[KATHRYN]: Imperfect Thriving is a part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you thrive imperfectly. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom Podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network. .

Welcome to the Imperfect Thriving podcast for all of us women in midlife to discover your self-limiting beliefs, determine exactly what you want your life to look like, and the imperfect actions to get you there. .

This is the Imperfect Thriving podcast and I’m your host, Kathryn Ely. I am so glad that you are here with us today. We have a most fantastic podcast for you all. I have Karen Brown here. Karen’s critically acclaimed second book Unlimiting Your Beliefs, 7 Keys to Greater Success in Your Personal and Professional Life has been named an Amazon number one hot release. She is going to share with us so much important information about unlimiting your beliefs and she’s going to tell us the seven keys to greater success in your personal and professional lives. And you know here at Imperfect Thriving, we are absolutely all about discovering your limiting beliefs so that you can get past them and keep taking imperfect action toward your best life.

But before we jump into today’s episode, if you enjoy this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. I’ve designed this podcast especially for you. So let me hear from you. What do you want to hear more about? And if you haven’t already done so, head on over to imperfectthriving.com/course to get your very own Blueprint to Thrive. This is a free email course that I designed to guide you step by step to assess your satisfaction with your current life, determine exactly what you want your life to look like, and how to take the daily imperfect action to get you there. So go to imperfectthriving.com/course and sign up today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Before we get started today, I want to tell you a little bit more about Karen. She is an unconscious mind and subject matter expert in the field of leadership and professional performance. And in her second book, Unlimiting Your Beliefs, 7 Keys to Greater Success in Your Personal and Professional Life, she reveals scientifically proven keys to greater success. She is the CEO of Velocity Leadership Consulting, which is an executive leadership coaching firm specializing in elevating leadership performance and impact using behavioral neuroscience techniques. Now, Karen realized her own performance potential and discovered the scientific keys to greater personal and professional success by achieving a lifelong dream of competing in the Ironman World Championships at age 46. I’m just going to let you all sit with that for just a second. She used this model plus 20 years of experience to help leaders elevate their performance. I could go on and on about Karen’s accomplishments, but I can’t wait any longer to introduce you all to her. Welcome to the show, Karen.

[KAREN]: Oh, thank you so much, Kathryn. I’m honored to be here.

[KATHRYN]: I am so honored and thrilled that you are here with us today and I cannot wait to dive in to this topic. I almost feel like we were destined to talk because we kind of share the same mission, which is eradicating limiting beliefs. And it seems kind of like we might’ve uncovered our limiting beliefs at about the same age. So, although you work with leaders in the professional world, what you have to say can help anyone who has limiting beliefs that get in the way of their best lives, right?

[KAREN]: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly why I wrote the book because what I discovered is, and this is part of my story, is that I’m just like everybody else and I struggle just like everyone else. And this is something that is inherent to our operating system and not many people realize it or realize that it is holding them back every day. And so, I specifically wrote the book because I thought everybody deserves to have this information and this ability to change this for themselves.

[KATHRYN]: Oh, you are so right. I love that. So I really want to start by hearing more about your amazing story. Can you give us some background as to how you got where you are today?

[KAREN]: Yes. So, as you said in the intro, I had a lifelong dream of competing in the Ironman World Championships and this is no small feat. Some say it’s the hardest race on the planet. I would probably agree with them, although I think I’ve done even tougher things than the Ironman World Championships when it was all said and done. However, it is a 2.4 mile swim in the ocean, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, finish off with a marathon just for fun. And it’s held on the big Island of Hawaii, which means it provides very difficult, challenging race conditions. You have big waves, you have extreme heat, you have very high winds that can literally knock you down off your bike to the ground and put you out of the race.

