High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 178: Aligning Purpose, Power and Possibilities with Catherine Palin-Brinkworth, CSP, Professional Speaker and CEO of Progress Performance International

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

As the founder and CEO of business growth consultancy, Progress Performance International, Catherine has spoken in 14 countries.  She has trained and mentored many thousands of emerging leaders and business owners, including many professional speakers. Catherine is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow. She is a Past National President, Member of the Hall of Fame and Life Member with the Professional Speakers Australia. She was also a President of the Global Speakers Federation. Catherine speaks from her own rich life and business background sharing stories of survival and strategies for growth.   She inspires, encourages and enables her audiences to rethink their world, expand their visions, and reach their goals and dreams.   In this interview, Catherine and Cindra talk about: How to make sure your vision and purpose still excite you Why it’s important o remember we have authority over ourselves The difference between a vision and purpose Why it’s important to ask ourselves “What are the possibilities?” and consider them from the parent, child, and adult perspectives The best advice she has ever received when she was diagnosed with cancer as a young age You can find a full description of the Podcast and contact information for Lennie at cindrakamphoff.com/catherine To receive the Free Download: “Aligning Purpose, Power and Possibilities,” go to: http://www.catherinepalinbrinkworth.com/

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Syndra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to Katherine Palin Brinkworth. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best athletes, leaders, consultants, coaches, all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or a sport. Now, today's interview, I interviewed Catherine Palin

Brinkworth, and she is from Australia. You'll be able to tell by her accent. And I just thought this whole interview was delightful. That is the word that I would use. Now, Catherine is the founder and CEO of Progress Performance International. She's also spoken in over 14 countries. She's been a professional speaker for 29 years, and she's trained and mentored many thousands of emerging leaders, business owners, including professional speakers like herself. She is a certified speaking professional, which is one of the highest designations within the field of professional speaking, and a global speaking fellow. She's a past national president and member of the Hall of Fame with the Professional Speakers Australia, and was also the president of the Global Speakers Federation.

She speaks from her own rich life and business background, sharing stories of survival and strategies for growth. You can hear just from this interview that she inspires, encourages, and enables her audiences all throughout the world. Now, in this interview, Catherine and I talk about the best advice that she received when she was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age and how her mindset helped her deal with the cancer and overcome the cancer, why it's important that we need to remember that we have authority over ourselves, and how we can make sure our vision and purpose still excites us. We also talk about

the difference between a vision and purpose. And my favorite quote from this interview is this one. This is the advice she received when she found out she had cancer. And this advice she received from a neighbor. So this is what Catherine said. This is a bump in the road. Don't focus on the bump. Focus on life on the other side of the bump. So I hope that you enjoyed this interview with Catherine. Before we head over to the interview, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for tuning in if this is the first time

or if you tune in regularly. I'm grateful to have this podcast to share a positive message each and every week to help you be at your best more often. So I appreciate all of you who've reached out to me to let me know something about the podcast maybe if it's how it's helped you in your profession as an athlete or coach or leader or someone who works in mental training and would always love to hear from you so you can reach out to me

in any way that you'd like maybe to suggest somebody that I should have on the podcast and you can reach me at cindra at cindracampoff.com or I'm always on Twitter at mentally underscore strong. So again, if you would like to reach out to me or Catherine, you can head over to Twitter and join the conversation there. You can tag myself at mentally underscore strong or Catherine at Catherine PB. All right, without further ado, let's bring on the delightful Catherine. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. It's great to have you here. I'm joined today by Catherine Palin Brinkworth. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast today.

It's my pleasure, Cindy. I love that you're joining us from Australia today. Catherine, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do. My passion is helping people live the best lives they possibly can. I think there are probably many on your call, Sindra, who share that with me. And for me, I've found that it's actually about accepting and understanding the possibilities that exist when you claim authority, when you claim leadership, when you understand the power you have over your own life and choices. Ah, love it. Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now,

speaking for 29 years. That's amazing. You have the CSP designation, past international president of the Global Speakers Federation. So just tell us a little bit about your journey in terms of getting to where you are now. Sure. It was all actually, if some would say, completely by accident. Someone would open a door and I would walk through it and they would say, would you like to do that? Yes, I'd love to do that. Thank you. Oh, gosh, that job needs doing. I'll just put my hand up and do it. So quite the opposite of what I often talk about,

it wasn't actually strategic. It was very much being open to service and being, I think, very fast searching, if you like, for how i could be of the most value and where my own wounds have been where my challenges have been and what i've learned through that and how i can best use that to help other people rather than, you know, live a life that gets all this pain and all this, all this challenge that I've overcome. I don't want it to be wasted, Cintra. I want other people to benefit from it. Absolutely. You know, Catherine,

what would you say has been your toughest challenge you've had to face in your life and tell us a little bit more how you overcame it? Oh, that's easy. There were several fairly big ones. My son's father left us when he was two. And so I had to take on all the responsibilities of mothering and fathering and earning a living. And that was pretty hard work. But I think the, but he's still now the greatest joy of my life. And I know every other mother will agree with me that your children are your greatest achievement and certainly your greatest reward.

