MindShifting For A Better You With Donna Blevins

 

Most people don’t realize it, but the secret to either success or failure has been in you all along. MindShifting exercises are the best way to begin the process of getting into the right state of mind for success. The author of MindShift On Demand: QUICK Life-Changing Tools, Donna Blevins, comes in to explain how MindShifting will benefit you, as well as some simple exercises to begin what could be a difficult process of transforming the way your brain thinks. Ever felt like you’re in your own way? Donna’s exercises might just be the key to maximizing your potential, and attaining the success you’re working so hard to reach.

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Listen to the podcast here:

MindShifting For A Better You With Donna Blevins

I have Donna Blevins in the show with me. She is a high profile successful entrepreneur who could have lost everything in one life-shattering moment, but instead she found the keys to control her mind and body. Instantly, she geared up and tested the limits of her mind-shifting exercises which we’re going to talk about and prove that they work. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show, Ms. Donna Blevins.

Rodney, I’m absolutely delighted to be here and honored. We are so like-minded. This is the first time we’ve talked face-to-face and I’m thrilled to share the time with you.

I’m glad that you decided to join me on the show. You agreed to be here. I’m grateful and thankful for that moment. I’m excited about what we’re going to talk about, mind-shifting exercises. This is the Game Changer Mentality podcast. We’re all about things that can help us change the game when it comes to mindset. I’m excited about what you have to offer and what you’re going to dive into. Let’s start talking about this life-shattering moment that you had. What is that all about?

It was Halloween in 2013. I was in the process of doing the final draft, at least I thought it was a final draft, on my book, MindShift on Demand. I stood up from my computer and I’m looking at the screens. I’ve got three screens where I do my writing and I was frustrated. I put my hands on my hips and I looked up at the screen and I said, “I want something that proves my mindshift exercises work.” Moments later I had a massive center left brain stroke, which literally mutes you. I could only speak two words. All along the way, when they air lifted me to the Florida Teaching Hospital, the healthcare team is saying, “She will never be able to speak fluidly again. It’ll take her 8 to 9 months before she can talk.” I have this internal remote control and I would go, “Cancel, delete.” Rather than buy into that, I chose to detach and observe. I started doing a mindshift exercise that people are now calling my signature mindshift exercise. I did that probably 100 times in three days and in three days I was able to speak fluidly.

You had a stroke and you couldn’t speak. Three days later, after utilizing your mind-shifting exercises you’re able to speak fluidly. That is absolutely incredible. Walk us through this because this is huge, this is nothing short of miraculous. Give us some details about what did you do. How did you turn this around so quickly?

One of the biggest problems when we’re dealing with anything that’s physical, as you will know, when our body is damaged, the healthcare team is trying to help us, but they’re telling us that we’re broken. If we buy into that breakage, then we seem to stay there. We magnify it. You look on social, I look at these screens, I look on social media and people are whining about what’s going on and they seem to hurt more. When we detach from what’s happening to us and we get to a place of peace, calm and allow our mind to step out of that illness, it has power. I had no idea how powerful that was until I experienced it.

How did you step out of there? How did you detach? That’s the hardest thing, especially when your world is flipped upside down. The main thing you want to do is get back on course, get back to what you would normally do and get back to what you would call a normal life and then you have this challenge in front of you.

I had been doing this one mindshift exercise for close to 50 years, but I hadn’t written it down until a few years ago when my poker coaching clients insisted that I tell them how I was doing this. It’s a simple process of when you’re dealing with something, if you take a moment and find someplace where you can take two minutes. Once you train your brain to do this, you rewire the neuropathways. When you create the habit of doing this, you can do it in a snap of a finger. Let’s say you can step away for two minutes and literally ask it to show itself. Whatever is in your mind’s eye, close your eyes and get to that place of calm and look at it and then be there in a moment. Forgive yourself for whatever’s happening because one of the biggest keys is when something happens to us, we start blaming ourselves. When we get into self-blame, that magnifies everything.

