Transcript of Episode

Hey visionaries. Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show. Happy Monday you guys happy beginning of the week. I hope that you are all ready for this week. I have a good feeling about this week. It’s the week, right before Labor Day. And so it’s like a really quiet week, which is not actually the case for me because I am working still, a lot. But I kinda like these plight weeks because I feel like he can get a lot done. It’s kind of like the weekend between New Year’s and Christmas. It’s when everyone’s just sort of bringing it in and I have that feeling about this week. I just feel like it’s gonna be a really amazing week. And so I’d love to know how you guys are feeling. What are you excited about? What’s happening? What are you pushing yourself to do this week that is going to get you closer to your next big goal or wherever it is that you want to be?

And the answer cannot be nothing ever because life is short and you are here to do big things. And that’s what this show is all about. So this is the Your Biggest Vision show. I am your host, Leah Gervais. I am the founder of Urban 20 Something. I am a six figure business coach for entrepreneurs and I specialize in email marketing. Uh, and I was able to build my business up to six figures in under three years and I help other people do it in a much more expedited timeline. In many of my programs, I focus more on the mechanics of business, things like marketing and email strategy. This show is all about your mindset and honestly, you guys, that’s like 75% of it. I would say that learning how to think better, learning how to, you know, dream bigger, listen to myself more, push myself further. That is what has gotten me where I am. It is not just about figuring out a sales funnel or having the next brilliant or anything like that. 

 And if there’s anyone who knows what it means to dream bigger and to push yourself and to think of new ways to live your life in a more challenging but in a good way, like in a more fulfilling way. It is Miss Mel Robbins. So for those of you that don’t know who Mel Robbins is, she is a life coach, extraordinary, and she’s the author of many bestselling books. I think the one that really shot her to fame and the one that I loved and really helped me when I started my business was called the five second rule and the story behind her five second rule. I’m just going to summarize it for simplicity sake, but I highly recommend going checking her her story out. 

There’s lots of youtube videos on it. You can also read her book. She had gotten to a place where she and her husband were just not happy and they weren’t that happy within their marriage. They were, you know, they had a loan on their house. They weren’t doing well financially, they weren’t doing well career-wise. It was winter in Boston. They just were feeling depressed and she said she was just in this cycle where every night she would say that, you know, tomorrow would be the first day where she changes or when she starts working out again or when she starts looking for a different job or when she starts changing her on happiness. And then she would just hit the snooze button and hit the snooze button and it was so cold and in Boston and dark and she sent out the energy to get up. 

So she just didn’t, and it was like that for months and months and months and you know, then the nights would end with a little more scotch and then a little more and then a little more and then it’s harder to get up. And then you’re, you’re just in this cycle of complacency and you can’t be, you can’t be complacent, but you especially can’t be complacent in a place that you are unhappy with. So she broke out of this cycle by one morning turning on the news when she was still lying in bed hitting the snooze button and they were featuring NASA and the rocket was about to glass off and before it did, they counted down from five, five, four, three, two, one and then it blasts it off and she just tells it so brilliantly that something within her clicked and she realized that that is what I need to be doing. 

I need to stop thinking, overthinking everything. I need to just count down to five and do things. So from there it started with five, four, three, two, one get out of bed. She’s like, well, maybe I can do this with exercising. Maybe I can do this with deciding I’m not going to have that third scotch. Maybe I can do this with deciding I’m going to go apply for that job. The possibilities are endless. And then she started doing a lot of research into why this was working. And it’s because she was teaching herself to listen to her intuition and to listen to her in her voice, which we all know is the best guidance system that we have. And what really stuck with me about this teaching, and I think the really big reason that it influenced me so much early on was I was reading, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. 

And one of the big factors he talks about when it comes to wealthy people is that they make decisions quickly. They make a decision, they own the decision. They don’t constantly look back and think, what if they could have done, should they have done? Maybe it would’ve been better if they had done. They go all out with that decision and if they don’t like that decision, then they make another one and get out of that. But even a bad decision, this is what I quote I want to be remembered for. So for those of you that are listening, I hope you remember me for this, something I live by, is that it’s better to make a bad decision than to be an indecision. Indecision is energy draining. It also kills your confidence because you are just proving your subconscious mind that you don’t know what’s best for yourself, which is a lie. 