But how long ago now? 16 years ago, I was actually told that I had lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or t-cell lymphoma and that's a blood cancer and that i had um most probably 18 months to live wow and very very lucky and very careful i might make it to five years and here we are now it's been it's 2018 and that was back in one so I'm definitely not a ghost center and my strategy for overcoming it was to just look at the doctor and say nobody tells me when I'm going to die you know that's you don't put on a white coat and tell me that that's the number of years I have I'm going to think about this and I'm going to decide what I want. And then I'm going to start working towards that.

And I think the best advice I got was from my next door neighbor in my apartment block. And she said to me, Catherine, this is a bump in the road. And it's really important that you don't focus on the bump. It's really important to focus on life on the other side of the bump and I remembered I'd been taught that lesson long before in going looking at where you want to go not looking at the obstacles and that I think got me through it got me out of it and I clever things, wise things like leaving a highly polluted city, even though I loved it very much, and coming up to live by the that, you know, this is just a bump in the road and don't focus on the bump, focus on the life after the bump. And it sounded like to me that

you made some deliberate decisions about kind of living on purpose after you got that diagnosis. I was just reading, Catherine, I just spent some time in San Diego and I was just reading about the health benefits of living by the ocean. You know, tell us a little bit about how your life did change after that diagnosis and, you know, what are the practices that change in your life just getting that diagnosis in terms of, you know, 18 months to live? Yeah, I remember I left the doctor's clinic and I went and lay on my back, not something I would do very often, but I went to our botanical gardens in Sydney. And Sydney is such a beautiful city. And the botanical gardens are run by the Sydney City Council, the local government.

And they're beautiful samples of plants from all over the world and I lay on my back and looked up at the clouds and I thought okay if I need to go if this is decreed and if this is what will happen then it's okay I gather it's a reasonably comfortable journey and I can do that but I don't choose to right now. My son was 20 at the time. I wanted to see him partnered. I wanted to see him with children. And the goal I decided I have wasn't a business goal at all. It was that I wanted to dance at my grandchildren's birthday parties and, you know, ideally at

their weddings and their birthdays, their big birthdays. So I think I gave myself a real purpose and a real vision. And with that clarity of vision and that commitment to that purpose, I could put up with most things. So I did a lot of, I did all the Western medicine that I was told to do. I did it and I augmented it with herbs and all the spiritual treatment I could get. I accepted with gratitude and any other nutritional guidance. I learned not to worry about what anything tastes like,

because if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter as long as it makes you well. other nutritional guidance, I learned not to worry about what anything tastes like, because if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter as long as it makes you well. So I think that helped me in really just well as fast as I could. I love what you said in terms of like it gave you, you gave yourself a real purpose and vision. How do you think that helped you in terms of just overcoming the lymphoma? I think it helped a great deal. I think it actually instructs, we instruct our body, we instruct our brain. And we know now that we have neural cells in our hearts and in our guts. We know that we have three active brains in our body and they need to be aligned around what they're trying to achieve and how they're trying to serve the energy that is really us I mean when we see someone who's passed we know that we're not looking at them we know we're looking at the body they used to live in and the them that is them has gone

and I strongly accept that and the me that is me is living in this body right now and I know that this body works best and this brain works best when it has a clear vision and a real purpose that it's committed to that's aligned with its values. And that's what leadership means to me. So when I talk to people about personal leadership, that's really where I'm going is saying to people, come on, you can't run anything unless you can run yourself. So let's look at what you want out of life and what you will experience discomfort in order to gain like things tasting bad. Does that make sense? Absolutely. You can't run anything unless you run yourself. So when you think about advice you'd give other people who might be going through a similar difficulty or just a difficulty in general, what advice would

you give them, Catherine? Part of me feels I don't really have the right because there is no right way. Everyone must do what is right and true for them. But I think the answer to everything, and for a pretty tough business leader who's been in business for 29 years and I've chaired boards locally and nationally and internationally, I'm all about love. And I know we had a wonderful book by Tim Sanders a number of years ago called Love is the Killer App. And I loved that.

