The Resilient Mind - Rewrite Your Life Story - Lisa Nichols

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Lisa Nichols is one of the world’s most-requested motivational speakers, as well as media personality and corporate CEO, whose global platform has reached and served nearly 80 million people. From a struggling single mom on public assistance to a millionaire entrepreneur, Lisa’s courage and determination has inspired fans worldwide and helped countless audiences break through, to discover their own untapped talents and infinite potential. Source: Impact Theory Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, rewrite your life story with Lisa Nichols. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I struggled all through school. The last time I took English class, I got to fail. And my English teacher said I was the weakest writer she ever met in her entire life. The last time I took a speech class, same year, I got a D-Minutein speech.

And my speech teacher said, Lisa, quote unquote, I recommend you never speak in public that you get a desk job. So that was the beginning of my life. That was the, that was my 19 year old experience. And then I go on and I'm trying to figure it out, trying to figure it out. I was obedient. I went and got a job in accounting. I was in the collection department for seven years. Y'all don't know I'm dangerous to accounting. I'm just dangerous. And I'm in collections. And you know, you should never put a broke person in collections. Never, because everybody's reasons sound good to me. I don't know it sounds funny, but it was real. Not only did I say, girl, don't you worry about paying that, I'm going to take your name off the list.

Somebody went to jail because I was in color. I got fired from five different jobs. And then I got pregnant with my son unexpectedly. And then at eight months, my son's father went to prison. I had to get on government's assistance to have my baby. I was on WIC, women, infant, and children to feed my child. And when my son was eight months old, I went to the ATM to get $20 out the baby. because I didn't have any pamper's for him.

And in order to get $20 out, you got that $20 in. I had $11. And I still can't tell the story without getting emotional because of my story. For two days, I had to wrap my son in a towel. But something happened, Steve, in those two days,

I was at Rock Bottom. I was broke and I was broken. Inglewood, California, my son laying on his back at eight months, I have a towel over him, and I have my hand on his stomach saying, don't you worry, Jay Lonnie, mommy will never be this broke again.

And I made a decision I was bankrupt. And every stinking thinking I had, I was bankrupt in trying to protect my pride. I was bankrupt and trying to be all that in a bag of chips and Ebola grids falsified. I was bankrupt and trying to not ask anyone for help. I was bankrupt in everything that was holding me and keeping me where I was.

I've always talked a good game. but I wasn't doing anything with my gift. And all that thing about potential, I was tired of having potential, I wanted to have my now. And I looked at that baby at eight months, and I said, I want to transform your life. Because you didn't ask to come into this chaos.

Come on. As an African-American male child in South Central Los Angeles with a single mother whose father's in prison, he had a 66% chance of going to prison himself, not on my watch. not on my watch. So if I have to be willing to drastically transform myself

so that I can become the woman that I know I can be. And that's what I began to do. I was radical. What did you do, Lisa? What did you do to change your life? First, I realized I couldn't grow with people who were struggling like me.

That whole, I don't want to leave nobody behind. No, I don't want to stay with y'all. Right. You don't even want to be here. Like, I don't want to be the queen of this block. Yeah. And I became okay with the fact that it doesn't make me any less committed to my community, committed to my culture, committed to my family.

The best thing I can do for you is not stay here with you. That's right. When I've got that, I went to places I'd never seen before. I went to conferences where people were talking about money, talking about prosperity. Yeah. Talking about, it was like, no-a-is-is-is-Spanel. What are you talking about? ROIs and PPMs and term agreements and capital fundraising and bottom lines and what is it?

I'm going to stay until I learn what you're talking about. I went to the same conference 42 times. And there I raised $532,000 in capital for my company, start my dream. And my dream was to transform teen lives. I want to teach teens how to fall madly in love with themselves and how to make integrity-based decisions. And I got it funded and I started working. and that was the beginning of me rescuing myself. I realized that I am my rescue.

No one else is my rescue. I am my rescue. Abundant thinkers understand the power of I am. Anything after the word I am is true to your unconscious mind, Michael. Anything. Anything after I am. Anything. Anything after I am.

Even if you just, you know it's not true, your conscious mind will believe it. Anything after I am. So the use of affirmations is very intention. and very consistent. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed in 2001. 1999, I'm sorry. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed. Me, it didn't make sense.

I had been in a relationship. I was engaged to get married, and my fiancé, who I did not know at the time, was bipolar, and he'd stopped taking his medicines, and under the belief system that love can cure anything. And so I ended up being picked up and thrown three feet across the room, and I end up being choked until I passed out.

And once I got out of that relationship, I just was different. It was different. So my mom insisted that I go to the doctor. I went to the doctor, and I sat on the table, and she checked me and talked to me and came back in with a prescription. And she said, Lisa, you're clinically depressed. And I felt like I heard Charlie Brown's parents talking like, want, wah, want, want, clinically depressed, and Lisa, that'll make sense in that same sentence.

