What are your limiting beliefs, and how can you change them into unlimiting beliefs? Rodney Flowers’ guest today is Karen Brown, the author of Unlimiting Your Beliefs, who completed one of the toughest races in the world, the Ironman World Championship, and finished. Karen discusses the two sides of the spectrum of your unconscious mind you need to be aware of: limiting beliefs and unlimiting beliefs. To switch your limiting beliefs, which are unconscious behavioral patterns that stop you from achieving your dreams, to unlimiting beliefs, you have to think of ways on how and why you CAN do what you dream of doing, even when it seems impossible. Do you want to know how to identify your limiting beliefs and change them into unlimiting beliefs? Then tune in and listen to Karen’s journey of achieving what seemed impossible so that you can do it, too!
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Changing Your Limiting Beliefs To Unlimiting Beliefs With Karen Brown
As always, I am excited about this show. I am here with someone who has completed one of the toughest races in the world and finished. Miss Karen Brown has combined her experience as an IRONMAN World Championship competitor with scientifically proven coaching techniques. She uses these techniques in her programs to help leaders excel in ways they’ve only dreamed of. In fact, she’s written a book about it called Unlimiting Your Beliefs. Without further delay, let’s welcome, Karen Brown to the show. Welcome to the show, Karen.
That was quite an intro. I’m thrilled to be here, Rodney. Thank you.
Unlimiting Your Beliefs: 7 Keys to Greater Success in Your Personal and Professional Life; Told Through My Journey to the Toughest Race in the World
Thank you for being here. I want to get into this race that you have completed. What made you want to get into the IRONMAN World Championship competition? You got to tell me what was that all about?
It started at age fourteen when I saw the IRONMAN World Championships on TV. I had no earthly idea what it was. I had never heard of it before. I was athletic, but not really at a competitive level, nor was I anywhere close to a triathlete. I saw this ridiculously outrageously difficult race. I was immediately stunned and mesmerized by it. I ended up crying watching it. I didn’t realize what was going on at the time, but I later figured out that the reason I was moved to tears watching it is because I thought, “What if I have inside of me what it takes to do that and I’m not tapping into it? What if I am simply living this small, safe life where I think I’m challenging myself, but I’m really not?”
It was an overwhelming feeling of untapped and unrealized potential. Long story short, I kept coming back into touch with that dream because this turned into this huge, gigantic, audacious, crazy dream. I would sort of shove it down every time I thought of it immediately dismissing it with something called limiting beliefs, thus the book, which goes something like this, “I can’t possibly compete in the IRONMAN World Championships because they are elite athletes and I’m a recreational athlete. How can I possibly compete?” That’s something called limiting beliefs, which is a scientifically proven behavioral pattern. It took me 28 years to figure out what that was, why it was holding me back and then to change it into an unlimiting belief. After I did that and jumped in, pursued the dream, and then I used my unconscious behavioral patterns and the techniques that we use with clients to get there. I crossed the finish line two years later.
Congratulations on that, first of all. Limiting beliefs is something that a lot of people deal with. One of the reasons why I got into this business that I’m in is because what I found is that people have goals and dreams, and then they see people that achieve those dreams. You see the Michael Jordans of the world, Kobe Bryants, LeBron James’, Tom Bradys. It’s great that they can do that. We lift them up. We praise them. When it comes to us doing that thing and there’s this limitation, you feel like it was great for them, but I do that? Probably not. I probably should keep my day job. I probably should not pursue a goal that big. I want it to change that thought pattern. That right there, that small conscious thought disrupts everything. First of all, why as an expert in this field, why do we even go to that space? Why is it this limitation about what we can do? When we see another human being is doing exactly or something similar that we want to do, but why do we have this belief about us and our inability to do that?
