146 - The House of Mind Games. Unpacking the rules we secretly make up with Julie French

Speaker A: It's usually because we've got some seed bed there already. Perfect seed bed. Uh, a belief system. And this thought tends to find its way to a, uh, pre existing belief system. And now we've planted it and now we're watering it.

Speaker B: Welcome to the smash your own ceiling podcast, helping you to up level your thinking, elevate your success, and create the life you really want. I'm your host, Barbara Nixon, and your next level leadership journey starts here. Hey, how you doing? It's Barbara. Hope you're having an amazing week and everything's good at your end. Now today I've got the pleasure of sharing a brilliant chat with the lovely Julie French. Now, Julie and I have known each other for a while, but I think this is probably the first time that we've actually sat down and had a, had a good old chat, which was really, really lovely. Now let me tell you a little bit about Julie. She was formerly a senior leader in social work. She's been coaching, training and delivering keynotes since 1999. She's an NLP master trainer and she's also the co director of the Academy of High Achievers, which she runs with her life business partner and husband. And together they've co authored three books focused on helping people reclaim their true self themselves, which I absolutely love. Now, we had such a good chat. We talked about mindset ultimately, and the way that Julie frames that, which just is amazing, is the house of mind games. So we talk about the mind games that we all play because we're human, right? And how we can actually get around them, how they block our success, our progress, how they keep us stuck and what we can actually do about it. We talk about the lift music of our thoughts. So the beliefs that are running in the background that we don't often recognize that are actually there, but they're doing a great job of keeping us stuck. But they're just humming along in the background, just keeping us staying exactly where we are. We talk about how neurons that fire together wire together and how repetitive thoughts actually build literal physical pathways in our brain. We talk about the power of unwritten rules that we've created for ourselves and how a lot of our daily frustration actually comes from trying to force ourselves, uh, force ourselves to follow complex sets of rules that we've made up in our own heads. And, uh, we talk about the power of questioning and how the memories that we've got may actually vary. And that, uh, sometimes our brain does a really good job of just lying to us. So there's loads of good stuff in this conversation. I can't wait for you to have a listen, so let's dive in. Hi, Julie.

Speaker A: Hello, Barbara.

Speaker B: I love that you're here and I love that we're. Now, I think we. We've known each other for a while, but we've not actually had a proper chat, have we?

Speaker A: No, we haven't. This is our moment, Barbara.

Speaker B: This is our moment.

Speaker A: This is it. This is our get to know each other.

Speaker B: And I also want to say I really like your shirts.

Speaker A: Oh.

Speaker B: Huh.

Speaker A: I know. I mean, I, I am the queen of these kinds of shirts. I have to say. They are. They are sea salt and I've probably got about 15 of them.

Speaker B: Do you have a wardrobe just full of really jazzy shirts?

Speaker A: Honestly, I have. I mean, and this is very flaggy, this one.

Speaker B: Very flaggy. It just look like flags, but it doesn't. I don't think there are. They aren't. Are they flags?

Speaker A: No, I, I don't. I, I don't honestly think that I could actually identify a real flag in them, but I do look as if I am waving the flag for a lot of different, different, um, countries. And, you know, given that it's, uh, World cup era, um, I'm playing. I'm. All the teams.

Speaker B: Yes. Well, that's good. Are you watching the football?

Speaker A: I'm watching some. I'm watching some of it. You know, I, I'm not really a big football fan, but I do get quite, you know, drawn in, particularly the, um, you know, the home team.

Speaker B: Yes. That's nice. I, I watch about 10 minutes and then I get ushered out of the room because I, they. We seem to score every time I leave the room, so I'm allowed to kind of just glimpse at the tv. And then when it gets a bit like where nothing seems to be happening, I get ushered out of the room and lo and behold, with score. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It's all my fault, really.

Speaker A: It clearly is. It clearly is. Well, take note.

Speaker B: Exactly. Anyway, we've got something in common because we both like talking about mindset.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And I saw you talk only at the weekend and, uh, Saturday where you talked about your house of mind games. Have I got that right?

Speaker A: You have. The Julie French house of mind games.

Speaker B: I love that. Let's talk about some mind games. If you fancy. If you want.

Speaker A: Yes, I, I absolutely do. I, I, uh, I've made it my business as, As I said in my talk, I've made it my business over the last 30 years when I came across my first personal Development book to. Yeah. Really look into. To the mind and how the mind is creating suffering for us. You know, we often tend, don't we, Barbara, to think that it's, you know, things outside that are, uh, you know, the boss or my colleague or the economy or, you know, whatever it is. We tend to sort of think that it's stuff outside and forget that we're actually creating our own reality.