And she handed me a prescription, and I read the prescription and had my name on it, and it said, Prozac. And I thought, that don't make sense. Lisa Nichols-Pro, that don't make sense. And I said, do you mean I'm sad? She said, very, very sad. I said, can I try something? and I'm not recommending you guys if you're on medication, you stop taking your meds. Please don't do that. I asked my doctor, she agreed. I said, do you mind if I try something before I take this? She goes, yes, but I need to see you back in 30 days.

If you're in the same condition, I need us to try this medicine. I said, okay, I could do that. So I went home, and every day I got in the mirror, and I drilled I am every day. because I realized I have forgotten who I was. I just forgot. And it was okay to forget. I just forgot. So every day, every day for 25 minutes, I just went over the I-ams.

Every day I am, I am, I am. And then I paralleled that what I forgive you for. Then I paralleled that what I commit to you, Lisa. Every single day. I went back in 30 days and I'm talking to her and I'm on fire. She's just looking at me. And I'm just talking, talking, and she twisted her head again,

and I'm just talking, talking, she says, wait, I gotta stop you. I said what? She goes, what are you taking? And can I have some? I was like, I'm taking some of me. And so the power of I am, the power of I am can pull you through

the darkest moment, the power of I am. In order to have something different, you are going to have to do something different. In order to have something more, you have to do something you haven't done yet. I had to say the things I didn't want to say, do the things I didn't feel like doing, to have the life I know I want it. Period. Period. And all I did was give instructions for here,

do this bite size, do this bite size, do this bite size, bite size, digestible, palatable pieces of what you can do. Does that sound good, you guys? And when you look up and you don't have to have a magnificent change over 12 months, have a small change over 30 days, and the small change over 30 days, your breakthrough will come in needlepoint moves. And you'll look up in five years and not recognize your life. What's been your biggest accomplishment, you think? Bouncing back, number one, is refusing to listen to the negative chatter of my own head, refusing to listen to other people's perception of me, creating something from absolutely nothing. So I got, you know, there's the books, there's the TV, there's all that stuff. But my biggest accomplishment is being willing

to give myself a thousand second chances. And every time I got to $9.99, I press reset. Yeah. I didn't ask permission. I gave notice. At some point, I have to stop asking, can I be great? Can I be brilliant? Can I be okay and still be accepted? I just stop asking permission

and just gave notice unapologetically, not in a braggadocious way, not in a way that shrunk anyone else. In a way that said, I only got one life, and I'm going to ride this one to the wheels fall off. And then all the other stuff came. Wow.

As a result of a decision I made. Right. But it was a decision. It was a decision. And it didn't come from, you know, a motivational experience. It didn't come from an inspiring teacher. It came from hitting rock bottom.

There's so much value in what you unlearn. Sometimes the best thing you can do was unlearn some things. We're always going after learning something new because we're information junkies because we have all these forms of information coming at us on the internet, coming at us in books, coming at us on the radio, coming at us in television, that we want to learn, learn, learn.

But sometimes your biggest breakthrough is in what you unlearn and then you relearn. Sometimes you have to disrupt your soil, pull your soil up, take that dry dirt that's been planted for years. I know, I've just been knowing this for years. This is what my mother taught me, this is what we've always known.

You have to disrupt that soil in order to plant a new seed to grow a new fruit. Yeah, yeah? You guys got that? And so I came very comfortably to disrupt your soil. Like, that's what I came for, to disrupt your soil. Not to necessarily keep you comfortable on what you know,

stay comfortable in that. I want to disrupt you in some things that are new awareness to go, oh, wait, hold on. Or a new awareness about what you've been doing based on what you've known forever that doesn't fit your future anymore. Because I can guarantee you every single one of us who want something different than what we're getting. We're doing something unconsciously from old patterns that doesn't even serve our future. That's when the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two totally different directions. And your job is to line them up so that you can move forward in a powerful way. Every single thing you touch is impacted by your story.

As an attorney, as a teacher, as an architect, there is not one line of business that you can be in that a story and a great story won't elevate your outcome. Every single line of business, every single line of service that you're connected to will be impacted and ideally elevated by the level in which you're willing to tell and share your story. So let me give you some guidelines, some parameters, what I like to call the bumper rails, as if you're going bowling. You know, when I go bowling, I ask them to put the little bumper rails down so I can stay, my ball can get down the lane. So let me set up some bumper rails for you so that you understand what makes a great story.

So one is the willingness to take risk. Most people, Vision, when they're telling a story, they don't want to take a risk so the story has, it has its limits on how high it'll go or how deep it'll go. And when you have that, then you're really not at that part that's going to touch my soul. So being willing to take a risk, being clear and concise with your stories. A great story is a show me story, not a tell me story. Now, this is the distinction. That's the game changer for most. Most people are telling a story. They say. So let me just share with you a little bit of my story. And I'll tell you and then I'll show you. So as I was building my life, there was a time in my life that was very difficult. It was very challenge, true story, very difficult, very challenging, very uncomfortable. I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have a lot of hope and things just look dismal. At some point, I had to turn my life around. At some point, I made the decision that life had to get better. I'm telling you that. It's decent. You learn about me. Then if I were to show you that story, I would say six days a week, I had to eat beanies and weenies. I had to find money in the crevices in the corners of my couch so that I can get my son milk.