Here’s what happens. This goes back to prehistoric times, the caveman brain. This is a mechanism that is in our unconscious mind and it’s meant to keep us safe. When we would have to live another day, hunt for our food, evade tigers that were going to eat us, and dinosaurs and whatever, I’m not a paleontologist, so I’ve may not know all my history completely accurately, but I do know the unconscious mind very well. What used to happen in caveman days is immediately we were faced with a threat. Our unconscious mind had to instantaneously ascertain whether it was friend, food, or foe and get us to take action immediately.
That’s why our brains evolved that way to do that, and it did a good job of keeping us alive so that we, as a species, could survive, but in modern-day, it just gets in our way because something happens, which is called negativity bias. It’s where we compare ourselves to other people like the Michael Jordans of the world, that we see carrying out and achieving their big dreams. We think, “I’d like to do that too. I’d like to achieve my own big dream,” but then immediately our unconscious mind comes in and says, “Whoa.” When we’re facing anything different, new or perceived to be dangerous, our unconscious mind is going to drop the curtain on it and go, “Nope, can’t do it.”
Even worse, it starts to think of what we then think are facts why we can’t achieve it. I used to think, “They’re elite athletes and I’m an amateur athlete. I can’t possibly compete.” I wasn’t a swimmer really. I could get in a pool or a lake and not drown, but that was about the extent of it. I wasn’t a road cyclist. I had never even ridden a road bike. I had never run a marathon. I had never done a triathlon of any length. Yet I want to do the biggest, toughest race in the world that every year 90,000 athletes compete for a spot. I had to come to grips with what the behavioral patterns were in my unconscious mind that just kept stopping me from pursuing that. By the way, the truth is, they’ll stop you from that big, scary, audacious dream, but they’ll stop you from smaller ones as well.
When you align your thoughts with the behavior that you want, you produce the results that you want in life. Click To TweetHow did you unravel those unconscious belief patterns that you have?
First of all, I became curious about it and kept using myself as the guinea pig and asking questions. Educating and researching what the answers were, what the solutions were. I also found that I was gifted at this kind of work. By a 25-year corporate career in which I loved working internally, sort of as an internal coach, coaching my team members and fostering other leaders and bringing myself along as a leader. I love the continuous improvement of self-development. That’s what I did is step number one, just trying to understand what this was, the feelings that I would have and what were the ensuing actions or inaction that would come from them. As I slowly started to peel back the layers and understand it, gain education about it, I realized that all of it distills down to these unconscious behavioral patterns that to save energy, truly, this is why our unconscious mind does it. It’s kind of like your cell phone battery. Our unconscious mind looks to establish and repeat patterns all the time.
Even with something that we’ve like thought about maybe once or twice like me with the IRONMAN World Championships at age fourteen. I see it, I think, “What if I have what it takes to do that?” My unconscious mind steps right in stops me from doing it in my tracks, presents what I think are a lot of facts, which are not at all. They’re not factual at all. Your unconscious mind is trying to keep you safe and then it establishes that as a regular pattern, just that fast. We don’t even know that it’s consciously going on. We don’t have any idea.
We keep going the same behavioral pattern because it’s unconscious until we dive in and understand and become super curious about it, what’s going on. The key is becoming aware of the pattern, interrupting it and running a new pattern. That’s what I did many times over because there were more behavioral patterns at play there. I had to access each one and work on each one. That’s also what drives us, drives our thoughts and our actions or inactions every day, in every walk of life. Whether we’re leading ourselves or we’re leading a team, or leading an entire company, personal life, professional life, all of it is the same.
I’ve seen people change abruptly, immediately when there’s a life-altering circumstance or something shifts their entire world. All of a sudden, you will find that what was supposedly going to debilitate them, they seemingly come out better than they were before they went into that situation. It’s mind-boggling because you have people who are not going through some type of life-altering challenge, but they’re limited. They have beliefs. They have goals. They want to go to the top, but they don’t believe they can do it. All of a sudden, something happens that sets them back, but yet it propels them forward because it interrupts that belief pattern. Scientifically, what’s happening there? Is that evidence of what you explained to us?