If we buy into the thought that our bodies are broken, we not only stay there; we magnify the breakage. Click To Tweet

Get to that place of self-forgiveness and ask it to show itself. Be at that moment with it and notice it. In your mind’s eye with your eyes closed, step back one step from it. As you do, look at it and say, “Isn’t that interesting?” That moment when you step back in your mind’s eye, you are detaching. Literally you are because your mind doesn’t know that you’re not doing this physically. You’re doing it in your mind’s eye. You’re creating this method of doing it and it seems to move away from you and start to fade. Be there for a moment and step back one more time. As you do, say, “Isn’t that interesting?” It moves further away from you and fades even more. It seems to get smaller. It’s no longer out there and all around you.

It now has boundaries because when you ask it to show itself in your mind’s eye, it has boundaries. You can step back one more time and say, “Isn’t that interesting?” and even chuckle at it. You want to open your eyes. You want to look up to your left and ask yourself out loud if you can, “Where would I rather be?” and let that go. What you do with a question like, “Where would I rather be?” You’ve done what I call a code modifier. You’ve downloaded some software, a question that your subconscious goes about answering. It becomes occupied saying, “Where would I rather be?” It becomes involved in that. That’s the process in a nutshell.

That seems pretty difficult. I would imagine you dealing with a stroke, your whole life is turned upside down and you find a way to say, “Isn’t that interesting?” and step away from that. I get the power in that, but I can imagine someone reading this. Maybe they’re going through a stroke, maybe they’re going through something a little bit more traumatic than a stroke and maybe it’s something as small as just a bad day. Help us get to that place where we can all collectively find the strength to do that. How did you find the strength to do that in such a traumatic experience?

Like anything, until learned, it seems difficult. Making it a habit makes it easy and automatic. When I said I had been doing this for 50 years and I started teaching people how to do this simple mindshift exercise, what I say is it takes a habit. You can train your brain on how to do this quickly without having to go, “How am I going to do this?” You have to go through this seven-step process of, “Isn’t that interesting?” every day for ten minutes over a 40-day period. It only takes 40 days to create a habit. By doing that, what happens is rather than being reactive, because it’s that reactive place where we go when things are terrible outside. When we are reactive, we’re fueling whatever is happening. By literally training our brain how to do that, we don’t have to step through it. When I said you can do it at the snap of a finger, once your brain knows how to do that, you can do it with a simple thought, a simple word of, “Isn’t that interesting?”

You prepared for this experience. You had some mindshift training. This wasn’t new to you. You knew where to go. You knew who you were as you were facing this challenge. How does one get to that place of realizing that you don’t have to settle for whatever comes? A lot of times, based on my experience, we don’t know the power that we have. We don’t know who we are in a sense when it comes to overcoming challenges and you did. You were in a place where you had some tools in your toolbox. You knew who you were as an individual and what you had to come back, the experience that you were facing. Help us change the game in our lives where we may be unaware of some of the mindshift exercises or unaware of what we’re truly capable of that will lead us to want to understand and learn more mindshift exercises.

It’s a case of whether people want to choose because it is everyone’s choice. If people say to me, “Things are awful, they’re terrible.” I said, “Do you want to stay in that mindset?” If they go, “What do you mean? I don’t have any control over that?” We have all the control. Everything that happens in our life is the way we see it. It is our perspective. We have a choice based on how we experience it, by how we perceive it. We have to change our perspective and that has to do with the whole process of changing your mindset. We need to decide to be better or to be in a better place then take action. It’s the case of choosing.

How many mindshift exercises are there? Is this the only one? Are there multiple? Tell us about that.

My book, MindShift on Demand, has twelve but I’ve got close to 150 mindshift exercises that I have created over the years. What would happen is I would meet someone and I would say, “What’s going on?” A crisis or someone would come to me for coaching and say, “This is what I need.” I would go, “What are you dealing with?” I would craft one that would fit them. As an example, when the book was first published a few years ago, a friend of mine said, “Go to the flea market and do a book signing.” I said, “That sounded silly,” but I thought, “Let me give it a shot.” I expected that the market for the book was probably people in my peer range of age.

It’s different exercises because it speaks to different people more directly. I was wondering if this was good for teens and that day, interestingly enough, you were talking about being God-centered when I was looking at your website. I ask that question. When you asked that question, it’s almost like you’re saying a prayer and, “Is this for teens?” That day during the book signing at the flea market, there were three teens separately that came by to talk about it. One was seventeen and she was in crisis. She was tiny. I don’t mean she was particularly short, but she was skin and bones. She was a lovely child, but she thought she was ugly.

