Fired from your dream job? She was, too.

What do you do when you get fired from your dream job? In this podcast episode of Daring Breakthroughs, host Jenn Landis sits down with banking executive Becky Fields Wilson to discuss how to handle getting fired and find a better job. Becky shares her raw journey of being a bank president who was suddenly told she was "no longer needed" and had to clean out her desk the same day.

This conversation is a masterclass in the professional mindset shifts for career growth. We dive deep into "Thought Work"—the practical science of taking negative thoughts captive and using your imagination to dream up your next big move rather than spiraling into worry. If you are currently navigating career setbacks in a tough economy, Becky’s "Positive on Purpose" framework provides the "bridge thoughts" you need to move from discouragement to your next great opportunity.

Inside this Podcast Episode:

• The 90-Second Reset: How to disrupt the chemical flood of panic to make better strategic decisions.
• The Result Framework: Understand how Circumstances → Thoughts → Feelings → Actions create your results.
• Mastermind Groups: How to form a personal board of directors to normalize your experience and destroy imposter syndrome.
• Recession-Proofing: Why you don't have to "sign up" for an economic downturn and how to find thriving companies.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The 90-Second Rule: Referenced by Jenn Landis, this concept was coined by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her work, My Stroke of Insight.
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Break Up. Break In. Breakthrough! by Jenn Landis
• Coaching insights from Bob Proctor and Brooke Castillo

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Let’s Connect

🎤 Hire Jenn to speak at your next event:
https://www.jennlandis.com/speaking

📘 Get your copy of Break Up. Break In. Breakthrough!:
https://www.jennlandis.com/book

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Connect with Becky Fields Wilson: Find Becky on LinkedIn and YouTube to learn more about her speaking.

Website: https://www.momentum90.com/

LinkedIn (Becky Fields Wilson): https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-fields-wilson/

YouTube (Becky Fields Wilson): https://www.youtube.com/@beckyfieldswilson

➡️ If this episode resonated with you, please LIKE the video, SUBSCRIBE for more Daring Breakthroughs, and COMMENT below with a moment when you chose alignment over pressure.

#CareerAdvancement #LeadershipMindset #JobLossRecovery #ProfessionalGrowth #PositiveOnPurpose