Yes. Here’s the truth about how this system actually works. Think of it like a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum is limiting beliefs, negativity bias and all this stuff that stops us that are nothing more than unconscious behavioral patterns, but they stop us. On the other side of that spectrum, are the Michael Jordans, Elon Musks, Richard Bransons, Warren Buffetts, the list is endless, that have found a way to tap into the way their brain works, which is their operating system. Instead of spending time and energy in that system, thinking of reasons why they can’t, which is the people on this side of the spectrum, they spend that time and energy thinking of ways that they can do what is seemingly the impossible. The truth is, we, as human beings ALL have the ability to carry out anything we can think of.
I want to highlight something here that you said. I want to highlight it for the audience because it’s screaming at me. It’s so blatant, but it’s easy to miss. You talked about when there are those negative beliefs or limiting beliefs, how the brain will try to come up with facts. It’s trying to validate the reasons why you shouldn’t do what it is you thought you want it to do, but it’s trying to protect you. It’s coming up with things to say, “This could go wrong. That could go wrong.” It’s validating the feeling that you’re having about why you can’t do it. When you spend time thinking about the ways that you can consciously, intently and consistently, you’re validating the thought that you can. It’s the validation of those thoughts. That’s what’s going to drive the behavior. That’s what’s going to change the behavior because you have validation. I believe your behavior is driven by your thoughts. If you have dirty thoughts, you have dirty behavior but when you clean that up and you have good thoughts, your behavior becomes good.
Unlimiting Beliefs: Limiting beliefs are a scientifically proven behavioral pattern that hold you back, which you have to change into unlimiting beliefs.
You align your thoughts with the behavior that you want.
Now you’re taking it even further. When you’re aligning it with your goals and objectives, the vision that you have for your life, now all of your behaviors are aligned with that. You just can’t help but produce the results that you want in life. Even when you face challenges like this triathlon, what kept you going was the belief that you can do it. Let’s talk about that a little bit. We say all these nice things in these shoes and it sounds great. It gets people motivated and inspired, but out there in the real world, the reality is you’re going to face challenges. You’re going to face opposition.
Even when you change your belief patterns, you are a positive thinking person. You’re producing positive results. You have great behavior. There are still times when we face challenges such as COVID-19, for example, because it’s easy. What keeps you going? In your triathlon, in that race, when you hit a place where it felt like your body wanted to shut down because you were in so much pain, what are you thinking? What are you believing? How did you continue on through all of that?
What works not only for me, but scientifically, is when you actively and consistently connect with the emotions that you’re going to feel when you achieve the goal. Every single day, I would visualize what it would look, sound and feel like to cross the finish line in Hawaii. I would make it so vivid that I could hear the roar of the crowd, which by the way, is 50,000 people and you can hear it from two miles away. It’s truly amazing. I’m getting goosebumps thinking of it right now. I could hear the roar of the crowd in my ears as I would go through this process. I could feel the humidity on my skin in the air in Hawaii. I could feel what the ground would feel like running down Ali’i Drive, which is the last stretch on your way to the finish line.
I would put myself in that place of feeling what all the emotions were going to be jumping across the finish line, which is what I ended up doing. This is after 15 hours and 45 minutes of swimming, biking, and running. For anybody that doesn’t know this, the distances of the IRONMAN World Championships are a 2.4-mile swim in the ocean, which is glorious by the way. It sounds daunting, but it is lovely. It’s with 2,000 of your closest competitors, friends, bumping you, elbowing you and swimming over the top of you. Followed by a 112-mile bike ride through seven different climate zones of Hawaii, in what can be crosswinds that can knock you clear off your bike, finished by a 26.2-mile marathon, just for fun.