There were times when my heart would beat fast just at, what am I going to have tomorrow? At some point, I got sick and tired of my own story. Is this going to be my future? No, I can't handle it. Notice the difference in that second story. I completely see that. I just painted a picture. Same story.

Now the second one, when you show a story, it's going to require more of you. It's going to require you to find the colors. What were you thinking? What were you experiencing? What was going on in your head? Instead of telling me you look for money, turn and point. Now, this is anywhere. This is anywhere you are doing anything. I promise you become a great storyteller and you will captivate your audience, no matter what you're doing. I've captivated investors. I've captivated students. I've captivated educators because I was willing to show you. Show the story. I call it unpacking the story vision. Being willing to tell me what were you thinking? What were you feeling? What were you seeing? Think about a story as an oral movie. And so in an oral movie, think when you're looking at a movie, the first thing they do is they identify what state of time it is. Is it futuristic? Is it in the now? Was it back in the day? You notice that based on what people are wearing, how they're talking. So paint that picture for me. Take me to that environment. Set the backdrop up for me. Show me what you're going through. Instead of saying I was Angry? You can tell me you were angry. But when you say the hair on the back of my neck was standing up, I felt the fumes exiting my nose. I thought that my chest was going to pop and I was going to say something that I'd regret forever. Ooh, you just showed me you were angry. Take that extra time to unpack it. Why will most people not do that? Because it requires a level of vulnerability that we're not willing to share. So I was hungry. Like I was hungry. People often want to call me the exception. Like, oh my God, you're the exception. No, I'm not the exception. I'm an average ordinary woman who chose every day to make one more extraordinary decision. I'm an average ordinary mom who said, I want to drastically transform my son's future, that he deserves to have every option that every other child would have, irregardless of what he was born into. I just was crazy enough to believe that. That it doesn't matter the color of my skin, doesn't matter my religious background, doesn't matter my origin, it doesn't matter my mom's bank account,

my dad's bank account when I was born. None of that means my future. That's just the circumstance that I came from. That's not what defines my future. I just believe that. Not a lot validated it, but faith is believing in the unseen anyway. So I had enough faith to go,

I know like I know like I know like I know. I don't necessarily have to see it yet. You know, I have a message for you. A very important message. We live in a world where, you know, limiting beliefs and limited thinking is accepted. And in some environments, it's actually encouraged not to put anyone down or any institution down, but look at our educational system. It's bound by who you can be, who you can't be.

We're taught that, you know, as an academic excellence student, you're expected to achieve more pressures. But yet even inside that more, that higher achievement, there's still a limiting belief. You know, I look at my life today, and it's barely recognizable. I'm grateful to say I have six bestsellers. I've set with Oprah, with Larry King on CNN, Good Day, L.A. I've traveled all over the world, did work in Taipei and Africa and Kazakhstan. But that wasn't where I started. I started struggling for 12 years in the educational system,

not thinking I was good enough. The word fail or not pass was threaded through every year, in school in some area or another. And so I graduated or got out. I mean, I graduated, but what did I graduate to? I graduated more of who I think I might be able to be or who I couldn't be, but not my possibility. I look up and for the first 10, 15 years of my adulthood, I struggled.

I struggled because I didn't dream big enough at that time. I didn't know. I felt like my dreams were covered and smothered with the cultural limitations. We're defined by who our parents were, what our culture can do, what our community can do. So you look at all the areas of our lives, financially, mentally, emotionally, family, geographically, and all of those things kind of put us in a box. And some of our boxes are this big, so we think they're amazing. Some of them are this big, and we know they're choking the life out of us.

The reality is we're trained to be realistic. to be logical, to stay practical. And there's nothing realistic and logical about Steve Jobs and his journey. There's nothing realistic and logical about Dr. Martin Luther King and his willingness to be radical for a change that none of us saw coming.

There's nothing realistic about Nelson Mandela leaving prison after 27 years and leading the largest forgiveness movement ever. There's nothing realistic and logical about even my journey, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, having three fights a week just to get home from school, you know, being told that I was the weakest writer my teacher had ever met, and that I should never speak in public by my speech teacher,

to looking at my life today and going on and having a child before I got married and getting on government's assistance just to feed my baby, not having money to buy in pamper's, and wrapping my son in a towel for three days until I was. I can afford to get money to buy pamper's. I look at my life and I wasn't supposed to be who I am today. Something turned, but it didn't come from outside. It didn't come from my culture or my community.

It came from within. Who I was committed to transforming my life into just didn't fit. It didn't fit realistic. It didn't fit practical and it didn't fit logical. I didn't know how I was going to get there. There were no examples of how I would get there. There was no instructions. There was no GPS.

And there wasn't even anyone around me that had an idea of how to help me. All there was was my intuition, my internal GPS, my internal God placement system, and the will and the desire and the big dream inside my belly. And I was willing to keep at it until I burst something greater than myself. in order to live the life you love and love the life you live, you have to be willing to step on the other side of normal, on the other side of where people give you permission to step. You have to be willing to step on the other side of realistic.

You have to be willing to dream big and give yourself a radical chance for a radical future and a breathtaking possibility. It starts with you. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.