Speaker B: That's true. I'm curious, before we start talking about that properly, what was your first personal development book? The first one that you read?

Speaker A: Oh, Awakening the Giant Within.

Speaker B: Tony Robbins.

Speaker A: I mean, I came across that book in. Well, it was 1997. I was in Waterstones in Solihull. And, um, that book absolutely waved at me and I was in so, so much in need of help. And I picked that book up and managed to get over the um, the COVID because, you know, it's a little bit. You know what I mean? And uh. And I. I dipped into it. I opened it actually at a page that was talking about beliefs. And um, it was something along the lines of beliefs can either create, um, or they can destroy. That was the sort of phrase that. That leapt out at me and I, you know, it just struck me like a thunderbolt. It's like, really?

Speaker B: Uh.

Speaker A: Because up until that point, I mean, your. Your listener. Well, I mean, I find it incredible. I'd never really thought about my own thinking at all. And um. And so this book was that first sort of exploration into, oh my goodness, I am doing thinking, I am doing this. And it's either helpful or it's not helpful. So that was really the beginning of it. And I carried that book around with me. You know, it's like, oh my goodness, this has got, you know, this is. This is my way to freedom, as I thought. You know, it's like, I know this has got everything in it. And so that's where it really all started. And uh, and then I got, um. Well, 2000. I got into NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, went on my NLP practitioner training.

Speaker B: I did it about that time as well, funnily enough.

Speaker A: Well, there you go. Wow. Unparalleled universe.

Speaker B: I know. The thing is, I wanted to go back to beliefs. Right. Because you're up. You've said a few. All so much good stuff in just, what, the short bit of time we've been talking that our beliefs really do hold the key to. It can be positive, it can be negative. What we think actually does matter. Because, uh. M. Let's talk about what a belief is if you just. If somebody's listening to this and thinking, actually, what do we. We're not talking about any kind of religious beliefs. We're talking about the things that we think about on a regular basis, whether we realize it or not. And I call this the lift music of our mind. Right? The things that's just going on and on in the background that tells us what we believe to be right or wrong or true or false. And often they just spill out and we don't even realize it. They might just. They're just lying underneath the surface, aren't they?

Speaker A: Yeah. And the thing about beliefs is when you start noticing them, everything is a belief. I mean, that's a belief. So it's pretty well impossible to use language that doesn't involve, uh, our beliefs. And they feel so true. But actually they are a, uh, heavily filtered version of reality. And as I said in the Julie French House of Mind Games, they are structures, elaborate structures that we have built over time involving, you know, those neurons in our brain that are firing repeatedly. So, you know, there's this wonderful phrase that some people will have heard, which is, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together. Now how our mind kind of communicates and comes up with thoughts is just neurons firing. But when they're repeatedly firing, they are creating pathways that are automatic. And we're not even consciously aware that, um, they are just neuron, neuro pathways. And so that's the sort of key message, is that they are largely made up, uh, and we have all kinds of beliefs and belief systems in there. The ones that I think are, ah, incredibly important are the ones that involve our opinions and our judgments and our, uh, ideas that we think are facts. And they often, if you look carefully at them, m. They often involve shoulds and shouldn'ts. You know, people should, people shouldn't, I shouldn't. And I often like to describe them as the unwritten rules that we have. We're wandering around with a set of rules that we don't even realize are our own rules. Nobody else knows what they are. And then we get het up when other people don't conform to our imagined,

Speaker B: uh,

Speaker A: set of standards about how things should be and shouldn't be.

Speaker B: So true. So true. And sometimes when you start challenging them, because I think challenging your beliefs is probably some of the. It's a. I was going to say fun, but I find it fun. But it might not find it fun, but it's very interesting to do because when you start thinking one. Just because I'm thinking it doesn't mean to say it's true, you know, because we think an awful lot of tosh. I'm sure you do. I do, certainly do. But second thing is, where did, why am I thinking this? Is this really, uh, my belief? Or have I just adopted it from somebody else? Yes, because we can, we can just. We get them from everywhere, don't we? From when? From our parents, from our carers, from schools, Just from throwaway comments from somebody that somebody gave us. It could be from anywhere. We gather and hoover up all of these beliefs, change them and adopt them as our own. And I know when I did this. And you continue to do this work, once you start doing this work, you start to keep doing it, don't you? And, and whenever I stumble upon one of my own beliefs, one of my, one of the things that I just love to do is right, okay, do I really think that is that true or is that just something that I've picked up from somewhere else that I'm claiming as my own when it's not really.

