Business Innovators Radio - Susan Sheehan: How to Build Resilience in 7 Simple Steps

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Susan is an International Speaker, high performance and wellness Coach of 30 years. As a two-time No.1 Bestselling Author, Susan has established and had businesses in Australia, New Zealand, & the USA encompassing both coaching and other ventures. Renowned as an authority on brain training, personal branding, professional profiling and the entrepreneurial mindset. Susan has not only interviewed celebrities but has also collaborated with leading figures in the personal & professional development industry. Her diverse skills and international experience make her a dynamic leader and innovator at The Coaching Consult.Learn more at: https://www.susansheehandailypodcast.com/speakerRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/susan-sheehan-how-to-build-resilience-in-7-simple-steps

You're Ababa Hockden To know on the Station of the planet Resistance is futile The Revolution Has was done You're listening to

Revelpreneur radio Helping you break the rules and build the business you need For the life you want And now Broadcasting his pirate signal From somewhere beyond the status quo Here's your host

Best Selling Author Marketing and Media Strategist Ralph Brogden Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden. If you're going to be an entrepreneur or a rebelpreneur in today's environment, you have got to build some skills that will set you up for success. We talk a lot about mindset.

There's different aspects of mindset, but one in particular is resilience. the ability to bounce back and to overcome obstacles and to consistently show up and do the work until you achieve the business you need so that you can live the life that you want. So the question becomes how do we build resilience? And today's guest is going to help us learn that very valuable skill. I'm speaking with Susan Sheehan. She is an international speaker, a high performance and wellness coach for over 30 years. and as a two-time number one best-selling author, Susan has established and has had businesses in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, encompassing both coaching and other ventures. She is renowned as an authority on brain training, personal branding, professional profiling, and the entrepreneurial mindset.

She's going to talk to us today about the seven S's to building resilience. Susan, welcome to Rebelpreneur radio. Thank you for having me. It's excited to be here. And it is late evening where I am in the USA. It is early morning where you are in Australia. Is that right? Yes, it's 7 a.m.

A. Today, Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning and still Monday evening here. So I just love these international guests and the ability we have to talk to people all over the planet that we may not have a chance to meet face to face, but technology brings us together. And so thank you for getting up early in the morning and spending some time with us. Well, it's an opportunity to inspire. And, you know, if you can help one person go, aha, I guess that, I can go do that,

then I'm living my purpose if I can achieve that every time I speak or get into you. that's what it's all about. And I love the name of the show. Oh, thank you. Rebopreneur really encompasses me to a tea. Wonderful. Well, then you are a good fit. You're in the right place.

Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what do you do and who you help. Well, I've grown up. I've grown up. I guess I've just grown up in the world of being an entrepreneur. I've been a coach for these years, and I've just, I've always said that my children have, the reason I do what I do, they inspired me and moved me into my career. It wasn't like, what do I want to do, but it was something I've been into, because of, I guess, the story around my own journey with my life and my children.

And I've always, I've always been able to connect with people. I was a child that brought home children that didn't have friends, not the child that brought home animals that needed to feed them. And so I think I've just always been in exactly the right place, you know. And as we go through life and we experience our own ups and down, you know, we can either learn and grow from it or not we have a choice. And I've just, I decided that, you know, I buried a daughter. and the day that I buried my daughter

I remember days and I go oh my days is so big and hard there has to be a meaning for this and I have to make her little life mean something and I have to rise above the pain so that I'm not pulled down into the pain and I was in 23 when I made that profound statement

but I know that it has been an unconscious driver for my life because I've always been able to do that. And so it's just, I've just gone from one step to the other step to the next step. When I was younger, I didn't think about, I didn't really think about it. I just always followed that that gap feeling. I think, I guess that I used to do and then I'd think, oh my gosh, did I do that? Oh, my gosh, does I do that?

but I remember my very first coach that I work with 30,000 dollars to learn how to think and I think that that's just always the point that I've always made that, you know, I've grown up in the world of coaches and everything that I have learned about myself has been because I've invested in coaching and I've grown up in some area with a coach. So, you know, I started off, I found fitness.

