Understanding The Power Of Conscious Choice with Jennifer Andersen

by | Oct 8, 2019 | Podcasts | 0 comments

GCM 67 | Conscious Choice

 

Everything is built upon how we think, and that drives our behavior and decisions. How can you train your mind to put you into a place of conscious choice and influence? In this episode, certified Energy Leadership™ coach and trainer Jennifer Andersen talks about how understanding your core values and exploring who you are will awaken your mind to greater awareness. She also talks about having a healthy perspective of others so you can work effectively in a team with shared values. Don’t miss this segment to learn more about the definition of success and self-leadership.

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Understanding The Power Of Conscious Choice with Jennifer Andersen

Whether you are a CEO of your household or a CEO of a major company, how you show up your thoughts and your behaviors and lead yourself throughout the day has a great influence on how you can present yourself to others or how you influence others. It really determines your outcomes. I’m with a wonderful coach and her name is Jennifer Andersen. She’s a certified energy leadership coach and trainer. She helps leaders and teams unravel unconscious thoughts and behaviors to consciously discover or reconnect with what truly drives them and connects them to one another and the work that they do. I am so excited to introduce Ms. Jen Andersen. Welcome to the Game Changer Mentality podcast.

Thank you, Rodney. I’m excited to be here with your enthusiasm. It’s contagious.

I’m all about changing the game. When we talk about changing the game, I get pumped about it because it can be a shift in the momentum, shift in the outcome, shift in the results that we produce in our lives. It’s an opportunity and I feel like when you have that type of opportunity to make changes in your life, it’s something that you should get excited about. I like to bring that to the table and that’s why I’m excited to talk with you because I know you are all about energy. We’re going to talk about how we can use this energy to make changes in our lives. I know that you focus on leadership as well so I’m excited about having that discussion. If you could just tell us a bit more about you, Jen.

There are a lot of different parts to who we are. I was privileged to get to meet you doing what I do professionally which is training, working with teams and leaders in all sectors in government, private industries, working with entrepreneurs and helping them to understand how their results that they get are a 100% within their control. A lot of times we look for magic formulas is one way to lead. We look for something scripted that somebody is going to come in and teach us and then if we just implement it, we are going to be amazing. While there are definitely tools and things that we can teach and we can learn, the most important thing is being able to understand the connection to how we experience life, how we experience our teams, how we experience leadership. How we experience everything is built upon how we think and what are the emotions that we experience. They drive our behaviors, they drive our results and when individually we can understand that, that’s powerful.

If we are a leader in a company, in an organization, a part of a team, to have that understanding is powerful. It puts us into a place of choice. It puts us into a place of influence versus force and control and managing everything. It’s a beautiful space to be in and felt something and it doesn’t have to be woo-woo and all out there and crazy. It’s just a basic understanding of conscious choice and decisions. When we can get that, practice that and implement that, it’s powerful. I’m a mama of four wonderful kids. I’m a wife. I’m a member of my community. I’m a sister and I’m a daughter. I love being with other people and working with those who want to be leaders in their personal lives as well as leaders in their work, in their industries and have fun doing it too. That was a convoluted answer.

You said how we experience things. A lot of times when we think about life and we think about the things that we experience, we don’t think about how we experience them. We just think about something that I experienced and that is what it is. Elaborate a little bit on that because there’s some power in how you experience things.

It’s easy to think and to experience life in a way that things are happening to us and to be at the effect of the experiences around us. It’s interesting you’ll have two people who will walk outside and I’m looking out my windows as I’m talking to you and the sun is shining. It is gorgeous out there. I may see that look out there and think, “This day is beautiful.” There are so many opportunities to go out there with my family and enjoy this or that while somebody else will look out the window and go, “It’s going to be another hot humid day. It’s going to be miserable. I don’t want to go out and do anything.” We can have the same experience of something. The sunny day is what it is. It’s what are my thoughts around it. If I think that it’s going to be hot and miserable out there, I’m going to feel dread, I don’t want to go out there, it’s going to change how I show up and the action that I take. Giving a simplistic thing here but it’s with everything.

