Kicking Anxiety To The Curb

Lauren: Welcome to The Biz Doctor Podcast, my love letter to business owners the world over. I’m your host, Lauren Goldstein, award-winning business consultant and advisor, fondly nicknamed The Biz Doctor by my clients. I help business owners who are burning the candle at both ends, diagnose what is actually keeping them [00:00:30] buried in the day-to-day busy work, and then formulate a treatment plan to adjust their business and team to fit them so they can take a breath and a vacation and have more fun making a bigger impact than ever.

So grab your favorite beverage and your earbuds, and let’s dive into our latest episode.

I was driving from Colorado Springs to Denver recently with the radio turned off soaking in the silence and scenery when it hit me. I think this is what Grand Master Uwe and Kung Fu Panda was talking about. Topo Inner Peace. Now, if you haven’t watched this movie, please do. It has so many great lessons.

I know it’s a kids movie, but. Ugh, I love it. In that moment, I became present to what Sage for centuries have been trying to get through our thick skulls about inner peace. Welcome back to The Biz Doctor Podcast. I’m your host, Lauren Goldstein, and today I’m gonna jive on something all of as business owners could use more of inner peace, and the lesson I recently got around it.

So back to achieving inner peace, you can only control the present. This is what I finally realized. The present is this moment in time where you have the power to create, to change, to become what you want, and there is no other time. And once it’s gone, It’s no longer the present. Now, I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find I’m spending too much time beating myself up over choices I made in business in the past, or worrying about what’s coming in the future.

Heck, raise your hand if you as a business owner feel like most of your days are spent in firefighting or fretting. Right? Okay, so let’s temper those flames and the fretting. Now back to Kung Fu Panda. What this amazing kids movie teaches us is to be at peace with this present moment, asking ourselves, did I do all I was capable of doing today and being at peace with the answer?

Either you did or hopefully you will have another day tomorrow to do better. I. So on today’s podcast, I wanna talk about the two tools that have helped [me reduce the anxiety that comes with life, being a business owner to achieve more inner peace. So grab a beverage of choice and something to take notes on.

Let’s dive in. A mentor of mine once told me that your stories are either serving you or you’re a slave to them. He then followed it up with, we’re all making it up as we go anyway, so you might as well just make up a story that serves you. This moment in time has stuck with me, and this is my North Star as I go through my days and hopefully will be your new North Star as well.

If you think about it, every action, every moment, everything we do in our business and our personal lives creates a story. Whether you’re in a grocery store and somebody, let’s say, cuts you in line, there’s a story you can create about that person, right? Sometimes it’s a good story, sometimes it’s not.

Rather, sometimes it’s a story that serves you and sometimes it’s a story that doesn’t. In that moment of choice is what I wanna dig deeper into on today’s podcast as one of the single best ways to reduce your anxiety and achieve inner peace by getting really clear on the stories you’re creating, and if they serve you or not.

You actually have a twofold benefit. First, you actually get your power back, which then actually sweeps away the anxiety. As a sidebar, go back and listen to the episode that I did with Whitney Alexandra on mindset. We talk a little bit about this that will help drive this home. When you think about interactions with your business and your team and the stories that were created, do you think they helped the team or the business, or do [00:04:00] you think they might have created unnecessary drama, stress, anxiety, fear, et cetera?

If you really think about it, how are the stories that you created actually serving you and your business? So now that I’ve set the stage for stories that serve versus stories that keep you stuck, I’m going to share a powerful exercise to resolve any lingering anxiety and again, help you achieve that inner peace.

And also, as a sidebar, I find it helpful to remind myself that if I have anger, it’s generally about something that happened in the past. And if I’m experiencing fear anxiety, it’s because I’m worrying about something that is yet to happen. And the only place that, again, we can create magic in our business, and the only place that we can actually accomplish anything or control anything is in the present.

So here’s how to make the present much more impactful for you. There’s something that I learned in my emotional intelligence leadership course with the Ascension Leadership Academy here in Austin, and ever since learning this, gosh, has my life completely changed through this process. What I realized beside the fact that I’m making up every story that comes along is that.

Really, truly anything that quote unquote happens to me is a choice. I know you’re probably like, what on earth does that mean? Stay with me. Just because something happened doesn’t mean that I have to let it impact me, or that you have to let it impact you. So just because something is scary doesn’t mean I have to let fear plague me.

Does that make sense? Without further ado, here’s the technique that will hopefully make this all come full circle and make perfect sense. When you have a conflict with someone, set up a time to talk and have a clearing conversation with them within 24 hours, and it goes a little something like this.

Okay, wait. Really quick word of caution. Don’t do clearing conversations right after the event. Give it some time. Schedule it. Say, can I have a clearing conversation with you? Because what you don’t wanna do, or rather what you want to make sure of, is that everybody is in their right mind and not still emotionally charged.

So you want to have this take place within 24 hours, but not if the emotions are still running high. So the way that you do this technique, and you can use this in your personal life, in your marriage, in your relationships, in your friendships, in your business, and your team, I recommend you use it everywhere.

It goes a little something like this. When this happened, the story I created was X. My request of you moving forward is Y. Then you give them a chance to acknowledge and ask them if they have any requests of you, and that’s it. Easy as pie. Now let me give you a few more details so that I set you up for even more success.

And also let me connect the dot back to the comment about fear. Just because something happened that was scary doesn’t mean that you give it power to create fear that stays with you. It’s a little  bit like if you’ve ever heard, if you’ve ever heard people talk about that fear and excitement, percent the same physiological.