That meant everything to me. Everything can be overcome with love. And so the first thing I need to do is love myself. And everything that I am. And even when I stuff up and do something stupid my clients laugh at me because I hold up my right hand as if it were a mirror and I look into my right palm and I say oh silly girl that was so sweet that's so lovely oh you did your best didn't you and then I give myself a big kiss on the palm reminding myself that even if I just messed up and didn't get the result I wanted

I could have another go at it because I'm okay and I can do that just as we would with the children that we love so much we we can do the same to ourselves so I would say the first thing is you love yourself um and I have a quote on my desk that i love and it says beating yourself up for something you haven't done is like draining the fuel from a rocket and expecting it to go further so i know that i have to love myself i have to believe in myself i have to not be cruel to myself I have to be encouraging and kind and at the same time be sufficiently challenging as you would a child just say is can you give it a little more tomorrow can you work a little more disciplined or a little more diligent can you go and do that again and encourage myself to do that so love me love my work

check that i'm still in love with my vision my purpose and that the values i say i hold are still meaningful to me um and so continually you know as a rocket is off track 90 percent of the time and keeps self-correcting make Make sure I'm self-correcting. And, oh, Sandra, you know, I'm good at falling into lazy habits. I can tell you. I'm really good at that, especially since I've been ill. I learned I had to take care of myself. And so it's easy for me to swing to the other side of the spectrum

and just decide to do nothing but have a good time today and sometimes I can do that and sometimes it's not the best thing to do so I have to love the choices that I make and and then love myself and my new skills and love the people around me and and love the and circumstances I'm in Because even if they're difficult, they bring gifts. I've learned that, that every single package has a gift inside, even if I don't think it does at the time. Catherine, you know, you defined leadership earlier as having a real purpose and vision.

Would you say that's what leadership means to you? I know you speak on the topic for, I mean, you've, you know, professional speak for 29 years, which is amazing. But tell us a little bit more about what you mean by leadership. Sure. I kind of fell into the topic. I was speaking on sales and marketing. I had actually an accountancy background, which has been very useful and not very exciting. So I got into sales and marketing and then I went and studied behavioural sciences because I really wanted to know what made us as weird as we often are. And I started taking on voluntary leadership roles of professional associations and then being asked to take senior leadership roles in my career and then starting my business.

Again, I was president of the National Speakers Association here and ultimately the Global Speakers Federation. And I had to really think about why I did that and what that meant to me. And the conclusion probably shifts a little over time, but what it means to me is that each of us has a responsibility for helping to create the world that we want to live in gandhi used to say be the change you want to see in the world and to me it's very similar if if i

want a particular kind of world then there's no point in saying well they ought to do that or why don't the government do that or whatever which is what we would do in Australia it's up to me to do everything I can to create the kind of world I want to live in and that means that we need to have a vision of that kind of world it means I have to be willing to take action and I think the number one action for a leader is communication. And it means I have to continually work on my own self-development. Because unless I am willing to get bigger as a person, as a leader, my vision is going to stay stuck in a small place. So if I grow, then the vision will grow and the

actions will grow and then I have to keep growing and to me that's what leadership is those three things make up what I call personal leadership and when you claim that you behave as a leader in all sorts of environments we see children doing it in the playground. And once you're doing that, then people invite you to take on positional leadership roles that do have authority and influence. But it starts with your own willingness to have that vision in the first place to go hey I can see what this could look like what do you think and consult with others and and bring them on board and find out what if anything might be a challenge for them and then work with them to help them solve it and really create a movement if you like like, towards the vision.

Now, if it's not a vision that serves everyone, they won't follow you. So you're not a leader unless someone's following you. So you then have the opportunity to say, OK, so you're not coming with me on this. What's the problem here? Clearly, it's not that you're stupid and it's not that I'm stupid. So what's the problem and what could we do differently? And what would you suggest? And so you're willing to take responsibility, which a leader does,

but you're not trying to claim that you're right all the time. And authority means that you become the author rather than the boss. Does that make sense? Yeah. Tell us a bit more what you mean by that. Authority means that you become the author, not the boss. Do you mean the author of yourself or tell me more about that? Yes. It means the author of yourself, the author of your own life, the author of your choosers, your choices, your choosing, your vision and the actions you choose to take and the skills you choose to develop. You become the author of that pathway. when you consult with others and engage them and bring them into the movement that you're leading, which might only be a movement of your family, which is pretty important, or it might be a movement of a thousand people. You are authoring that movement. And I like that the word authority is about being the author. I think you become the

