144 - How to Grow Your Mental Muscles in Challenging Times

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Ivette Gonzalez Flower is a certified Leadership coach with the International Coaching Federation as well as a Positive Intelligence Coach. She is a recovering perfectionist, lifelong high achiever, corporate veteran, top producing Sales Executive and mother to 3 teens.  She provides the coaching framework, tools, and the space for growth so her clients can get more done in 12 weeks than most do in 12 months! 

Ivette partners with high achieving Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and Sales Executives, who are in the frenzy of juggling their career and their personal life to avoid burnout and live with great intention. She was able to work part-time and make a 6-figure income as a commissioned Trade Show Executive. She understands personally the difference between being an overachiever and a high achiever!

To sign up for her programs and to learn more visit  www.iflowersolutions.com

In this episode we cover:

3:23     Car Metaphor

6:12     High Achiever

8:18     Positive Intelligence Quotient Exercise

11:40  Awareness

13:27  Energy

14:38  Burnout

18:05  Three Strategies For PQ Training

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Special thanks to Ivette Flower for being on the show.

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Transcript

Intro  0:02  
Did you know that the judge is the saboteur that affects everyone? It constantly criticizes you for your flaws and failures, forewarns you about potential dangers, keeps you up at night worrying, and makes you fixated on what is wrong with the people in your life. Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help you get the scoop on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then  this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping you achieve bliss through awareness and action. So let's get to it. In this episode, Ivette Gonzalez Flower shares tips on how to grow your mental muscles in challenging times. Ivette is a certified leadership coach with the International Coaching Federation, as well as a Positive Intelligence Coach. She is a recovering perfectionist, lifelong high achiever, corporate veteran, top producing sales executive and mother to three teens. She provides the coaching framework, tools, and the space for growth so her clients can get more done in 12 weeks than most do in 12 months. Ivette partners with high achieving business owners, entrepreneurs and sales executives who are in the frenzy of juggling their career and their personal life to avoid burnout and live with great intention. She was able to work part time and make a six figure income as a commissioned trade show executive. She understands personally the difference between being an overachiever and a high achiever. To sign up for her programs and to learn more visit www.iflowersolutions.com. 

Disclaimer  1:43  
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. 

Marisa Huston  1:55  
Ivette, it's so nice to have you here today.

Ivette Flower  1:57  
Thank you, Marisa, it's so good to be here.

Marisa Huston  2:00  
I get excited with every guest and you are no exception. Would you explain to our listeners what we're going to be talking about today and how it might help them?

Unknown Speaker  2:09  
Definitely. I am so excited to share with your listeners today, how to grow their mental muscles, especially in challenging times.

Marisa Huston  2:18  
That's a good one. And I think we can all use that.

Ivette Flower  2:21  
I use it every day, girl!

Marisa Huston  2:23  
I hear ya!  You hear those buzzwords, all the time. Things like improving your mental capacity, getting out of negativity, your mindset. These are words that we hear frequently. But I don't know that people really understand what that means. I like to define things very clearly for our listeners. Perhaps you can explain more thoroughly what you mean by that?

Ivette Flower  2:46  
Yes. So the idea that our mind is sabotaging us and Positive Intelligence has done research in just that on how our mind works. And there was a study with 500,000 participants that showed that the brain has this plasticity to it, which means it's like a muscle. So, if you think of those little grooves in your brain, I visualize it this way. You know that car from the game of life, that little tiny car? Did you ever play that game? 

Marisa Huston  3:21  
Yes, I love that game!

Ivette Flower  3:23  
That car is going down the groove of my brain. And if the natural path of my thought pattern is stress, anxiety, overwhelm, that is going towards the left side of our brain, which is also the fight or flight. I'm sure you've heard of that, right? 

Marisa Huston  3:37  
Yes. 

Ivette Flower  3:38  
So if that little car is on autopilot, and you're finding yourself that it's always in that, I should have done that this way, or I can't believe that I did that. That inner critic, that anxiety, that stress, the shame, all that that's going on the left side of your brain. Now, if you can picture being that mental muscle in your brain, where now I'm commanding it to go to the right side of the brain, so the car can start making its groove on autopilot moving to the right, that's the part of the brain that produces cortisol, that gives us that peace, that joy, that calm, even when times are challenging. Because as you know, when you get older, you start to realize life doesn't get easier, you just have to get better at it. There's challenges thrown at us, whether it's from teenage children, which is where I get to practice on a regular basis. If you're wearing a lot of hats as a caregiver for your parents, if you're an entrepreneur, if you are with your partner, or in a meeting, a sales call or a business meeting, there's always going to be challenges being thrown at us. So, why not learn how to improve that mental muscle so that you have peace and calm and before you get to that decisive action of whatever needs to happen with that challenge, well, there's a few steps along the way before you can get there so you can get there with joy and peace.