When you have opportunities to make changes in your life, it's something you should be excited about. Click To Tweet

If we want to feel like we have some semblance of control, if there are certain things that we want to get out of life, if there are certain outcomes that we want to have, to understand the basic concepts of how we think about things will impact those results. How we feel about things, it’s basic neuroscience is going to determine the actions that we take. Those actions are what generate our results and outcomes. It’s something that until we have an awareness of that and we can play with and experiment with it, have fun with that. We’re going to keep doing things the same way and just the way that we’ve programmed ourselves to do things. I want to have some things that I know that I want to experience in life, so how do I want to go about that? I don’t want to always get the effect of everything. I don’t always want to be a victim of my circumstances. I don’t always want to have to fight everything and to feel like everything I get in life is going to be a battle. There are some things I’m going to have to push for and fight for but I get to choose. We all get to choose that. That’s empowering.

It puts things into perspective. You’ve probably heard people say, “This happened to me and that happened to me.” As a result of this, “I feel,” or as a result of this, “I am.” That takes the power away from you and no one is exempt from things happening to them or having experiences in their life. All of us have the ability to choose how we act and behave regardless of what the circumstances. That’s empowering and I think that’s a fundamental tool that is overlooked by a lot of us. It’s something that you have to consciously be aware of at all times. I realize that life can throw you some blows and sometimes you’re not always thinking on a high conscious level. You just want to react like the fight-or-flight response. It takes a conscious effort to be able to come into a sense of self and presence at that moment. That’s the hardest part is being able to come into a sense of self and presence at that moment. I want to fight or flight. How do we do that? How do we build the mental and emotional muscle to be aware at that given time when it’s so critical to make the right decision?

We’re human and you know we all have defaults, especially under stress or when we’re triggered by things. That’s why it’s important whether it’s in your personal life and your work life to build that awareness muscle of what are the things that do trigger me? What are the things that take me to that place where I feel like I’m at the effect of things? We all have them and because we’re human to say that, suddenly we’re going to start making in the moment conscious choices, every time is just, “Whatever, good luck.”

We’re human, however, we can get better. That’s what I strive for or what I encourage other people to strive for, is it’s not coming to this place of perfect conscious choice in every moment. It’s getting better at it and it means you’ve practiced. It means you have to focus time on being clear on things that are important to you, get to know what your core values are. That was huge for me when that was introduced to me in an intentional way, not just flippant talk about values and principles or things like that. Taking time to identify when push comes to shove, what are the things that underlie the values or that underlie the principles that guide my life, that guide my decision-making and priorities and so forth? That’s a big thing. Getting to know what your triggers are, the things that jack you up and take you to that stress response place.

There are certain things that even though I am aware and I tell myself that the next time it happens in the moment, I will make a more conscious choice. I still got my default stress response. I may not be there as long because I have a growing awareness. I may shift out of it more quickly because I am aware, but that’s the point of it. It’s just becoming more aware of those things. We can slowly begin to build that muscle to where I may have stayed in a funk for two days and ruminate over why so-and-so said whatever it was to me or why they did this and here I’m saying they did to me. Instead of staying in that place for two days, it maybe ten minutes of allowing myself because I’m conscious of it. I’m aware of what I’m doing being able to say, “I need to feel ticked off and beat myself up and beat them up for a few minutes, but I know what I’m doing and I’m aware of it. Once I get this out of my system, I’m going to choose something different to move myself forward.” That’s what we want to strive for. If we try to work for perfection of in the moment choices, in some ways I think that can keep us stuck, trapped and frozen in things. It’s not going to happen because we are human beings. We are going to have those defaults, but we don’t have to stay there long.

Is that a necessary step though to get that out? To feel and express whatever that emotion is as a result of whatever happened or whatever experience it was?