Transcript

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The biggest breakthrough that I had in my career was actually the day that I got fired from my dream job. So, I would not have said that on that day 'cause I was sobbing, of course, as one would. Welcome to Daring Breakthroughs, the podcast obsessed with helping professionals at all levels build unstoppable confidence, gain crystal clarity, and create powerful connections. To give you a competitive edge, we share practical strategies and inspiring stories from daring people who have achieved remarkable breakthroughs. I know that if you can see it. You can be it, because I navigated my own career from Walmart to Wall Street and my friend, you can too. I'm your host and author of Break Up. Break In. Breakthrough, Jenn Landis. Our guest today is Becky Fields Wilson. She's a banker, business owner and success coach. Becky's career in banking has spanned over two decades with roles including commercial lending, private banking, chief lending officer and president. Currently, she serves as the director of private banking at Mid-First Bank, the largest privately held bank in the US. She's also the founder of Positive On Purpose, a professional and personal development company where Becky helps high-performing women create powerful strategies and systems to uplevel their career, income, and life. Her passion is to lead, coach, and inspire women to be all they were made to be. Today, I'm so excited to be visiting with a dear friend of mine, someone that I admire, someone who is incredibly positive, and you're going to learn all about that. She's a speaker, she is a banking executive. She's just an all-around wonderful woman. Her name is Becky Fields Wilson, and I am so privileged to count her as my friend. Hi Becky. Welcome to the podcast. Hey Jenn, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. I'm really honored. So, I love to open all of my conversations by hearing a little bit about the person, from the person, because no one will tell your story the way you do. So, if you wouldn't mind just helping us get kind of a, a level set by sharing your background, maybe some of the the primary breakthroughs that have led you to where you are today. And then we'll spend the rest of our conversation talking about all the good stuff mentioned in the beginning introduction. That sounds great. Um, so lead off with, the biggest breakthrough that I had in my career was actually the day that I got fired from my dream job. So, I would not have said that on that day 'cause I was sobbing, of course, as one would. But, um, to give you a little background on what that was, I've been in banking for 25 years and I had a finance degree and I didn't really know immediately that I wanted to go into banking. But, um, I loved numbers. I ended up being a credit analyst at my local bank and then just worked my way into the management training program and had a great mentor there that he just saw something in me and mentored me along the way and continued to give me opportunity after opportunity just as I would, you know, keep requesting those things. Like, "okay, what else? What else do I need to know?" So it was really exciting to, to learn under him and to get to go through management training programs under him. And, he sent me to graduate banking school. And so I was able to work my way into senior management. I was president of that bank and I was there for 15 years. And I really felt like it was my baby, like I loved everything about it. I was having the time of my life. A lot of the, um, people on my team I had personally hired, and so we had kind of grown up together as well. I had other people in the bank that had grown up as well, so like a friend that became, um, also an executive leader at the same time. So, it was just a really fun time in my career. And then things changed as they often do in banking and or in business in general, right? In life. Um, but it was a wake up call to me because, I don't think I realized that, um, things can change so drastically even when you're doing all of the right things and you feel like you're showing up in the right way. So, I'm certainly happy to get more into that breakthrough and everything. But, um, as we go into the conversation and what happened, but suffice it to say I stayed in banking. I've been in banking for 25 years, and now I am the, managing director of Tulsa Private Bank for mid first private bank, which is one of the largest privately held banks in the US. So it's really been a great place to work and um, I still love my career in banking. So I have left jobs and made difficult calls around jobs that left me sobbing. I think most of us who are listening to this, have probably had some pretty tough times. Just in the last, you know, couple of years. There's just been a lot that's been happening. In business, in the world, we've just all faced challenges that I think many of us didn't think we would ever face. And one of the things, Becky, that has always struck me about you is how stinking positive you are. And I say that with love, because there no matter what is happening, there's a smile on your face and you have a way of looking at the bright side and a way of helping others look at the bright side, but without the um, the false face that a lot of positivity stuff has on it. Like, you know, it's raining, but let's look on the bright side and let's just ignore the realities of the situation. And I have never found you to be that person. You don't ignore the realities. And yet you've found a way to navigate positivity and it's something that I deeply admire in you and that, um, that I look to you for inspiration and, and ideas and just to get better myself. And so I would love for you to share a little bit of your secret sauce, if you can. How did you get to be that person, how did you learn those skills and, how would you guide me as I try to become a more positive person? Yeah, I love this question. I have to give credit where credit is due because