I asked her and said, “Would you like to step over here away from the other people into a safe place where no one could hear us?” I said, “What’s going on? I’ll keep this private.” She shared the issues with me. I said, “I’m not sure what we can do, but let me give this a try.” In this instance, I was thinking, “What do kids relate to? They relate to a touch screen.” I said, “I want you to imagine that in front of you.” I said, “Put your hands up. You show me how far. About this far away from you, there is a touch screen right in front of me. Can you see that touch screen? I’d like for you to project on that screen this situation. Can you see that on your screen?” She said, “I sure can.” I said, “Now you have control over this. I want you to reach up, take two fingers, bottom left and send it away.”

It was interesting because this lovely child who was in such despair, her body was crunched down. When she did that, all of a sudden, she straightened up. I said, “Let’s create another screen. That’s a screen that you want to be, a place that you want to be, that you want to have as your desktop.” We talked about something. I said, “What’s been a wonderful time for you and can you see that? Can you project?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Take your fingers and move it slowly over to the left, so it’s in your archive. When you send something away, let that come on to your screen. How’s that?” She said, “I could do that.” It’s deciding or talking to people and finding out how to craft them or customize them so they work for each person.

Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that what life is? They are flashes and screenshots of the images that we hold in our minds, good and bad.

That’s exactly it. We create our own play. We create our own game. It is ours. I can remember when I was at my real estate office years and years ago when I had a real estate office. I’m on duty and there’s nobody else around. It was a Sunday afternoon and I went in those days. When you’re sitting there, you start daydreaming. I actually saw people walking around and they had these bubbles around their heads. They would come up to each other and the bubbles would touch and the bubbles would go into each other. At that moment I realized that everyone has their own bubble. They have their own game because the way that they see life is through their lens.

It’s funny because the way to change the game is to change the lens. We have to go inside. A lot of people spend a lot of time working on the outside to change the game or to change their lives, to change the outcomes of their lives. It all starts with them. It’s all mental. It starts with a thought. It starts with those mental pictures.

It’s the words we choose because the words we choose set ourselves up for either success or failure. That is a fact of life.

Let’s pull that back a little bit. Why is that so important to you?

In order to take action for ourselves and make ourselves better, we need to decide to be better. Click To Tweet

It’s important to everyone because the words we choose, what we say is what our subconscious hears and believes. Everything that comes out of our mouth is truth to subconscious. It has no filter. Our subconscious mind is our controller. Our conscious mind is only about 5% to 10% of our mind, the rest of it is subconscious. Our subconscious mind is a perfect recorder. It is simply a lousy playback system. As an example, when I was in high school, I played basketball not because I wanted to. It’s because I was so tall. I’m 6’5″ tall. When I got to high school, I was about 6’0” and I was coached into playing basketball. They didn’t have a girls’ basketball team at my high school when I got there. Since I had grown so fast, I had grown nine inches in one year, I was uncoordinated. There was no way I could dribble. I was what they called a spot shooter. I would find my spot and wait for them to bring the ball to me. I would shoot and I would miss several times and finally, it would go in. At the end of every game, I said to myself, “Why am I such a poor basketball player? Why am I always so awful on the court?”

Fast forward twenty years. I was on a daytime talk show with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Before the show in the green room, Kareem asked me the question that most people ask me when they see me at 6’5″. He said, “Did you play basketball?” That’s the only time anybody’s ever asked me that I was proud somebody asked me. I said, “Yes, sir. I did.” I told him about what I shared with you. He said, “What was your average?” I told him and when I did, he threw back his head and he started laughing and I was so humiliated. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is laughing at me. He finally stopped laughing and he said, “You know Magic Johnson?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “His average is 23 points this year.” I said, “So?” He said, “He’s the most valuable player globally.” I said, “Do you mean my 36-point average during high school meant I was a good basketball player?” He said, “No, you weren’t good.” He said. “You were a star.” At that moment, I realized that it had been the words that I had been choosing, what I’ve been asking myself, “Why am I such a poor basketball player?” I anchored that reality rather than the fact. It was the words I chose.