I have a son with a reflection with the bear, He was born with three parts of the same damage, multiple food allergies, and you have a seizure every 20 minutes. And I just used to walk out the front door and go, okay, what do I need to learn today? And again, I was only 25 at the time, so I didn't know the questions to ask. I didn't know who would go to answer for me. But this is, I guess, the lesson that I learned, which is a big, big success lesson, is that we need to be curious.

And even though I didn't know at the time that curiosity was a success strategy, I just made out an application to help me and mine. And my son was now drug-free, allergy-free and seizure-free. So I just, you know, I was curious things and I've just gone through as a step to step. And honestly, I would be as squillion now if I had a dollar, so every time somebody said to me, easy, you're so strong. it's like, well, no, I just have a brain. I call them brain anchors.

Very simple one-liners that push you forward is, what do I need to do? What do I need to do to do better? What do I need to do to feel better? What do I need to do to have better? And there's always been that one question is that we're better. That just keeps me moving forward into what I need to learn or do at the time. Wonderful. And so now you're helping people to make those distinctions as well.

tell us about resilience. I gave kind of a layman's definition of resilience, but describe for us in your perspective what resilience is and what it means to people who are trying to achieve their life and business goals. Well, yes, absolutely. It was, I called them an effort to resilience because it's a simple framework that people can remember. I've been asked to speak on mental wellbeing and the same time I was asked to speak on the subject. I've got to put this into a framework. So I can repeat all of the facts that people need to know. People can write them down because, you know, the brain lacks simplicity.

So I needed to simplify the process. So that's where the diagnosis came from. But I was always curious to why some people seem to have the mind of touch to success and other people, you know, do the work and do the work and do the work and other types of it. hold of what they wanted. I remember I had a project that I launched around Australia. I had 5,000 women online. It was a menopause program for women, actually.

And I was making money, and, you know, we were helping the other women, but I never hit that million dollars in sales at that point. And I thought, what is wrong? What is not working? You know, the business plan says it. We're doing the work. It's all happening. But why am I hitting that million dollars in sales at that point?

What is not working? and again I asked myself the question and I can see myself standing there frustrated out of my deck going, why is this not working? And the answer that came back and my unconscious was you don't deserve it. So what I, which is, it's like,

well we all deserve it right. So what was the story that was telling you that I wasn't? So that's the first step to resilience. What is that story that is driving your life? We all have this unconscious tail that's defined who we are and how we live our life. It decides whether we build success or deserve success or achieve success. And this unconscious, this unconscious tale, it's on replay. It's sexually, it's on replay.

And if we make the conscious decision to change it, you know. I think it was Morris Nessi identified that we had given our unconscious just default belief system from the age of zero and seven. And then we just write new pages in that story every day. But we can choose at any given time to close that book and write a new story. And, you know, Einstein said that imagination is more powerful than knowledge, but science now proves what it is. So that story, that first-descest, this story,

is this story that's thriving your life that forms your beliefs serving you, or is it causing me to not to believe that you've, don't deserve success that, you know, you're not worthy of it. You're too old or too young. You're too short. You're too. A lot of the excuses that is driving your life that's causing you to live a life list and what you want to live.

And because my curiosity got me interviewing celebrities and really looking into, you know, what is really going on there? What is the story that drives these people? And, you know, they just have rewritten the story so that they can live the life that they want to miss you've got to be a bit of a river. to make that happen. So that's the first death. What is the story that's driving me?

And do you need to rewrite, close the old book and rewrite a new book so that you can live the life that you want to live? Good. Excellent. So how do we... So the second is the same. No, no, sorry. No, I was just, I was agreeing. Absolutely.

If you want to change your life, you have to change your story, especially the story that you tell yourself. Yes. 100%. Yes, yes, yes, that's so true. And people get confused between the brain and the mind, so we look at the brain and the bridge, and your bridge needs to be going in the right direction, it needs to be made of the right stuff,

and it needs to be unbreakable. Your mind is the vehicle that takes you there, and that needs to be resilient and unstoppable. Your belief system is the engine that drives it, and that has all these different parts, like an engine, though an engine has all these parts, your belief system is the same, it has all of these different parts.

And for the engine to run smoothly, you need to get all those parts working with one, and that's literally what happens in the end country. And then your passion and your purpose is what fuels this whole vehicle. So, you know, that story is that's why it's a first death because it's very, very, very common to ease the outcome that people either get results or they don't. The second death is self-awareness.

