Positive Mindset Strategies with Ben Elliott
Well, hello there, Catherine Langman here back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. And today on the show, I’m going to be joined by Ben Elliot, my fabulous high performance mindset coach.
I met Ben a few years ago now when I was going through a bit of a wobbly mindset/confidence period of my life and was just feeling super stressed all the time for no particular different or good reason. And a friend of mine who also owns her own business recommended that I have a chat with Ben and start working with him, which I did.
And it was really one of the most positive life-changing things that I’ve done. And so Ben is a high performance mindset coach, as I said. And so what he does is work with people to really learn how to develop and maintain that really rock solid, confident mindset, and put yourself, I guess, into the kind of person that you need to be to achieve whatever the goals are that you’re going about in your business or in your life.
He doesn’t just work with business people. He works with professional sports people and all different kinds of people. And I guess any of us, as we’re trying to achieve big things in life, we all need to learn new skills and whether it’s leadership skills or stress management skills or other skills, to grow into the kind of person that you need to be to achieve those things.
And it’s like anything in life, we can’t achieve new things if we do things the way we’ve always done them. So anyway, and I guess I really wanted to bring Ben onto the show. He’s been working with our clients in our group coaching program and our mindset and really helping to make a difference with these business owners. And it’s such an important time right now.
We’re coming to the end of the year. It’s been a really difficult year for a lot of people. And I’m pretty sure many of you are probably feeling pretty exhausted, maybe a little bit burnt out, maybe feeling a little bit gun shy, how can I possibly plan for next year when things can change on a dime? And it can be very difficult to approach that time with confidence in your own abilities.
So I thought now would be a really fantastic time to bring Ben onto the show. And we’re going to have a chat about some of the common pitfalls that many of us fall into that affect our mindset and how that then affects the results that we experience in our business as well. And he’s also going to share with us some really practical strategies and activities and tasks that you can easily incorporate into your day to help improve your confidence and your mindset and help maintain your motivation and momentum. Even when things feel bloody hopeless or they’re just not working. So without further ado, let’s welcome Ben onto the show.
Catherine Langman:
So today on the show, I’m really excited to welcome my fantastic mindset coach, my high-performance mindset coach Ben Elliott onto the show. Welcome to the show, Ben.
Ben Elliott:
Hey. Thanks for having me.
Catherine Langman:
Awesome. Awesome. Today on the show, I was super keen to get you in to have a bit of a chat because this year we’re getting towards the end of 2020. It’s been a big year, a pretty tough year for a lot of people, and I just thought it would be really good timing to have a bit of a chat about mindset, about confidence, as we all come out of the fog of this bonkers year that it’s been, and attempt to plan for next year. We’ve worked together for… well, on and off, I guess, a couple of years now.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. I found it amazing help working with you, and so I’d really love to introduce your little bunch of magic to my audience. So to get us started today, I know that a lot of my clients at the moment and audience as well have been experiencing some pretty wild fluctuations in their business, thanks to many, many different reasons. Maybe Facebook shut their ad account down or something else has gone wrong, people have had all sorts of holdups in production and manufacturing and various other things that are making things difficult. It can be really hard to keep pushing forward and work towards whatever their goal is when things feel like they’re not working.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah, for sure. Well, 2020 is looking like the year where if it could go wrong, it probably did go wrong. As you say, manufacturing for all your clients in the product space and Facebook changing all their algorithms and everything like that, and coronavirus hitting and all the stress that that brought, and trying to work in lockdown. I mean, I expect that a lot of your clients, and they’re trying to be productive at home while having a whole bunch of children running around the house and distracting them, and they’re getting excited because mom or dad’s home, and playing with them and stuff like that.
Catherine Langman:
Exactly.
Ben Elliott:
It’s been a hectic year.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
I think what we’re going to find is out of 2020 is, there will be a new breed of successful entrepreneurs because people have had to level up their inner game and just take their life to another level in order to survive.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Crises usually produces the most successful people. Recessions, when they hit, and if you look at a lot of successful people, they figured it out during the sucky times.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
And what they learned during the tough times is what made them get to those higher levels of success. That’s why I guess I’m here today, is to try and give some tips and try to help you guys navigate through it all. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Mm. Yeah. So what you’re talking about there is about growth internally, personally, rather than growth of the business, which… I’m down with that cause that’s certainly helped me in my plans, but no, I really agree. I guess it’s a little bit like the oyster with the hard, gnarly, shell and inside is the beautiful pearl growing in very difficult situations. Let’s go through some ideas and strategies and tips to help people become that pearl, I suppose.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
We were talking before about just thinking about needing to level up, or that concept of needing to level up and work on our own personal growth. Would you like to maybe share some thoughts on that?