Doubling back to your experience that you shared with us with the stroke and based on my own experience. We hear those words from a doctor that you have a stroke or you have this diagnosis and this is the outcome. This is all we can do. This is what your expectation is. It’s coming from an expert, the best in the business. That’s at least the way most human beings would see that person because that person has the power to make you better or not. That’s how most people go into these situations. They say those words and they get anchored like what you’ve been telling yourself and then you start telling yourself and you start repeating what the doctors said. Everyone you know, they go to the doctor and they get a diagnosis. They go home and say what the doctors said, and so it is because the doctor said it. You start repeating that and it becomes a pattern. It takes changing the game, pushing away what the doctor said, debunking that and creating your own version of what you want your outcome to be.

Word choice applies to doctors too. If they say they can’t heal me, they can’t. The healing is not from outside anyway. The healing is from within. It’s critical that everyone realizes that the healing is inside of them. I love healthcare teams. I want you to understand when I say that word choice applies to doctors too. There is no disrespect here in relationship to doctors. I love them, I care for them. I take care of communicating with them. I want to know that when they would say something off the cuff and I’d say, “Explain that please.” My mother is 93 and by the time she came to share a home with us nearly eighteen years ago, I became her healthcare advocate and the doctors would say to me, “How do you know what you know?” It’s because I wanted to understand what was going on.

Let me go back to the word choice because word choice is very important. I called them to code modifiers. When you say, “Where would I rather be?” you’re downloading that and don’t answer it consciously. You go about your business. “Where would I rather be?” You download it to your subconscious mind and it becomes a question. It is a question that starts to modify the software that’s there. We have created software and our magnificent biological super computer that is our mind and our brain. We program it with our experiences and it is the questions that we ask ourselves. If someone is having trouble sleeping, they’ll say, “Why can’t I ever sleep?”

When you ask yourself a question like that, it magnifies it because you’re going to sleep poorly. One of the coaching clients that I’ve worked with mindshifting and relationships, he and his wife both were working with me, but not together. I’m not a couple’s coach, but I would work with one then the other. He contacted me and he said, “I’m having trouble sleeping. I need some help with that.” I said, “I’ve never done sleep work before.” I said, “How do you know you’re having trouble sleeping beside the fact that you don’t feel good?” He said he wears one of these watches that shows how many times he moves at night. He said he’s at 80 and he said, “That’s terrible.”

I said, “Let’s craft some questions that you ask yourself before you go to sleep.” He had worked with why questions before in relationship to what I suggested doing. It’s like, “Why is it becoming easier for me to rest? Why am I sleeping better? Why do I feel better when I wake up?” I said, “Go ahead and start doing those crafting questions because you want the questions to be a positive outcome. That’s how you ask them.” He contacted me the next morning and he said, “You would never believe this, but I have the evidence with this watch.” I said, “Tell me.” He said, “I was at 80, the number of times that I was active and restless.” He said, “I was at twenty last night.”

Those are power questions. That’s what I like to call them because a lot of times, when you’re looking for a certain result or change, it’s the question that you’re asking that may or may not solicit that, provide that result or provide that answer. It’s all about the question that you asked. What is your favorite mindshifting exercise?

 

I have to admit, “Isn’t that interesting?” is my absolute favorite. It is something that I use all the time continually. It helps me to get back to the present. The whole key to the mindshift exercises has to do with mindfulness. My favorite exercise is sitting down at a poker table because poker literally changed my life and it was many years ago. I had never played poker before and had the opportunity to learn the game. I was in the middle of being a management broker for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was under extreme stress working seventeen hours a day, seven days a week.

I’m sitting down at the table and I’m in a hand and I’ve got cards in front of me. I’m thinking about this contractor I’ve been dealing with because I had to manage a lot of contractors and how much of a problem he had. I had to go do a roof inspection the next morning. Roof inspection scares me to death, getting on top of a roof. I’m thinking about that and all of a sudden, it was like the universe gave me a smack on the forehead and said, “There’s only one thing that exists and that’s the cards you have.” All the cards are folded. There are no other cards dealt yet. I went to that place of mindfulness. If you’re saying what’s the most important mindshift exercise, It has to do with mindfulness but poker has become my therapy because it’s a place where I remember the mindfulness.

It’s good to have that go-to, to remember that. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes life happens and it knocks you off your game and you forget these tools.

That’s right. Would you like to run through the mindshift exercise, “Isn’t that interesting?”