a lot of it does come from just seeing it modeled in my own household. My dad is a very positive person. And has gone through a lot of trials in life, just like we all have, and yet can see the glass half, half full. So I probably come by a part of it naturally, which not everyone does. So I absolutely understand that. as I got older, I realized that I also hadn't had huge setbacks in my life to. Even really overcome or understand, I, um, sometimes people would say, oh, you've had a Pollyanna life. And honestly, up until that point I probably had, you know, compared to a lot of people, I hadn't had any major ad adversities in my life, but what I found out. Whenever I was fired from that position and it was really just like things happen in, in business where owners switch, they bring in their own management team, nothing dramatic about it other than it was very dramatic to me, because they had to come in and say, you're no longer needed here. And, and then, you know, clean out your desk, you know, you're, you know, we'll take over from here tomorrow morning. And so, in that moment I, you know, I went home and I had my own crying fest and like, why me? This is not even fair. But the very next morning I woke up and, you know, it was really a blessing because I was a single mother at the time. I didn't have the luxury of just saying, I'm going to wallow in my pity and say, poor me. Everybody feel sorry for me. I mean, I was thinking those things, don't get me wrong.'Because like you said, I'm not, it's not pretend positivity, but I'm also a very factual girl, you know? Because I'm a numbers girly and banker and everything, so I just need the facts. And the facts were, I needed income. So part of it just stems from I know what I have to do and I'll, I'll roll up my sleeves to do it. So during that time, I went ahead and started interviewing, um, all these different interviews and everything. Ended up moving to a new town, getting a new job at a new bank, actually with more pay. It was a, it was the same, uh, same position. They didn't give me the same title, which was kind of weird to me. I was like, oh, that's weird, you know? And so all these thoughts in my head about. Well, what are people going to think? Do they think I got a demotion and I had all these things still going on in my head, even though I found this new job and I thought I should be happy. And so I was having all these feelings of guilt of, know, you should be happy you found a job in only four months, which at that point felt like a lifetime. But really looking back, that was a blessing also. And so there were these little things that kept happening that were still, I was depressed and discouraged. I was on a new bank board it was all gentlemen that were super nice professionals. No, no problem. But they didn't know me and I didn't know them. I didn't have any capital, know, human capital were a relationship capital, um, where I had in my last bank. And so I started to have these feelings of imposter syndrome. Like, how did I get here? Uh, do I even deserve this job? I was fired after all. So, I mean, you know, who am I to take this position? During that time, I did so much soul searching because my dad, the positive one, he would always say, "a setback is a setup for a comeback". So whenever I started shifting my thought from why me? How did this happen to me? This isn't fair. I've given up so many things like for my daughter's softball games or my son's football games or something like that for work. I was having those kind of thoughts and I kept trying to reframe it and saying, "well you know, I'll just overcome this just like anything else." And so I started, um, really looking for things that could clue me in on how to move forward. And one of the things that I thankfully stumbled across was Napoleon Hill's, Think And Grow Rich. And it's an old, old book. It's like probably a hundred years old now. Writing is really strange because it's so far back. But one of the things that it kept talking about is, um, that one of the things that tells whether someone's successful is not where they grew up or their background, but it's their thoughts. And that kept going on over and over in the book. And it really resonated with me because I come from a spiritual background where I read the Bible and one of the verses was, um, take every thought captive. And so I really always believed, oh, you could, you must have thoughts that you can identify and take captive, but actually how does, like where does the rubber meet the road there that, like, how do you practically do that? That sounds great, but again, it's one of those things that sounds great, but how do you practically do it? And so I started studying everything um, that had to do with, um, thought work and some of it. Like you said, would just be more, to me, it was woo woo at the time, especially being in banking because it had to be a fact for me to believe it, and I had to be able to back it up. So I was like, some of this is just too woo woo. I don't understand. But I came across some teachings from Bob Proctor and I would say he was probably one of the first, um, people that I followed that had a more scientific approach and understand it from science. For instance, we all have an imagination. We don't, we talk about our five senses all the time. Those are very well known to us. But we actually also have six higher functions. And, one of them is our imagination. And so if you just think about it like this, like I'm imagining something anyway, what do we call it when it's bad? We call it worry. That's an imagination. I'm worrying. I'm imagining something that's going to happen. I have no idea if it's going to happen. It could be a reality, it could not. Most of the time it's probably not becuase our minds are very good at imagining things. But we typically imagine the worst case scenario really, because it's just our brain's way of protecting us. It's that motivational triad that says we're going to try to escape pain, run towards pleasure