Ben Elliott:
Yeah, well, just as we were saying before, and as I was saying about 2020, the reality is, if you want to be a person who wants to have sustainable long-term success, everyone has a vision and a goal, but not a lot of people really realize how much of a price there is to be successful. It’s really easy to think, “Okay, I just have to do X, Y, Z and I’ll get there.” But the real secret to success is how quickly and how able you are to grow internally as a person. So that’s growing your mindset, growing in your leadership skills, your business skills, and it’s really the internal stuff that is the real key to success. How quickly can you get back up after you get knocked down? How resilient are you? How positive can you be when everything’s falling apart?
Ben Elliott:
How focused and disciplined can you be when you need to be productive and get work done, and all those types of things. How do you handle the setbacks? That’s really the mark of what can get you to success, and then also maintain that success.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
There’s a lot of stats of people who look… they win the lottery, and I think the statistic was 80 or 90% of people who win a lot of money in the lottery, within three to five years they’re back to being broke, a that’s because they got given success, but then they didn’t have the character in order to maintain that success. I think that’s the main thing, is a lot of the time in business as entrepreneurs, it’s the ‘happy when’ syndrome. It’s, “I’ll be happy when I get this result,” or, “Everything will be okay once I have this amount of money or once this bill’s paid for.”
Ben Elliott:
But the real focus needs to be shifted during the tough times and the hard times. It’s all really about all of that personal growth. If you can grow through anything, then nothing will ever stop you, any sucky times that you go through, if you don’t quit, you do the right inner game stuff, you work on your mindset, you work on your skills, you level up yourself, your ability to be resilient and all of that.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Then that’s stuff that will stay with you when the sucky time has gone.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
For people who are trying to make the most of the 2020, even if all the business stuff has been really, really tough, if you’d been able to grow mentally, psychologically, emotionally, being able to level up the inner game, then those lessons will stay with you for the rest of your career and business.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
And it’s going to be there, and it’s going to be more automatic to lean on that resilience because what you went through in 2020.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. A hundred percent.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah,
Catherine Langman:
I guess it’s [crosstalk 00:06:10] it sounds like what you’re talking about is learning how to be happy now, whilst still having the drive to, and the motivation to, keep aiming and striving for whatever your goal is in your business. Because you were saying there, “I’ll be happy when…” Well, we have to be happy. If we’re not happy now it’s very difficult to keep moving forwards towards that goal.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. Well, the thing is, it sounds strange, right? We know that the ‘happy when’ mindset is really bad, but the reality is, is success… it takes time. If you’re trying to build anything of quality, and anything big, yes, you can get quick turnaround, you can have great, epic months, but to really scale and really take things big over a long period of time, it just takes a lot of time, it takes effort and it’s going from one level of success to the next.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
I mean, I’ve worked with so many high performers, and I met them at the point where their businesses are making $15 million a year and, and all these great things are happening, and crazy amounts of clients, all these great things are happening, but they’ve had that ‘happy when’ mindset. And then they’ve never really learned to endure the process. That’s when they start sabotaging everything.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
They’re making all this money, and they have all the cars, all the watches and everything else, but because they’re unhappy, then they stop bringing the same passion and enthusiasm to the work and all of that. And one of the things I have to then step into, is help them still have a big vision and still be driven, but you have to be in a good state. You have to be in a good mood to perform well.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
It’s just how it is. If you’re always waiting to be happy and you’re just trying to accomplish things so you don’t feel stressed, or accomplish things or tick it off so you don’t feel fearful anymore, it’s a really short-term motivational strategy. The people who really can sustain that success, they’re the ones who can feel good, feel happy, feel confident, feel motivated, and then they approach their task. Then they approach the challenges, then they approach all that work, and that there is what really makes them high performance high performers.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Business owners are a lot like athletes, and we know this from watching sports so often.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
I know your son’s into swimming, so if he’s having a really shocking morning and he’s tired and he’s unhappy and he’s stressed out in life, he’s not going to swim very well that day.