I think in some ways it is. There’s a difference between being at the effect of something or being angry and being in that stressful non-supportive place and state. There’s a difference between being there unconsciously and being there consciously. There may be times where I need to where it will serve me best in that moment to just be like, “I can’t do this, I can’t handle it, I’m helpless in this moment and I need somebody to support me and help me.” Where sometimes I may look at that and think, “I don’t want to be a victim to this and have somebody have to come rescue me. That’s not going to work for me.” There’s a difference from automatically going to that place and being there and saying no.

GCM 67 | Conscious Choice

Conscious Choice: Focus time on getting clear on the things that are important to you. Get to know what your core values are.

 

The best thing for me right now is that I have somebody come in and help me and be in that place. There’s a difference between being continually pissed off like raging and being angry, controlling and defiant. There’s a big difference between being there all the time. We know those people that are mad about life and everything all the time and they feel like they have to fight everything. There’s a difference between defaulting continually to that and being in a situation and saying, “The best thing I can do is be ticked off and fight.” That’s a conscious choice and sometimes it happens in the moment, sometimes we have a five-second pause, sometimes it’s five minutes. It doesn’t matter as long as we reach that point where we can choose.

The longer we stay in that place, it’s the place of disservice to those around and to yourself, so the quicker we can get out of that.

That is not to say that we stay there because that’s absolutely a disservice to those around us and a 100% disservice to us. The thing here is to recognize that there’s a difference between being there because we default there and being there via conscious choice. Anytime we make anything from a conscious choice, you’re choosing the results that you get. Even if you choose to be in that place and be there for a long time, you also have to understand that there’s a responsibility for the outcomes that you get for it which may not be of the best service to you or to other people.

Regardless of what it is your response?

Regardless of that.

What are some practices that we can put in place to raise our consciousness, to be able to stay in a place of conscious vibration that serves us?

Different things work for different people, a lot of it’s starting to pay attention. Paying attention to the basics if we can all agree that our thoughts that we have about things do generate an emotional response within us and that we act based on how we feel. If we can accept that then one of the best things that we can do is start to pay attention to what we’re thinking. For some people, they journal so that they can bring attention and awareness to things that they’re feeling. Not just when you’re triggered and you’re jacked up in situations but even in the day-to-day when things are going well, paying attention to “What are my thoughts around this situation, people, myself, my world.” It’s when we’re under stress, paying attention.

Perfection is impossible. Just strive to get better Click To Tweet

Looking at our self-awareness around values, self-awareness around personal strengths and the way that we process our world is important. Looking at belief systems. It’s incredible sometimes how much of our behavior and our emotions are built on belief systems that we’ve never taken time to question or to challenge or to say, “Where did that come from? How long have I been buying into that load of garbage?” When we start to recognize that, “I’ve been behaving this way because I’ve been believing this for so long.” One of the best things we can do, some people journal, some are talking to somebody about it. For others it’s having a meditation practice, centering practices, a lot of things that we can do to begin to start to quiet our brain, to start to get to that place where we can grow our awareness around what we’re thinking.

Do you find that these practices help us identify mental blocks that we potentially may have as it relates to how do you respond to certain things?

The more that we can begin to pay attention to the thoughts that we’re having, absolutely. That’s a great way we can start to identify some of those blocks that we have in play. Having somebody sometimes even outside of ourselves, a coach or a trusted friend. That’s why journaling works for a lot of people is that when things are rattling around in our heads, it’s hard. We want to manipulate things. We want to see things outside of ourselves and it helps to process things. Even sometimes I’m upset and I’ve written something out, I look at it and it’s almost because it’s outside of myself, you almost don’t recognize it’s connected to you. I’ll look at something and I think, “Are you kidding me? That thought was in your head?” and I can start to pick it apart a bit.

