don't necessarily confirm the potential, but you see the potential and you're not far off. But sometimes those people disappoint because you don't test the potential, you just perceive the potential. Just perceive the potential and, um, that perception is fine. But you know what I go. You know for a lot of things. I just want to try things out and see like I'm a big tester and I I'm not trying to judge, I'm just trying to find out what actually occurs, what happens, not trying to judge, I'm just trying to find out what actually occurs, what happens, and then share that and see if I am perceiving it the way that they perceive it. And if they tell me their perception of it is different than mine, well then I park mine and retest.
Speaker 2:That's what I try and find out if I still come back to the same set of conclusions that I drew the first time. Then, you know, I saw it effectively and they misinterpreted their behavior. But sometimes it's just me, so you know, maybe I can look at this differently and figure out a different way to take a look at it. So for you, you tend to take it personally and so it's a bit of your gap and you're slowly starting to get out of the what's wrong with me, into and what did I do to what happened? And look at what happened and say, oh, what might I do differently? You're smiling differently there. What's going on?
Speaker 1:it's. It's. It's really interesting because what, what you're saying is, I'm having things in my life come up in my mind like images, pictures that are reflecting what you're saying, and it's super interesting and I've been asking myself how, what, what in my way of speaking, in my facial expressions, have you seen that have given you that? Because I've got to say I do get caught up in the feels sometimes, but you are right that I can pull myself out of it and get back on track. There used to be something that I used to struggle with a lot I would spiral and I would just give up, I'd avoid, I'd isolate. That doesn't happen anymore. At some point realize like, hey, that's enough, I know what's happening here, let's get back on track. Sometimes it takes a bit more time than others, but I don't get lost or trapped in that kind of state anymore, even if it can still be very uncomfortable. And there were some other things you were saying, so with the getting caught in the feels and then so you're getting.
Speaker 2:May I may I interrupt that slightly when you get caught in your feels? Yeah, do you notice that you have now generalized your feelings and you're not naming and labeling them, and that's what you do internally.
Speaker 1:That's a good point, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you now have a ineffective off-on switch or on-off switch so you can turn it off switch, so you can turn it off. But as opposed to building a rheostat and having each like, like, each mark on on the where it is and go, oh, could you name and label those feelings and so that those feelings, when, instead of calling them feels because they're just body sensations but you're not naming, labeling what they are, because what you could do is turn those fields into data points.
Speaker 1:so, because that is information it just happens to be. What does? I'm really curious what you're saying. So if if I were to label what it is that I'm feeling in those moments. What does that then do? So what's essentially labeling them? Because you said there's this subconscious switch, but I'm not really aware of what's happening. So where does that bring the awareness in and what change does that make?
Speaker 2:Where does that bring the awareness in and what change does that make? When you get that rheostat and your feels named and labeled and you have a whole range of them, what that gives you is an early warning system, and it gives you the ability to start identifying yourself shifting far sooner, so that you can then pivot the conversation. You can then express what's going on. You can start exploring what's going on way sooner than having to shut down.
Speaker 1:What just stood out to me is, essentially, you're identifying a pattern, because everything's a pattern, basically, and so whenever we go into these, get stuck, or we go into these places spiraling, there's generally it's the same stuff every time. We're just maybe not aware of it. And so, by labeling, it's becoming aware that this is a pattern, it's recognizing it. And so, by labeling, it's becoming aware that this is a pattern.
Speaker 2:It's recognizing it Instead of calling it the same stuff, because that will force you to generalize it as the same stuff. Can we at least shift that to similar?
Speaker 1:Similar.
Speaker 2:Similar rather than the same, because when we call it the same stuff, we call it the same pattern as opposed to a similar pattern. If it's similar, there's got to be some differences, but if it's the same, we don't have to look for differences because it's the same. We know what it is and so that's part of you doing your off on switch arbitrarily, but now pivoting that to the same. Now that I've named my three feelings here, it's the same and I go no, and it's degrees of what you're feeling, and probably other feelings in there as well that you haven't named and labeled but that you're lumping all together and you're overgeneralizing, because we cannot change generalizations, we can only change specifics.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that when you get specific on what's showing up for you, what does that change? What happens then? Quick break. I forgot to mention that when you join the free seven day challenge to help you heal in a long-term, sustainable way from skin picking, you also gain access to my free private support group on whatsapp. This is a space where I send messages of motivation and support, and I also share every week a resource that will help you in your healing. Here's a few of the resources that I've shared.