Catherine Langman:
No.
Ben Elliott:
Whether it’s a game or practice, but if he’s feeling good, he’s happy, he’s confident, he’s carefree, but he’s also focused, then he’s going to rip through the water.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
It’s just the case, and it’s the same thing. If you’re a business owner, a business leader, you need to be in the right state because then you perform better, you lead your team better, you problem solve better, you make better decisions, you don’t second guess yourself, you don’t get in your own way, you don’t sabotage yourself. So it really is a major key, really a massive key.
Catherine Langman:
Where… because I think a lot of people find… they think their confidence comes from success, and so if they feel like they’re not having any success, they don’t feel confident. And by success, I guess in our audiences, businesses, they’re e-commerce businesses and brands, so that success to them might feel like it’s coming from sales on their website or new stockists coming on board and that sort of thing. If we’re not having that success yet, where does the confidence come from? Or where should it come from?
Ben Elliott:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Where should people put that effort?
Ben Elliott:
Yeah, for sure. Well, this is the thing, right? If we’re talking about the normal average person, then that’s… the normal average person is just going to try and get their confidence from external things, right?
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
From everything, from how they look, that’s where they get confidence from, from how much money they have or how well things are going. But that there is really limiting because if you’re trying to be a high performer, if you’re trying to really create a lot of success, there’s going to be times where the sales aren’t there, there’s going to be times where Facebook changes the algorithm, and if your confidence is really tied up with how much money you have or how many sales coming through, then your performance will basically go up and down based on those numbers, and basically Facebook control how well you perform, which is just never going to be sustainable.
Ben Elliott:
What I highly recommend and what I’ve seen work best in myself and in others, and even with you. Your confidence is beyond just your numbers and that.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
With all of that stuff there. So I recommend… you want to start to get your confidence. There’s a few different things, but you basically have to get it from something that’s not as shaky, not as external. The ideal thing is getting confidence from within. You know who you are, be confident about that. You’re confident in what you’re capable of, even if it just comes down to being focused on how great your product is or focused on all the opportunity or the need for your product. At least then, if the sale was a down, you’re still confident knowing that your product is good, knowing that there’s a massive market for it, knowing that there’s a massive need for it, knowing that people are going to value it.
Ben Elliott:
But at least then, if your confidence is tied up in those things, that’s not going to move around as much.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
If you’re going to try and get your confidence from that internal place. One really good task that I’ve set all my clients is, I make them email me. We usually do this around session one or two, but they have to email me a list of 50 things that are good about them, 50 things that they have to offer and it’s the combination of strengths, skills, abilities, 50 things that are good about them. And it’s just to try and help them get their mind set on what they have internally.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Not just the things that are going well for them because you don’t…
Catherine Langman:
I’d forgotten that exercise. I remember doing it now. Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:11:47] But that’s the thing. Yeah. A lot of people, when they start doing that list, they go, “Okay, yeah, I have this talent and this skill or this internal thing,” or, “I’m good at this,” or whatever.
Ben Elliott:
But it’s usually a stretch to get to the 50.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
But what it starts to do is it starts to train your brain, to look for a source for it.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Again, most people, they start their business and their confidence is, “If my friends and family like it, then I’ll be really confident. I’ll be ready to go,” or, “I’ll put up a Facebook ad, and then if people respond to it, well, then I’ll be really confident and then I’ll do more.” But that is never a straight line. We were talking on the phone beforehand, it’s never a straight line of success. There’s always setbacks, always haters, there’s always critics, there’s always things that go wrong, and if your confidence is based on external things there, there’s just so much potential just for you to get in your own way, for you to freeze up or hesitate and all of that, really.