and not make changes. And so anything you know is a fight or flight where your brain kind of says,"Hey, you better be concerned about this." That can be worry or anxiousness. We have the exact same tool to use our imagination. Imagine something different and to imagine something better. And you talk about this, Jenn, with your breakthroughs. Those don't just come from nowhere. Everything has to be dreamed up at some point. I have this pen here. Someone at some point envisioned this pen. Someone imagined this pen and then someone drew it and brought it to life. So things don't just happen, but we don't really, especially in corporate world I think, or just all of us achievers, we don't really ever connect the dots between"I had a vision, I had imagination, I had a dream, I had a positive thought that got me here." And, "the thing that I finally realized is our thoughts." We can choose our thoughts. We're not at the mercy of our thoughts. We are in a paradigm or a habit of always thinking the same thoughts over and over. We develop those things. Um. Out of habit because our brain is trying to conserve energy. But um, you can create a new habit. You can create a new thought. And to me that was so empowering and I just started working on every thought that I just like first of all just becoming self-aware. So I guess the secret sauce, is being aware of your thoughts. And just taking that thought and then taking the thought captive. So taking that thought and going, does this serve me? Do I like the feeling that this produces in me? Does it give me a feeling of motivation, of joy, of something that's expansive? Or does it give me a feeling of something that's going to shrink? Because anything that's growing is going to expand, and anything that's more of a depressed thing is going to shrink. You're not going to take the same type of actions from the same type of thoughts because our thoughts form our feelings. So the main. Um, thing that I learned out of Bob Proctor's teaching and then also Brett Castillo later when I went and got my own coaching, um, certification. Just 'cause I was so, you know, enthralled by the whole thing. I had never heard anything like this, but basically that we all have a circumstance that happens to us from that circumstance. We form a thought about it. From a thought, we develop a feeling that just happens internally in our body. From every feeling, we take an action and then that action produces a result. So it's a very simple framework that seems like, does that work on every situation? But I have not found a situation that doesn't work on it. Really, everything starts with a thought. So much there, Becky, to unpack. so a couple of things that were racing through my mind as I was listening to you. I once heard that it takes about 90 seconds for the, um, hormones and the chemicals that your brain produces as a result of a thought, like a panicked thought, for instance, or angry thought. It takes about 90 seconds for those chemicals to flood your body and to actually wash out of your body. And if you don't capture that thought in that 90 seconds and you let it spin, then guess what happens when that countdown stops, you get another flood of those same chemicals, and so it keeps you stuck. That's one of the benefits of gratitude practice is that when you can change your thought away from the thing that is creating all of those chemicals to flood your system in a negative way, you can break that 90-second cycle and now you've got room to breathe and to do something appropriate with that thought that's going to help you, like you just said. That's fascinating to think about. The the hormone that makes sense, absolutely. The other thing, um, I've heard is when you evaluate a thought, you should ask yourself, is "Is it useful?", "Is it helpful?", And, "Is it kind?" And if it's not, those three things, then you probably shouldn't be listening to it. I wish I could tell you I was better at that. Better at evaluating and holding my own thoughts captive. Um, but I honestly, I don't think I am all that good at that. I think it's too easy to get sucked into the moment. I, I want to talk a little bit more about this idea because it sounds so simple, Becky. So many things that are breakthrough material sound very simple, and yet simple does not mean easy, right? No. So this idea of awareness of your thoughts and capturing your thoughts and then choosing what you're going to do with your thoughts is something I very much believe in. I actually wrote about some of this in my book because this is obviously something I have to work on. But the other thing you said that I thought was really interesting was we're not formally educated to think about our thoughts being tied to, um, imagination and what are we going to do with those thoughts. I think there's one exception to that, and I think it's strategic thinking. We are encouraged to imagine, to innovate, to think big when it's in the realm of strategic thinking. But I think a lot of us who are in leadership positions stop short of applying that same mode of strategic thinking to ourselves as we do to our businesses. And I feel like that's what you're saying is that we can be strategic, we can use those muscles that we use at work (strategic thinking), tweak them and apply them to ourselves so that we can be strategic in the way we capture our thoughts. I absolutely agree, and let's go back to when you said"is this thought useful?" I still ask that question, but I'm now also giving a different definition to what is useful. So whenever you were talking about strategic thinking and oh, you know, like a negative thought about something, whatever. There was a long time in my career where if basically someone had a different opinion than me, I just thought they were wrong. You know, I would shut, shut down, you know, like, no, this is the right way. You know, Yeah. I've searched out every single answer and therefore it must be right. You know, Right. Thankfully, I, I, um, abandoned that tactic early