Having somebody who can listen behind some of the things that we’re saying. What’s the thinking that’s residing behind that? A coach, a mentor, a friend or somebody who can say, “That’s interesting,” when you said you were feeling X, Y, Z, I’m curious as to what the thought process is. When you identify it like, “Where did that thought come from? Who told you that? Where did that belief come from?” When you hear me repeat that back to you if I were to say that about myself, what would you say to me? Start to question things and break it down. It can begin to set us onto a new path of, “If you recognize that’s not working for you, what is a thought process that will work for you? What’s something that will be in support of you that if you were to begin to adopt that way of thinking, things are going to be different from you? You’re going to feel different for you, you’ll feel differently, you’ll behave differently?

When you’re in those emotional stress situations, you begin to make stuff up sometimes. Because you know logically you can’t seem to make heads or tails of the situation and so in an effort to do so, you begin creating these thought processes that make sense to you in that moment. I’m with you because I’ve done that and then I go back and I’m like, “What state was I in when I thought this?” Probably it made sense at the time but it doesn’t serve you in the long run. Absolutely, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m sure some people in the audience, some people that are reading have had that experience before where you’re in a stressful situation and all types of thoughts go through your mind at the time. I love the idea of journaling because you can get all that stuff out and then revisit and then you go back. You can identify what is going to work best in this situation. That’s a good practice.

You brought up some things that I wanted to touch on and you were talking about values, which is an important topic when it comes to business and to teams. I’m going to even deeper relationships because that’s what builds the team is the relationships. One of the issues that we have when it comes to relationships, it starts with values and ends with expectations because a person’s behavior is based on their values. 90% of your behavior unfortunately is unconscious. A lot of your behavior is unconscious and if that much of your behavior is on unconscious behavior, what’s driving those behaviors? By default your values is what’s driving that behavior. Your values shapes a lot about you, what you think, the way you behave. It places the expectations that you have on yourself and expectations you have on others are stemming from these values that you have within yourself.

When we talk about relationships and when relationships breakdown within teams or business or even just one-on-one relationships, I think it goes back to those expectations that are not met because every relationship is an agreement. You get into these relationships. It’s not maybe expressed in writing, but there’s an agreement here that we’re going to relate to each other based on these terms and conditions and they’re not always explicit, but they’re there. When things go wrong it’s like you violated something and so now we have an issue within our relationship. I want to hear from you as a coach in this area, your thoughts about that whether that’s an accurate statement.

GCM 67 | Conscious Choice

Conscious Choice: Your values shapes a lot about you, the way you think, and the way you behave.

 

When you were talking about what drives our behaviors, the statistic was that 30% of our decisions, 30% of our actions are based on logic, 70% are based on emotion. Oftentimes when we do go in and work with leaders and teams, there’s a strong drive for systems, tools, metrics like all these things. Whether it’s managing relationships, decisions, behaviors and actions, we try to do it from a place of logic, but that’s not where people are operating from. It’s the emotional place and the things that build on our emotions are things like our values and numerous other aspects that comprise that emotional part. We don’t address that enough that if we want to connect teams, if we want to drive behavior or change behavior, if we want to have everyone on board with things, we need to start with that emotional component. That’s what people are going to connect with, that’s where they’re going to make decisions, that’s where our actions, behaviors are going to come from.

Once that emotional need is met, we can shift into logic and reason. Values are a very powerful thing for us all to understand especially when we get triggered with someone else’s behaviors or when relationships break down. Usually when I’m in training with folks, I’ll hear about all these team dynamics issues, there’s a lot of shifting of blame. “My team is lazy. They don’t do anything.” It’s all of these things, “They complain too much. I don’t know what to do because of this and that.” The other thing and even in family dynamics, you’ll hear it, my son will say, “I would be happy except that his little brother is so annoying and he annoys me all the time. He’s loud.” When I hear the same stuff, it’s important to note that there are different things that we all value.