authority when you are claiming that authorship and willing to keep learning as you work with it. I think that's really powerful, Catherine, in terms of being the author of your own skills, your own vision, your own development. When you, you know, as people are listening and thinking, gosh, well, you know, I could have a stronger vision of where I want to go. I might maybe have a vision, but, you know, I think it could be more clear. What would you tell them in terms of like, how do we really try to find this vision of where we're going? For me, it's when things feel wonderful. So I think most of the guides and mentors I've had help me over the years have emphasized that it's to go back in your life to a time when you knew you were on track when you loved the work

you were doing um and cinderella i'll share this with you um i am gaining wrinkles every day there's another one and i got myself into a place oh not that long ago where I thought I'm too old to do this. They want glamorous young chickies up on the platform and, oh, dear, I'm not that anymore and I don't really prance around the way I used to and, you know, maybe I'm too old for this and I'll just work online and I'll do a little bit of speaking and that's fine. And lately I've come to realise that my invalidation of my age and my experience is absolutely ludicrous,

but I had to come to it myself. It's the same as accepting that you're not always right, that you don't always have the right answer. It's the same thing, it's being able to look at a choice or a decision you made and go, okay that didn't feel right. I thought I was too old, but in fact, I'm not. And when I'm up speaking, I'm more alive than I've ever been in my life. And I love being able to work with people in large, one-to-many. And I know I can contribute something and they teach me things as well. And so we're all on a group growth path and it's all good. And it's looking back to those times when you know that energy feeds you so well and you're able to make such a massive contribution.

And it might be baking brownies for your kids. You know, it might be learning how to be the best clinical practitioner you can be or the best student you can be it's whatever at that time captures your heart and your mind and your soul and can take your body with it through whatever challenges it encounters and know that it's still what you want to be doing at least 80% of the time. And when you've got that, then you think, okay, well, if I could have the world that I wanted to live in, what would it look like? 15 years from now, what would it look like?

And what would it feel like? And what would people be saying to me? And who am I hanging out with? And what am I driving? and where am I going? And the vision gets clearer and clearer and clearer once you're in the feelings. But I think it's best not to try to make a list because that theoretically pops us into left brain

if we believe some versions of neuroscience. And I know that's a generalisation. But it can put us a little into the logical process. And what we really need to do is be in the creative process and just allow those pictures to pop up and the feelings and sounds and the happiness and the excitement, knowing that it will not always be happiness and excitement, or we wouldn't still be alive. Does that make sense? That makes sense. You know, and Catherine, when I think about like

how often you should think about your vision and where you're going and kind of create this emotional state that you're talking about and, you know, really feel what you want to be doing and what you want to be driving and, you know, who's around you within that 15 years? Would you say this is something, you know, leaders should do like every day or what are your thoughts on that? I think they should do it as often as they want to, because I don't really believe in should. I always think should to someone else's agenda. Good point. So for me, I will refer back to my vision every single time I need to make a decision or a choice that is apparently significant. So what I eat for dinner, not necessarily reference the vision, but if I'm thinking, okay, will I take that speaking engagement will I go on that cruise will I take that course

of study um you know what will I do around that what fits the vision best and I do go with my intuition I justify it with logic but I will go with what feels as if it will fit into that particular vision and pathway. And I have had times when that vision has been seriously challenged, like when I thought I was too old, that got challenged. And a previous time when I was in recovery and my immune system packed up and I actually fell into a real depressive heap. And I'm only just able to speak about that now because when you're a motivational speaker,

you're not supposed to get depressed, you know. Exactly. And that made it even worse, the self-criticism. So engaging back in the vision at that time was so important and when I realised in the last year that time was so important. And when I realised last year that I really had to go on speaking, plugging back into the vision then. And there are mornings I don't want to wake up.

I don't know about you. There are mornings I'm a night person. I mean, you know, it's 11 o'clock at night here right now. And I don't want to get up in the morning and I go, hang on. You know, one of my life's purposes is to help people discover their own magnificence. And if I don't do it today, maybe no one will get to find that out. And so it's one of my little whips that I get out. Come on, you've got a vision. Get on with it.ips that I get out. Come on, you've got a vision, get on with it.

No, I love it. I love it that, you know, this vision shouldn't be as prescriptive, you know, perhaps it just should be a time where thinking about your vision should be, you know, times where you really need to connect with it and decide, you know, what you should be doing, what you should, well, I just use the word should. I'm trying to avoid that. But I like what you said in terms of like connecting to your vision when it's important to you. Catherine, you know, when you're talking about leadership, you also talked about purpose, you know, in terms of, you said leadership is really about having a real purpose and vision. If we separate those two in terms of like our vision and where we're going and then purpose, how would you tell us to connect with our purpose and find our purpose?