And this is the best of the best. When Ironman was started, this race was reserved for the best of the best. So you had to qualify at a qualifying race somewhere around the world. And essentially what it means is that you have to be the fastest in your age group to get to this race. So the numbers are that every year about 90,000 athletes, vie for some coveted 2000 spots in Hawaii to compete. So, and let me just set the stage further. I had been a corporate executive for the better part of 20 years, a simultaneous internal business coach before coaching was even a thing. And I was always fascinated with human behavior and thought that I was challenging myself to do things and to stretch my comfort zone, expand myself and to try to find and live my purpose on a daily basis.

And what I realized every time I looked at the Ironman World Championships, because I could see the coverage on TV every year, is that I really wasn’t doing that. What I was doing is living this small safe life doing things I knew I could achieve. And then when I saw the Ironman every year on TV, I would start to cry.

[KATHRYN]: Oh, wow.

[KAREN]: And I would cry because this emotional core deep inside me was touched because I kept looking at the screen thinking, “What if I have inside me what it takes to do that and I’m not tapping into it? I am just living this small safe life.”

[KATHRYN]: Okay, I absolutely love that you happen to say ‘what if’ right there because what happens, it seems like when people limit themselves, they’re always asking the negative ‘what ifs’ when they come up with something that they want to do but just can’t seem to. I love that in that moment you asked the positive ‘what if?’.

[KAREN]: Yes, and at the same time I would have this, you know, huge wave of emotion come over me. I also would break out into a cold sweat and think I was going to throw up. And that’s because of the enormity of this dream that I was watching play out on the television screen. And, I’ve also come to know that every one of us feels like that every day when we think about something that could be a big, gargantuan, audacious dream like that, right?

[KATHRYN]: Absolutely.

[KAREN]: We, because, yes here’s the deal. We, you know, I would answer that question to myself that yeah, maybe I do have what it takes to complete the Ironman World Championships, the toughest race on the planet, but what am I going to do? I don’t even know the first step. I don’t even know what I don’t know about this race. And the other thing that happens, which I can go into fully in a minute regarding the science of limiting beliefs is we start doing something called comparison bias, which I was comparing myself to the people on the screen in the Ironman and thinking, “Well, who do I think I am?” But I can just, you know, roll out of bed one day and say, “Yes, I’m going to train and get to the Ironman World Championships at age 44 with no triathlon training. I hadn’t even completed a marathon at the time. I had never even a rode a bike and you know, I was a super no one in that world. Like I said, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. So those are things that immediately get in our way and you know, oftentimes until you have the information that we’re going to go through today and it’s in the book, until we have that information, we just keep stopping ourselves.

[KATHRYN]: Oh, you are so right. I cannot agree more. So exact for our listeners, will you explain exactly what a limiting belief is and how those beliefs block our success?

[KAREN]: Yes. So a limiting belief is when we think or say, “I don’t have enough money, time, talent, support,” whatever, fill in the blank to achieve that. So anytime we think or say that about something, that is a limiting belief.

[KAREN]: Yes, absolutely. How did you realize that your beliefs were limiting you?

[KAREN]: Actually, I was in a class. I was in a business class and they started talking about how your mind operates. It was a class meant to really stretch us to go to the next level and they laid this all out and then I realized, “Oh my gosh, I have done this for 28 years, with, the Ironman. And I thought that I had shielded myself from doing it with other personal professional goals. And all of this came crashing down. At this very pivotal moment that I realized that wasn’t the case. That limiting beliefs were pervasive in every part of my life. And once the tears stopped flowing, the dust sort of cleared and I thought immediately about the Ironman and I thought, “Okay, no one is holding me back, but myself and I’m done with that. I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to figure out how to transform these limiting beliefs and harness the power of my mind.” Because I immediately came to understand that that’s where it was. That’s where the key lied.

[KATHRYN]: So, it was a big aha moment when you realized it was much more of an internal roadblock than anything outside of you that was keeping you from your dream?

[KAREN]: Yes, absolutely. Because other people would simply just read my words or my thoughts based on my actions and my mannerisms, and then they would go, “Oh yeah, that’s really scary. You’ve never done a triathlon and you’ve never even run a marathon. Like yeah, you probably can’t do that.” I mean, it’s in those instances where people just are a mirror, they’re just reflecting back what we’re giving them. They’re just reading what we’re saying.