And also not good for your own boost of morale. And it’s boring. No one wants to be the person that just can’t decide her own destiny or can’t even be in control like no one is interested in your moping or your, you know, asking everyone for advice or you going to like your great uncle and your mother-in-law and your friend from high school to ask for advice on what you should do. They have their own stuff going on. Be The empowered person that makes his or her own decisions and then own them. And yes, you’re going to mess up. Of course you’re going to mess up. But you’ll learn from that decision and you’ll get better at making other decisions because you’ll get out of them. So this is a little bit of a tangent, but it’s all to say that her book really influenced me early on in my business. It really taught me to trust myself, make decisions, stop consulting every single other person in my life about what I was trying to do, especially the people that had no real background or understanding about the things I was trying to do and just own it. 

And that’s so much stuck with me that last year in 2018, nine, eight, the year the word of my year was decision because I just looked back at everything that happened last year. Last year was one of the best years of my life. So many of my dreams came true and the most fantastic of ways. I built my side business up to make more than I wasn’t my nine to five job. I was able to leave my nine to five job. I hit from my first five figure month and engaged. So many great things happened. And when I really looked back and ask myself, what was it about this year that made so many things work? And it was because I decided they would and I made decisions, little decisions every day to support the fruition of those goals. So I really think Mel Robbins for teaching me how to decide quickly the importance of decision making, the importance of listening to yourself and the importance of moving quickly and her role was the way she was able to do that. 

I have to admit that I don’t personally use the five, four, three, two, one rule every day, but I think it’s because I’ve gotten to a place where I make a decision and then it’s out of my mind. I’m going to the gym today. Don’t think about it again. I don’t go through this whole, well, maybe I should take today off. I don’t really want to go. Let me text my mom from motivation. Now either I’m going or I’m not. And also that’s part of it. Sometimes I just decide I’m not and I don’t make myself feel guilty about it. I don’t make myself wrong for it. I don’t make myself feel like I, you know, am a lazy person because of it. I just decided I wasn’t. And a story. You guys get the picture. Let’s come back to why you are here and that is to hear about my experience on her show. 

It’s actually a hilarious story. So I background one of my clients, um, Jackie, she’s amazing. She reached out to me and she lives in New York. I actually met her because she is a personal trainer at my gym. And I told her about what I do and you know, she told me that she’s starting a personal training business online and that’s how we connected. So I’m, she lives near me and I see her a lot because obviously she’s in my gym. So she told me that Mel Robbins is doing curl the preliminary season of her show here in New York and it’s airing in the fall and that she, you know, has this way to get tickets. So I go and I registered to get tickets. And um, I find out the day before, it was a Friday that I, that the show was airing, I had to go all the way to the west side of Manhattan, which have you guys known in New York City? 

That means it’s like the land away from any transportation or like civilization, but it’s where those huge studios are. So I’m about to go over there the day before and then that Thursday before I get an email saying that I’ve been, you know, boosted to priority seating or whatever. I don’t even know what that means. But my guess was that at these big tapings, they oversell the tickets because they want the audience to be full. And then, you know, it’s kind of first come first serve. And if you get in and you’ll be one of the full ones, but if not, then they just need to make sure it’d be filled. So I go and I feel like I have this priority seating now and it says we need to be there at one. Although I’m guessing, I think we knew that the filming didn’t start till two, but when my priority seating and said get there at 12:45 so first of all you guys can just know this about me and I’m like perpetually late. 

I’m just one of those people that’s laid all the time. So as a shock to no one, I roll up there at about 12:47 and even that’s pretty good for me. And I’m like, oh well, you know, I’m part of the priority. I’m proud of the priority. I was told to be here at 12:45 I want to get ahead of like I knew anyone else and the ticket people were pretty much like, uh, you should’ve been here at 12:15, like 12:45 is when the priority entrance ended. And sure enough, I looked on my phone and I had just read the ticket wrong. So I thought that I’m like part of this privately group and I’m getting there early and I’m going to have you know a for sure seat and I mean even later than I thought I was, I missed entirely that point. 