I’ll use a personal example is that laziness is a trigger for me if I’m around people who don’t work harder and they’re not contributing a lot. What I feel is an inadequate thing to what I’m putting forth and it does trigger me. I still have to work on this, keeping my trigger levels low. Until I came to accept and believe that every single quality that we all have, including the values, are within everyone else as well but just at different levels and degrees. Until I could accept that there’s laziness in someone else, but that’s because there’s also laziness in me. There’s complaining in someone else, but there’s complaining in me. There’s hard work in me, but there’s hard work in that other person, but how we value it, how we express it, how we deliver it, may be very different. Until I could get that and then start to question why it would trigger me so bad, one of the reasons is that in my top values I have accomplishment that’s high. It’s so important for me to contribute and to accomplish things, to get things done. They’re strong values within me.

There’s also a part of me that if I truly believe that everything that’s within me is within other people. When I’m around others that I feel I have to ask myself, “Let’s flip it. How do I express laziness?” I express laziness when things are hard or overwhelming or I’m exhausted. That’s when I don’t want to do anything. I just want to pull out the lazy card. I suppress laziness when things are important to me, when I value what I’m doing or when the work is meaningful. I suppress it if I fear judgment from other people because I’m not accomplishing enough or contributing enough and then if I can flip it back to other people too. If those are things within me and we all share these things, in what way could this possibly be something where this person is not feeling purpose or value in what they’re doing, maybe they’re exhausted, maybe this, that or the other thing, I’m flexing empathy. I’m shifting perspective, I am eliminating that flipping judgment piece that’s is horrendous for all of us so that I can gain some understanding and refocus things.

It’s a powerful thing when we are working. I’ll flip it back to teams is that when we look at teams, when we look at families, when we look at relationships, often we operate in this tunnel of our own values. What’s important to us without seeing how they’re also present in other people and what’s important to them is present in us. Just because they’re not at the same place or level or because they’re not expressed in the same way, it doesn’t make one better than another. Sometimes we have to step back and break things down so we can function together.

Anytime I do values exercises with groups or individuals, I have a big list of them but I refuse to define them for anyone. If somebody says, “What does achievement mean?” I’d say, “You tell me,” because we define these things differently. It does not matter how I define it. What matters is how you define what that is for you. It’s unfair for me to look at a group of people and say, “You’re all lazy.” What I may need to do instead is say, “How do we define hard work together as a group?” If I’m working with a team, we’ll come up with a collective definition, “How do we define that? What does this mean for us?” A big problem with a lot of organizations is they’ll say, “Here are our values,” and they slap them up on a wall without saying, “What does this even mean?” I’ll never forget Brené Brown in something she had written or said. She said, “We slap them up on the wall like those motivational cat poster bullcrap kind of things where it’s just motivational garbage without saying our values collectively.”

Teams need to come up with their core values together and not just a leader or an organization saying, “Here are our five core values.” It’s great if an organization says, where the top leadership comes together. As they’re starting a business and they want to bring people on who has a connection with that, that’s okay. Especially in large organizations where there may be values that are set or a mission statement, it’s still important for individual teams to come together. Knowing that the company honors, knowing what’s important to them, it’s important that there’s a difference between the aspirational values and what are core values. It’s one thing to say that fun is a value of mine because I enjoy laughing and that kind of a thing. However, do I make all of my decisions based on fun? No. Do I set my priority for the day based on fun? No, but it’s something that I’d like to say I have. It’s something I aspire. It’s an aspirational value.

Every single quality that we all have, including values, are within everyone else as well. It's just different in levels and degrees. Click To Tweet

A lot of companies and teams, unfortunately, have aspirational values. If they don’t see in your day-to-day decision, the policies you make, the rewards that you establish, all of those things. If they don’t see that value is being reflected in those, this is where teams lose trust and this is where customers lose trust. It’s not important. They say integrity is important, but we took on a client that had the least amount of integrity so that’s not true. It doesn’t matter what I do. Those are aspirational values. For teams to come together and to get clear, you can do it in a number of different ways. There are all kinds of different ways you can help guide people in getting clear on their values, but it’s important that everyone has a similar definition and matched expectations together. Not just what is it and what does it mean, but what does it look like? What does it sound like?