[KATHRYN]: Oh yeah, absolutely. But I guess at some point your mind told you, “Well, there are people that are out there doing it. They had to start somewhere.”

[KAREN]: Mmh.

[KATHRYN]: I would imagine there was a mind shift somewhere along the way. Tell me about that.

[KAREN]: Well it goes back to further learning. So, once I came face to face with reality and that the fact I was holding myself back through limiting beliefs, then I had to educate myself as to how to transform them. And that’s what I can share in the show notes with listeners. I have a three-step technique that I followed to get to the Ironman World Championships that worked so well. I crossed the finish line two short years later.

[KATHRYN]: That is just amazing. It’s almost, I mean, my mind wants to be limiting me and even believing that. That’s so amazing. Wow. Can you tell us a little bit about those three techniques or do you want to dive on in to the seven keys to success?

[KAREN]: I’d love to tell you about the technique. So, it’s a three-step technique. So, it’s very simplistic and it’s very powerful. So when you do it, it works. And this is the other thing that I really like about, I guess my industry and my profession is that I always was looking for and took comfort in finding things that worked for everyone, every time, every situation, right. They didn’t just work for, you know, some girl down the street that was totally different than me or was naturally talented in some area or had a leg up that I didn’t have. I always wanted something that I thought, “Well, okay, I’m really an ordinary sort of person. And for those that listening right now and think that I was probably this naturally talented, fast athlete, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’m the total opposite of that. As I’ve said, I was not naturally talented at all and had never done anything like this whatsoever. So you could say I was probably the least likely to be able to do it, especially in just two years from the time I made up my mind and started training and cross the finish line. And that’s what I have to say to everybody. Each one of us has all of that inside of us. We all have that unlimited capability. It’s just that limiting beliefs tend to hold back. So this is sort of the operating system of your unconscious mind. So the three step technique is really this, you first of all have to become aware of your limiting beliefs. What are they? And so for this, I like to just take a regular sheet of paper and a pen and I ask myself the question, “What’s holding me back from achieving X?” So for me it was the Ironman, for you it will be something else. And then just jot down every single thing that comes to your mind in the order that it shows up. And don’t wordsmith it, don’t write things that you think you should or cross out things that you think shouldn’t be there. Just stream of consciousness jotted down as it literally comes flying out of your head.

Those are your limiting beliefs. And the thing that I found when I did this the first time is I thought I only had two limiting beliefs, which were, “Who do I think I am to complete the Ironman?” Like I couldn’t, I’m not a professional athlete. Who do I think I am to complete this? And then the other one was, “Well, I’m not a good swimmer.” I thought I only had those two limiting beliefs. When I went through step one of this technique, I had a whole page full.

[KATHRYN]: Oh wow.

[KAREN]: Yes. I wasn’t even consciously aware of the rest of them holding me back. And I share this. I’ve been on a bunch of shows, I’ve done a bunch of speeches and I still coach people every day. And this is still the most pervasive thing that I see, especially these unrecognized limiting beliefs. Because you know what happens? They bounce around in our head and we take them as a four letter word beginning with F. And that word is fact. F A C T.

[KATHRYN]: Yes.

[KAREN]: We interpret these thoughts, these limiting beliefs we have as factual. Oh, well the fact that I, you know, didn’t complete a marathon or hadn’t even road a bike or any of the other things I mentioned. Oh, those are facts. So there’s proof that I can’t do this. No, they are not fact at all. They are just something that your unconscious mind came up with to keep you safe because that’s really what our unconscious mind began doing and why it was created when we were cave people running around, right? It wanted to keep us out of danger and out of the mouths of lions and so it developed this operating system to err on the side of safety when we’re —

[KATHRYN]: Absolutely.