Speaker 1:Recently, I created a post-picking sessions to help you to move through that heaviness with more grace so you can pick yourself up faster. That's something I shared a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, I shared a meditation to help you to break out of the rumination loop. So when you're stuck in your head and you're thinking about things constantly, this is one that I personally use and I find it highly effective. And the week before that, I shared a 60-second exercise to calm a racing mind. I also share practical tips and strategies to help you on your healing journey. It's a group where you can know that, whatever you're going through, you'll be seen, heard and understood, because everyone in that group is there for the same thing and it is a deeply supportive and inspiring space to be a part of. So if you want access to that group, join us in the 7-Day, and you'll be able to do that by clicking on the seven day challenge link in the show notes Lots.
Speaker 2:If you started feeling threatened or concerned or a lack of trust, pick one. All of a sudden you know you have a concern. Let's take the two extremes there, more or less or probably lack of trust and concern. So if you have a concern and or lack of trust, are they based on exactly the same thing specifically, or are they parts of the same thing, but two different ways of looking at it? And I go once you start sorting those things out, then you go oh well, the lack of trust is I don't know where they he, she is operating from. I could ask a question around that when are you operating from? What is your driver here? What would you like to figure out here? That may take care of the concern, but it may not, because how they're processing that information that, are they processing it effectively or ineffectively, or are they making a judgment?
Speaker 2:If they're making a judgment call, then you go oh, I see that it's their opinion, all based on their internal states and nothing is observed about me. It's about what they think I'm doing based on their previous stuff, which means they're being triggered by their past, but they don't have the ability to sort that through. So they're blaming me? Oh well, but it's not really me. It's their past, but we can't talk about it because nobody's identified it as anything. So now you have to go into your feels and just shut everything down, and then it sort of all brings everything back to normal. But it's not normal because we've had this experience where it wasn't normal, it wasn't where we wanted it to be, but we've just pressed down, squelched, suppressed all these feels and decided oh, I can just stuff it and move on until we can't stuff it anymore.
Speaker 2:And then it blows up okay.
Speaker 1:So then, what I'm understanding in this is is essentially, basically, as we know, emotions and messages they give us emotions about. They give us messages or information about the kind of information that we're taking in how we should feel about it or how we do feel about it, and by labeling them really really consciously labeling them we're able to gather more information so we can potentially have a different perspective and a more accurate perspective of our reality, rather than getting caught up in the emotion because we're not labeling it.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't operate that way. I personally wouldn't operate that way, but you can.
Speaker 1:Okay, what am I missing here? Because I'm seeing that by labeling it, you can understand, because it brings you in.
Speaker 2:So if you label, okay I'm feeling I'm not trusting.
Speaker 1:Right okay, I'm feeling. I'm feeling I'm not trusting right, and then that makes me then, with that understanding of that feelings, well, where is this coming from? That we can ask better questions, maybe have a better understanding.
Speaker 2:So where is, rather than just shoving it down is it coming from you or is it coming from them? Is it internally verifiable or externally verifiable? Are these feelings effective or ineffective?
Speaker 1:so are the feelings effective or ineffective?
Speaker 2:okay, yeah, are the feelings effective or ineffective, even if they're like I'm not, I, I, I don't, I'm feeling a lack of trust, okay, is that feeling effective or ineffective? A lot of times it's effective, keeps us safe, okay, so it's highly effective, just uncomfortable as hell.
Speaker 1:But highly effective.
Speaker 2:But sometimes it's not effective because I'm feeling lack of trust. Is that internally verifiable? Yeah, it is. I'm triggered to all of these things in my past where I've been hurt before. Da-da-da-da, all of this stuff, I didn't want to go there. Oh, okay, but are they actually intending to go there or are you thinking that's where you're going to go, like in psychological terms? It's referred to sorry, I just wiggled my desk but it's referred to as projection. But I don't like the term projection. Are you projecting this stuff on the other person? Yeah, you are, but what you're doing is you're seeing something from your past and you haven't named and labeled it effectively.
Speaker 1:That's all okay, so this is. This is. I feel like this is making things more simple in a good way. Yes, so, and I really I want to, I want to explain back to you what I'm getting from you also?