I don’t even know if I’m going to get in at this point, but you know, it is what it is. Nothing you can do about it at that point. So they let me and my friend and my friend Alexis who came with me and uh, we are like the two last people that they let in and then we all go to this huge waiting room, this series of waiting rooms. Actually some of them are like rooms that you have to go through different rooms to get to. So we’re way deep in whatever studio, window list, filming situation like warehouse. This is, and I know that, you know, there’s a low chance that we’re going to get on, but it’s okay. I’m still in a good mood at this point just because there’s nothing I can do. So we sit there for like an hour and a half and then at about two or two 30 they start filing us up into elevators, into the studio and we’re going to start filming. 

And my friend Alexis and I are the last, we are the last four to be let into elevators and to be let into the actual studio. And so there’s two people behind us and that’s it. The rest of the hundreds in front, I have already gone in. They’re already seated in their files and etc. And so her and I get there, we realize when you get out of the elevator that we’re still gonna make it in the show. We’re really excited and they’re filing, you know, the last people, the group that weren’t in, in the very back of the studio, there’s this corner and so it’s just going to be in this were, you know, we knew we were going to be like as further away as possible because we are in the corner with the last group and why this we’re about to walk up the stairs into this ending corner, kind of like the annex area. 

Some producers sees me, pulls me over and says, how many people are you with? And I said, just one, my friend likes this is very pretty. She has like big blonde hair. And he looked at her and he looked at me and he pulled us up and we end up sitting on the stage with Mel Robbins the whole time for the whole show. So we are like right on the stage on this like poorly constructed couch. I shouldn’t say poorly constructed, but you guys know how these TV sets are. It’s just like they just built this, I mean it’s a beautiful studio. I wish I had pictures, but of course they were very strict about us not taking pictures. We have turned off our phones, everything like that. And her and I with two others are just sitting on this sofa on the stage with Mel Robbins and there’s a few people in front of us on a different sofa or like kind of in different chairs who Mel ends up like interviewing and you know they’re big parts of the show. 

But in terms of the sort of general people there, no one except us for is on that stage and the rest of the people are in the audience. So that was totally serendipitous and I’m super grateful that I was able to be on the stage with her. I got to hug her, I got to meet her and I’m looking forward to showing you guys the episode when it comes out. But it was once again a great lesson to remember, which is, you know, you don’t ask if you don’t get and if you don’t show up then you don’t get opportunities. And so even though I thought there was a good chance, I wouldn’t have even made it onto the show and there was a good chance I wouldn’t have even made it onto the show. I’m there, I was on the stage and it never would have happened if I didn’t just go. 

And I remember that day, it was like a Friday and I, you know, I’m getting married in about a month and so I feel like up to my eyes and wedding stuff, business is busy. I have not at all put the brakes on my business even though I probably should because I’m about to get married this month. August has been the highest month in sales I’ve had by like two times. Any other number. And so all this is to say it’s been very, very busy and very, there was a big part of me that morning that was like, Nah, I don’t think I’m going to go. And if I didn’t, I never would have gotten this experience. So I hope that you can take away from that to push herself even when it doesn’t sound fun or when you don’t feel like going because you never know what can happen. And from that, I want to tell you a bit about the actual show and some of the lessons I took away from Mel even having read nearly all of her books and I follow her on social media and I feel like I, you know, know a lot of what she teaches yet there were still some things that really stuck out to me. So in addition to my own personal lesson, which is that you should say yes to things as much as possible. There’s a few other things I want to share with you about her and her show itself because you’re going to love it when it comes out. 

So the first thing is to understand that Mel has this unique position where she has multi, like several million followers on social media and her and her team are very proactive about communicating with them and interpret what they say in a really cohesive way. So when Mel Robbins tells you that she has the number one biggest reason people hold themselves back, that’s not just tongue in cheek, she and her team have asked hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, what holds them back. They categorize it, they sort it, they dig through it, and they really do make it succinct information. 

And so it’s really powerful to hear, you know, that everyone else is feeling a similar fear as you. And what’s interesting is that I think we all have what feels like our own unique fears because we all have our own unique circumstances. So whether it’s a fear of never finding the person you’re gonna marry or any or the fear of your business not taking off, or the fear of having spent too much money and not being able to pay it off, or the fear of putting yourself out there, you know, they can seem very unique because they’re real to you and your situation. But more often than not, when you peel back the layers, they all come down to a common fear between all of them, which is a fear that you’re not good enough. And that was so profound. And what she had us do at the beginning of the show was to write down a negative thought that we tell ourselves every day. 