[KAREN]: Yes, when we’re faced with anything new, different or perceived as dangerous, that operating system is always going to jump in and say, “Nope, shut that down. We can’t do that.” And then it’s going to come up with reasons why we can’t do it. And then we interpret those reasons as fact.
[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely. The first thing I do with each new client that walks in my door is get to the bottom of the limiting beliefs and I have to give the cave woman brain’s speech. I don’t know how many times. So I’m right with you on that first step. What are steps two and three?

[KAREN]:
Okay. So step two is you take that list that you made of all of your limiting beliefs and then right next to each one, you write the opposite of that limiting belief. So for me, here’s examples, my limiting belief was, “Who do I think I am that I can compete in the Ironman World Championship?” The opposite of that limiting belief is, “I will compete in the Ironman World Championship.” The other one was, “I’m a terrible swimmer.” The opposite of that belief is, “I’m a great swimmer.”

[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely.

[KAREN]:
Okay, so you do that for the entire list.

[KATHRYN]:
Okay.

[KAREN]:
Then step three, and this is the most important pivotal step. Carry this list with you everywhere because now what you have to do is interrupt these thoughts, these limiting beliefs when you have them throughout the day. And let me just share from experience. I thought I maybe you know, thought or said these limiting beliefs a few times during the day. Why was I wrong? I thought these thoughts all day long, every day. So what you have to do to change this thought pattern and to transform it into an unlimiting belief that actually propels you forward to pursue it and to do what’s needed to achieve it is when you’re having that thought or you’re even saying it, stop yourself dead in your tracks. Say out loud, the unlimiting version of that belief. And for me, you can picture this. I was a CEO of a major corporate office at the time and I would literally shout to myself and say, “I will compete in the Ironman World Championships.”

[KATHRYN]:
Oh, I love that. I’m sure you’ve had heads turning.

[KAREN]:
Oh yes. I got the side-eye all the time. “Are you kidding me? Who’s that crazy lady over there talking to shadows in the corner?” And you know what, I leaned into that and I brought other people along with me because when I got the side-eye I’d say, “I bet you wonder what I just said. Huh?” And they’d go, “Yeah.” And then I’d say, “Well, I’m transforming my limiting beliefs about a lifelong dream of competing in the Ironman World Championships. What is your lifelong dream?”

[KATHRYN]:
Oh, I love that.

[KAREN]:
And everybody has one. That’s the really cool thing and that was surprising to me. I thought, “Well, somebody’s going to catch me one day saying this because they’re going to go, “I don’t have one.” Never been caught. That’s never happened because we all have this going on for us.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes, we absolutely do. I tell clients all the time that the most important words we say are the ones we say to ourselves. And it’s so true.

[KAREN]:
Yes, yes.

[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely.

[KAREN]:
Yes.

[KATHRYN]:
So, I love this system. I love a good system and I really love this system. So what can you tell us? What are the seven keys to success?

[KAREN]:
So the seven keys are, first of all tap into the dream. So I alluded to that in the intro. And this isn’t just any dream. This is the dream that causes you to break out in a cold sweat and believe you’re going to throw up because it’s so huge, it’s so enormous. And you might even feel like an impostor thinking about this dream like, “Well, who do I think I am?” You know, that I could really do this. That’s the right one. Because the dream has to be big enough to be enormously challenging for you and to force you to stretch your comfort zone. And it also, in doing so will provide an enormous internal motivation for you that cannot be extinguished. And that is what’s going to drive you to do whatever it takes to accomplish it and not give up.

Because it’s going to get tough, it’s going to get complex, it’s going get really challenging and you’re going to be tempted to give up. And that is the secret sauce that will keep you in there to accomplish it. So tap into the dream is number one, [00:24:01] beliefs, what we just talked about is number two, because once you tap into that dream, I guarantee you’re going to have limiting beliefs so you have to conquer them like we just went over.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes.

[KAREN]:
The third key is called no discipline. And this is an intentional play on words and it’s having the discipline to say no to things that are going to get in your way. Because there’s plenty of them out there.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes. You have to be intentional with the time that you are putting toward your dream. And when you say yes to something else, you’re saying no to your dream, right?