in my twenties. But the thing that ended up happening though, because I do try to reframe things from a strategic standpoint for my thoughts reframe them into a positive light, sometimes I would be called Pollyanna again, rose colored glasses, those type of things, because they're like, well, that's not realistic. And they would spout, you know, the bad things, like bad things that have happened. Again, because to me, life is 50/50 anyway. You're not going to have all positive things happen to you. You're not going to have all negative things happen to you. It's just what you choose to focus on. And I'm thankful for that because I wouldn't even understand what joy is and what euphoria is, what elation is if I, I didn't, if I didn't know the opposite of that and those feelings. And I think sometimes we try to get away from those feelings in the workplace because we think, oh, that makes us a bad employee. Or, oh, that makes a bad employee if they have a negative feeling or a negative thought. To me, what some of those thoughts, is this useful to me, it's a signal. A signal that something's off here. So I want to listen to that in my head. And so what it did is it helped me reframe people who were like against what we were doing. I, I would be step back and go,"Huh, they must have a different perspective than I." Yeah. Right. Of course they do. They're a different human. But I don't know why that's an epiphany sometimes, but it is. Um. But they must have a different perspective than I do. They must have a different value set than I do, and they're coming at this from a different angle. They have different experience. So I wonder why they're having this type of reaction. I wonder why they don't want this change to happen. I wonder, and just getting curious instead of being judgmental. And so I think you are right. You're spot on about it all, it all ties together. It all ties together, and it happens to us every day. And we have more control over our outcomes in our work and with interpersonal relationships at work than we think. Um, we a lot of times frame it as fact, like "it's that person who is bothering me. It's this job whose is bothering me? It's the client that's being mean. It's my boss that's, that's making me feel bad." We have so much control over our response to those things. It's not actually what's happening, it's your response to them and your thoughts about them. I so agree, and I think this really is highlighted for me as I think back on my career when I would receive, um, evaluative feedback, whether it was in, you know, a performance review, or I was leading a team and someone needed to let me know how my, how I my leadership was working or wasn't working. And I talk a lot about feedback, um, in the work that I do with people. And I often tell people, wouldn't you rather know what those counter perspectives are because they exist, whether you know about them or not. And if you know about them. Whether they have to do with you or the project you're working on, whatever that counterpoint is, if you know about it, then you can take action or not, but you put yourself in the driver's seat, right? I can decide to either adopt or to politely decline that information or that feedback, but if you don't know about it, you don't have the ability to do that, and they're still talking about it at the water cooler behind your back. Would you rather know? Be part of that narrative then not. Exactly. I want to talk about positive on purpose because not only are you a banking executive, a coach, um, just a, a woman who is determined to change her destiny through positive thinking as well as helping others. You actually are also an entrepreneur on top of all of it. So I want to hear a little bit about positive on purpose, um, and the speaking that you do to help people like me and like our listeners, become more positive. Yeah, so during the time after, um, I had switched jobs. Like I said, I was really feeling isolated and alone. And so back to that Think and Grow Rich book, he was talking about, he being Napoleon Hill, was talking about mastermind groups and how a lot of presidents and high level people in the past have had a mastermind group, which is basically your own personal board of directors that you surround yourself with. So we all have those within the jobs that we're in as far as our teams, our boards or something like that. But this is your own personal hand chosen board. And so I went around and just started asking really, um, amazing sharp women that I would meet in town and I would say, Hey, would you like to join my mastermind group? So we started a mastermind group and it was really just to meet for the next three months. Because I had all these things to work through, as you know, issues with the new place I was working and then my own identity, which I didn't realize it at the time, that I was still attaching my worth and my value to my title and into getting fired. And so when we started meeting, we were going to meet for three weeks. We ended up meeting for two years. It just showed me, there were a group of six of us just showed me that other executive women were going through the exact same thing that I was going through. I was not alone, was not in this on my own, and honestly, I was nothing special. I mean, all of them in the group I think had been fired and or laid people off. And so I saw insight into you go on. It's okay. You know? And that's not to diminish, like getting fired, it still hurts so bad and you have to go through the grieving process, but it just was so nice to see the light on the other side of the tunnel. Like, yeah, we don't care. That doesn't even, yeah, that happens every day in our business. And so it just helped me to put it in a different perspective. Like "that was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me" to, "okay, that was a thing on my resume." That's, that was it. So, when we did this, we learned so much from each other by just reaching out and having someone to confide in and normalize