That is the missing link, you’re onto something. Not only do I think that the organization should bring clarity and definition to those values, it should be a recurring thing. I’ve been down at the individual team level, the people that are actually doing the work, they may have a different meaning of what those values are based on the work that they’re doing. How your management can put values in place and it means a certain thing at a 50,000 feet level, but you’ve got an employee that’s in the weeds and doing this stuff every single day, it’s going to mean something different to them. They start leveraging these values on their teammates. Everyone is human and they have their own belief system background which affects the perception of the values that you’re putting in place. It could be different for everyone because we don’t have that clarity and root, that continuous consistent reiteration and re-evaluation of what we all think these values mean, we have break down.

It’s important to note that we don’t have to have every single value shared, and in common, in order to feel good where we’re at. There can be conflict and there can be a disconnect there. It’s like if you are somebody who has fun or adventure or something that it’s just so important to you, but you’re in a job that’s not there, then that’s an awareness that’s important. You’re going to feel something off. There’s going to be a sense of dissatisfaction. You may not be able to ping it to that and say, “This is why I think it’s important.” I have my values listed on the wall. They’re always present and in front of me and they’ve shifted over time. Our values, what’s core to us, they’re always there. It’s our strengths that there may be things that are within the top ten. Sometimes there may be based on what our experiences are or where we’re at in life. Some come up higher and we give more weight to at times than others, but they’re all hanging out there.

I remember when I was in my career previous to this just hitting a point where I was so emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically drained, exhausted, dissatisfied, in a funk. I couldn’t identify what the heck was up because logically, there was no reason for it. I was, according to anyone else’s definition of success, incredibly successful. I almost felt guilty and didn’t want anyone to know how miserable I was because they would be like, “Are you kidding me? I would trade places with you in a second.” Until I realized that it was because the values that were most important to me weren’t being honored. I didn’t know how to articulate that because I wasn’t even clear on that and when I got clear on my values, it was like the heavens opening and I was like, “No wonder.”

Until I was able to set things up to transition into the career I’m in now, I had to find ways within the job I was in to bring my values to that work. This is why I say if fun or adventure is something that’s a core value of yours, but the job itself doesn’t honor that, how can you bring that to the job? That’s where we have choice. I don’t have to be at the effect of my job that’s not fun, but how can I bring fun to it? Where is an opportunity for that? If I can do that, will I be happy and satisfied enough where I’m at that it’s not like, “I have to either be miserable or quit?” There are many other options and that’s it. We start to widen our options and opportunities available to us.

For the entrepreneur that’s reading this or the leader that wants to create a stronger, more productive team and seeing that these values have a disconnect or there needs to be more clarity in the values within the team, what is your recommendation to create that shift in the team?

Is it in terms of value identification strategies?

GCM 67 | Conscious Choice

Conscious Choice: We don’t have to have every single value shared and in common in order to feel good where we’re at.

 

No, it’s in line with what we were talking about that needs to happen in an organization in terms of the communication and the definition of the values that get passed down to the individual teams. What I’m speaking in terms of an entrepreneur that has a business and has employees that are working for them or a leader in an organization that has a team of employees maybe a second-tier or third-tier manager or leader. How can they implement some of the strategies that we’re talking about, some of the concepts that we’re talking about to lead their teams?

Start with yourself first. Until we can lead ourselves, understand the power of just self-leadership, it would be hard for me to take on a team of people and begin to explore shared values in this matter if I haven’t first explored what’s important to me. If I don’t understand my own influence over myself, day-to-day, it’s going to be hard for me to begin to generate influence with others. For anyone who’s an entrepreneur, anyone who’s in a leadership position, it starts with yourself first. Do you know what is most important to you? Do you know what beliefs have led you to where you are now? If you struggle with communication as a leader, why? I would want to get to the heart of that. What do I believe about myself as a communicator? What are the things that keep me trapped? What are the things that I’m thinking that are creating the blocks that I have in reaching out to other people?