Oh, cool. Okay. So the vision sometimes comes after the purpose and sometimes before it, I find, when I'm working with clients. And so the vision is pretty much, I'm visual. So I do see things in the distance, but some people feel them or hear them my son is very auditory and he's very clear about what he can hear in his future um so i look to the distance when i think of my vision and my purpose is something that lives inside me now. And I remember, I think probably in the early years when he was small, my purpose was to be the best mum I could be

and to raise him the best way I possibly could. And we used to have that discussion a few times. He would say, that's not fair you know um mike's mother doesn't make him do that and i would say well she might be a better mother than me but i'm the only one you've got and this is the way it feels to me and i'm doing the best job i can and so this is my role this is what we're doing this is my way and so that was my purpose was to be the best mother I could be and to help him understand the principles and guidelines and morals and character issues that I thought were important for him and then when he got a little older and I was starting my business, and he was 10, 11 when we were doing that,

I was asked by the graphic artist, I said, can you design my logo? He said, yes, what are you trying to achieve? And I said, oh, okay, good question. I want people to get how magnificent they are. Because when I think back on my career in management, when people got their own magnificence, their own inherent magnificence, and like this is back in the 80s,

and not many people were talking about this then. When people got that, they stopped being defensive. They stopped trying to pretend that they were perfect because they knew they weren't and that was fine. They just knew they did their best. They kind of also knew that everyone else was magnificent too. And with that in their mind, they were kinder and more encouraging and supportive.

And they certainly made more sales because they honoured their potential clients. They certainly had great support within the organisation. And everything just flowed. So that was my thought and it just popped into my head. And I said, I want people to get how magnificent they are because that's what I've noticed works and he looked at me and said as an Australian guy would do Sandra he said oh you've got to be kidding love you've got to be kidding love he said, you know, in his own way, he said that employers often have a vested interest

in having their people think less of themselves rather than more of themselves. And he said, you know, that unfortunately that's the way our economy works and, you know, that unfortunately that's the way our economy works and, you know, people will ask a lower salary, they'll work for more even if they don't want to, if they don't think they're worth much, right? So I was shocked at that but I realised that what he was saying

at that time anyway was true. I think we've come a long way since then. So he said to me, you're going to have to build a Trojan horse, love. And I just looked at him and he said, you build a Trojan horse and you call it leadership development or you call it sales training or you call it productivity management or you call it whatever you want. But inside that particular vehicle vehicle you can carry in your message you can get it in the corporate gates and take that message in and unload the horse

and let them know how magnificent they are now you know he was a bit of a crazy guy but he's one of the wisest men I ever met and he's no no longer with us. But that's where my current purpose, it's been there for the 29 years. And it was probably there for the years in the corporate life as well. I just hadn't quite an unscathed it that way. That's a great story. Catherine, when you think about your own clients, and they say, they might say things like, well, I don't really know what my purpose is. How do I find it? What would you tell people?

Where should they start? I think breathing is a good start. So I would just say keep breathing and get your shoulders back so that your chest is expanded and I had a psychologist taught me this many years ago that we really often particularly women don't open up our lungs to the fullest and breathe and this might sound trite and irrelevant but it isn't so if you put your hands in front of you with your palms down and then turn them over so your palms are up and then take your palms out to the side and feel where your shoulders are and that's when your lungs are fully expanded and you can breathe deeply and oxygen is going into your brain and coming through all those magnificent veins and arteries and really enlivening you and allowing yourself to tap into

all of the feelings and emotions that sometimes we don't listen to. And when you've been doing that for a week or so, you're sitting one day with that and you say, what would I love to do every day? What's the thing I'd love to do? Now, where I live, someone might say, oh, I want to go surfing every day. And I would say, aha, I can can understand that but if you did it every

day it wouldn't be quite so much fun it'd be just like a job right so when you do go surfing what do you love about the surfing what is it that absolutely thrills your being and they will for instance say things like oh it's just being free and being at one with a huge force of nature like the ocean and being able to respect and love the ocean when it produces those to ride and being willing to just let the ocean do what it needs to do if I can't catch the wave just to be with what is and I say okay so what else makes you feel like that and is that something that seems important to you for people to get is that something you could teach in management because I coach a lot of speakers on their topic and on their business development. Is that something you could speak on?