what we were going through. And as a result, um, other people wanted to join our group, but by that point it was so confidential, 'cause at those levels, of course, you're having very confidential, you know, conversations and so the girls in the group said, Becky, you should start your own like a business to, to do this, you know, and and run mastermind groups. And I said, oh, I couldn't run a business. And they said, well, you run a bank, so you're running business. Again, like a limiting belief. We all have these limiting beliefs. I just thought, no, I'm a corporate girl. I like my nine to five. I'm all, you know, this is fine with me. And they talked me into doing it and I started, um, this business and I realized during that time that my passion in life, yes, I love banking. Yes, I love numbers. I love waiting on my clients and everything. But my true like passion in life and where I just shine and where I would do it all day, every day. And that is, um, my mission is to lead, coach, and inspire women to be all that God created them to be. And so with that lens, with that, why I started a business and the only name, I mean it was just like immediate, was "Positive On Purpose." And the reason I got to choose that, and the reason I chose it is because this is me. Like banking, kind of any job they dictate and, and nothing mean, but they need you to show up in a certain way. You follow their brand rules, you follow everything. And this was like, this is me. And in banking so many times, you have to be the one to be the bearer of bad news, you know, when you turn down loans or when someone doesn't get a promotion. So a lot of things were so serious to me on the bank side. And again, I'm cut out for it, it's fine. You know, like I, I love all that, but I also love what, you know, I used to call the softer side of banking, which is hilarious because it's the, it's us. Spoiler alert, we're the softer side. You know, we're the people, and the most important thing, you know, back to what you said about our thoughts, but um, yeah. So anyway, during that time, I just knew that I wanted to build this company around positivity. And it wasn't just positive for being positive's sake and, um, pretending like nothing is wrong. No, I had already been through several things. In fact, I was also going through breast cancer at the time. And so I just knew that I choose to be positive and I have a purpose. And the reason that I choose to move on and to stop asking questions like why me and change it more to what does this make possible? Who else can I help? Because of what I've learned? What did I learn about myself, about the world, about others during this adversity? I became so empowered that I couldn't stop myself, and so, that's why I named it that. And so I, I ran that business for I think, um, 10 years, I would say, where I ended up getting my coaching certification because I was also coaching a lot of small business female entrepreneurs would gravitate towards me because I had the background in banking and could advise them on, you know, financial and banking matters also. So it's just a nice tie all in and I loved all of that and doing some personal coaching. What ended up happening is during COVID, I was so busy with banking, I had to drop all of my coaching clients and I really did it so part-time. Obviously my career doesn't allow for too much more, but you know, I, my kids were out of high school by then, and so I was doing this on the evenings, a few evenings a week, and then on the weekend. You know, where I'd have coaching clients. But still, even then, um, my bandwidth was just, um, too narrow at that time. And so, you mentioned the speaking. That's what I ended up pivoting that business to. I, I was so sad that I couldn't have clients anymore, but I still have this outlet of like this passion that people will call me and say,"Hey, can I have coffee with you?" I just was let go for my job. And I know people know this story about me because I'm transparent and I'm not going to pretend like everything has been easy or that, um, I've had it just an easy path, but I am transparent about like what the hard places were and how I got through them. And so I'll have people reach out to me, and that's my passion. But I haven't had time to be able to do that. So instead of doing the one-to-one model, I just do the one to many now because I still have a message, I still have a passion for getting it out there and helping women that are maybe a couple steps behind me. You know, going through some of the things that I went through, and if they can borrow some belief from me for the time being. I love it. So your story is so inspirational on so many levels, and your transparency is such a beautiful thing. Thank you for sharing that, not just with me individually, um, as a fellow speaker, sister, and friend, but also with this crowd that may be listening to this podcast and also the people that are in your sphere, because I think this is a message we need more of. It's such an empowering message. And I think the other thing that's so inspiring about your message is the fact that it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. You got fired. And I've had my own situations in life where I'm crying on the couch and my husband looks at me and says, I hope you go through this 10 more times because I want it to lose its power of debilitating you the way it is. I wanted to kick him at the moment, but it was tough love that I, it was tough love that I needed. Right. And I think when I'm coaching women. I will often tell them, look, you need to go through this right now. If you learn this lesson now, you don't have to learn it later in your career. I've worked with a lot of people that didn't learn the lessons that they needed to learn because it was Pollyanna for their entire career until it got towards the end of their career and they were ill-equipped to handle the type of adversity that came at them. And I think being able to handle adversity, navigate it, extract