Absolutely. Let’s do that.

Go ahead and close your eyes. I want you to come to that place of mindfulness. Go ahead and take three deep breaths to bring that point to mind. One more time of breath. What I’d like for you to do is I’d like for you to bring to mind something that has been awful in your life. I’m going to ask you to bring to mind something that’s dark because it gives you evidence of how you can shift away from that. It might be something in the past, but it’s okay to bring it up because this is a safe place. I’m creating a safe, nurturing place for you at the moment that is blame-free, guilt-free and judgment-free. I want you to bring up to mind something that on a discomfort scale would be an 8, 9 or 10, something that would be awful. It’s unnecessary for me to ever know what that is. This is yours. I’d like for you to rate where you are. Pick a number. What number that might be? Would you tell me what number that is?

Seven.

The first step is I want you to forgive yourself for where you are because that’s one of the most important parts of mindshifting is that we blame ourselves regardless of what a situation is. Everything seems to be out of our control, so forgive yourself for where you are in this particular instance. Be in self-forgiveness. I forgive you and you say your name. Be there in that forgiveness place for a moment. What I’d like you to do is ask it to show itself in your mind’s eye and take a three-dimensional form. It could be a person, a vehicle, a building, a geometric figure. Do you see it in your mind’s eye? Yes, you do have that, good.

The words we choose to describe ourselves and the things we do set us up for either success or failure. Click To Tweet

Anytime that it gives us difficulty in relationship to see it, all we need to do is to give it a name and then we look at that word in our mind’s eye and that takes the place of a three-dimensional figure. Once you can see it in your mind’s eye, it now has taken three-dimensional form. It is no longer out there and all around you. It has boundaries. It is finite and at this moment, it literally begins to shrink. Go ahead and step back one step and as you do notice it and it begins to move away, say, “Isn’t that interesting?” You could say it aloud or to yourself, whichever you’re comfortable with and notice it and step back one more step.

As you do, you’re detaching more from it and it’s moving away from you. Say one more time, “Isn’t that interesting?” It almost becomes comical. Step back one more step in your mind’s eye and it’s moving farther away. It’s almost at the horizon. It’s getting smaller. It’s fading and say, “Isn’t that interesting?” Be there because you are totally and completely detached from it. You’re no longer feeling it. It is completely separate from you. You’re no longer fueling it and engaged in it. It is going away over the horizon. Now open your eyes. Look up unto your right. Pivot your body 45 degrees to the right. Continue looking up and ask out loud, “Where would I rather be?”

Where would I rather be?

Come back to me. Now, write it on your discomfort scale. Where are you now?

Three.

You went from a seven to a three in four minutes. How powerful is that?

It’s amazing.

One of the things that happen is I’ll share this with people at a live event and I’ll have people go from an eight to a three. I’ve had one woman go from a ten to zero and I was dusted. I’ve had people come to me two weeks later and say, “It’s no longer working.” I’d say, “What do you mean?” “It’s not working anymore.” I said, “When did you first experience it?” They said, “About two weeks ago.” I said, “Fine, how many times you’ve been doing it since then?” They said, “Only that once.” I’m going, “How many showers have you had?” It is literally a case of learning and creating that habit of mindshifting. Once you do this 40 days in a row, ten minutes a day, use the controller that controls you, your phone, set a clock, find a space where you can do this and go through this exercise for 40 days.

 

If you do it for 40 days, ten minutes a day and go through the process, you don’t have to do the whole thing. You start out with your ten-minute day. You started out with three things that you’re grateful for. Go through the process and say, “Where am I going to use this now?” That’s all, a little ten-minute mini session. It’s a practice session. It’s what it is. At the end of 40 days of this particular exercise, if somebody will bother you and all of a sudden, you’re in the calm, “Isn’t that interesting?” All of a sudden, things are no longer difficult. They become easy and calm.

How did you come up with, “Isn’t that interesting?” Where did that come from? Why that choice of words?

It developed over time. I’ve been doing this particular exercise for 50 years and I figured it out. I can’t tell you where it came from because no one creates anything. We take everything around us and it filters through our lens. I’ve studied many things in my life. With practice, you can run your mind through the whole process simply by saying, “Hmmm,” quietly to yourself. I discovered it and started doing it and it became apparent to me over the years. I want to tell you I’ve had good practice because I’ve experienced some terrible things throughout my life and I decided that I wanted to be happier in the midst of that. To tell you exactly where it came from, it came from the game of life.