Um, like she wanted us to show something that comes up a lot. And I think mine was something like, um, I’m afraid that I’m not doing enough. Like, or that I could always be doing more on my to do list is never done and that I should be more active considering the goals that I have. And a lot of people had similar, similar things like that, whether it was that they’re afraid or that a negative thing that they tell themselves is that, um, they’re not smart enough or they’re nervous about making a career change. They’re not good enough to make a career change. Why wouldn’t even take them seriously at the core of this, all it is this fear that you’re not enough. So rather than Mel having us basically just decide that we’re enough because we all wish it w as that easy? Right? Her big mission with this show is to reverse negative self talk because she has said that more than anything, anything more than money, more than your network, more than your community, more than your intelligence, more than your, um, resume more than the school you went to more than your good idea or your natural talents or your lack thereof. 

The number one thing that holds people back is their negative self talk. And so she walked us through a lot of exercises about how you can write down, I have people that do this and my scale, your side hustle program, write down negative things that you tell yourself and then cross it out and decide on a positive thing you could tell yourself and said. So using my example instead of telling myself that there’s more I should be doing, if I want to reach my goals, I can start telling myself, wow, look at how much I already accomplished today. I can even- something I did start doing was writing down everything I accomplished that day. So I’m actually kind of meshing two takeaways right now and I’m sorry this is confusing. We’re just going to go ahead and lay both of them out because they’re both really powerful and they are intertwined but different. 

The first takeaway I’m trying to share here is that we have us humans have a shared common fear. The number one fear we all experience is commonly that we’re not good enough. Now, how this shows up and manifest in our life that is different. That will hold us back from different things that will hold us back from dating, that will hold us back from trying to start a business that will hold us back from trying to get in shape that will hold us back from asking for a race. It will hold us back from raising our prices, but it all comes down to this clear fear that we’re not good enough and therefore those things won’t work. That’s point one. 

Point two is that the number one thing that does hold you back throughout the day, right? Like we have this fear but the way it shows up is the way you talk to yourself. Negative self talk is the number one barrier between you and whatever it is that you want. And Mel Robin has said that she’s seen time and time again, including in her life. Once you change how you talk to yourself and how you allow yourself to think about yourself and even how you talk out loud about yourself, you will see miraculous change and I can vouch for this. One of the biggest things I did last year to transform my life was to be really active about my conscious language both internally and externally. So I want to share this with you guys because if you are, if any of this is resonating with you, if you are feeling ever like you’re not enough, and even if you don’t directly think that sentence, but you think about your other fears and how they might be a representation of that fear, you are not alone. 

Literally everyone else, everyone else has helped us in some way or at some, in some form and they probably still do. Everyone. When you look up to every great athlete, you know, a good example of this is Sophie Turner who played Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones and she’s really open about mental health struggles she had. And you know, on the outside looking in, it looks like she has the world. She was one of the most beloved characters on one of the most famous shows of all time. She got famous really young. She’s incredibly talented. She’s very, very pretty. She has, you know, ended up having partnerships with some of the top brands in the world like Louis Vuitton. She got married to a Jonas brother or whatever, one of them. And still she has felt a lot like she didn’t deserve all of this or that people would find out that she’s a phoning or like, why is it her? 

So, you know, any athletes, you look up to, any celebrity, any entrepreneur, any business owner, any CEO, they have had these spheres to in some way or another. So I think the best thing we can do is release yourself of the pressure to think that we have to feel that Southworth before we move forward. You don’t, and sometimes you won’t, but if you’re waiting for it, if you’re waiting to all of a sudden feel worthy of it, then you might end up wasting a lot of time because in the meantime you’re just waiting and you don’t have time to wait. Your dreams are too important and there’s too much that you need to do and accomplish for you to not be taking consistent action toward it. So even if it sometimes feels like you aren’t worthy of them or that you don’t know who you are by going for them, you have to fight through that. 