Speaker 1:so that the listeners can can also gain some more clarity. So when we feel a certain way and say we're not feeling like we're, we feel uncomfortable, that's probably the first thing we're going to notice I feel uncomfortable, I don't like this, I want to get away from it. Then, if we get curious and we can label what it is actually that we're feeling whether it's I'm feeling this, I'm not feeling like I can trust this person, I'm feeling misunderstood, I'm feeling attacked, I'm feeling embarrassed, I'm feeling anxious when we can label that, then this, what you're talking about here is is it internally verifiable and externally verifiable? So, internally is essentially, where is it coming from? Okay, past experiences and externally verifiable is is there something happening in life right now that can confirm this feeling is effective? So it's it. It's you're responding to something that is actually happening in real life right now, not just based on internal experience. Is this what I'm understanding?
Speaker 2:this is what I'm understanding correctly. And now you have to do one other thing and that is to blend it, because part of it is going in. Okay, when I was 15 or 16, my friend and I went to the mall on our bikes and riding back together and it was late in the evening and a little dark out and there was a gang of guys there my friend has a mouth on him, sometimes very sarcastic and this one guy, much bigger than both of us, was riding this little kid's bike and pedaling around and just fooling around and he shouts out push them pedals.
Speaker 2:And the guy took umbrage with the phrase push them pedals and came over and decided he was going to teach us a lesson you don't call me that Like you, don't talk down to me in front of my people. You know he was the gang leader and the top dog, and so, anyway, he punched my friend in the throat, which took him out immediately, and told us to get out of there, and we did. Fortunately, I mean, it wasn't much else. He wasn't going to beat the crap out of us any more than he already did, but he proved his point. He was the tough guy, okay, and so we got out of there, but that was that whole thing.
Speaker 2:Anyway, years later, I was in north africa with two other friends and we were approaching um, a alleyway. That was feeling very dodgy because the looking at us were looking at me, us the way that those other kids were looking at us when things were going not so good, and so I said I'm not going down here. I don't care what you guys want to do. You want to go down this alley. I am not going down here. My spidey senses are tingling. I ain't doing this and I go, okay. So I didn't go down there. What happened? Those two guys got mugged.
Speaker 2:Okay, I had enough experience that I could barely pull together, like it was after the fact that I recalled. I put the two experiences together after the fact, but it was somewhere in my subconscious that it was there that it did that I go. Oh, I know what this is about. This is unsafe. And I just said, my spidey senses are tingling. I'm not going down here, street smarts how come? Because I've been beaten up before. Well, I didn't even get beaten up, but that was it. But it came from somewhere and I applied it in the moment and I stayed safe. They didn't and they got mugged. Okay next, like that's sort of the thing to pay attention to, but it's externally verifiable but it doesn't see what you're saying internally verifiable in the moment, because you don't recall and you didn't name and label things.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, I had already started naming, labeling a lot of my feelings to get that sense of it. When you're calling your stuff feels, that's great, but what? What are those feelings?
Speaker 1:okay, it's really interesting because, you know, I, I can see, and I just want to point this out as well, again for the listeners. Yeah, please Is that in your story you had the feeling.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So that was internally verifiable, so you could identify the feeling. Internally, you understood okay, it came from that experience in the past. Externally verifiable is you saw similarities between the two experiences, the one that you were having right there in that moment and the one that you had in the past. So that could bring you a lot more certainty of what you should do in that moment which is a lot more clarity, because okay, no, certain a lot more clarity, a lot more clarity, okay I'm clear a lot more clarity.
Speaker 1:This, which you could feel more secure in yourself. Absolutely no decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah if it was certainty, then I would have bought into what my friends are saying, because they would have been able to talk me out of it okay, because I wasn't certain.
Speaker 2:Certain because, as you said, a lot more certainty. But if my friends are certain and call bullshit on me that you're and I can't name a label, I just feel it. But if I have clarity I own my clarity. They can't talk me out of my clarity because I'm clear, but certainty they can put stuff in my brain that causes me to doubt my certainty, right.
Speaker 1:I mean, if they're more certain than you are, then they can overwrite they win, overpower your certainty.
Speaker 2:That's right, but I'd rather be clear and go I can win.
Speaker 1:But if you have more clarity, then you can't be convinced.
Speaker 2:It's hard for people to top that when you have more clarity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, True, that's true, and what I'm hearing, and I'm curious what you think of this, what I'm hearing and what you're sharing is that sounds like intuition. Intuition is a combination of internal and external combined together.