It’s very powerful because it is dis-attaching. It puts things out there where they belong.

That’s exactly right. We live inside here and people don’t get it. Sure, I’m concerned about all the clutter in my office. I had this wonderful office in my home. I’m a caregiver for my mother who’s 93 and my husband who’s 75 and 100% service connected, a disabled combat veteran. I’m 6’5″ and he’s 5’3″. With all the clutter and all the things that are going on, to be able to get to sit down or stand up or go to a place and when I’m frustrated about something, I’ll go, “Do I choose to be frustrated? Do I choose to do that?” Sometimes I’ll say, “I’m going to be upset.” It’s a case of choosing. It’s a life. We have a choice and there are terrible things that we experienced. It’s a case of detaching from that and observing and we have the power to do that.

You can sense that someone may be dealing with pain from a situation or an injury or a diagnosis. How does this apply to the pain that may be involved? One can say, “Isn’t that interesting?” but they’re still feeling the pain emotionally.

It’s a fact that I’ve discovered that we can magnify pain that exists by thinking about it in a particular way. When the book was first published, I took a book down to my husband’s primary care physician at the VA Hospital in Tampa, Florida. I was going to give the book to her and one of the nurses saw the book. She grabbed my arms and she pulls me down a hallway. She says, “You have to talk to this other doctor. He’s the chief of the pain clinic.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “Tell him what you do.” I did briefly and he said, “Would you come and do a session for the veterans who deal with chronic pain every Tuesday? We have a seminar or a workshop.” I said, “I’ll be happy to. How long do I have?” He said, “Fifteen minutes.”

I don’t have any idea if it’s going to work with pain. I said, “When would you like?” He said, “Next Tuesday.” I said, “Fine.” What I did in that situation, my husband, as a veteran, he was there as well. I started out and I wanted to open up the hearts because when we start with humor, humor helps. I said, “I’m 6’5 and what do people ask me?” They’re going, “Do you play basketball?” I said, “Yeah, but more importantly, what do you think they asked me?” They go, “How tall is your husband?” I said, “Come on up here.” They’re laughing and we do a few naughty jokes.

When we are reactive, we're fueling whatever is happening. Click To Tweet

I asked them to bring a situation to mind and I didn’t say bring pain to mind, but they’re at the pain clinic. I probably expected that they were going to bring pain to mind because I wanted them to use the pain scale as we did. Zero is nothing and ten is the worst. I had no idea how it was going to work. There were thirteen people there and we finished the exercise. I had two people nearly jump out of their seats. Everyone there was on opioids and I didn’t say, “Are you?” I knew that they were in chronic pain. Two of them nearly jumped out of their seat and each one of them said without chiming in, they went from an eight to a three with physical pain because of this mindshift exercise. It will work with physical pain. I had no evidence until then.

If people wanted to know more about you, maybe even work with you, how can they find you?

They can go to MindShiftOnDemand.com and reach out to me from there. The best way is to go ahead and opt-in for the four-minute audio of this mindshift exercise. There’s a place for opt-in for that audio and then you’ll be on my list and then we can contact each other. Reach out to me on Facebook. Because I’m 6’5″ tall, my personalized link on Facebook is Facebook.com/BigGirlPoker. That’s my brand. I’m in the poker industry for many years, so I’m the big girl of poker. Reach out to me on Facebook. When you do, if you send me a friend request, go ahead and message me and say, “I heard you on Rodney Flowers Podcast, Game Changer.” I do that because I get so many friend requests from people I don’t know. Message me to let me know where you heard from me and I’ll go in contact with them. That’s a good way to do that.

Thank you. That is so awesome. What would you say to someone reading that maybe is going through a situation? They want a mindshift and they need a change. What would you say to them?

It is a game changer because when I realized I could create my own reality, what would I say to them? I would ask them, “What do you want? Do you choose to be where you are?” A lot of people make that choice of being where they are. I’ll start out by saying the words we choose to set ourselves up for either success or failure. It’s where would you rather be? It’s asking them where would they rather be and go from there because each contact with people, everyone is different. There’s nothing that I do that is cookie cutter, at least customized to whoever I’m am working with.

