High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 452: What Story Are You Telling?

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

On the podcast today, we discuss how the stories about the events in our life shape our reality and our identity. To cultivate more empowering emotions, it’s important to tell yourself more empowering stories. You can do this by seeing the story from various lens.    Power Phrase this Week: “I choose an empowering meaning to the stories in my life in order to reach my potential.”  Quote of the Week: “People can cultivate positive energy by learning to change the stories they tell themselves about the events in their lives.” Tony Schwartz 

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Sandra Kampoff joining us this morning. And Dr. Kampoff, let's talk about what story are you

telling? You usually start with a quote. I love this quote by Tony Schwartz. And he said, people can generate positive energy by learning to change the stories they tell themselves about the events in their life. So how do you want to start today? Well, Lisa, I'm noticing that people are feeling just a lot of stress and pressure right now, which is part of life, right? But I'm also seeing that people are feeling just more with school starting and maybe the COVID case is changing. So it feels to me that people are a little bit more on the edge. And as I was thinking about growing through this, not just getting through this, it's

important to consider the stories that we tell ourselves about the events in our life, especially if they're things that we can't control. So what do you mean by the story that we create? Well, I mean, that's our lens. The lens is how we describe events in our lives. And our story is really about what we tell ourselves about these events and about ourselves. And it's important to understand how we create these stories eventually creates our reality. So for example, events in our life could be, you know, tough feedback from your job or a job loss, or it could just be these everyday moments like an interaction with your colleague or a family member. So we're constantly creating stories about interactions and events in our lives.

So what is the impact of telling more empowering stories based on the events that are happening in any of our lives? I think that's how we generate more positive emotions, by learning to change the stories that we tell ourselves about these events. And a lot of times we can feel like a victim, maybe blaming other people, you know, or blaming external things. So it's powerful to realize that we have a choice to create any different story when we experience an event and to recognize like how powerful that can be that influence our emotions and how we feel when we change how we see a story. So will you give us some examples of maybe seeing something from a different lens? I was reading this really powerful article in the Harvard Business Review, and they shared three different lenses that we can see, we can apply to different events in our life. So one that they could describe was the reverse lens.

And we think to ourselves, like, what would the other person in this situation or this conflict say? So seeing it from a different person's lens. The long lens they described is that we might think about how might I view this situation in six months or a year. And then they described a wide lens where we can ask ourselves how can we grow and learn from this. And I think the power of this, Lisa, is that we're intentionally creating the story around these events in our lives and this helps us generate more powerful emotion that helps, you know, reach our potential.

And when we're intentionally telling ourselves something in a more empowering way. So how do you summarize today for us? Well, I'd say our default is more, you know, telling ourselves negative stories or disempowering stories. And that leads to us feeling like a victim, which leads to us feeling sometimes guilt or powerless or shame, which holds us back from our potential. So I think the key is really to watch the stories we tell ourselves and tell ourselves more empowering stories, especially through difficult moments. All right. I like the lenses, the reverse, the long and the wide lens. That makes a lot of sense. You usually have a power phrase for every week that we talk to you. What's this week's power

phrase? I choose an empowering meaning to the stories in my life so that I can reach my potential. And, Cindra, how do we get in touch with you, follow you on social media, maybe get in touch with the book? Yeah. You can head over to Dr. Cindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. And I have a book called Beyond Grit where I talk about choosing more empowering stories in your life. So this is covered in there. Way to go for finishing another episode

of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindhra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra.

That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.