We have to be aware of ourselves. We have to be okay with going inside south and really looking at our strengths and looking at our work with being true to ourselves. You know, authenticity is an office in this world of business today. And even though we live in this AI world, being authentic, I think, is a powerful asset. And we have to help more people really be okay with who they are. Be okay with sticking out in front of the lie that most people pretend to live behind. and really identify who am I, who am I today,

and if I want to live this life and this new story, if I really truly want to be this person I was born to be, then I need to know who I am here. I need to be aware of my strengths and my weaknesses and be okay every day sticking out to be the best version of myself. Yeah, absolutely. That's the second here. The service is stress management.

stress management is a big one. And the more that we care about self, then the easier it is to manage the stressors. So, you know, this is where we have to be aware of, you know, what we eat. And it's all about well-being, mental well-being. It's all about physical well-being. It's the food we eat, the supplements.

We take the exercise we do. How do we actually manage our stressors? You know, do we have a daily ritual that we work with? You know, health and fitness, health and wellness, mental and physical well-being, it is a success strategy. And this is not an opinion. It's an absolute fact. You know, a wellness and well-being program will help you manage stressors. It will help you perform at peak performance so you can be a high achiever.

Nobody achieved success when they feel unfit, fact, they'll be unsuccessful, set up fronty. That's right. It just doesn't work. And stressors, certainly, stressors become monumental and mountains are hard to climb. So, you know, a health and well-being program is essential to manage dressels and to build success. So that's the third FDES.

The fourth F is a sense of purpose. One must have a sense of purpose. You know, we've got the Olympics on at the moment. and I'm just, I'm just, it inspires me, these athletes inspire me. And one of the Australian squirons who had a, who came seventh in Tokyo, really, really was, didn't cope mentally well with that.

So he got a well-being coach and working his team. And so he's come, he's come to Paris with a whole new mindset around who he is and what he can achieve, maybe feeling a little bit more, to the pressures around where he is. But his brain anchor, his brain anchor is advanced unafraid. That's one of his brain anchors, advanced unafraid. And then before he jumped into, before he went out to swim his race, his first race,

he wrote on his hand purpose. He wrote on his hand purpose because he said the swim was only one event in life, that he had to do the best that he could, that his life is so much more than that one plan. And I thought, oh my gosh, what a great analogy for business and life, right? Because we have to have a purpose. We have to see more than ourselves

if we truly want to live a life that's worthy of living. We truly want to live the life that we were born to live. We have to see something bigger than self. Yes. And on my journey of interviewing successful people and, you know, getting up front and close and personal with some of the A list people of this world, whether it be business, music, drama, you know, whatever the industry of context, is that they all have a purpose bigger than themselves.

And I know my purpose has got me up every day and driven me forward through challenges that sometimes the mountain is so big you can't see the other side of it. But when you have that purpose, this is when your superpower and your imagination comes into play. Because your brain has to see something. And if your brain does not see something bright, beautiful, magnificent every day, your brain will bring images of the old story, bring it into today. You connect emotion to it and you believe it's real today. So your imagination is a superpower, but it can be used like all superpowers,

it has a positive and a negative. So you can use your imagination to magnify something beautiful that you can grow forward to, or you can use your imagination to magnify a fear that will cause you to think deeper into the pains and the problem rather than to grow forward. So imagination is a superpower. It allows you to create a vision of your purpose.

And once that brain sees that vision of the purpose, then what you need to do to get there is inconsequential. For me, a life-changing moment, and it was a moment in time when I realized that the life that I wanted to live is waiting for me, I just think I'm the person I needed to be to get there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And to do that, to do that, to do that, we have to, the brain has to see it.

Your brain has to see something, so the brain has to see it. So, you know, dream building is one part of it. Green building alone doesn't work, and willpower alone doesn't work, because the brain has to, that dream has to turn into a vision. We need to become a visionary of our life. We need to become a visionary of our business. And if you think of any of the A-list, Richard Branson, I'm sure you know this, you know, he created every business in his mind, created his business in absolute detail, and then got excited

about unfolding it in a physical world. I mean, you know, and if we could help more people, you know, the biggest problem, the biggest problem in the saddancing is that most people don't know what they want. But what is your heart-pumping core desire is the question I ask everybody. Now let's turn that into a vision. Now what's the first step you need to do to just go and start untolding it in your life. So the next, the next is, powerful, powerful, the next is we have to become smarter. We have to become smarter.