As I was going through this, in every single setback, every single milestone, I would go back to this touchstone of what it was going to feel like emotionally, the full depth of all the emotions of crossing that finish line. For me, it was the culmination of so many things, that yes, I am tapping into the true potential within me. What are the other things that I’ve realized along the way? This is tapping into my true divine self, what I was meant to be, what I was meant to do. The difference I was meant to make on this planet. When I kept stepping into that and turning amplification on it every single day, it then changed my thoughts and beliefs and then aligned. It aligned with my big dream because then I would start to see myself as this IRONMAN World Championship finisher.
When you were going through the training, did you ever meet any resistance? Did you ever have any doubt about putting your body through that level of training or not being able to finish the race? How did you deal with those types of thoughts?
It’s the same exact way. I had to interrogate every single doubting thought that I had. I’m going to be completely open with everybody right now. The first biggest doubting presence was my husband at the time. As soon as I decided to pursue this, he said, “You will never get there. You don’t have what it takes to get to the IRONMAN World Championships.” I had to overcome things like that. It wasn’t just him. The lion’s share of people in my world at that time when I shared it would say, “Nope, I don’t think you’re going to be able to do it. It’s too difficult. You’re a first-timer.”
How did they make you feel?
It’s terrible. I would cry my eyes out every time. I remember one time I was in my master swim team, which is a language that means swim team for older people. I was swimming with some great swimmers, like former top collegiate swimmers. I remember in the locker room one day, not only my coach said, “You suck in swimming. You have a terrible feel for the water. You will never make your goal.” Two women in the locker room, as I was finishing, from that horrible event, they said, “You don’t deserve to go. You’re trying to take the spot of a very talented elite-level athlete that deserves to be there.”
Become aware of your harmful behavior patterns and interrupt them, then run a new pattern. Click To TweetWhen these things happen, I was shattered. I would go back to my support system, which was my sister, my mom, my best friend, everybody that was in my corner and believed from minute one that unwaveringly I would do this. They were with me every step of the way. I’d call them crying and they’d say, “Let it out. Process it through the emotion that you’re feeling and all the hurt that you’re feeling,” which is by the way, what we need to do right now with COVID every day. They would remind me of my goal. They’d ask me, “Why are you doing this?” Why do you want to achieve this? What is it going to feel like at the end for you? What is it going to feel like with the next win and the next way that you progress forward? What does that feel like? Once I would answer those questions and get back in touch with the emotions of how it would feel and what it meant to me, boom, I would leave those sad emotions, feelings and being shattered. I would leave them behind.
What validated you completing this race? I do want to know that. When you start thinking about how you can, and if you find those things that validate that question or validate that thought, what validated it for you? What gave you that knowing that you could do this?
It was completing incremental steps to get there. This was a two-year process. For a lot of people, it’s a lot longer than two years. I could say it was a 30-year process because I held myself back for 28 and then it was two years once I started pursuing it. I bet a lot of people can relate to that. Once you’re pursuing something, it’s broken down into probably a million little incremental steps. As long as I would take each incremental step and I would complete it, I would do what was necessary. I had to learn to run fast and do sprints on a track. When I started, that was one of the favorite things I could think of to do. I would rather poke myself in the eye with a pen.
I knew, “I’ve got to get good at this so that I can get to the IRONMAN World Championships. This is one of the things that’s going to get me there.” I would lean in. I would change my mindset about it. I would find something to love about it and that worked. I would keep making this progress over time, which by the way, at my company, Velocity Leadership, we came up with a proprietary app for this because this is how you change behavioral patterns on a daily basis. You have to become aware of it, interrupt the pattern and then run a new one. That’s what I did every day and completed every step to get there. We built an app that helps people to do that.
What has this taught you about leadership?