Ben Elliott:
And it’s just going to be a toxic journey for you. You’re going to hate business.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Because you’re going to be stressed for weeks, and then you’re going to be like an addict, waiting for that one sale to come through. So you’d be refreshing your feed or looking at your stats more than you need to. [crosstalk 00:12:53] conversion rates more than you need to.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Ben Elliott:
I’ve had clients before who are in the marketing game and they were chronic checkers when I met them.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
They’d be in date night with their partners and they’d just be constantly checking their states all the time, [crosstalk 00:13:08] refreshing their numbers and it’s like, “Hey, you need to look at it… before midway and at the end of the campaign, and that’s it.” But again, it was all their confidences come from those movable things.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess if we hand our power to those external things, whether it’s a platform like Facebook ads or, or something else, it leaves you feeling totally unempowered, if that’s the word.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
We shouldn’t be so cheap to hand away that confidence to somebody else.
Ben Elliott:
Totally. I will just give you one more point on it. The real trap is, is it’s not just about how you emotionally feel, but the reality is, when your confidence is on external things and you’re under that stress and that negativity, you just can’t innovate anymore. And as an entrepreneur, innovation is your number one strength. You need to be a superhuman innovator because every time there’s a problem or a setback, you need to figure out how to innovate, to find a solution.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Whether that’s a change of the product, whether it’s finding a new solution, Facebook changed the algorithm, you have to find out a way to innovate so your marketing still works.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
So you have a solution to that. And when your mind is lacking confidence, or you’re in that bad state, you’ll you go into fight or flight mode and your brain just gets all cloudy and you just can’t innovate. That’s one of the real practical reasons why we need to handle this.
Catherine Langman:
Mm. Actually. It’s funny. You should say that. I remember when I was very early days in business, if I was really stuck and things weren’t working, sometimes I’d find myself having been sitting at the computer screen, trying to problem solve and just… it was not working, and without fail, if I went and either did some exercise outside or I baked, because I love to bake.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
I started to call it therapeutic baking, but the ideas would flow again. Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Catherine Langman:
Step away from the computer screen when it’s feeling like that.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. It’s just funny because for me, if I was to go away and bake, I think I’d be more stressed. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, dear. Well, my swimmer sons are quite happy that I like to bake because they eat a lot [inaudible 00:15:24] besides the point.
Ben Elliott:
[inaudible 00:15:27].
Catherine Langman:
Have you seen those… I’m sure you would have, and other listeners would have as well, seen memes that go around on Facebook and online, like the two miners mining for diamonds and one very quickly cracks through the rock and gets their diamond and disappears. And somebody else sees that the other guy has one and turns away from almost hitting gold and goes and tries the other shaft and then never gets there, which is like they’re saying, “Stick to your guns rather than giving up too early,” sort of thing. Success isn’t ever that straight line, as we were saying. It’s definitely been a time when things have been difficult. I think we were talking about not being a victim, so let’s talk about that concept a little bit. I’m sure people would feel a little confronted, maybe if we say, “You’re being a bit of a victim here,” but it can [crosstalk 00:16:30] like that.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because when I do my talks to companies and stuff, this is usually… they’re the ones who get offended by me. I mean, I personally think I’m a really likable, nice, guy.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
If anyone’s going to get offended from me, it’s going to be on this thing. But at the same point, this is usually where the big breakthrough is.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
It’s my responsibility in my role as a coach, since we want to stretch people. Victim mentality is a real thing and the best of us go into victim mode sometimes, but we have to be super aware of when we’re tempted to get into that trap. The ‘woe is me’, or the… the victim mentality, let me just define it. The victim mentality is where you’re blaming other things, “It’s not my fault. It’s because this has happened.”
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
And then you play the victim. So the victim mentality, it comes from this hidden addiction that humans have of needing a scapegoat. It starts when you’re really young. Let’s say as an example, you have siblings fighting and they’re under five years old or they’re five years old or whatever. Siblings are fighting in the lounge room. The mum comes in and says, “What’s going on here?” And what do they both say? “It was their fault,” blaming the other person and never taking that responsibility. There’s almost like this hidden addiction in people to want to not be at fault and not be at blame.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
But that mentality is when bad things happen, or tough things happen and we get really tempted to go into victim mentality.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
It makes us feel emotionally a bit better if it’s like, “Hey, it’s not my fault. It’s Facebook’s fault.” Or, “It’s not my fault, my coach didn’t give me this.” Or, “It’s not my fault that template didn’t work.” Or, “It’s not my fault because this happened,” or dadada. But the problem is, is when you’re in the victim mindset, you start complaining a lot. That means your brain focuses on the negative, and because you’re in that victim mentality, you start to lose hope. Hope is that ability to visualize the future or see the future that you want and believe that you can get there some way or somehow.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
When you go into victim mentality, all of a sudden you start to emotionally feel heavier, you get more drained, you lose your energy, the story and the self-talk in your head becomes complaining and moaning, grumbling, gossiping, all that negativity stuff comes out there. Jealousy pops up because of the victim mentality.