And the way Mel Robbins suggests actionably that you do is by deciding what you’re going to tell yourself every day when your negative thought patterns come up or your negative self talk comes up instead of things that represent that fear of not being enough. So you, I think a great, you know, exercise to do after you listen to this episode would be to write down some of the common things you tell yourself. Maybe it’s, I’m not ready to my audience, you guys are entrepreneurs, most of you that are listening to this. So I’m going to use examples like that. Things like I’m not ready to get a client because my website’s not professional enough. I’m never going to be able to quit my job because it just seems impossible at this point. I’ve invested way too much money in my business and I’m not seeing it pay off yet and maybe that’s because I’m doing something wrong. Will I ever make this money back? I should be doing more. I should be doing better. I should have more of an education. I should have more of a background. I should have started at a different time. I don’t know if people will like my social media posts. 

Anything that comes up like that. Write what you’re going to think and set. I started my business at the perfect time. Every day is a new lesson. There are possibilities about how my business can grow beyond what I can even grab my mind around right now. People are going to love my social media posts and if I don’t put them out there, then how would anyone find out about that? I owe it to people to be open and honest and out there with myself. 

I’m ready. I’m amazing. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m doing what it takes to make my dreams happen. I’m not holding myself back anymore. I believe in myself. I know that I’m doing enough every day to move forward. If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, then I will get to where I needed to be. Okay, this is going to get me emotional. You’re like, I can’t go to all hell have too long into this because this is so dear to my heart and it’s just some of the most powerful and rewarding work I think any of us can do. Um, and I also find a lot of comfort and I mean, I don’t know. I don’t mind it. I’m trying to figure out how to say this. I don’t find comfort in knowing that everyone has fear because I don’t want everyone to have fear. 

I don’t want people to feel like that, but it does help to know that there’s nothing different about people that are successful. Then there is about you. You have to put yourself in the game and one of the biggest ways you might be blocking yourself from being in that game is your negative self talk and are the things you’re telling yourself about what it would mean if you did charge that much. If you did quit your job, if you did, put yourself in the game, if you did get on social media every day, whatever that fear is, that’s what’s holding you back. It has held so many back and it might hold you back again. But if you can just call it out for what it is, instead of letting it take control of your actions, then you can take control of your life in a whole new way. 

And you can see results in like never before and you can do whatever you want and your dreams can be bigger and brighter and more extravagant than you’ve ever experienced them before. And that’s what life’s about. It’s not about playing small, it’s not about keeping yourself out of the game. It’s not about settling. It’s not about your fears winning. It’s not even about being responsible or being rational or being thoughtful. It’s about being impulsive. It’s about living big. And it is about making the grandest version of your life possible. And Mel Robbins is a genius at helping you deal with the small things that might be holding you back from that every day. So with that, I’m going to leave you guys for this Monday because I am fired up. If you guys are listening to this episode, I recommend going to have a big chug of coffee or some sort of caffeine because we can do this. 

You guys have got this. I hope that this was helpful when Mel Robbins show comes out. I’ll be sure to post it on social media so you guys can see me literally on the stage, but in the meantime, I hope that you take her two big takeaways. One, everyone is afraid that they’re not enough always. It’s what will hold you back from investing in yourself is what will hold you back from putting yourself out there online. It’s what will hold you back from creating a new program. It’s what holds you back from raising your prices. All these things, everyone has felt that in some way or another, and you probably will again, but you can start to dismantle that by addressing what she says is the most damaging thing people do, which is their negative self talk. So to then start noticing what mean things do I say to myself, what am I going to choose to think instead of those mean things? How can I change my thoughts to be in service to my happiness and not against it? Why am I being mean to myself? 

You’re your own best friend. You can do this. I believe in you. I know you believe in yourself. Let’s ride that wave all week and forevermore because life is too short to have anything mean to say about yourself. All right you guys, this has been great. I hope that you guys liked this and those of you that are just hopping on now, I highly recommend listening to the replay of this because I just talked all about my experience on the Mel Robin Show and for those of you that were here, I hope that you enjoyed this and that you’re signed up for the week now or as I am and I will talk to you guys very soon. We have some great interviews coming up in September, and if you ever have any requests for something you want me to cover on this show about entrepreneurship, about my journey, about getting to 6 figures, about mindset, about money, then let me know because I am in service to you all. And I love hearing from you and I’ll talk to you guys very soon. All right visionaries have a good one.

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