the lessons from it that we need, and end up on the other side. Positive on purpose is a superpower that more of us need to cultivate and that we are better off ourselves when we learn to do that. So I, I just love what you're sharing here and I'm so appreciative of it, Becky. From an economy perspective, since we've got a banker on the line, um, what would you share right now? Because it is tough for a lot of people. Lots of companies are um, closing their doors. Lots of companies are reducing their workforce, and I know personally how difficult that is for not just the person who's going through it, but the family that's attached to that person. So anything that you would share, um, specifically with folks that are going through that tough time right now. Either they got laid off or they lost their job for one reason or another, and they're looking at this economy going What am I going to do? Can I be as lucky as Becky and only be out of work for four months? Right. Yeah. It's so scary. When you get that, um, information. So I want to go out this, I'll, I'll tell you a quick story and then some practical steps that helped me along the way. Um, whenever I was in banking, when I was president of the bank, it was during the Great recession, so it was during the '08-'09 where everything was, you know, crumbling in banking and the housing crisis was happening. And so it greatly affected my team, my bank, my clients, my community, the nation and the world. So that's a real problem. That's a big problem. So of course, as a banking executive, to all of the news channels every day, Bloomberg, CNBC, you know, you name it, Wall Street. Had it all out on my desk, listened to it in the morning, listened to it at night, had it on in the car. It was constantly in my head telling me how bad things were, and it was there. There's no no denying it. People were laying people off. It was so scary. We were foreclosing on homes. That was the first time had foreclosed on a business, on a daycare. Oh my goodness. You know, like these were real things happening to us. So, I was perpetuating that story over and over because it was so terrible. I'm telling my team, it's so terrible out there. It's so terrible. Listen to what happened today. Another company closed down another this on and on. And my sales coach got on the call with me that week and I said, Hey, I don't have time for the call this week. Like, everything's going bad. I have to go to court and foreclose on this, um, one company and then another. It's just, it was so hard on me, on my heart, on my heart, it was so hard on me. And she said, I want to stop you right now because, um, you, you have a really negative spin on this. And I said, yeah, it's negative. I, I don't understand. Okay. And she said, well, I'm just going to let you know that you didn't have to sign up for the recession. And I said, what are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And she's from a financial background, trainer. And in banking. And I said, what are you even talking about? We all are in the recession. What do you mean you don't have to sign up for it? And she said, what I, your homework is actually, I want you to tonight, instead of getting on CNBC and all these places that you're listening to, I want you to get on and to Google all of the companies that thrived in groove during the Great Depression. And all of the companies that grow whenever we have a recession or a dip in the economy, because you're looking at all the bad things that are happening. Those are true, but there are also businesses that are so strong they're buying up these other businesses because they were just well prepared for it, for whatever reason. And so, she said, you're focusing completely on everything that's bad and nothing good. And that was true. That was true. But I was, at the time, I was still kinda like, how is that going to help? Here, here are the practical things that I learned out of that. And then also getting fired. Um, and then also having to lay off people myself. And, and that is the practical thing is those are real events that are happening in the world, but they're not exactly happening to me right now. I need to deal with like what's at what is in front of me. And so I have this saying that says, where your focus goes, your energy flows. So you can see me focusing on everything that was bad in that economy and I was going for more of it. Or you could see me as I did my pivot and chose a new thought of where there are companies out there that are doing well. We are actually doing well as a bank. We're very well positioned, we were conservative and so we honestly didn't have not even close to the number of losses that a lot of the banks were having, so we were safe. So I was kind of like, why am, why am I not giving us credit for that? When that happened, it opened up a whole new pathway for me that I didn't see because I was just doom and gloom over here. This opened up a whole new pathway of, okay, what does this make possible? What it makes possible is I do know that 99% of my portfolio is performing well. Why don't I go to some of those businesses and see who would like to maybe buy out some of these other businesses, who would like to maybe take on some of their employees? Do you need extra like a home for this, that, or the other? I know you, you're looking for a deal right now. We have some deals and it would help someone out of their credit. So all of those things that made possible and when I started turning off the noise and turning off all those other things that are facts that are reality that are happening. It wasn't that I was ignoring them. People still clued me in on everything that needed to happen, but my practical piece of advice for you during this time is to stop listening to the noise and stop listening to people who are saying, it's so bad out here. There aren't jobs. The news is there are actually tons of jobs. There is something for everyone in any economy. You just have to be that one. You have to be