Catherine Langman:
Comparison.
Ben Elliott:
And then all of a sudden it’s… yeah. It’s massive. Yeah. That one pops up heaps is like, “It’s not fair because it’s easy for them.” That’s the comparison part of it. It’s like, “It’s easy for them because they are this more,” or, “They have that,” or, “They don’t have as many kids as me,” or, “Their kids are older,” or-
Catherine Langman:
They’re just clearly lucky.
Ben Elliott:
[crosstalk 00:19:04] “It’s easy for them.” Exactly. That’s a big one that I hate hearing, but it’s true. It’s like, “Yeah, they’re lucky. They got a lucky break,” or whatever it may be. But that victim mentality, what it really does is it literally disempowers you from taking the right action.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
And again, from innovating and finding solutions. So you find when someone’s victim, they become heavy. They start to lose that hope and then they start to quit, ann then it’s a really toxic place to be.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
Also, to then switch from being in a victim state to then trying to lead your team, the energy is mismatched. You know what I mean? You’re carrying a darkness and a heaviness about you, then you’re trying to give instructions to your team or trying to coach them and performance coach them or correct them, and it’s not happening. When you’re jumping in front of a camera and you have to put on a happy face for your Facebook marketing, all of a sudden that energy… you’re still carrying it around. But with the victim mentality, it’s probably the number one trap that I see high performers get into.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
It’s really, really, hectic. So when it comes to the victim mentality, the way to the snap out of it is you really have to focus on realizing that you’re in control of your response.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
The big one with high performers is… the victim mentality that they usually fall into, apart from what we said, is they blame other the people or blame other things for how they feel.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
So it’s like, “Hey, just snap out of that rut. Snap out of feeling negative, snap out of that, whatever.” And then they’re like, “No, it’s not. I can’t, because Facebook made me feel this way.” You know what I mean?
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
“Facebook changed the algorithms. That means I feel like this,” or, “No, you said this to me,” or, “You did this to me,” or, “When they left a bad review on my product that was unwarranted, that makes me feel a certain way.”
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
And it’s really tempting to buy into that because then you can feel justified. You can feel all that negative toxic stuff, which is… it is tempting, but it just teaches you different completely different powers. You can’t then go, “Okay, how do I solve this?” Because your brain isn’t in solving mode, your brain is in victim mode.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
A big step to get out of it is going, “Okay. It’s not my fault that they wrote that comment, but it is my responsibility of how I respond to that comment.”
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
“It’s not my fault that Facebook changed their algorithm, but it is my responsibility to respond to that in an empowered way.” So you have to try and take back that control because then you do feel powerful. You do feel like you have options, your mind to be focused on solving a problem and innovating instead of just being stuck, because that’s the big trap of it. The victim mentality would have keep you stuck in the same place.
Catherine Langman:
Mm. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to inject a comment here for some people who are listening. By innovating and being creative problem solvers, it does not mean that you are chasing shiny objects or just flipping from one strategy to another [crosstalk 00:22:00] every day. We still need to be consistent about things and give things a bit of oxygen and time to play out. Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Totally. [crosstalk 00:22:11] And when I say innovate… yeah. Yeah, I know. It goes back down to what you’re saying about that meme. That meme about the digging for the gold.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
I call it holding the line. You do have to hold the line, see things through, it’s just that innovation is just about innovating a different response to the problem.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
You know what I mean? You’re not breaking things apart, you’re just tweaking things or focusing on finding a solution.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
The innovation mindset is, “How do I make this work? I know this is the path forward, I’ve committed to this path forward, how do I make it work?”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
And then when you asking that kind of question, you will figure out how to make it work. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess it is one thing to have that gold… that goal, not gold. Obviously it would be nice to have gold too, but we have that goal, but focusing on the gap between here and there can be pretty stressful rather than, “What can I do today to be 1% better than yesterday,” and get the incremental improvements and keep your mindset away from the gap.