Speaker 2:But I would argue, see, I don't exactly like I don't disagree with the concept of intuition, but right there, under this set of circumstances, I don't call that intuition circumstances, I don't call that intuition. Um, you know, even when it was back there, I called that unlabeled feelings and experience.
Speaker 1:So if I can name, what would feelings and experience?
Speaker 2:yeah, then I can very rapidly go. Oh right, I've been here, done that before, it's like I was in Edmonton Maximum Security, so it's experience wisdom as well.
Speaker 2:And you know, again, years later I was in Edmonton Maximum Security Institution during a lockdown and I was working with lifers and in Canada everybody who's a lifer has killed somebody. Okay, so I've got like 20, 25 people around me, everybody killing at least one person, and all of a sudden everything goes clang, the alarms go off and there's a lockdown and all the doors are locked. You cannot leave and you know we start keeping on doing the class that I was teaching in there and basically one of the guys about I don't know three, five minutes later said we should take Blair as a hostage. And I went really, had you guys planned anything? Come on, give it a break, because we got work to do here and had you planned it, you would have had me as an hostage in the first two seconds.
Speaker 2:And he said yeah, you're right, I just called his bluff and it just diffused the situation so fast Now on the drive home I just about peed myself, because what the hell would you just make?
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that I've been so intimidating.
Speaker 2:And you did that and like you just walked through, like how the hell did you get away? Like this is all the future events appearing real, type of stuff, and I freaked myself out. All my fear happened then because I took myself into the future F-E-A-R. Future events appearing real fear. Okay, we don't experience fear in the moment. We experience it when we're out of that whole thing, and I've been in lots of situations. But it's every time you project into what possibly could go wrong. That's where fear hits you.
Speaker 2:Like accidents, spinning out, like doing a 360 and then a what is it? A whatever 360 plus uh, uh, another 120, um. So flipping around and driving down the highway on block ice here in canada because it caught a wheel and it threw me into a spin, and then I'm driving at highway speed, spinning out of control, getting control, driving backwards on a freeway in a curve and missing traffic backwards. So it wasn't until I had pulled over. That's when I started to shake, because everything slowed down, because you know, that's what it was.
Speaker 2:Then I started freaking out, then I felt afraid, but in the moment I didn't feel afraid, I just did what I needed to do, just through, like watch the whole thing, steered in the direction, managed the, the skid, uh, handled the spin, stopped and got the vehicle going backwards. And then I freaked out and then yelled at everybody because a couple of my friends did not have their safety belts on you backwards. And then I freaked out and then yelled at everybody because a couple of my friends did not have their safety belts on you know. And then I mean I just stayed there and shook for the next five, ten minutes, you know, just letting the adrenaline decompress yeah you know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, those are the things, but the fear and and I've talked to hundreds of people about real things that they were afraid of like geez, this is going to be horrible. Some of the coaches that I've trained, two of them they have a book called Swept Away Becky Graff. She had become trained as a coach a year. Almost to the day her and her husband, tim Becky and Tim Graff, were celebrating Mother's Day and they took their two children that were three and seven at the time and they took them into their favorite place was to go camping in the Slot Canyon and there was a flash flood and they literally got swept away and both of their daughters, the three-year-old and the seven-year-old, got swept away by this massive wall of water, massive wall of water, um, and they, becky, could not hold the kids, like, because she got. She just about died too, you know, um, but she didn't. Unfortunately, tim found both their children's bodies and uh, oh, that's devastating yeah, but their marriage is stronger than ever.
Speaker 2:They survived all of that by applying the mind models and tested and figured out how to be okay without any traditional counseling at all. And people ask them how do they do that? Well, they apply the mind models and that's one of the things they actually wind up doing is helping others, um, who have you know, survived tragedy, how to cope with all of the crap that they're doing. And that's what mind models are all about. It's coping, problem solving and success that are identifiable, repeatable and duplicatable.
Speaker 1:That's what they do and that's you know, it's so incredible that you can live through something like that, which is, I mean, unimaginable, and then to be able to find your way through that and then help other people. I think that's just people that do that. They just it's so needed in this world, because there's a lot of horrific stuff that happens, and just knowing that there's some people in the world that can actually that understand, that can help you. I mean that's an incredible gift to be able to give to people.