If resilience is, you know, one of the definitions, you know, sent to strength falling down and get back up. But if we don't become smarter when we get back up, we're going to keep falling down the same way. You know, the same holes in a keep popping up, but we're going to fall down into, right? So we have to become smarter as we get out. You get out, we look around,

and I think we've all been guilty of making the same mistake over and over. So what I realize is that through becoming smarter, opening our mind from listening to people that are achieving what we want to achieve, to learning what we need to do better, strengthening those weaknesses. Stop focusing on what your strengths are. Because our strengths are unconscious. They already set. The neural pathways are there.

The images are in place. We've got to get up every day and strengthen our weaknesses. I spent $50,000 and I saved this seriously with a smile. I spent $50,000 working with a coach, and that coach was actually John Astorak to be told that my brain didn't see numbers. And I'm thinking, I went off. I saw people that I didn't see numbers.

And the reason that that program that I had hadn't generated the million dollars because I wasn't doing the numbers. I saw the people that I saw the people, but I didn't see the numbers of people. And so that was a really big, huge lesson. I had to train my brain to see numbers. Now, you're not going to come and pay me to do a spreadsheet,

but I know how to read my spreadsheets now, and I just focus on the numbers. So, you know, we have to be smarter. We've got to be okay with knowing what our weaknesses are, and you get up every single day, and be okay with letting go of what's not working, and remember we're rewriting that story, so as we rewrite that story,

we're becoming smarter at what we need to do better. So that's the perfect. The success is we have to be stronger. We have to, as we keep moving forward, we keep growing forward, we have to become stronger. And I call them the power train. We have to be grateful and we have to forgive. And I think that if we wake up every morning,

we're grateful for what we have, for who we are today. I always forgive. Ask for forgiveness before I start the day because I know I'm going to muck up somewhere. But I, because they're human beings, right? So perfectionism is something that we'll never get to. But I do, I do think that the power to be grateful and being, and forgiveness make us stronger. Because being grateful, it's, the energy is great.

You know, when you see something you're grateful for, a straightway, we're in this beautiful, abundant energy. And forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves. If we don't forgive ourselves, if we don't forgive others, we just eats us up inside. It just fuels a negative piss in the bottom of your stomach that weakens you. It weakens you.

So forgiveness and gratefulness, I think, is what I call the power tree, that really can help you build that in your strength, help you build that in the strength and live in the right energy that attracts success. Yeah. And the finalist is to seek help. if this is needed, to seek help, be okay with us people.

I had a client once who asked me to go to a church meeting with her. She belonged to the church and she asked me to go and I did. And I really connected with the pastor of the church. She was a beautiful woman and she said to me, would you come and work with the woman in the church? And I said, yeah, I'd like to. I know I'm a Christian, but I didn't belong to. I didn't at that time belong to a church. Anyway, I went along and I said, so what would you like me to do?

She said, well, you have to be part of the church and this is our expectation. Well, that didn't actually sit with me. It wasn't where I felt that I wanted to be. You know, I think finding a church is something that you've got to connect with. You've got to feel that's where you belong and I didn't have that feeling. So I thank you very much. You said, look, you know, if you would like to, you know, I'm here if you'd like to, but this just doesn't feel like the right fit for me.

At the moment, today, I just wasn't going to do it. Anyway, three months later, three months later, it was a Sunday afternoon. I just turned on the computer, got an email, and I had an email from the former. Now, I haven't had a conversation with this random email, and all it said was, please always remember to see that, even help us need help us. And it was like, whoa, okay, well, there's a lesson I probably need to have. And sometimes we get these random lessons to people that just come out of the blue. And I think when you step out into the world with this curiosity and desire to be the best that we can bring,

to make a difference to the world, to live our purpose, that we get these messages and we're open into hearing them. So seek help is the seventh. Be okay with us to help because even help is good help. So those will be seven answers. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's important. The last one you said seek help. That ties back into number two, self-awareness.