It’s taught me that first of all, choosing to look at yourself and make behavioral changes is a choice. I know that right now, we can all think of leaders out there who are not making that choice. These are leaders that say, “It’s the way I am. It’s my personality. It’s the way I’m wired. This is the way it is.” No, I would say, “Bull hockey to that.” That is not true. What is true, according to science is that 95% of who we are, how we act and what we carry out every day is up for grabs. It’s up to be molded, shaped and shifted. Just like you said, you’ve seen people who have made pervasive, profound changes, sometimes like that. It is a choice. The other side is leaders who lean in. They first look inward and ask themselves a question. They get curious and go, “What’s my contribution to what’s going on here with my behavior or with the team or with the company or in my life? What are the thoughts that build that behavior?” When you get curious, you interrogate those and you make that choice, it’s the game-changer.
What are some of the limiting beliefs you find that are holding leaders back, perhaps preventing them from being the outstanding leader that they could be, or reaching that certain level of potential, completing their triathlon as a leader?
First of all, let me define a limiting belief because it will help us with this. Anytime you think or say, “I don’t have enough time, money, talent, resources or support to achieve X,” and X is your goal. The first limiting belief that I find that every single leader out there has, it doesn’t matter what level they are, is I don’t have enough time. It falls down into either and more women think this way than men, so I’m going to be real, “I’m not good enough to achieve that. I don’t have what it takes,” which is the limiting belief I had. Men tend to think more along the lines of, “I don’t have enough time or support from board members or team members, or my number two or the people in my company,” even if it’s a small company, whatever. They always tend to look outside of themselves for something that’s missing or lacking.
How do you get them to look inward? With every situation, the first place you have to look is inside, but it’s seemingly difficult. There are outside factors that weigh in on whatever we’re trying to do, where we’re trying to go. It takes extreme ownership and that’s another show all in of itself right there, to do just what it says. Take ownership of all of that at the capacity that you have to take ownership of it and it is getting rid of all excuses. There is no excuse. How do we do that? There are some things in the corporate space, in business that are realities.
For example, COVID-19 is a reality and it’s a fierce reality for a lot of people. It’s causing a lot of disruption, change and uncertainty for a lot of people. There are factors related to this issue that are uncontrollable. How does a person with all of that going on that we just set up now have to go inward and, “It’s on you? You still have to find a solution. You still have to find the way.” Talk to us about, I don’t know if the word is ignore or maybe a better word is manage all of that’s going on out there, and yet still find that place inward to find strength or intellect or whatever it is that they need to perform at a high level.
First of all, it takes a realization that we are the masters of our own thoughts. We are the only ones that manufacture our own thoughts. Nobody else does, but we do think that because of environment or events or all of that stuff outside of ourselves that we can’t control that it manufactures our thoughts. It’s not true. We manufacture our own thoughts. It’s our reaction to something or our interpretation of something. It goes back to this choice I talked about and what is at the bottom of that is a willingness to be a pilgrim of self-discovery, to look inward, to ask yourself those questions, to interrogate your own thoughts.
Oftentimes, all that’s required after you do that, is to find a different way to do something. This is what COVID has exacerbated in us. It has forced us through some very painful things to find a different way. There are all these success stories out there right now of all of these people who they were presented with lemons and they made lemonade. They found a different way. They had to be more creative. They had to innovate and they had to realize that, “If I keep on the same trajectory doing the same things, it’s not going to work.” I can choose to change or I can choose to be forced to change later. Which will it be?
One of the things I love about a triathlon race is the fact that you got to be able to run. You got to be able to swim. You got to be able to bike. Is there anything else? What I love about it is you have to be good at all of those things. You have to be able to adjust. You have to be agile and flexible. If you’re a great runner, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to complete a triathlon because you’ve got to be able to swim. You’ve got to be able to ride a bike. If you’re great in any of those areas and you suck at the other, you’re going to struggle.
A lot of people are drowning right now because it isn’t familiar for a lot of people. When we talk about uncertainty is being in a space with things that aren’t familiar for you. You don’t have that level of confidence, that level of belief that if they throw me in the water, I’m going to swim. If they put me on a bike, I’m going to be able to ride it up. If I’m on a track and I have to run sprints, I’m going to be good at it. It’s unfamiliar. That’s what leads to uncertainty.