Ben Elliott:
Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely.
Catherine Langman:
Awesome. I want to talk a little bit about some daily practices or activities or things that we can do, practical things that we can do, because I know you’re good with this stuff for maintaining that rock-solid, confident mindset and holding the motivation and the momentum, even when things might feel a little bit hopeless or like they’re just not working. We’ve talked about things like needing to focus on some personal growth and I guess grow into the person you need to be, to have the success that you want to have, having the confidence that’s coming internally and not being the victim. What are some daily things that people can actually do to… I guess, work on those things?
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. I have four chunks of advice here. I would do all four of these every single day. If you don’t have some sort of morning routine, then that would be the first thing you’ve really got to slide in there. If I was doing a morning routine or recommending, I’d have these four things in it. One of the big things as a high performer and a business owner is, it’s going to be next to impossible to wake up feeling good every single day. It’s just not going to happen. If you’re actually going after a big goal and you’re stretching yourself and it’s something really important to you, there is no way that you’re going to feel good every single morning.
Catherine Langman:
No. It’s a bit unrealistic, isn’t it?
Ben Elliott:
But as I said before… Yeah. It’s impossible. But at the same point, you would heard from me before, I said that you need to feel good in order to perform at your best.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
So what do we do then? The first thing is, is what everyone has to learn at some point, is really how to control your state. Your state is if you’re happy, you’re in a happy state, you’re in a sad state, you’re in a motivated state, confident state, but you really have to get really, really good at controlling your states. If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, which is going to happen, and there’s going to be times where you get knocked down, but being able to get back up again is the real key there. So in the morning you wake up, wrong side of the bed. You’re stressed, you’re worried, there’s busy-ness, house is going crazy for whatever reason. You really have to be able to do something where you can get yourself into the right state of mind. There’s a few things I would do, but just understanding that in the morning, your real goal is to switch on. Your goal is to get into the leadership state or CEO state, or that confidence state or that motivated state, that business mindset state, but just like an athlete before they jump in the pool or an athlete before they play their sport, they spend about 30 minutes before the game, at least, getting themself into the right mindset.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
They’ll jump around, they’ll visualize the game, they’ll see themselves succeeding, they’ll run through the game plan and they’re doing all of that to psych themselves up for the game.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
As business owners, we have to do the same thing. Getting in state is massive. Defining how do you want to feel today. A few ways to do that. First, I have these daily power questions, just three of them, but I think they’re really good. If you got a pen handy, listeners, you can write these down. I’m sure you’ll put them in the show notes or something like that as well.
Catherine Langman:
I shall. Yes.
Ben Elliott:
Yep. Daily power questions would be, what’s one thing I could work on today to make myself better? And that’s a personal growth question.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
And that’s really good, because if you’re going through some of the stuff, it’s going to get you out of victim mentality. If you’re asking, “What is something I could work on today to make myself better?” It’s trying to put you back into victor, and not victim.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
That’s really useful. Second question would be, what’s one bold action I can take today to challenge my comfort zones?
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
Comfort zones will hold you back and keep you small.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Asking yourself that question, that’s also going to really be a really good prioritizer of what tasks to do because after doing this for 12 years, I can honestly say, everyone knows the big task that’s going to make them the biggest amount of income and profit and success, but that’s always the task they don’t want to do. So as soon as you ask, “What’s one bold action I can take today?” It’s going to be really obvious of the thing that’s going to make you the most successful.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
If you hate marketing and getting in front of a camera, then it’s going to be probably doing that. But it’s going to be really obvious when you ask. What’s one bold action I can take today to challenge myself out of my comfort zones?
Ben Elliott:
And then number three is really important as well. What’s one word or one phrase that describes the person I want to be today?
Catherine Langman:
Hmm.
Ben Elliott:
What’s one word or one phrase that describes the person I want to be today? When you ask yourself that question, you begin to kind of decide who you want to be, but that really will affect your performance for the rest of the day.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
Just by asking it in the morning, you’ll find that you interact with your team better. You interact with your work better, and you’ll start to carry yourself as the person you need to be to be successful.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
So that there is a massive one. They’re three questions I’d ask. Two more things I would do… tell me if I’m giving away too much, yeah?