[KAREN]:
Yes, absolutely.

[KATHRYN]:
Go it.

[KAREN]:
And, I mean there’s a whole bunch more we could talk about with this, but you get the gist of it because there’s, you know, schedule is like the first thing, right? And then there’s a bunch of stuff after that. You know, for me it was nutrition. It was also who I was surrounding myself with because I had a bunch of naysayers that would just try to get in my way a lot and literally said to me, “You’ll never do this. You don’t have what it takes to do this.” And I had to realize that, “Okay, that’s their limiting beliefs that they’re trying to put on me. That has nothing to do with my actual ability to do this.”

[KATHRYN]:
Exactly. So if someone were to go pick up the book, they could get a lot more details about the no discipline stuff and the different things they can do?

[KAREN]:
Absolutely. Yes. And it’s stuff that is really at the heart of what all of us struggle with when we take on something like this or when we pursue a dream like this. Because it happens with all of us. It’s the human part of it.

[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely.

[KAREN]:
Yes. Next key is do whatever it takes. And we talked a little bit about this, but, you know, the way I describe this is if someone would have told me everything that I would’ve had to do at the beginning of this Ironman journey, I’m not sure I would have taken it on. I might’ve just said, “Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?”

[KATHRYN]:
It’s too much.

[KAREN]:
Yes, and here’s the thing. Had I not done that, I would not have found my purpose, my unique gifts that I bring to the world and how I can make a difference in the world on a daily basis. And I would have just laid out that small, safe life, unfulfilled mediocre level of happiness at best and not come to face and live all of those things I just said; purpose, legacy, what I meant to do every day, why I’m on the earth. All of it.

[KATHRYN]:
Oh, that’s such good stuff. I love that.

[KAREN]:
Thank you.

[KATHRYN]:
All right. What’s number five?

[KAREN]:
Number five is make a decision and verbalization. And these go back to some scientific studies and keys to what helps your unconscious mind get in line with what you want to do. So make a decision and verbalization. Those are two very powerful things. Six key is hire a coach. Here’s the truth. And I also found this along my journey because I am a coach. And so I would say to myself, “Well, I am a coach. Why do I need one?” Well, we all need a coach because we have to have somebody outside of ourselves who’s going to tell us the truth and who’s going to kick us on the fanny when we’re tempted to give up or we hit a roadblock. And I needed that just as much as anyone.

[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely. There are days where every coach needs a coach to nudge them along. The day that those critical voice might be a little bit louder or the day that we are just not looking at things through the best lens for us. I mean everybody needs a coach.

[KAREN]:
Yes, absolutely. Truth tellers is another way to say it, and my coach would always tell me the truth and be able to help me to regain perspective and to reframe my thoughts because sometimes they can kind of get out of whack and out of perspective. You know, you can lose perspective. And let me say this too, you know, because I get this sometimes that, “Well, my partner or my spouse or my friends can be a coach to me.” There’s the truth of it. No, they can’t, and it’s because they love you and they’re not, they don’t want to think that they’re hurting you.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes, their brains don’t want to let them say things that can hurt us. Right?

[KAREN]:
Right, yes. When it might be the exact thing we need to hear, but they’re going to hold themselves back from saying something because of that relationship. When you have a coach that you’re paying money, that you’re writing a check to, there’s a level of accountability there and you’re counting on them to speak the truth to you.

[KATHRYN]:
Oh, absolutely. So I love those, the seven keys to success. So what do you think is the number one thing blocking us from success?