Speaker A: Exactly. And I think, um, just getting to what am I actually thinking? And then as you say, where does this come from? But you know, just asking that very simple question, what am I assuming? Because some, some of these thoughts, these beliefs, these things that seem so true, they just sneak in under the radar. You know, some of them are very, some of our beliefs are very obvious and very visible. But a lot of the ones that um, create the most pain for us are ones that are, uh, they're less visible, they're just hidden. They just, as I say, sneak in. Uh, and then they take a front row in the seat or they take over and they become like the producer of what's going on in our mind. And uh, it's like, well, you know, they're not. I didn't even invite them in, so I didn't even know they were there.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah, I didn't even know. So let's look at some of these games then, that we tend to play with ourselves. What's in the. The mind games? The House of Mind Games of Mind Games.

Speaker A: The G French House of Mind Games. Well, the way that I present it is that, um, you know, the first mind game is the grabbing of particular thoughts. Because. Let's go further up the river. I love this metaphor. I didn't use it on, uh, Saturday when I um, presented and I meant to. Which is this. Lovely. You've probably heard this story. It's a group of people, they're walking along by the river and they see Somebody drowning in there. And they think, oh quick, let's go and rescue them. So they go and rescue them. You know, they're very feeling very heroic. They, you know, they've saved this person, they carry on, they find two people in there and uh, you know, they rescue them and then they, you know, they resuscitate them and they carry on. And now they find four people drowning and uh, once they've rescued them, one of the, one of them goes, hang on, let's just go further up the river and see who's throwing them in. Uh, and so you know, the art. The reason why I start with thoughts is because that is, you know, really at the start of the river. This is um, a thought that I've taken of the 60,000 plus thoughts a day that are coming in, wafting in, wafting out all the time. And uh, it's the grabbing of a particular thought and doing something with it and creating pain for ourselves. And it's like, why did I grab that thought? And uh, maybe it was somebody didn't, I don't know, get back to me. Maybe somebody didn't reply to an email. And you know, and now I'm just mulling over, oh, I wonder why they didn't. And now I'm starting to make something of that. I wonder if, or it might be, yeah, it might be somebody was abrupt with you and it's like, oh, you know, that was a bit. And rather than just allowing that to waft in and waft out, it sort of finds a place in our system. So the reason why I start with thoughts is because um, we grab them and we tend to grab them if we have somewhere for them to live in our own house of mind games. And that's where the beliefs come in. And as you heard me explain, it's usually because we've got some seed bed there already, perfect seed bed. A belief system. And this thought tends to find its way to a uh, pre existing belief system. And now we've planted it and now we're watering it.

Speaker B: I just want to take a super quick break from this amazing conversation to remind you that the doors for Elevate are now open. It's happening on the 15th of September at uh, the beautiful Swinton Park Hotel in North Yorkshire. And this is for you. If you are a founder and senior leader.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And to the outside world you're a high performing leader, but on the inside you might be second guessing yourself. Even though you're used to, to feel really confident, you might also be feeling a bit out of your depth, even though deep down inside you know that you're more than capable. And you might be also feeling completely stuck in the weeds, like you're spinning your wheels with no time or headspace to think properly. And everybody in the business seems to want your attention. If you can relate to any of that, you are in the right place, because this is exactly what Elevate is all about. All you need to do to get more information is visit Barbara nixon.co.uk work with-Barbara Elevate. The link that you need is in the show notes. All the information that you want is right there. Okay, let's dive back in. If you have a paper cut or a splinter, the paper cuts, even though they're tiny and you can't often see them, they're really painful. Right. And you go about your life and then all of a sudden and not think about it, it's just there. Uh, and all of a sudden something will cat, you know, and it'll be agony. And I think it's something like that where you don't realize that you've got this paper cut. You don't realize, you've got your. Into your usual analogy of the seed bed. You don't realize it's there. And then something will happen. And all of a sudden it just grabs hold of your paper cut. It just hits you in the right way. And it can be difficult to shake off.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think, uh, but often we try and distract ourselves. We try and get rid of it, we try and move on, or sometimes we go with it, you know. And again, the way I describe this, Julie, and you probably use something similar is where you're getting into a rubber dinghy and, you know, on the rapids, and you don't have an or, and you don't have a, uh, motor on your, your dinghy. You're just sailing with it. And that's you sailing with your thought, your emotion. You're getting carried away. And what we, we love to invite people to do is start to notice is that to spot that so we can do something about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Before it starts getting further on down the stream. And I love your river analogy because it is that everything can get carried away. I mean, in Buddhism, they talk about, uh, the samsara wheel, uh, that a thought, you know, attaches itself to something and before you know where you are, it started a wheel spinning. Uh, and then we tend to sort of feed it. In my house of mind games, um, it would be with the stories that we start to weave in the endless and pointless stories that we tend to start to create in our own mind. And, you know, and it's just going down the same old patterns, but it's actually creating new ones as well.