Unlimiting Beliefs: When we’re facing anything different, new, or perceived to be dangerous, our unconscious mind is going to drop the curtain on it and go, “No, can’t do it.”
I love what you said about finding another way. In a triathlon, you have to be good in three ways. You have to be good at all three of them in order to finish or to compete at a high level. We’re in these spaces where we’re outside of our comfort zone, outside of what’s familiar. For me, I find it as a time to get excited. It doesn’t always feel good, but yet I know over time and with consistency, this feeling of uncertainty is going to go away. It’s going to be replaced with certainty and comfort because the pattern is going to repeat of me trying to do it this way.
If I keep swimming and I don’t know how to swim, eventually I’m going to learn how to swim. If I’m traveling a road I haven’t traveled before, if I keep traveling that road, eventually I’m going to know it by heart. I’m not going to have to be as aware when I’m traveling the road because I’m just going to know where it turns are, where the stops are, where the cops are or whatever. I’m going to know all of those things.
It’s unconscious competence.
That’s what we’re talking about here. Once you’re in that space, you have found another way. You’re not even thinking about what you were doing five years ago when COVID hit, speaking five years futuristically, because now you’re so used to doing it this way that it doesn’t even matter anymore. The only reason that matters now is because you can’t do it the way you used to do it yesterday, so it matters and that doesn’t feel good. In five years, it’s not going to matter. To me, I feel that when you talk about our brains and the way our brains work, when we talk about our beliefs and then we start talking about uncertainty, there’s a belief that we can’t make it or it’s going to be tough or it’s going to be this in it or we might fail. Those are all emotions. Those are feelings. How do we deal with those feelings? What are your thoughts? What advice can you give us about dealing with those feelings of discomfort or disgust or whatever that show up when we’re in those spaces?
There are two things. The first thing is what you’re talking about, all the examples you gave, the underpinning of all of those is fear. That’s at the basis of all of it. If we, first of all, reframe our thoughts about our comfort zone. Instead of our thoughts about comfort zone being, “It’s this finite circle that once we step out, it’s like stepping onto a cliff,” which is scary to look over the side and think about falling and failing. That’s fear. When we change that paradigm and think of our comfort zones as this ever-expanding rubber band that never snaps back, you can keep pushing on it and pushing on it and expand it, and it is infinite because our minds are infinite. They have infinite potential.
First of all, reframe that whole comfort zone idea. This is in the book, by the way. What always overcomes fear is what I talked about of connecting to the positive, the feel-good emotions that are going to come when you do what you need to do when you take that step, or when you expand your comfort zone or when you achieve the ultimate goal. Once you force yourself to stay in that space, “This is going to feel great. This is going to be who I truly am. This is going to lead to my purpose. This is going to lead to greater fulfillment and happiness and will be a gateway to all those things.” Whatever else you can think of, it is an antidote to fear. Fear cannot live in that environment. That’s what you’re trying to overcome is fear.
Back to the fight or flight, the brain is trying to protect us.
The brain is trying to keep us safe. That’s it. It’s the perception of safe. Truth is when we are thinking of doing something that we believe is going to be outside of our comfort zone, again that analogy of the circle, immediately that raises our emotion of fear. That’s going to stop us every time if we let it.
I feel like life is a training ground. We get these opportunities to practice and it starts when we’re young. We’re little and we’re falling and getting back up, and hurting ourselves, and learning how to walk and do all of those things. The difference is you don’t have the same level of fear. When we’re young, we’re more willing to take certain risks. Relatively speaking of a one-year-old or a toddler, they’ll do things without a lot of fear that you wouldn’t think. We would think, “I can’t believe you did that.”
