Stop self-sabotaging, uplevel your mindset and reclaim your confidence

I was thrilled to have the lovely Christine Cochran on the podcast recently. 

Christine is a business mindset master coach, a speaker, a podcast host, and co-founder of the Rise Up Conference and creator of the Energetics of Money program. 

Christine and I spoke about how she helps heart-centred business owners overcome their imposter syndrome, level up their mindset, and reclaim their confidence and power. 

How Christine got started in her business

I was in a corporate role before I started my own business. I was in business development roles. So I was actually helping a lot of other business owners to grow their businesses. And we were very strategy focused as a corporate company. And so basically I would meet with six to seven business owners a day and share with them different strategies in order to grow their businesses. And I found that some of the business owners that I would work with would take the strategy and run with it and be really successful. And then others, I would see again the next month and they hadn’t done anything. And it really frustrated me from my point of view of “what am I not doing right. Am I not delivering it in the right way that they need to hear it? Am I not giving them what they need in order to implement it?”

 

I then started to actually look at improving my way of delivering the strategy. I started to look into human behaviour and that’s where I started to get a little bit obsessed with understanding what makes us tick, understanding how we create habits, and how we create behaviours. And our mindset was a huge component of that. It is the foundation of all of our belief systems, our values that drive all of our behaviour. 

So these business owners that I was working with, I found that they were getting caught up in so much fear. They were getting caught up in so much of the imposter syndrome, self-sabotage and all of these things that once I started down the human behaviour rabbit hole, I then went into neurolinguistic programming and understanding the way that our brain works. 

I was able to put all these strategies in place with the business owners that I was working with and saw such great results that I just absolutely loved it and they loved it. 

So I started to build up my business alongside the corporate role before I then decided to resign and dived right in. 

My focus now is very much working on helping women up level. So I absolutely believe that we are capable of so much and yet our mindset can hold us back in so many ways. So I love to support them with being able to shift mindset blocks on a subconscious level, on a cellular level. So your mindset is no longer driving your behaviour. I challenge the way that you think about business, the way that you think about what’s possible for yourself, challenge the way you think about money and all of those elements, because that all encompasses our ability to succeed. 

Where do we learn our belief systems?

Belief systems that you develop in such early stages between the ages of zero to seven years are our imprint phase where we’re taking on board everything that we learn, from how to behave and how to interact, how do we develop relationships, how we interact with money, like all of it. And we develop our identity beliefs. That’s really the area I love working with my clients because those identity beliefs are the ones that are creating those limitations, because that’s what the imposter syndrome begins. Feeling like, I don’t believe I’m capable of that. Or I feel like I’m going to be seen as a fraud because I don’t have these skills or I’m not qualified enough. I’m not good enough. I’m not experienced enough.

All of that starts at such a young age. And we think that it doesn’t begin until we start a business, but it’s not that it’s the business unearths them. You start a business and all of a sudden, your fears come out. 

Surround yourself with positive mindsets

Fears like, fear of rejection, fear of judgment. All of that comes into play. Especially if you’re putting yourself out there and challenging yourself in new ways in business, it all comes out to play. And we don’t realize that we’re in a society that almost rewards and connects based on scarcity, based on negativity, based on judgment. For example, if you were standing in line at the post office and you started up a conversation with a person in front of you and said,Hi, I just have to tell you, I’ve had such a great day. You wouldn’t believe the wins that I’ve had and the weather is amazing. They would look at you like you’re a crazy person. 

But if you turned to them and said, oh my gosh, this line is atrocious. How can they make us wait this long? I’ve never had such bad customer service. They would say, yes, isn’t it atrocious? And you would literally develop a connection. It’s unfortunate in a way. But I think one of the key things when it comes to being in business and if you are wanting to really go to that next level is to start to surround yourself with people that do think bigger or have worked on their money mindset and are challenging themselves in new ways. Because those mindsets are the ones you really need to adopt. Don’t just get caught up in the norm of what everyone else is doing because you’ll just create the results they’ve got. 

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

So it’s important going into business, whether you are a startup or whether you are more seasoned in business, that you do choose wisely the people that surround you, that they do have a positive mindset and they have your back. 

I believe that’s why women always crave connection and community because we do network really well and we can support each other really well. There’s no competition. If you find the right tribe, you find your right community. 

It’s even more important that you do continue to seek out those rooms to put yourself in because that’s actually going to determine your results. You will continue to play small because you want to feel like you belong. That’s a core human need.

Where does Christine see most business owners self-sabotaging their success? 