You have to be aware of your limitations and acknowledge them and not be afraid to reach out and to get help from people who have been there, done that can help you get through whatever it is you're trying to work through. And being self-aware enough to do that. And that helps you become smarter and stronger. All of these elements are really working together to help you build the resilience so that you can continue on your success journey for personal and for professional and business goals. So this is. Well, I think I think the very first destiny that I ever had, and I wasn't in business at the time once that. was that your life will change and your business will go as fast as you grow personally. And so personal development has to be, needs to be.

It's a necessity for more people to embrace and to get involved in if they want to grow successfully. Sure. Without development, without developing itself, it will never happen. And especially if you are a rebelpreneur or a solopreneur, or running a small team, it absolutely has a lot to do with you and where you are. So this is really important stuff. Susan, you are also a best-selling author. Before we close, tell our listeners about your book.

My book, I wrote actually, I co-authored a book with nine other women, pre-COVID. but through COVID I wrote a book called Fast Track Your Brain Power for Ultimate Success Reset. So it's just really talks about my story. It's quite amusing. There's little snippets of the story. But, you know, just what you need to do to train your brain. It's really grade 7 language based on neuroscience, based on my own journey of how you can train your brain so that you are waking up every day knowing what to do.

brain training, we have seven ingredients to success. Do what it takes, losing excuses, fall in love with being uncomfortable because all success grows in the state of discomfort, as you know. Implement fast, procrastination. Procrastination is a killer of success, so implement fast, be mindful. Mindfulness is a big topic, and mindfulness is powerful healing,

but to be mindful means that our 2% conscious brain is overriding a 98% pain and crap that could be driving your life. So we must be mindful every day of what we need to do to strengthen those weaknesses, otherwise that unconscious will take over.

That unconscious will take over. And then we've got be coachable, so really open the mind to being coachable, to listening, learning, letting go. And it's, it, when we bring these several ingredients together.

That is when we can make up every morning. I guess it's all about having that work ethic, isn't it? And look, the most challenging thing we do is to, is, I think, to listen. We have to be okay with being coachable, and I think that's why coaching is so powerful, because we always know, as human beings, we can always do more than what we think we can. And when you work with a coach, you know,

We push, we can help push through those days. I don't want to do this. It's too freaking hard. But here's the secret, and this is a big secret, that when you have a vision of where you're going and you believe that it's possible, you believe it's there, you believe you have it and you do it, and you believe that and you have a purpose, this actually pulls you forward.

So it's not always a pushing. When you know what you want and you believe that you can have it and it's there and bright, beautiful colour, all you've got to do is press play. and this movie of when you're going comes up in your brain, you know, panoramic and gorgeous, then that will pull you forward. And so it's not always a game of pushing. But you know what?

We are bombarded with 2 million bits of negative information every moment of every day. And so, you know, having coaches, listening to your show, it all helps us just to believe in ourselves and to keep taking that step forward. Yeah, that's the key. That's what we have to do. lots of tools and lots of good information and a great deal of wisdom. How can our listeners get in touch with you, Susan, find out more about you and your work and all the things that you have available to help them on their journey?

My website is, my website, my website is meet susanshin.com. So just meet susanshinan.com. And that will get new to me. You can download my book, reach out to me, contact me, my phone number's on that page. And yes, look, it doesn't cost anything to have a conversation. And it's all about just seeing that first step. What is that first step that you need to take

so that you're opening the door to possibility? And each step you take that possibility becomes realer. there's a word for you. There's a new word, a realer in your mind. And the further consequence steps that just becomes like, I can do this. You build your confidence of every step that you take. So a conversation and then the doors are possible which we start to open until they become like, oh my gosh, I can do this.

I can do this. And you know what? I'm doing it. I'm doing this. And that's the mental shift, isn't it? To not believe you can to seeing the possibility to then going, I can do this. Oh, my gosh, I am doing this. Absolutely.

And I think when we get people to that point, then we're making a difference. Yes, and anything is possible at that point. Susan Sheehan is an international speaker, high performance and wellness coach for over 30 years. She's a best-selling author, and she is a renowned authority on brain training, personal branding, professional profiling, and the entrepreneurial mindset. Susan, thank you so much for spending some time with us and sharing your week. wisdom with us on Rebelpreneur radio today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for much. Thank you.

Thank you for much.