When we get older, we tend to have this level of hesitation. Fear seems to play a bigger role in our behavior. We are presented with these opportunities where we can practice. We have opportunities where we can overcome, but we don’t. They’re continuous. We get so many opportunities because there are so many opportunities to do things like what you’ve done or there’s opposition. There’s resistance that shows up. There are life-altering experiences. These are all opportunities to practice challenging those beliefs, in my opinion. Why don’t we do that in your opinion?
What keeps us from growing and evolving? Getting to a place where you and I and the people that are reading are the Warren buffets and the Bill Gates of the world. To me, this is available for everyone, but not everyone is experiencing it. What’s the discriminator here? What we’re talking about, it’s not rocket science. It’s on the books. It’s been said before. It’s available for people. We’re making it more available, but yet they’re still a disparity. What do you think needs to happen? They still need to buy your book. They need to go to your website and talk to you. What are you finding is a common issue for people?
We are the masters of our own thoughts. Click To TweetThis is why I wrote the book. After many years of not only this journey of mine, but also working with high-level leaders of a middle to large market companies, and just human beings in general in every walk of life getting to be an expert in how our brains work, specifically unconscious behavioral patterns, what I’ve come to realize is that this is available to everyone. We can all do this. As soon as we learn it, we can do it. Maybe that’s it that we’ve never been taught or we’ve never been exposed to it. If we were exposed to it, then we didn’t say yes and actually implement and do it.
I have this belief and I know it to be scientifically possible, which is that we can eradicate limiting beliefs. Human beings don’t need to suffer from limiting beliefs and struggle with them any longer. It’s 2021. We’re talking caveman times where this is from. We can overcome and eradicate this very quickly. What I’m going to share with you are the statistics between the processing speed and the capability of your unconscious mind compared to your conscious mind.
It goes like this, your unconscious mind processes 400 billion bits of information per second and impulses travel at a speed of up to 100,000 miles an hour. Compare this to your conscious mind, which processes only 2,000 bits of information per second and impulses travel at a very pedestrian 100 to 150 miles per hour. It makes sense that this is the powerful game-changer, which is your brain. When you work in your unconscious behavioral patterns, it is the game-changer. That is the key. It’s the difference-maker with such velocity. It’s like you said before, you’ve seen people that have made what looked to be instantaneous changes. It’s like they go along and then boom, and about-face. They do a 180 and you go, “What happened?” This is probably what happened. They’re tapping into this power and speed of their unconscious mind.
What are some practices that people can take away really quick to kind of start tapping into their unconscious mind?
Interrogate your own thoughts. That’s the thing I can say most quickly. Ask yourself, even write them down. We have tools on our website to do that, also how to take a limiting belief and transform it into an unlimiting belief. Also, that information’s in the book but at an even more simplistic level, it’s to start becoming aware of your thoughts, write them down and then interrogate them and go, “Is this thought that I have, first of all, accurate? Is it true?” Nine times out of ten, the answer is no. It’s been manufactured in your head and then blow holes in it. If it’s stopping you from achieving something that you’ve said you want to do, then align it, change that thought. Actively change it to align with what you do want to achieve. It is possible so fast, it will make your head spin.
Karen, how can people connect with you if they wanted to work with you?
It’s the name of my company, which is VelocityLeadershipConsulting.com/company and you’ll find us.
Karen, thank you for coming to the show. It’s been a wonderful conversation. I would love to get you back at some point to dive into this even a little bit deeper. For me, this is one of the fundamental areas of success, changing the game of accomplishing what it is that you want to accomplish in life. This particular topic out of all the self-development tools and ideas out there, you don’t get this one right. You can’t master the thoughts. You can’t change the story that is going on in your mind and that story could have been created by doctors or by your family.