Speaker B: Exactly. And just getting used to challenging them. Right. And just saying, is this right for me? Is this true? Um, is it that big a deal? How else could I think about it whilst we're talking? I remember having a, um. My mom likes to keep everything. She was born, born in Poland in 1939. They didn't have anything. Yeah, Nothing at all. And they had ration booklet books and everything. Ah. So right at the very start of the Second World War. And it's not. Poland wasn't a great place to be in the Second World War, as you can imagine. So now she doesn't like to get rid of anything because of all of that. And I remember, um, years and years ago when my kids were little, feeling guilty because I was having a big declutter and, you know, sending things to the charity shop or, you know, getting rid of things. And I thought, oh, crikey, I need to keep it. And I found myself following the same story that my mum's been feeding me forever. And she was feeding me that story for the right reasons because it was based on her childhood. I remember sitting myself down and going, hang on a minute, right, is this what I want? Is this my belief? Is this a story that I want to keep going with bearing in mind I could follow, pass that on to my children and off it goes. And I thought if I. If I keep this belief, which is. Was my mum's belief and it was right at that time, then you could also say, well, I should have a ration book then, because she also needed one of those. And I also say that I needed to go outside to the bathroom outside somewhere. So where does it end? You know, that's how I rationalized it. So if I was going to keep that part of the story, then you could say I should keep all of it. Which obviously was ludicrous. And once I'd kind of unraveled it like that, it was so easy for me to just let that thing go and let it dissolve. And I think sometimes we just need to sit down and unpick things without getting caught up in it.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Ah. As you say, you know, it is the investigating of it, is the leaving no stone unturned. Um, you know, it is a. Hang on a second. What am I actually doing in here? How am I creating this for myself?

Speaker B: And so I don't know what you. Your thoughts are, because I'm of the belief that we don't actually have to go looking for where it came from, but we just have to know why we think it.

Speaker A: Yeah. What am I doing?

Speaker B: Yeah. Challenge the thought. Do I actually think this. Is this true for me or is this just something that I'm caught up in right now? You know, but we don't have to go digging for where it came from. What do you think?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, um, you know, it's, it's. It's the investigation of what am I actually doing rather than where did this come from? I mean, it, it can be useful to, um, to recognize that it's, you know, it's got a historical basis. It can be useful for people to go, oh, yeah, you know, I remember that, um, you know, my parents or my grand grandparents always said, whatever it

Speaker B: was, and money doesn't grow on trees.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that, that can be. Be helpful to recognize. No, there is a distance between where this came from and what I'm about and who I am. Um, right in the here and now.

Speaker B: Yeah. And why it was true for them. So it might have been perfectly fine for them, you know, their situation and, you know, the experiences that they were having. But yet, no, you know, you're living a different life. You don't need to. You don't need to continue with that thought.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the key thing with it is, and, um, this is why I use the buckets, um, is that it isn't whether it's right or wrong or true or false. Because, you know, we would argue forever in a day about, uh, you know, uh, the beliefs that we hold dear to us. It's whether it's helping. It's whether it's smoothing the way to helping us achieve what we want to achieve, um, which for most of us is a state or a feeling or whether it's getting in the way of that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so, you know, it's looking at it in that way.

Speaker B: Yeah. What are the other games, then?