I get that and that’s sage advice as well because a lot of times we’re creating the very situation that we despise, that we want to get out of. We’re creating it with our minds. We’re creating it with our thoughts and our words. By asking the question, “Where do you want to be?” it forces you to change the lens. It forces you to create a new image and then we can start practicing shifting the mindset towards that image and shifting the vocal towards that image.

When I had my stroke on Halloween of 2013, there was only one of my coaching clients that knew that I had a stroke. I was so close to her that when she couldn’t reach me, she literally got ahold of my husband and said, “Where’s Donna?” That’s how she finds out about it. I had a group coaching call two weeks later. My husband did the one-week after because I could speak fluidly, but there were some words that were missing in action because I had to re-acquaint myself with words. It’s funny because when you have a stroke and an area is blocked, if you do an MRI now, my brain have a black hole about the size of a golf ball right where the part that controls my ability to speak. The doctors tell me that there’s no way I can be speaking. What’s happened is that my brain said, “Do you want to use another part of your brain? We can find a part that you can use,” but it’s going through the practice of that.

On the two weeks afterwards. I’m talking about how the brain has these parts or the mind has these parts. I’ve talked about the iceberg and I was looking for the word ‘iceberg’ and wanting to talk about the fact that our mind is like an iceberg. It was interesting because I couldn’t find the word ‘iceberg’. I started describing what I was looking for. I said, “What do you think floats in cold water where it’s cold and you only see a little part of it?” Somebody said, “Iceberg.” I said, “Yes, iceberg.” I acquainted myself with that. It’s a case of whenever you’re struggling with something, rather than struggle to find something, step back and say, “Where is that?” When we’re looking for something, when we want something, ask, “Where is it? Where would I rather be?” It’s probably a good key.

Thank you for coming on the show, Donna. This has been amazing. I appreciate you.

You are an awesome host and I’m honored to be here with you, Rodney.

Thank you. This has been a blast. It’s so calming, I would say. Your demeanor, your persona is so calming and I want to say thank you for that. It’s been a great show. Thank you for the value that you’ve provided us. This has been quite mindshifting.

My intention entirely is to be mindshifting. Thank you for validating and giving me the evidence.

Before we depart, what is the game changing mentality message you would like to leave with us?

The words you choose will set yourself up for either success or failure. Choose wisely.

There you have it, another successful episode of the Game Changer Mentality. Choose your words wisely. Thank you so much, Donna, for coming on the show. This has been amazing. I appreciate you for all that you do and who you are in the world.

I am honored to be here. Thank you, Rodney.

Important Links: 

• Donna Blevins
• MindShift on Demand
• MindShiftOnDemand.com
• Facebook.com/BigGirlPoker
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• https://RodneyFlowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
• https://MindshiftOnDemand.com/about-donna-blevins/
• https://www.Facebook.com/pokermindsetcoach/
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/donnablevins/
• 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 Donna Blevins

Donna Blevins, PhD, is transparent and openly shares how you can shift your mindset in an instant! Dr. Donna is a high-profile successful entrepreneur, who could have lost everything in one life-shattering moment. Instead, she found the keys to controlling her mind and body. Instantly, she geared up and tested the limits of her mind shifting exercises and proved they worked.

With her roots in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Donna grew up in a coal mining camp, and ‘grow UP’ she did to a towering 6’5”. She brings a down-to-earth humorous approach to her writing, speaking and coaching, and today she stands out as the Poker MindSet Coach and is lovingly called “The Big Girl of Poker”.

While moving from poverty to prosperity, Donna lost more often than she won. Even though it’s admittedly more fun to win, Donna candidly shares her intimate story of turning losses into wins by accessing the wisdom within those mistakes.

Donna built her self-confidence over time rather than submit to low self-esteem that comes from “just not fitting in” or losing. She learned how and now she speeds up the process and will teach you how to kickstart your mindset and shift.

Along with mindshift coaching in all walks of life, Donna’s expertise has crossed over and aids Wounded Warriors with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury.

Her skillset broadens her mindshift coaching to include business people, college graduates as well as people dealing with midlife crises, retirees and poker players. Donna believes that controlling your mindset is the biggest challenge most people experience regardless of age.

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