Is that something that would excite you and get you over any stage fright or any call reluctance, if you like? So that's the sort of thing I'll suggest to them is take themselves to a place where they're in sheer joy that they would do it if they had the freedom to do it because they always have the freedom to do it. And it's not necessarily that actual activity. It's what that activity will give them, the side effect,

the impact of that activity on themselves and on others. So what I'm hearing is connecting to times that you feel the most energy and being in the present to feel those emotions and then ask yourself you know what do you love about blank so you can really connect with kind of the reason behind why you're doing what you're doing and your purpose yes and the impact that affected that and I think that I've had times when I've slightly shifted my purpose and then I've come back onto it because it's just fallen into place again. So I think you know when it's right. And it's never wrong.

It's never, ever wrong. I think there are times when it's just a little more right than others. Good point. You know, Catherine, one of the things that I enjoyed reading was your ebook about aligning purpose, power, and possibilities. Let's talk about that for a few moments. And you've talked a little bit about purpose and how to find that, how to connect with that. But let's talk about power and possibilities. So tell us what you mean by power. You know, and I liked what you talked about in terms of like claiming our power.

So how would you tell us about how do we claim our power? Oh, that's cool. It is the power that I have to make choices in every moment, the power that I have to change my thoughts, even if sometimes that's difficult, the power that I'm so self-governing, Sindra. You know, that's extraordinary. I think so many of us think in our lives that everyone else owns us. You know, I'll have someone, I've been workshops, I've had women say, I need to take care of my, I have to take care of my children. And I say, well, actually, no, you don't.

You choose to because it fits your value system. But you don't have to. There are people who don't. It's not an inherent part of your human life like breathing is. You have to breathe or you'll die but there's not many other things that you have to do breathe eat drink and sleep I think and I have people say oh but I have to work oh no you don't I know it's not a very nice life if you don't but you don't have to someone will feed you well certainly we're very lucky in this country

um and i think that you know americans are very privileged canadians europeans all very privileged people you know we will survive so every single thing then that we choose to do that's over and above the eating, drinking, sleeping, et cetera, every single thing we choose to do is in our power. The important thing for me was to come to the understanding that I don't have power over anybody else. And if I spend my life trying to get it, I'll be frustrated and miserable and permanently stressed, and I'll probably be angry with them most of the time because I have to acknowledge that's one of the things

that I think leads to a healthy life. I don't have to, but it helps if I do, acknowledge that they too have the power. And I remember trying to a healthy life. I don't have to, but it helps if I do, acknowledge that they too have the power. And I remember trying to teach my son this when he was like five and I don't want to do that, Mummy. And I'm saying, well, if you don't do that, this is what will happen. And if you do do that, this is what will happen. Like his allowance, he had to do five chores a day to get his allowance.

I was a tough mother but I wanted him to learn why wisdom I wanted him to learn good choices so I remember saying to him well if you don't do that that's all I'm going to do and he stamped his foot and he said I'm sick of choices I always have to make choices and I thought oh you poor little thing and I just said sweetheart that's just part of being a person if you have to make choices and it's that power that I find exciting that there are infinite possibilities out there I may complain oh they won't let me, I'm a woman, or they won't let me, I'm old. But that's not true. The truth is that I sometimes don't try hard enough. I sometimes don't get clever enough. I sometimes don't find the way that it could work. And so I blame other people and let people think they have the power rather than me.

Does that make sense? It does make sense. I think that that can be our natural tendency to blame someone else instead of just working harder, being more creative with how we're going to do it. I think that's a really important point. Yes. And, you know, none of us was born knowing how to speak, not one of us. And therefore we had to learn that and we had to learn listening. We have to learn understanding and we learn from other people's research and

models, but essentially day by day by day, we're just figuring out what works and what doesn't. And if it doesn't work, something else. You know, Catherine, one of the other things that you were talking about in your ebook was how to consider the possibilities. And when do you think that's important? And tell us more about how that connects to kind of our leadership and our power and ruling ourselves. Yes. And I want to share a clue with you or something helpful, than that. I think possibilities are important whenever I feel stuck. So I fall into shoulds as much as everyone else does.