Marisa Huston  5:01  
I love that metaphor. I could visualize it so clearly when you explained it. Because here's the thing, life is like a road with lots of twists and turns. You have a GPS, essentially, you think you're going in one direction, and then you come across a traffic jam and it's like, Oops, I gotta detour. 

Ivette Flower  5:19  
Yup!

Marisa Huston  5:20  
It sounds to me, like the mind has all these little tracks in its head, and it wants to go in a certain way and it's up to the driver to steer it in a different direction. Otherwise, you end up clogged in that traffic jam. Just to have that visualization to say, you do have control. There are things you can do to put yourself in a better road.

Ivette Flower  5:40  
Yes, that's exactly it's I'm so glad that message resonated.

Marisa Huston  5:44  
I love metaphors for that reason, because it really helps you identify what you're trying to accomplish. So now that we understand what that is, sometimes I feel like it's easier said than done. You wake up in the morning, and you set yourself up to say things are gonna go well, and then you get a phone call, or a complaint, or your child is doing something that you didn't want. And then you're like, oh, my gosh, I was so excited to start this day and now it's not looking so good anymore. And it's hard to maintain from that point.

Ivette Flower  6:12  
Yes. Okay. So in the past, I was that high achieving sales executive who had a lot of focus on details, and I was working in trade shows, and it's very time consuming, very high demand on your time. You have to focus on the details and the attention. There's like a lot of moving parts. Whether or not the shipper will get everything, or they will get the booth to the show whether that thing you just updated is getting there on time, whether it's being set up properly. Like there's so many moving parts to this, that I would get out of bed and immediately start checking emails, checking with everyone about certain projects, getting the kids out the door driving and having a phone call getting there and then meeting after meeting after meeting, skipping my lunch, not drinking any water, so that I could be at pickup and drop off and still get six hours in the day in between the school schedule. That was me. I could function that way and I did function that way, for a very long time. I excelled at it. I made really good money. And as a matter of fact, I worked part time and made full time sales numbers because I was laser focused and I was able to get things done. However, when you are moving at that rate, and you're always doing this, and you always feel like you are behind the ball, like the dishes were never quite done, there was always something to be done in between that call or getting out the door or whatever it was, it just seemed like I had too much going on. I was wearing too many hats. I actually had a wake up call where I couldn't remember simple words to keys was the big thing that I one day when I woke up and I said to my husband. I'm holding the keys in my hand and I said what are the words to this again? There was so much chatter going on in my mind that I couldn't function. I wasn't sleeping. And so I had to see two doctors. One was a neurologist to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with my memory and the other was at a sleep study to see what was keeping me up. And basically what came back was you got too much going on.

Marisa Huston  8:17  
I would imagine!

Ivette Flower  8:18  
Yes. And one of the doctors held my phone in his hand and he said, this is the problem. This is controlling your day. When someone emails you, you respond, you take care of it, you drop everything you need to drop to get to the next thing, and you're not taking care of your health or your well being. So I had to stop that and make my well being a priority. So now, instead of doing those things, and mind you there are times where I pick up the phone and I'm like, Oh, I'm just gonna check one email. Well, it's 10 emails later, I'm like, Okay, wait a minute. I'm still working on some of these things. But the main thing is, when you get up in the morning, you can do what is called a PQ Rep. It means positive intelligence quotient. It is where you get a 10 second hyper focus on one of your senses. As you're sitting in your seat right now, I can envision you're sitting down right now, and your listeners may be sitting down or standing, you can just pause for a second, take two deep breaths, in and out, in and out. And you can focus on your senses. So if you are sitting down, focus on the lower part of your body as it's sitting on the chair, so you can feel that weight. You can also take two fingers and rub them against your thumbs so you can feel the ridges of them as you're breathing. Did you feel a difference? 

Marisa Huston  9:38  
Absolutely. 

Ivette Flower  9:39  
Some people feel this immediately. If it didn't feel like anything immediately. Then you have other senses you can activate. You can do the listening one which I like. If you're out and about on a walk, listen to the furthest thing away as you're breathing in and out and then listen to the closest thing as you're breathing in and out. So, these are ways to active that right side of your brain and move away from that fight or flight. And even that, at the very beginning of your day helps. However, what I do and what I teach a lot of my clients to do is you sprinkle these in throughout the day. Because just like you said, you wake up and you think everything's going great, you've probably done some meditations some visualization, whatever it is, a mantra to get you up and running and then at 12, you're already annoyed.