Speaker A: Okay, so we've got, we've got, you know, you take your thoughts, um, you plant them in a seed bed of, uh, preconceived, unwritten rules and, uh, belief systems. And we've got the endless stories that we tell each other. So there are two more. And, uh, you know, and these are the best because they are, wow, so powerful. And, uh, so the next one is, um, that sense of who we are, you know, so it's A particular kind of belief, uh, because it's our beliefs about who am I. And uh, we don't often or we, I mean, let's put it differently. We rarely even question our preconceived ideas about ourselves. So this is a game of largely mistaken identity. Because, um, you know, the game is we are wandering around with a set of ideas, a set of images, a self constructed sense of who we are. And the key thing is if it's helpful, if it's liberating, if it, um, enables us to be the best version of ourselves, great, you know, let's embrace it. But for a lot of people, it's constricting, it's limiting. You know, when we have a very preconceived idea about, about self. And I see this with a lot of people, it takes a lot of maintenance because it, you know, I've got to defend this, I've got to protect this. And I tend to describe it as, um, you know, wearing different suits. It's like, I think that, you know, I make the mistake, the mistaken identity of thinking that I am that suit. You know, because I've got a suit which is, you know, I'm a leader. I've got a suit which is. I'm a mother. I've got a suit which is a different role. And uh, where it can become very constricting for people is that they inadvertently mistake themselves for the suit, but also that they are aligning themselves with that, uh, made up concept such that they are becoming prisoners of their own m invented Persona.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: And it's quite deep, I know, and it's quite complex. Um, there's a lot to this when we start to really, you know, get into, well, who am I anyway?

Speaker B: Um, and who do I want to be?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And, uh, whoever I want to be. Let me make sure that, uh, the starting point is that, you know, that it's got a lot of freedom in it.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. And we can change, you know.

Speaker A: Of course we can.

Speaker B: I mean, neither of us would be in the business that we're in if we didn't believe people could change. People say to me all the time, oh, I don't think people can change. I disagree, you know, uh, because we've seen it and I'm sure you have too.

Speaker A: Oh my goodness, yes. I mean, um, you know, we are evolving all the time. All the time. And um, you know, you look back on yourself maybe five years ago and, you know, some, some of your audience will be doing this now. You know, think. Well, or think about me as a child. I mean I, I think about myself as a child and, and it's very flimsy because, uh, you know, I can't, there's no reality to that memory. There just isn't. It's a very, very flimsy, um, made

Speaker B: up concept and you only really remember the things that you want to remember or you color it in, in a different way that suits you at the time, I think, don't we?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, so often memories morph and that's why you get, I mean me and my siblings have this all the time where we'll remember things from our childhood and we'll go, no, that didn't happen. And no, that wasn't that. And no, that car wasn't that color. It was this cold color. And you just can't really rely on your memories.

Speaker A: You so cannot rely on your memory. I mean, you know, the, our late queen put it very nicely when she uh, she, she, she did a, there was a documentary about her shortly before she died and she used this phrase, recollections may vary. And I thought, oh, I'm going to borrow that, that's absolutely lovely. But you know, I, exactly the same when I'm um, when I'm speaking to my sister and she'll come up with some memory and I'll go, I hang on a second. That's my memory, isn't it?

Speaker B: My memory.

Speaker A: Give me that happened to me. And now you're remembering it as if it happened to you. It's quite hilarious when you think about it.

Speaker B: Did it, Julie? How can people get hold of you?

Speaker A: How can they get hold of me? Well, first of all, please do connect with me on LinkedIn. So I'm Julie French and if I can make a shameless plug now Barbara, for my daily video series.

Speaker B: Oh yes, I'm singing that.

Speaker A: Yes. So I'm now on, I think day 44 and somebody said to me, how long are you going to carry on doing these daily videos? And my answer is for the next 30 years.

Speaker B: What a commitment, right? You heard it here first. If she stops to tomorrow, I'll be complaining.

Speaker A: Well, exactly. So you know, the more I say it, the more I'm committed to it. So um, yeah, so, so I've got a daily video. It comes out at 7:30 each morning and it really is, you know, uh, just, just watch it before you get up or you know, first thing in the morning and give you a little tip on um, how to uh, manage today and how to manage your relationships in that day. So LinkedIn is a very, very good place to start. And then I do have, we have a number of websites, but, uh, our hub website is aha. Success.com. and, uh, then we have an everything disc psychometric profiling website which is aha. Disc.co.uk I'll put the links in the

Speaker B: show notes for you.

Speaker A: Uh, thank you, Barbara.

Speaker B: Julie, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. It was. It's just really good fun.

Speaker A: See you soon, Barbara.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Smash your own Ceiling podcast. If you're ready for more, go to barbaranixon.co.uk See you soon.