I can go read 100 books, take courses, do this or that on how to be a powerful communicator and how to write an appropriate email, how to be assertive, but if I have a core belief line behind that, that nobody will listen to me because I’m a 5’3’’ female who sometimes giggles when things are funny to her or gets emotional, no one’s going to take me seriously and that’s the belief behind that. Do you think I’m going to go walk in powerfully and confidently into a room of stoic men and communicate with authority? I’m throwing you a whole bunch of BS stuff. If that’s going on in my brain, it doesn’t matter how many courses and communication I’ve taken or how to be assertive because that’s going to still come out and how the actions that I take and how I feel. I will circle this train back around. Leaders and entrepreneurs need to spend some time on their own self-leadership and their own development and understanding. It’s not that they can’t go out and generate this within their teams. Of course you can do this, but we have a responsibility to ourselves to understand our impact on our influence if we want to go out and have influence over other people.

That’s something that you do, correct? I know you coach teams and organizations but you also work one-on-one with entrepreneurs and leaders as well.

I enjoy working one-on-one or in small groups with individuals to support them through coaching. It was a large part of what I did when I was in direct sales. Working one-on-one with people within my organization and where I became drawn to coaching because I had some powerful coaches that I hired and worked with that made a profound difference in my life in my business. When it came to leaving direct sales, it was important for me to be certified. It’s one thing that I learned a lot through my experiences. I knew there was a lot more to learn. When I certified, I knew I wanted to do some of that one-on-one work. The teacher in me loves being in the classroom in groups and I enjoy the training, but working one-on-one or in small groups with emerging leaders, the coachable. They need to be coachable. They need to be open and willing to want to grow and to learn and contribute on their end to build their skills. It brings me joy.

How can people connect with you if they wanted to work with you one-on-one or if they had a team that they want to speak with?

The best way is to reach out is my website, JenAndersenDevelopment.com. You can go there and all of my contact information is there in addition to a contact form you can fill out. A lot of people reach out to me that way. My email is Jen@CoachJenAndersen.com. You can reach me there. I’m on LinkedIn as well so you can feel free to connect with me there.

If you haven't explored or understood your influence over yourself, it's going to be very hard for you to generate influence over others. Click To Tweet

How long have you been doing this work, Jen?

All of this work has been a part of everything that I’ve done since I’ve had a career. My career started as a high school teacher which is where the foundations of teaching education, coaching, started to form and about twelve years in direct sales doing the same with leadership development and building a large and successful team. Jen Andersen Development came from that working as a solopreneur doing this work with businesses and individuals.

As a solopreneur to another, I’m a solopreneur, you have some additional responsibilities of being a solo entrepreneur with kids and a wife. What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome in order to become successful in this business?

We all have unique challenges and they’re also universal in many ways. I’m going to tie it to values. Because connection and collaboration, accomplishments, development is intentional that my business is Jenny Andersen Development, developing people is something that’s at the core for me. There’s the conflict that I often experienced was all of those things that are so important to me how those values are there for work are equally as intense and representative in the family. It’s the classic struggle, especially when you are an entrepreneur, where it’s easy for it to feel like a 24-hour a day thing to creating boundaries. Recognizing that because work is important and honoring those values of achievement, accomplishment, development, and all of that in work is important. It doesn’t mean that family is not and vice versa. It’s just that sometimes it’s a 51% to 49% in one area and then the next day, it flips, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important, 49% is still important.

Being able to manage that in an age now and a time where social media is huge, especially with business and for entrepreneurs. That was a tough thing for me to reconcile because I like developing things personally. Because social media is a big time suck, I had to be okay and come to a place of understanding that building a business and building success takes many forms. There’s no one right way. The most successful people have gotten to where they are because they honored the way they work. They honored their gifts, their strengths and how they could best do things for themselves.