Marisa Huston  10:25  
I always like to think it's a fresh slate, I don't know what's coming. And I just like to start the day thinking, Oh, it's gonna be good, you know? And then things turn in a different direction, quickly. Life happens.

Ivette Flower  10:36  
Life happens. And so if you're in that board meeting, and you're annoyed by the person who's presenting, rub your fingers together underneath the desk, and just take a deep breath, and calm that nervous system, to the point where you're not in your mind going, Oh, my God, this is so stupid. I've got 1,000,001 things to do, why are they wasting my time, and you're not even really there anyway. That is a way to do that. And then the positive, intelligent app that kind of guides you through this, you don't do this on your own, it guides you through these, you can decide to do at least 15 minutes a day, I actually start off with at least 15 minutes in the morning and then I do two minutes in the middle of the afternoon, two minutes by three o'clock, and then five minutes to end my day just so that I can be centered again, and understand that even when that challenge is coming on me that I have a way to calm myself and control my reaction and my response to what's happening.

Marisa Huston  11:32  
Why do you think these exercises help and what are some of the things we can expect to experience when we do this on a regular basis?

Ivette Flower  11:40  
So, if you think of the idea of putting your hand on a hot stove, that's another metaphor for negative emotion. Those emotions are there to alert us about something. Like this doesn't feel right, I'm annoyed by this, or I'm angered by this or something is happening that just triggers something in you. So think of it as an alert. You want to keep your hand there long enough for the alert but the rest of the time you want to take your handout. Otherwise, guess what you're gonna get burned. So if you think about those negative emotions, where we sit in them, or maybe it's that victim mentality where something happened to us, and we just can't get over it, and we keep replaying it in our mind, it's only hurting you, it's not hurting the person you're really upset about. I think going back to your question about how does that help us? When you're aware that it's happening, you don't keep your hand on that stove very long. The response that you're there is shorter and shorter and shorter. It's not that bad things are never going to happen to us. It's how long are we going to stay in that left side of our brain that fight or flight side that gets us anxious? Does that make sense? 

Marisa Huston  12:47  
Yeah, it makes total sense. And I'm glad you explain that, too. I call it dwelling. That's the word that just comes to my mind every time there's something that bothers me and it just goes on and on. And I go back to telling myself don't dwell. Being so obsessed with it for that long a period of time is not helping. 

Ivette Flower  13:05  
No.

Marisa Huston  13:05  
But I have to tell myself that and I use that word to myself. But what I like about this exercise is that enough to say that. I can just take my fingers and rub them and just get that sense, breathe in, breathe out and realize that you're refocusing your energy, refocusing your mind somewhere else so that you're not obsessing, essentially, with that one thing that's really not going to help you.

Ivette Flower  13:27  
Well, and you hit the nail on the head when you said energy. So, the reason why we don't want to stay there is when you're in that left side of the brain and by the middle of the day, if you're exhausted and you haven't been physically working in a demanding job, that physically your energy drained, it's really then your mental energy that's causing that drain. So, the longer you stay in there, it does affect your energy. It also affects obviously, your heart. Especially women, we have one of the largest percentages for heart attacks, because we carry the stress very differently than men do. And so, I didn't want to have to in 20 years, realize that this whole time and working on that left side of my brain that it's been making my heart work so much faster that now it's not doing what it needs to do. I don't want to get there and go, Oh, you mean I could have just been calm and breathe through these stressful situations and eliminate some of these situations and then I would be okay? Not have to deal with that medical condition. Right? It affects you if you stay there for too long.

Marisa Huston  14:33  
Yeah, that makes total sense. What kind of positive changes will come as a result of this?

Ivette Flower  14:38  
Burnout is the big thing. That's going to reduce that burnout. It's going to minimize stress. It's going to help you maximize performance. A lot of athletes use this technique because right when they're about to make that big shot or that big play ,their bodies get excited too. Like oh my gosh, what if I miss this? What if I screw this up? They can't go there. They have to be focused. And so, when they do that, then they maximize their performance. And so, just like athletes would use a tool like this, we could use a tool like this, even as a mom, even as a caretaker as a, whatever it is that you want to do in your personal, professional life. And then it also minimizes conflict when we're working with difficult people. And you would be surprised on how this technique helps. When you're on the other line with a family member, or you're face to face with them and you know that they push your buttons, you do this, and I'm telling you, it will calm you down. There's also other visual things that you could do like visualizing them as a young child to activate that empathy part of our brain. But, I use that on certain family members and I don't feel like I pity them but I can empathize with that child who is now struggling, and who is now a difficult person to work with. 