the one to give yourself hope after hope after hope. And I just had this conversation this week with someone who was discouraged about some bad news on a property that fell through that they really needed it to happen. And it reminded me again, all the way back to whenever I was let go. I had interview after interview, and that entire time I was so discouraged. But what was I doing? Every morning I was getting up and working out just like I always do before work. Just pretending like, Hey, this is a normal day. I got, then get my kids ready for school. I do my normal day. I do my normal things. I have an expectation. I have a hope that I will have a job again. I have this barometer set in my mind. I will return back to normal. That's going to happen. It's just a matter of when. It's just a timeline. And so then all you're doing is you're acting as if, and it's not pretend. It's just that I know it's going to happen, and you have to convince your mind of, I've had a job before. I'll have a job again. It may not even be the exact one that I want right now, but it will be something. It will be enough to meet our needs, and then you'll move forward and springboard from that. Because what I realize now, looking back, hindsight, is so lovely. I didn't know it at the time, but look for your mile markers. Look for your little milestones, because now whenever I was telling this story to my friend recently, I look back on that and even though each of those first five interviews ended in defeat and a no, what it did for me that I didn't realize it was doing at the time that was so neat is it gave me hope. So I was jumping from hope to hope. So this morning I was getting up and getting ready for an interview, and I was so happy that week. And yes, I was discouraged when I, whenever I didn't get it, but, and then I was like, oh, I've got another interview. And so I was hopping from hope to hope, to hope from positive thought, to positive thought, to positive thought. And I landed, I end up landing where I needed to be. And it's never in the timing that we want. It's never exactly how we plan it out in our mind. But if we don't envision it in the first place and give our thoughts, access to that. won't get there. And so the practical thing that I think you can take away from this is you do have control of your thoughts. You can, you know, again, use that journaling process. I was never a big journaler, but through all these different things I've learned to be a good journaler. And the first step you could take today, just get out a blank piece of paper, write everything negative. Just write your mind. Just write it all out, completely dump it out on the paper. This will do two things. typically when I do it. I realize, wow, I can barely even fill one notebook, a page of things wrong right now. That's so interesting to me.'Cause your brain, just like you're talking about that loop, uh, you know, the, uh, hormone thing, it's true. Your, it's like your brain is on a loop just telling you everything's wrong, everything's wrong, everything's wrong. When you write it down, there's a few things wrong. And so, okay, that's a little bit more solvable than everything in the world is wrong. So that writes that down. But then the other thing it gives you the ability to do is go, okay, what do I want to change about this? Which of these thoughts I'll go through and cross out the ones that aren't useful. Just like you said, circle the ones that are useful, I want to do more of those. And then the ones that aren't useful or helpful or kind, I just want to replace it with something else. So a bridge thought would be, you're not going to go from, I got fired today to, I know I'll have a job tomorrow that your brain's going to go. Okay, that's not realistic and it's probably not I, that would be amazing, but maybe a bridge thought would be something in between, which is that thought that I was telling you earlier, like, I've had a job before. I'll have a job again, that's just a little bit across the bridge or, um, I have so much value to give to the world. I can't wait to find my next employer. I have so many friends that I know from past jobs, I can reach out to them and just every little thought again is going to get that bridge, get you across that bridge to all a sudden you have a job. So it's so important just to remember that the power of your life is in your thoughts. It's in your thoughts. It can change everything. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. As you can see, I get so excited talking about it because it's, it really transformed my life whenever I understood the power of that and that. It's within me, which is really me. I will never forget that. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I've learned so much. Um, I think this is a, a great place for us to transition to your information. If people want to follow you and they want to see what you're doing or find out where you're speaking next, how can they get, in touch with you, Becky? The best two places are LinkedIn and YouTube, and it's both under Becky Fields Wilson. Becky, thank you again so much for this lovely conversation. Um, I will include all of the things that we've talked about in the show notes down below so that people can have access to the book recommendations that you've mentioned and, uh, your contact information. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Jenn. Well, that's it for today's episode of Daring Breakthroughs. Thank you so much for joining us. If you found value, I invite you to review, like and subscribe. Remember to check the description for free tools and resources that were mentioned in today's episode. Also, let's be friends. I'd love to connect with you. You'll find me on all the social platforms @AskJennLandis. That's Jenn with two Ns. And finally, if you need a speaker for your next event, visit jennlandis.com. That's J-E-N-N-L-A-N-D-I-S. Dot com. Until next time, share one insight you gained today with a friend and make one bold move. I dare you.