A lot of people talk about impostor syndrome, we try to do well at everything. It took me a while as an achievement-oriented person to let go of that. A big thing for me is I stepped away from business promotion and a lot of things that were social media oriented because I was active for a long time that way and it worked for me. When I stepped back and I logically looked at my business, the bulk of my work, the bulk of my success has come from meeting, talking, and connecting with people in a way that was through speaking or just casual conversation and people referring me.

Right now with four kids, young kids, kids who have specific medical needs and so forth, the important thing for me was not in a dollar amount or a client amount, it was in making a difference developing people. If I can do that right now in my family and with clients that I love and adore, it’s not about how many, it’s about the quality of that. I know that I’m going to have all my kids in college in a few years too, then I can go gangbusters if I want in some of those other areas. We have to let go of comparing which is hard when you’re an entrepreneur, thinking like you have to do everything because you don’t. Find what works for you, run that in that lane. Know that there’s plenty of time. There will always be businesses out there who want and need what I have to offer and I don’t have to give it all to them right now.

GCM 67 | Conscious Choice

Conscious Choice: Social media is a big time suck.

 

That provides a sense of peace about your business. Jen, I want to thank you for coming on the show. This has been a very rich conversation. I have thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you for coming on the show, I appreciate.

Thank you for having me. It was a blessing and an honor to be with you.

Any final words that you have for us? Any game-changing mentality message or final words you would like to leave with us?

There’s more than one way to success, however you define that. There’s a time for everything. There’s a method for everything. One of the best things that I’ve taken on for myself is that I have to tell myself over and over again and it works for me is that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. If you know what’s important to you, if you’re clear on your values, if you’re clear on priority, if you’re clear on who you are, that doesn’t even need explaining.

That’s the game-changing mentality message of the day. I loved it and it’s powerful. Thank you again for coming on the show, Jen.

Thank You, Rodney.

There you have it. Another successful episode of the Game Changer Mentality podcast. Get clear on your values. Get clear on who you are and lead yourself first. As always, remember to remain resilient in the pursuit for greatness. Thanks, everyone.

Important Links: 

About Jennifer Andersen

GCM 67 | Conscious ChoiceWhether CEO of your household, or CEO of a major company, how you show up (your thoughts and behaviors) and lead yourself throughout the day has great influence on yourself and others and determines your outcomes.

As a certified Energy Leadership™ Coach and trainer, Jen helps leaders and teams unravel unconscious thoughts and behaviors to consciously discover or reconnect with what truly drives them and connects them to one another and the work they do. This is especially important right now in a climate of stress, overwhelm, “powering through and ahead,” and status quo thinking and behavior.

When leaders and teams hit the pause button to build Self-Awareness, understand perspective, recognize choice, and take action, there is a profound shift that occurs within organizations. When individuals have an opportunity to explore Who they are, What makes them tick, and How these factors impact the results they get- and that there is CHOICE involved- we see seismic shifts in how our people engage in their work and lead from the seat they are in!

Jennifer Andersen: Wife. Mom of Four. Caregiver. Teacher/Trainer. Coach. Entrepreneur. Leader. Like most of us, Jen has experience stepping into many roles and navigating the challenges and blessings within each of them. Over the years she found the common denominators within these roles and she leveraged her unique strengths to create success. She finds great joy in helping others to do the same.

Jen has over two decades’ experience training, coaching, and developing leaders and teams in various sectors including the federal government, private sector, direct sales industry, education, and with non-profits groups.

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Are you ready to shed your past, rise above your present, and go confidently in the direction of your dreams? The first step? Decide. Choose right here and now to make a move. Set your intention. Then simply ask Rodney for help. https://rodneyflowers.com/mentoring/ 

Want an inspirational story and a magnetic personality plus interactive actionable strategies to transform your audience? Book Rodney for your next event. https://rodneyflowers.com/speaking/

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