Marisa Huston  16:02  
Yeah. To your point, it's like a different perspective. Because when we're emotional, we tend to gravitate towards reacting, or not even really giving things the thought that they deserve. So, we just make assumptions. We start to interact with that person in a different way. Rather than if you're doing these exercises, or you're thinking in a different way, then you're able to put yourself in their shoes. A classic example is if you call customer service, and they seem like they don't want to be there, all you have to do is smile, say something nice, make them feel good and all of a sudden, you'll notice how quickly they change their tune. Because you're putting yourself in their shoes and you're saying to yourself, this person is not having a good day. I know that right now. They don't want to be here. What can I do? How can I make it better for them? Because in turn, when you make other people feel better, they'll reciprocate? For the most part.

Ivette Flower  16:53  
Yes, you're empathizing with them about their day. Man, I bet you've had a rough day or man, it's hard to deal with people like me every day, isn't it right? Or you make a joke or something. Their guard comes down, and now your energy transfers to them as opposed to their negative energy transferring to you. Yes, that is reciprocated in both ways.

Marisa Huston  17:12  
Absolutely. And it's taking charge of it and turning things around rather than reacting. And you're just basically getting mad at them back. And then what do you expect is going to happen? It's not going to go to a good place, that's for certain.

Ivette Flower  17:25  
Whatever you wanted to accomplish from that call is not going to happen. 

Marisa Huston  17:29  
Yeah. And it's funny, because I think we don't realize how much control we really do have over these situations. We just assume that a person's mean to us so they're terrible and I'm just gonna let them know, I don't appreciate it. Well, it doesn't help. How can you make the situation better? And I think by refocusing, changing your perception and implementing that in your life, you'll start to see some really amazing results, which that's how you help people. Now that you've explained the PQ, and now we have a better understanding, how can people learn more about how you can help them dig deeper into these habits so that they can apply it in their daily lives?

Ivette Flower  18:05  
They can definitely learn more through visiting my website and kind of understanding the program, how it breaks down. If anyone wants to practice this or understand it a little bit more, I have three strategies that they could use to implement this positive intelligence training into their daily lives. So the first that we had discussed was that awareness. The idea of being in that left side of your brain. If you could just be aware of it. Some people like to give it a name. For me, when that judge, that inner critic pops up, I call it Judge Judy. So I say, oh, there it goes, Judge Judy, and that makes me aware of it but it also makes a little joke out of it so I don't take myself so seriously. Number two would be to activate that right part of our brain so that we can be at that peace and that calm and before we get to that activate that I talked about. So, taking those breaths, and then do either one that you like the sensation of the vision, the hearing or feeling yourself sitting on your chair. So that's number two is activate. And number three is self command. That self command piece is so big to understand that like you and I were just talking. You have control of how you feel, what you think, how you respond. If you're feeling like you're still hijacked at that moment, because you cannot believe that that person was so disrespectful or you can't believe that this thing just happened to mess up your whole entire day or year, you have to then go back to awareness and activate until you can get that breathing down and get into that central part of your nervous system where you can now think clearly. That self command is kind of like a loop. We have the power to do that. And that really goes back to one and number two, which makes number three.

Marisa Huston  18:05  
That helps a lot. Because then you have the three prong approach. And then if you get to the end and you still need to reflect, then you go back to the first one until you reach that goal.

Ivette Flower  19:47  
Yes, if anyone wants to find out more, I have a six week program that I put on on a regular basis. And you could go to my website, www.iflowersolutions.com to find out when the next session is starting. And I also have coaching that I provide either one on one or as a group session. And just think of the idea that the foundation is positive intelligence training and figuring out how to stop sabotaging ourselves. And then I build on that. If you want to increase productivity, if you want to learn about conflict management, if you want to learn about how to become a better leader, things like that, then we could talk about one on one coaching or talk about my group coaching sessions to help with that.

Marisa Huston  20:49  
You mentioned a few things that I know people talk about a lot. They're having challenges with those areas. It really helps us understand, okay, these are some of the things that I'm experiencing and this is the kind of help that I can get for it. Ivette, I can't thank you enough for being here and sharing this with us today.

Ivette Flower  21:06  
Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. I had a lot of fun.

Marisa Huston  21:09  
I did too. Thank you. 

Outro  21:11  
That's a wrap for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks to Ivette Gonzalez Flower for joining us and thanks for listening. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speakpipe.com/LBOVM or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show. Please visit www.liveblissedout.com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!