There’s a massive list of self-sabotaging behaviours. I could speak all day about it, but the most common behaviours that I see a lot of are undercharging, over-delivering, people-pleasing.  I see a lot of high achievers that from the outside, they look like they’re doing a lot, but internally they know that they’re actually not reaching their fullest potential at all. Yeah. They know that they’re capable of so much more. Overthinking and perfectionism, money blocks, limiting themselves with their scarcity mindset. All of that comes into play and self-sabotage is very attached to our identity.

When we have something that we want to go after, like a goal that we want to achieve, if that means that we would have to be somebody outside of our identity, then our identity almost works like a thermostat. You hit up against those upper limits. And then self-sabotage helps bring you back down. You go into a place of safety or self-protection in a way, because that limiting behaviour is protecting you from something. So if you didn’t have that behaviour, you most likely would achieve that goal.

So it could be that you would be rejected or that you would be judged or you would lose friends and family because you’ve become wealthy.  It’s that bigger fear, that’s where it stems from. But often we actually don’t even unpack it. We don’t even uncover it.

What are the best ways to overcome these mindset limitations? 

Firstly, addressing it and figuring it out. What’s the biggest part of the fear that you’re most worried about happening?

The obstacle here is, that our subconscious mind even protects us from figuring out what that is. A helpful tactic can be to imagine the worst-case scenario. And once you actually figure out if that did actually happen, how you would handle it. 

Other times it’s actually finding a representation of what your goal is or what you do want to achieve in your world where that’s a safe representation of you achieving that success. So for example, you have a fear if you were to become wealthy that you would then lose friends and family. So if that was your biggest fear, you would need to find a representation of someone in your world that has been able to achieve that and didn’t lose their family. Because our brain needs evidence to realise, that it’s okay, we’re going to be safe.

A big thing to remember too, with imposter syndrome is that we are most often operating from the past. We’re waking up in the morning remembering what happened yesterday. Our subconscious mind brings in our identity, this is who we are and where we live and what we are doing. We go back into the same patterns. For us to make a big change in our life, we have to first identify that that is the past. And I don’t necessarily have to replay that if I don’t want to. Then you can start to explore, what would it be like to be my future self who has already achieved everything that I’ve wanted to achieve? How would I be thinking, what would the belief systems be that I would need to adopt? How would I be acting? Who would I be being in that place? And I think once we start to spend more time with our minds in that future based situation, rather than the past, we release the past.

What would you recommend to women who are doubting themselves? 

With self-doubt, it can be two different elements. So sometimes it’s a perpetual belief system that’s developed from a younger age. It can be a constant loop that plays self-doubt. So sometimes that’s more difficult to change if it has been developed at a younger age. So that’s where I would definitely work on subconscious mind support. That’s why working with someone who is trained in things like I am trained in is so beneficial, with hypnotherapy, matrix therapies, neurolinguistic programming, being able to change the belief systems based on years and years and years ago. 

You actually do that with a subconscious process, which can’t be done when your eyes are open. Many people think, I’ve done lots of journaling and I’ve done lots of reading all of these personal development books, but that will only go so far because your subconscious mind will protect you from change. 

Because change is scary and unknown. So working with someone like myself to help unpack that and remove that block is definitely worthwhile. If you find it’s not as deeper a perpetual belief system like that, but you find that self-doubt pops up or the imposter syndrome pops up, as you are stepping into new horizons, this kind of imposter syndrome is a little bit different in this situation. 

I actually implore my clients to actually seek it out because it is actually a growth process. Right? So the people who aren’t experiencing imposter syndrome, guess what they’re not doing, they’re not putting themselves out there. They’re not trying new things. They’re not challenging themselves. They’re not stepping outside their comfort zone. They’re staying in their comfort zone and doing the same thing they do every single day because that’s safe and that’s familiar. 

Whereas the imposter syndrome shows up because you are on the precipice of change and growth. You’ve stepped outside of your comfort zone, into the unknown and your brain’s thinking, oh no, we might die. You better be careful! And so it shows up as this challenging belief system or thought pattern, that is trying to protect you from doing something that could put you in danger. 

What do you wish more women knew? 

I wish more women knew they were so much more capable than they’re giving themselves credit for. That they are so worthy of being a million-dollar business owner, a multimillion-dollar business owner. One of my biggest passions in life is to have more money in more women’s hands. Because I know that this will make the world a better place.

 

We’ve been conditioned by society, our whole entire existence as women to believe that we’re not worthy of having more, that money is something that we shouldn’t love. 

All of the belief systems around money, men should strive for success, but women shouldn’t. If we’re able to overcome that, women are the ones that are going to be changing the world and to do that, we need money. And that’s something that we don’t have to start putting, keep putting such negative connotations on money. 

It’s time to pull up your big girl pants!

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