Elements in your body, the sweating, the shaking, the breathing, all the things it presents the same way, but the label that we give it of, Ooh, this is so fun, or, oh, I’m so nervous, actually dictates how we move through that moment. I. To achieve inner peace and reduce anxiety. We get to look objectively at each moment and the story that we create with it.

And so why this technique or tactic, if you will, is so powerful is because it puts the power back into your hands by removing any ambiguity around the situation and also removing the emotional responses. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have emotions, that’s not what I’m saying. In fact, I believe we should fully process our emotions because stuffing them down makes them come out in not very supportive ways.

But what I am saying is having important conversations in the heat of the moment when emotions and tensions are high, almost never serve us. Second, it brings clarity and communication back into this relationship. This is not a time for he said, she said, this is a time for owning the story you created and the subsequent ripple effects that it had on the relationship business, et cetera.

Because here’s what I know for a fact, and if you’ve listened to any previous episodes, you’ve probably heard me say it numerous times. Unshared expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments. Clearing conversations, remove that resentment, the misinformation, and they let both sides be heard.

Again, not in. Defense, but in a request. Remember that in life there is only one thing that we can truly control, and that’s our reaction to things in this present moment. So this wonderful tool is putting the onus of your reaction, a k a, the story on you.

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I’ll give you a really good example of a clearing conversation with something that actually happened recently to one of my clients. Let’s say one of your employees has a temper tantrum in the middle of a meeting. Honestly, as much as I hate to admit that we’ve all been there where an employee has just all of a sudden had it and does something so outta character, everybody is shocked.

Who knows what is happening in their home life or what may might be spilling over into work, but all of a sudden there you are in front of your team with shrapnel everywhere. But because you are a leader and you now know this technique, you get to have a clearing conversation with them and not address it.

In this moment when emotions are high and create more damage. So it might go a little something like this. Hey, jt, when you got upset in this meeting this morning, the story you created was that you hate your job. I’m a terrible boss, and you’re gonna quit. My request of you moving forward is that if you are frustrated in your role, feel like you’re not being heard or something in your personal life is impacting your work, that you come to me first and we have a private conversation so I can support you.

And so we do not inadvertently create any strife in the team or however you wanna word it, whatever your request is. Now, this is key. They don’t defend themselves because again, there is nothing to defend. So if you are having a clearing or you’re being cleared with, this is not the time to defend yourself.

In this moment, we are simply saying What happened? The story I created was this, after this event happened. They feel they need to add context. They can if they want, but it’s not necessary because no one is getting in trouble here. Again, it’s not about he said, she said blame, control, any of that. It’s really just about clearing the space, being heard and moving forward.

Back to our example, you can make a request. And now they have the choice to honor your request or not. Honestly, I’ve never had anybody not honor my request, but if your request is pretty outlandish, like I remember I had a clearing conversation with someone, um, who said, my request of you is that you answer every text or phone call immediately.

Now, obviously in this case, I’m not gonna agree to something that would set us up for both, for failure and many more clearing conversations. So now the last step is asking them, do you have any requests of me? That’s their moment to say what they need from you. Because here’s what I’ve learned about humans in my almost 20 years in business psychology and neuroscience.

Almost every single conflict comes down to someone feeling like they’re not being heard. So when somebody doesn’t feel like they’re being heard, chances are what happens is they start acting out in very strange ways. So if you can start having these conversations with your teams, your family, your friends, just think about this for a minute, about how many conflicts this would stop in your relationships.

Come to think of it, Brene Brown uses a very similar technique. She shares a great story about her husband and her swimming. She’s loving it, feeling it’s a really special bonding moment for the two of them is talking and sharing and he’s really not paying attention. She notices gets really miffed the story she creates as he doesn’t care or love her anymore.

So finally after stewing on it for a day or two, she has a conversation with him and she says, you know, when this happened, I really felt X, Y, Z. And he looked at her and was like, honey, what on earth are you talking about? I didn’t hear a word you were saying because I was so terrified of drowning at that moment because I realized how outta shape I was and how much of a struggle swimming had become.

So this is a perfect example of how two days worth of anxiety and stewing could have been avoided by having a clearing conversation. So in conclusion, the way to take your power back over anxiety and achieve more inner peace is twofold. First, recognizing that stories you’re creating are either serving you or keeping you stuck, or maybe even keeping you a slave to where you are right now.

The second is having clearing conversations with people, and I mean, really having those tough conversations so everyone is clean and clear. Lastly, remember, take a look at where your anxiety is coming from. Is it coming from beating yourself up for something  that happened in the past that you cannot change and cannot control?

Or is it coming from worrying about something that’s gonna happen in the future? I. If it is either of those, find something to bring you back to the present. ’cause that is where the magic happens. All right, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening in. If anything I shared sparked something in you, I’d love to hear from you.

So let’s connect. Tag me on Instagram at it’s Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn or wherever you hang out on the interwebs. Also, please don’t forget to subscribe to your first to get notified when our next episode is live and ready for your ears. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.

Thank you for listening to The Biz Doctor Podcast. Now, I like to say that friends, don’t let friends  WebMD your business. So if you’re wondering what your next steps could be, here are some options for you. No matter what, head to the show notes or to my website, goldenkeypartnership.com for some impactful resources to support you getting out from under your business.

That’s also where you’ll find the links to learn more about our services and how we support business owners. Just like you who are ready to make the successful jump from business operator in the trenches to visionary business owner with more freedom and flexibility.  All of that info is on our website, so pop on over to learn more or get in touch goldenkeypartnership.com.

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