I've been doing my very best to get a particular project finished. I wanted it finished before Easter and it wasn't. So I have constantly found myself stuck. And I sometimes forget that the best thing to do is to have a look at what possibilities exist. One of the possibilities is I could close the laptop and go and get in the car and drive somewhere with a lovely view. Or just go and sit on the grass somewhere. Or for me, just go paddle in the ocean. So there are possibilities. I could completely reshape it, start work on something else. I could turn it into something different. I could record it instead of writing it. There are lots and

lots and lots of possibilities. But what's helpful for me that tip I think that I'd like to share I don't know if you knew or remember or did any work with transactional analysis that was very popular several years ago I think I discovered it through the work of Thomas Harris and Eric Byrne. And I was reminded of it about 10 years ago. And that is that we have within us a parent person. So there's a parent, Catherine, who wants to look after everybody and rescue everybody, which in fact is depriving them of their own power, but wants to make the rules and tell people what they should

do and organise everything so that things fit. And there's the child inside Catherine who just wants to play or might actually want to rebel just for the sake of it. I've known a lot of little boy pirates inside men I've known in my life. I've known a lot of rebellious school girls inside my girlfriends at times. So I have a child inside me. I have a parent inside me, the one that tries to get the child to do the rules. And I have an adult inside me, the one that has learned to think for herself, the one that can see far and consider possibilities. And sometimes I forget to go into the adult. Now, this can happen when I'm having an argument with someone.

It can happen when I notice that someone is doing things that I don't like and I become the critical parent. Or it's gorgeous out there and I know I've got to do this finish this project but I want to go and walk on the ocean and I become the naughty child who says no one will know when I skip on out I know I need to sometimes get into that carefully thinking adult the intelligent adult that will just help me think through those possibilities and the way I've learned to do that the way I was taught to do that is to give myself three choices and the reason three choices works is because one choice is the parent you have to do that that's the right thing right the child likes two choices because then they can say well that's not fair

I can't do either of those so I can't do anything that's not fair and the adult has to look at the three choices and go hmm okay that one's not going to work that one I could do but that one's going to be the best one for me to go with right now so it will tend to be your values and your purpose that influences that choice and of course it's your power to exercise your authority and say right that's the possibility i'm going with this time if it doesn't work that's okay i can tweak a few things and have another go, come up with another three possibilities. Catherine, can you give us an example of a time that you did that or maybe a time where your clients gave themselves these three choices,

parent, child and adult? Yes, lots and lots. But I'm going to share a more personal one. And I don't think, okay, a friend. Yes, I think it's okay. I'm going to share a personal one because I think it's important that everyone can relate to it and I think they will relate to this. A friend in a relationship talking to me and saying, I don't know what to do. This man that I'm seeing wants me to move in with him. And part of me would like to do that,

but I'm not happy with this and this and this and this. And she mentioned a number of behaviors. And, you know, the lease is up on my apartment and I've got to make a decision. And here we have this got to and have to thing happening again. It's all self-imposed pressure. And so I just looked at it and said, okay, so it seems to me you've got three choices.

One choice is you renew the lease on where you are, you stay where you are. Another choice is you move in with your man and you have a very open discussion about those behaviors and how it makes you feel and what you'd like to do about it and see if you can reach some agreement on how you could signal each other or support each other, at least respect and understand each other. And the third choice I said is that you can just walk away from the relationship because you don't have to stay there. You know, if he wants you to move in, you don't want to, you don't like his behavior, you don't have to stay in the relationship and I watched her face and it's part of the NLP training that I've had, Sindra, you notice people's eye movements, you notice their skin color and you

calibrate how they feel and what they want out of each of those choices by watching and listening carefully. And I watched this colouration of her face when I said, you can leave him, you can walk away. And she said, I don't want to do that. And I said, I know you don't, I can see that. And you don't really want to stay where you are either, do you? So let's talk about the kind of deal you could reach with him and you can't control him he's the only one who can control himself you can only ask

him to do that and then you can accept that and maybe have a strategy in place that you can walk away make a cup of coffee do whatever you want to do if you're not feeling good and then revisit it in six months and see if you're still happy with the decision because as Jim Rohn used to say one of my favorite mentors if you don't like it move you're not a tree does that give you an example that's a great example of like something real life in terms of you know the decision making process and thinking about the parent and the child and the adult which one would be the child in that situation just walking away do you think um yes and i think in fact in all three the the walking away would have all three would have had both parent and child in them. There would have been the parent-child discussion going on

if I hadn't pulled her into adult by giving her three choices and making her think rationally about what she really wanted and what was possible. There was parent in the I should walk away he I don't like that behavior yes probably you know an old guy might tell me to walk away and I'm going to be a child and tell him it's all his fault right um so there was going on there and then also um when you know i was saying look you can leave it exactly as it is and um she said no he won't be happy with that and i said no he won't but you can leave it as it is and again there was the child who wanted to please um and who was trying to make a decision

to please the other person as opposed to what was right and true for her and what she was willing to undertake and manage. And the parent in that, again, was, well, I'm taking this over and I'm going to renew my lease and I'm not going to do what you want, which is probably still more child, actually. But the adult had to say, OK, what do I really want? And the adult had to say, sweetheart, sometimes when you've had more than two drinks, I'm really uncomfortable with the way you lose your temper.