We are programmed as we grow up to believe what we believe. I love that thought about interrogating your thoughts and beliefs. That is so critical because we go our whole lives believing a certain thing and it’s driving our behavior. All it takes is a switch to turn that belief off and then turn on another one and seemingly everything changes. I think this is it, but yet it’s challenging for a lot of people. I’m going to get your book because I want to read what you have to say about it because I just love this type of stuff. I encourage the readers to go check this out as well. If you can master this, I don’t think you need anything else. Once you can master the mind, you’re done. If there’s an area where you want to spend time in self-development, this is it.
It makes everything else easier or unnecessary. It’s the basis of everything.
Before we go, you’ve given us so much, but I still have to ask you the game-changing mentality question of the day. How can we bounce back from adversity, dominate our challenges and consistently win at the game of life?
Be a pilgrim of self-discovery.
There you have it, Karen Brown, in the show. Thank you for stopping through.
Thank you so much for having me. What a delightful pleasure it’s been.
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There you have it, folks. It’s another successful episode. Be a student of self-discovery. I believe out of all that we have learned, all the institutionalized learning, the education, all of that we are exposed to in terms of learning opportunities, I don’t think we spend enough time on it. I was having a conversation with my trainer this morning about understanding who you are and how you are created and the powers that you have. A lot of that is going on between your ears and your brain and what you are thinking. Taking the time to understand how that works and how you can use it to benefit you or use it to prevent many of the challenges and obstacles that you may be facing.
Maybe all of that comes to an end, if you can change your belief about what it is that’s happening to you, which is why I believe that the challenges and the obstacles that you have are so useful because it gives us that opportunity to do just what Karen said, interrogate our thoughts. We have to be able to look inward whenever these challenges show up so that we can find a way to overcome them. Looking inward works every single time. It is the go-to. That’s the audible. When nothing else is working, you go to that space.
One last thing, based on what you’re saying is when I started pursuing the IRONMAN in earnest, I thought that it was going to be 90% physical and 10% mental. I found the exact opposite to be true. That is true in anything that you want to do. It is all up in your head, whether you’re going to be successful in it or not. When I say physical, that’s not just me going out and running and swimming and biking. That is a metaphor for outward or external things that are going on in our world. We think it’s because COVID is happening or this is happening or this isn’t happening or whatever, or it’s the market. No. It’s wrong. It’s 90% in your head and only 10% of what’s going on outside of you.
It’s the game-changer mentality. Until next time folks, peace and love.
Important Links:
- Unlimiting Your Beliefs
- https://www.VelocityLeadershipConsulting.com/company/
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
- https://RodneyFlowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
- Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
- Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
- Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
About Karen Brown
Karen Brown is an unconscious mind expert in the field of leadership and professional performance, world-class ultra-endurance athlete, successful corporate executive, professionally certified executive coach, keynote presenter and best-selling author. Karen tackles critical topics in today’s business environment. She utilizes the powerful mechanism of the unconscious mind, where all learning, behaviors and growth happens. After many years of coaching leaders, Karen discovered that the unconscious mind is the scientific key to elevated levels of success, with greater velocity and ease. This inspired her to found Velocity Leadership Consulting to bring this difference-making model and tools of success to all leaders. Karen realized her own transformation and discovered the keys to achieving greater success in her personal and professional life when she achieved a 28-year dream of competing in the toughest race in the world, the IRONMAN World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, as an amateur, non-triathlete at age 46. She parlayed this experience to the business world and now helps CEOs, executives and managers connect with and realize their own goals, with greater velocity and ease.
She has two published works, the most recent, Unlimiting Your Beliefs: 7 Keys to Greater Success in Your Personal and Professional Life. Karen earned Master Practitioner certification in Neuro Linguistic Programming and Mental and Emotional Release from the Association for Integrative Psychology. She’s also a certified Personal and Executive Coach through the International Coaching Federation and Coaching & Positive Psychology Institute.
A consummate learner, Karen investigates the latest scientific findings that unlock elevated professional performance and leadership. She lives in Denver and finds happiness and personal expansion in training and competing on the international stage of ultra-endurance athletics.
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