Speaker 2:And you know they talk about. Becky talks about in the book she wrote Swept Away, like how mind models help them and how they and how Tim used a different set of mind models in the same situation than Becky did, because Becky processes differently. Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 1:Because of flexibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and our brains are not built exactly the same way. We have different needs at the same moment because we're different people. If somebody tells you do what I do because it worked for me, I go bullshit. That's what I got taught back in mindset. Okay, because it worked for me, it'll work for you Bullshit. My brain is neurologically hardwired differently than yours. It doesn't work exactly the same way. Similar, yes, but not the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can potentially take some things away from how someone is doing it, but you've got to find your way of how it works for your brain.
Speaker 2:But if you have mind models, you have models to test against, I know. And so Becky would use one like effective versus ineffective and then basically Tim would go out there and work at describing feelings, Because when Becky's stuff was there of is this effective or ineffective, she was here but he needed to work with coping with the feeling of all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay with coping with the feeling of all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay. So now you can start bringing it together and talking about naming and labeling the feeling, naming and labeling what works, and then go into is this effective or ineffective? For both of us it's more effective. While some of this is internal, most of it's externally verifiable. And if I name and label what my fears are, what, like, you're going to leave me, either party in that relationship is going to be, and they state it, and then they can say, no, I don't want to go Like, I love you, I want to be with you, I want to work through this. Oh, okay, I'll have to ask that a whole bunch of times because I got to figure this one out and I go yeah totally normal, totally okay, but we'll work through this great, so you do and you build a stronger relationship.
Speaker 2:The two of them have got an amazing relationship.
Speaker 1:And it's.
Speaker 2:Becky Graff, g-r-a-f-f, and the book is Swept Away. It's on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll leave that in the show notes, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, and if you're doing book stuff, I do have my own book, sorry, oh, please do share. Yeah, oh, and if you're doing?
Speaker 1:book stuff. I do have my own book, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh, please do share. Yeah, it's Ultimate Mind Hacking and that's what it's all about. And so what it does is it goes through 23 ineffective mindsets that are fixed by 16 highly effective ways to smash those ineffective mindsets that are fixed by 16 highly effective ways to smash those ineffective mindsets. So little patterns, and I call them stacks, mind model stacks, like the three E's are a mind model stack, but in there, like you know, you can go in here and take a look at this and just the different chapters and go on the failure mindset, comparing yourself to others mindset, you know, challenging your unhealthy mindsets, the victim mindset you know, the excuse mindset, like all of those strategies to say, okay, you think this way, apply these mind models in this pattern and at least test it out and see what works or what doesn't work yeah, I mean, I'm for sure gonna get my hands on that book.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious to read it. And just curious, was it very intentional for you to use the word mindset in combination with these very limiting ways of thinking?
Speaker 2:Because those are mindsets, they're a set way of thinking, they're a mind that is set to this pattern and they don't know how to break it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes so much sense Coming full circle here. Yeah, I love it full circle here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it back into mind models, because you need mind models to get resourceful flexible and resilient.
Speaker 1:And there you go, like becky and tim resiliency at the wazoo, like amazing yeah absolutely, yeah, wow, this has been such an amazing conversation and I'm sure we could keep going and going and going. I do have one question for you, though. Fire away One last question, just to wrap this up what's one thing that you would love to leave the listeners with? Something tangible, something to help them with their perspective, with life, with themselves?
Speaker 2:it's an exercise I usually give people frequently and it's if they are having a tough time. I'll give two versions of the same exercise. If you're going through difficulties in your life, write down three things that you do every day, that you did that were effective. Every night, just before you go to bed, write down three things that you did that you could say I did that effectively, that worked. And then write down one thing that you're going to change tomorrow and work at that and see what happens.
Speaker 2:If you do this at one exercise for seven days, you will notice a whole bunch of things shifting. Your sense of confidence goes up slightly, your sense of judging yourself goes down slightly and you start feeling a little more in control of your life. And if everything is going well, then I would suggest doing a 3-2-1, which is three things that work, two things that didn't work and one thing to improve upon or to change tomorrow, when you know what worked and what didn't work, and you pivot. That's huge, because it's not about fixing the thing that doesn't work, it's about not doing more of it.
Speaker 1:I like that. It's not about fixing the thing that. Oh, can you say that again?