Can we have a deal that, you know, when you're with your friends, really, you get yourself into trouble there's nothing I can do but when you're with me could we make an arrangement where we both promise that we won't do that you know yes absolutely that's very adult it has to be an adult and I think that's the way I'd like to have raised my son and hopefully there's a bit of that um so yeah it's coming into that totally rational and you know what that adult has no fear no fear I think if I've made any big resolutions in my life syndrome it's been I want to live without fear. So love can't handle fear and fear can't admit love. So I want love, not fear. Love can't handle fear. And what else did you say, Catherine? Fear can't admit love.

That's really strong and powerful. So as people are, first of all, you've been delightful to talk to. I just so appreciate your insights. And I'll kind of summarize the things that I got from the interview in a second. But tell us, Catherine, how people might reach out to you if they're interested in having you speak at their business or at their organization or their conference. Tell us about how we might connect with you and the topics that you do speak on. Sure. Love to do that. Thank you very much. So I love to speak about profitable leadership for small business organizations, associations, where they see that actually taking leadership in their life and in their small business is much more profitable than not. So I love to do that.

That really fulfills me. I love to talk about navigating chaos because we have so much of it in our worlds now. Everything is unpredictable and disruptive and we need a set of guidelines and maybe some chaos cushions. And I've worked with those for a number of years and I love sharing that. So, and also because I did discover I was getting a bit older and I've begun to observe that whole experience, I love to talk with organisations about the fact that age is not a four-letter word.

And I usually have people look at me and go, yeah, well, it's not. I don't know, but we behave as if it is. And we tell each other lies like, oh, I had a birthday the other day and somebody says, oh, you turned 18 again, did you? And I think, why would you say that? I'm so proud of being in my 40s or 50s or whatever it is that I'm in. You know, it's why do we pretend that being 18 and 25 is perfection? Why isn't 38 and 45 and 58 and 65 just as wonderful, if not more so.

So I'm beginning to do a little bit of, oh, hopefully not preaching, but just helping people look at that and find fun ways to accept their own aging and to help the Gen X and Gen Ys to actually manage baby boomers because they don't understand us any more than we understand them. So I'll give you an email address and a phone number. Perfect. And the email address is Catherine, C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, at progressperformance.com. And the telephone number,

instead of having a one in front of it, it has a six one in front of it. So it's whatever you dial to get out of the country, and I think it's double zero for you, is 61419-916. Excellent, Catherine. I really appreciate your time and your energy. And I'd love to share with you a few things that I got from the interview.

At the beginning, you talked about how your good friend said to you, you know, that your cancer was just a bump in the road, but we shouldn't focus on the bump. We should instead focus on life after the bump. I liked what you talked about in terms of finding your own vision and your purpose and how our personal leadership is really having a vision and taking action and then continually working on our own self-development. You gave us some ways to consider our vision and when to refer back to it when you're making a significant decision.

I like how you talked about how purpose is really within us, but vision is really kind of more in the future, right? Something that we're looking towards. And I think what I'm walking away with most is just your conversation about authority and that we do own our lives and we own our choices and we own our decisions and our direction of where we're going. And, you know, that what you talked about in terms of kind of being an author of our life and having authority.

So I'm just grateful that you shared some time with us. I know it's late there for you there in Australia. So I really appreciate that. Catherine, what kind of final advice do you have for those people who are listening? Just keep breathing. If I can help in any way, I absolutely would. And if there is anyone there who thinks that they would love

to be able to share their message message as you share yours so well, Cyndra. And if there's anything I can do to help them in that, I'd be very honored. I'm very honored to be on your podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm very, very honored to be with you. Excellent. And so people can reach out to you with your email that you provided. I'm also going to provide her information on the show notes page. So you can go over to cindracampoff.com slash Catherine. So Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today. That's my great pleasure.

You have a wonderful day, wonderful week, a wonderful month and a wonderful lifetime. Thank you so much for joining me today on the High Performance Mindset. If you'd like to learn more about the mental game in business, sport, and in life, you can pick up your own copy of the Beyond Grit book and workbook at beyondgrit.com. The book and workbook covers 10 practices to help you gain the high performance edge and provides practical strategies and tools that work. Adam Thielen, a Pro Bowl wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, wrote the foreword, and you can learn his insights on how he implements the mental game.

And a special offer for the listeners of the podcast, you can use the code FREESHIP, that's capital letters and all one word, FREESHIP, to get free shipping of the book and workbook at beyondgrit.com. Have an outstanding day, my friends, and be mentally strong.