Ben Elliott:
Two more things I would do is I would… I actually do this thing, I do it myself every morning, but I have what I call a carrot list.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
I read my carrot list to myself. What a carrot list is-
Catherine Langman:
[crosstalk 00:28:30] What is the carrot list? Oh. Literally like dangling a carrot. Okay. Okay.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. It’s the carrot list.
Catherine Langman:
I love it.
Ben Elliott:
People get motivated the same way donkeys get motivated, which is either with a dangling carrot or with pain, like a big whacking [crosstalk 00:00:28:48].
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
Yeah. So you have the pain… most people are really used to being gap-focused and stress-focused and fear-focused. They use a big stick to motivate themselves, “I have to do this task or I will fail or I won’t succeed or won’t even have the money to pay for the bills,” or something like that. They’re very stress-driven, it used up a lot of adrenaline, a lot of cortisol.
Ben Elliott:
You’ll stress yourself out, you’ll burn yourself out and you’ll find that if you’re ever… if you’re a really stick-motivated person, and I know this because I was a stick-motivated person at 21, and I burnt myself out because when everything was easy, I still wanted to be successful, but I had no motivation because I had no stress.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, right.
Ben Elliott:
So then what my brain would do is I would make up dramas and make up worst case scenarios to try and motivate myself forward.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
That was a real toxic [inaudible 00:29:39]. That was another world that I was in, in my head, there. But the carrot list is like being motivated by everything that you can gain, everything you can accomplish and everything that you want. I have the carrot list, which is, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?What do I want, and what the whole purpose is, and what the carrots are from doing all the work today?”
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
So it’s simple things. I got really big picture in terms of what I’m trying to create and accomplish in 10 years, but it goes right down to simple things like… I have big picture stuff, deep stuff, long-term stuff, and then I had the simplest things like, I want a new bike. I want a new bicycle.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
I want a really expensive bike that’s going to be really fast and if I knock out this task, I give myself permission to do that. But it’s just a simple carrot there.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
After reading 10 to 15 to 20 different carats of the things that you’re going to gain, or the people you’re going to help, or the impact it’s going to have, how much is my family, my parents, going to impact if I can accomplish this? I would love to be able to pay off their house, or do that. That’s on my list, or being at a dadadadada. [crosstalk 00:30:51] They will be things on my list. That’s a massive one, and that’s a really good way in terms of getting motivation when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Reading that and doing the power questions, they’re helping you to get into a good state.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
And then the last thing I would do is, you need some visualization in there.
Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Elliott:
Your imagination is like the steering wheel of your brain. Most people are visualizing anyway, because they’re always thinking the worst, they’re imagining bad things happening, they’re remembering failures of the past or stressful situations or when things went wrong. So people are always using their imagination, but they’re not doing it on purpose.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
So you really have to do some visualizations of seeing yourself successful. And I just make it really simple. I imagine it’s the end of the day, and I visualize the day having gone really well.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
I imagine that moment where I’m catching up with my wife, debriefing on the day, we’re going for a walk on the beach or something like that.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
And I’m just trying to… visualizing, “Yeah, I’ve accomplished what I needed to do today.” Or I might visualize months in the future where that massive goal has been accomplished, but I’m trying to visualize success because then your brain all of a sudden has a target, and a steering wheel.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Ben Elliott:
And then even though I’m not thinking about it for the rest of the day, consciously, back of my mind, my brain is trying to figure out, “Well, how do we make that happen?”
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
“How do we make that happen? How do we make that happen?” And it’s a really good thing of hearing your thoughts where you want them to go.
Catherine Langman:
I guess when you do that in the morning, your brain is predisposed to see those good things rather than to focus on the… maybe the irritations or the things that maybe didn’t go to plan or, going out to lunch and you visualized yourself having a really nice lunch, but perhaps they mucked up your order. I think you’re less likely to focus on the shitty things that happen rather than the good stuff when you do that visualizing. Definitely another-
Ben Elliott:
100%.