[KAREN]:
I think it’s two things, and one is that we don’t dream big enough. Again, I hear this all the time in my daily work. Just a gentleman that I was talking to the other day about working together. I had to stop the conversation and say, “Okay, now wait a minute. I’m not talking about these garden variety dreams that you probably can achieve. I’m talking about the so big you have to run to the bathroom kind of dream that you have no earthly idea how you’re going to do this. And yet it taps into some emotional bank inside of you. That’s the dream I’m talking about.” And then I literally had to wait a full minute in silence for him to think about this. And ultimately he came up with two of them. And I could tell as he was sharing them and describing them to me, his voice was cracking , he was stuttering a little bit, he was really struggling to find his words. And I said, “Those are the right dreams. That’s what we’re talking about.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes. That’s it.

[KAREN]:
So that’s number one that we don’t dream big enough. And number two is that then we all suffer from limiting beliefs, because, here’s how this works, right? So I uncovered my limiting beliefs with regard to the Ironman World Championships. I unlimited them, which means I transformed them and then I was able to do the training and whatever it took to cross the finish line two years later. Well then I went into another level. I took it to a higher level by becoming an international, ultra-endurance athlete. So I went completely off the rails. And so that meant I had new limiting beliefs. So this is, again this is how the operating system works and once you know how the operating system works, you can work much, much better so that you have the outcome you desire. That’s all we’re talking about here. But my point is, this is not a one and done.

[KATHRYN]:
No, no, that doesn’t mean that all of the beliefs are going to be eradicated. It just means that we’re not going to let them stop us from moving toward what we want

[KAREN]:
Then we now engage a system to transform them every time so that we can get our power fully behind us in whatever we want to tackle.

[KATHRYN]:
Absolutely. Before we wrap up, and I ask you the last question of the day, where can our listeners go to learn even more about you?

[KAREN]:
They can go to my website which I’ve, I actually have a special page set up for all of your listeners where they can find the three-step technique we talked about, they can find my book, they can get in touch with me, we can have a conversation, whatever they would like to do. And there’s also other tools and videos there that that folks love. So the name of my company is called Velocity Leadership Consulting. If you put those three words together, add a .com forward slash greater (velocityleadershipconsulting.com/success), meaning greater success, we can connect.

[KATHRYN]:
That is fantastic. I hope everyone will go to the show notes page and go directly to that link. That is so great. So, Karen, I like to suggest a one imperfect action that my listeners can go do, whether it’s thinking about something or actually doing something at the end of every podcast because that’s what we’re about, not just not just listening, but actually taking something away and going out into the world and doing it. What is the one imperfect action you would recommend that our listeners can take away today regarding their limiting beliefs?

[KAREN]:
Get in touch with your dream.

[KATHRYN]:
Yes. Absolutely.

[KAREN]:
No matter how outrageous, ridiculous it might sound even if you say it out loud or you think someone’s going to laugh. You know, I worked with a coach once who said, if people aren’t laughing at your dreams, they aren’t big enough.

[KATHRYN]:
Oh yes.

[KAREN]:
He was right. So get in touch with your dream.

[KATHRYN]:
That’s perfect. I love that. I just can’t thank you enough for being here today. I’ve had the best time with our conversation. It’s been awesome.

[KAREN]:
I have too. It was a delight to be on your show. Thank you Kathryn.

[KATHRYN]:
Well, I’m so glad that all of you have joined us for this episode today to learn from Karen Brown all about our unlimiting beliefs. So like Karen said, the one imperfect action I encourage you to do today is get in touch with your dream and that dream is going to cause you anxiety. If you are thinking about your actual biggest dream, you are going to feel some real discomfort there. Don’t let that scare you away from it. Dig in deeper and get in touch with that big drain and when you do that, pat yourself on the back, celebrate the fact that you took action toward the life that you want.

And until we meet back here next week, go out and find a friend or a loved one to add to our community of women striving toward our best lives, supporting, and nudging each other along the way. Share the website and the podcast with them and go out and take imperfect action towards that life.

If you love this podcast, will you rate and review it on iTunes or your favorite podcast player? Also, I have a free nine-part blueprint to thrive email course. It’s a step by step guide to find out what you want your life to look like, exactly what’s holding you back, and how to get to that life you want. Head on over to www.imperfectthriving.com/course to get the course today.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.