Speaker 2:I didn't grab that, I didn't remember that first bit it's not about fixing the thing that didn't work okay, because most of us want to fix what doesn't work and I go let's just build on what's working. At least acknowledge what's working and build on it and change one thing. Now, if you want to pick one of those things that didn't work and change that, change it. Don't fix it, change it Okay. In other words, test something different than what you did. Don't try and do it better. Don't try and like. Traditional educational systems are frequently into right wrong and so if it's broken it's got to be fixed, as opposed to.
Speaker 2:I'm dyslexic. You know, if I, when I was, I don't know, um nine, 10, um 10, 11, maybe I went into a educational psychologist, um thing. The school system put me into this thing because I wasn't performing normally. I was very good in some areas and lousy in others. And they put me through a battery of IQ tests and they brought me into the office to tell my parents the results of all the IQ tests and they said your son is scores at both the moron level and the genius level in IQ tests. So I retained I'm a moronic genius and what I figured out was I don't want to focus on my moron parts, I want to focus on my genius parts. And so I started figuring out where my boundaries were of the things I don't do well, Like spelling.
Speaker 2:I am the world's worst speller. However, I can dictate. Now I don't need spelling, I dictate. It spells for me. So not an issue. So dictate, do it that way. Find an alternative strategy. Don't try and fix what's there, because my brain doesn't operate well in that vein. But I'm very creative. I'm naturally a good observer. So use that and make it more specific. Then find rules, like mind models, to be able to both listen and observe people's behaviors. Then what can you notice as a result? Patterns and what patterns work. Well, these whole things that I said. Well, verses, you know, because two ways of learning. One is mimicry. As a baby, we learn by mimicking. Secondly, we learn as we learn how to talk and do other things, and by the time we're about 7, 8, 9, 10, we learn by comparing, contrast, and most of the time as an adult, it's almost 100% compare and contrast. So what do we contrast? The stuff that we had before against ourselves. So we tend to beat ourselves up because we were judged in the past about right, wrong, good or bad Educational system.
Speaker 2:But what if we didn't? What if we parked that and said, oh, I do this effectively, how might I do this more effectively? Hold it, I'm building on your strengths. What does psychology tell us to do? Build on your strengths, because you know, at the end of the day, if you build on your weaknesses, all you're going to have is a whole bunch of really strong weaknesses. But if you build on your strengths, all you're going to have is a whole bunch of really strong weaknesses. But if you build on your strengths, your strengths, get stronger.
Speaker 1:That's a really, really powerful way to wrap up this conversation. Thank you so, so much for sharing that, and I know I'm going to take those two practices that you've just given and I'm going to apply them Really, looking forward to doing that and, yeah, thank you so? Much. You've given so much value to this conversation and to the listeners and I really appreciate it and I appreciate your time Super.
Speaker 2:Hey, if they want to find out more about me, they can always go to BlairDunkleycom.
Speaker 1:And I will leave that in the show notes. Absolutely, they can find it there Super.
Speaker 2:Oh, by the way, if they go to my LinkedIn profile, just find Blair Dunkley on there. My picture's up there. I give away a free 45-minute profiling session for those of you listeners that want to be profiled.
Speaker 1:Hey, it's a place to start. That's very, very cool. Well, everything that you've mentioned the books, the resources, the free sessions that's all going to be in the show notes, so anyone who is listening, who would love to get into any of that, they can find that there. You bet.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Blair Raffaella, you can find that there. You bet Awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Blair.
Speaker 2:Raffaella, it's been a pleasure. I hope we do this again.
Speaker 1:We absolutely will. What an epic conversation. True to Blair's work. This conversation really challenged my perspective and helped me to learn and understand a new way of thinking and a new way of looking at myself and life, and I hope it's done the same for you too.
Speaker 1:If you have taken anything away from this episode, please do leave a five-star review. I super appreciate your support because it does help to push this podcast out to new people and it supports me in continuing to put out episodes every single week. So if you want to get connected with Blair, if you want to get to know him better or his work better, you'll find all the links from all the resources, freebies and books that were mentioned in this episode in the show notes. So go to the show notes, check that out. Leave a five-star review. Thank you so so much for spending this time with me, for listening, for choosing to listen to this episode, this podcast. I super appreciate you being here. Really, truly, from the bottom of my heart, I really do appreciate you taking the time to be here. Have an incredible week and I will see you next Tuesday for the next episode of Untapped Confidence.