Catherine Langman:
Sports practice there as well, I guess. I know in-
Ben Elliott:
[crosstalk 00:32:47] Oh yeah. And that’s where I learned that from.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
That’s where I learned that from. I was a real nut when it comes to basketball. It was my life growing up. I used to play twice, three times a day, all that kind of stuff. Hardcore basketball player. It was my whole goal in life to play basketball. When I was trying out for college in America, one of the college coaches from the USA, and they’re big on all this stuff over there, obviously, but the coach came over and he says, “Okay, Ben, you had a really hard time doing this move that we’ve taught you, and even though you’re practicing it with a ball a lot, you’re not picking it up fast enough for what we need.” So I was like, “Okay, appreciate the honesty.” But he was like, “Yeah. So what I need you to do to fix that, I need you to visualize that move in your head for 30 minutes a night.”
Catherine Langman:
Okay.
Ben Elliott:
“What are you talking about?” I said, “You don’t want me to just get my basketball up and practice two hours a night?” And [inaudible 00:33:38] goes, “No, no, no. Just as you’re falling asleep at night, just visualize doing the skill, dribble down, in and out, crossover, pull up at that spot, shoot it and see it go in, and just visualize yourself doing it perfectly, put a timer on and then 30 minutes later just stop and that’s it.” So I did it for a week. And then without thinking about it, just visualizing, I was in the middle of the game, heat of the moment, pressure was on, and because I’d rehearsed it so many times in my brain, my body just responded. So I was dribbling down the court without thinking about it, did the move perfectly, pulled up in the exact spot without thinking about it, and the shot went in.
Catherine Langman:
Wow.
Ben Elliott:
That pre-programmed my brain a hundred times just by doing that exercise. So it sounds fluffy sometimes to people, but when you actually look at the neuroscience, you’re actually building in pathways, you’re doing things where, as I said, you hit the steering wheel with your brain. You’re programming your brain, that this is where we want to get to, and this is what we want to do, and there’s all of these psychological processes that I won’t bore you with. Don’t want to get all nerdy on you, but they all… it starts kicking in. It starts kicking in. if you visualize things like that in private, then when you’re under pressure, that’s what your brain starts reverting to.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
You’re seeing yourself succeed, you’re seeing yourself confident. You’re going to have more of an expectation that you can overcome anything that comes your way.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
You’re going to see yourself as a winner. You’re going to start feeling like a winner, thinking like a winner and it starts becoming self-fulfilling.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. And I guess in the smallest way, it’s about going about your day in an intentional way, rather than just meandering and reacting to stuff that comes your way.
Ben Elliott:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Catherine Langman:
Mm. Awesome. Some absolute nuggets of gold that you shared with us today, and can’t thank you enough for joining us on the show and sharing your pearls of wisdom. Now, I know that you have a free resource. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about that, and obviously I’ll share a link for our listeners to go and grab that from you?
Ben Elliott:
Yeah, the free resource is just called the seven Mindsets That Supercharge Success. I personally find that the personal development, the mindset space, is crowded with so much stuff and there’s some useful stuff towards motivation and then there’s stuff that’s useful for business, but then that stuff… there’s just a whole bunch of stuff out there.
Catherine Langman:
Mm.
Ben Elliott:
After working with people, and high performers in particular, after working with them for about 12 years now, I’ve found that there’s really seven mindsets that… if you can just master these seven, then you’re going to conquer anything. They’re the main seven. I find that it’s really useful. Get that free download, and once you get it, you can just run through it. And if you just work on those seven, then you’re going to crush everything. A lot of people will spend a lot of time trying to major in a minor mindset that doesn’t really matter.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
You know what I mean? And they come to me saying, “Hey, I’ve been working on this mindset for a whole year now.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. But that doesn’t actually matter.” It sounds bad, but there are seven that you’ve got to master, and if you just put your time and energy towards them, then you’ll get there.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Ben Elliott:
What I’d highly recommend is, grab the resource and then go through it. There’ll be an evaluation at the end. And then you can see, “Okay, this is the one that I feel the weakest on,” and just put all your eggs and all your personal development planning on just knocking out and developing that, up-skilling that particular mindset, and it will just help you so much.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Brilliant. Awesome. You can find Ben at http://www.benelliott.me, and I will absolutely link to that with your free resource in our podcast show notes as well. Let’s bring it to a close, but thank you again for joining us on the show today, Ben.
Ben Elliott:
Thanks for having me.