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As you probably know by now, our LIFE is a journey filled with countless ups and downs, twists and turns, and unexpected challenges within our story. Along this path, we often encounter mental and emotional roadblocks that hinder our progress, cloud our judgment, and leave us feeling stuck. Whether it's confusion about the next step, anxiety about making the right decision, hitting a creative or career block, a lack of motivation, or crippling self-doubt, the mind spins: Where am I going? Am I happy? What am I doing? When will I be happy? These obstacles can be frustrating and overwhelming, making it very difficult to move forward. Previously, before experiencing mindset coaching, I personally would have notched a roadblock up as failure. My mind had been programmed from a young age, that anything less than 100% was failure.
I would be totally stressed out, spiralling into anxiety overthinking all the WHY's and WHAT IF's... ultimately not feeling good enough. Which never EVER helped the situation! When negative emotions and fear rule the situation - it makes EVERYTHING harder. What I've learned since then is that hitting a mental or emotional roadblock does NOT mean I am a failure, or it’s the end of the road. It's actually a fork in the road, a good check in point. Here's why: An emotion in itself is a feeling, and feelings are not facts. The study of NLP (Neuro-Linguistics-Programming) tells us that we experience our first negative emotions in early childhood, typically 0-7 years old. If the negative emotion that we felt for the very first time (like fear, anger, hurt, guilt or sadness) was too confusing for our young mind, or left unresolved, the memory of that experience (and our reaction or response to it) is stored within the unconscious part of our mind. The part of our mind where our habits and patterns are formed, that essentially runs on auto-pilot. The mind then uses this past experience as a reference point for each time that specific emotion is arises in future. Unconsciously filtering new information coming in and present-day experiences on that past trigger point, even though we are no longer a child. The mind unconsciously in a split second says “remember that time you felt scared about X when you were young? This is JUST LIKE THAT”. When in 99% of circumstances it is not. So, our response as adults now to the fear is bigger and can often be out of proportion to the context of the situation in front of us. Have you ever wondered “Why am I so fearful of X, when other people are not? Why do I get so angry and frustrated about X, when so-and-so doesn’t even care? Why can’t I let go of it?” This is why, shown in my example above, I continued to notch up every “No” in my life as a failure. My mind had unconsciously stored an experience of failure when I was 7yo. From that moment I learned to react and respond with fear in a specific way any time there was a possibility of failure. This inhibited me in many ways throughout my adult life. The specific coaching that helped me to realise all of this and release my fear of failure and reprogram the self-limiting belief I had formed that I was not good enough, was the transformational process of TimeLine Therapy®. You can watch my video below to learn more about TLT or read about it here. Now thankfully, when a roadblock presents itself, I like to see the situation as a unique opportunity for inner growth and self-reflection. I am no longer trapped by fear of failure. And this is what I want for you too. It is the reason why just 6 months after working with a Mindset Coach myself in 2017, I went on to retrain and become a NLP and TimeLine Therapy® Practitioner – so I could pay this gift forward to other women just like me. Where do we start when we hit a mental roadblock? Absolutely, we need to honour our emotions and express them. There is a saying I like to remember: “What we resist - will persist”. You can only deny emotions for so long. We must begin to unpack the emotion and the trigger, and find healthy ways to release the emotion. The most powerful way to do this for me is to journal my thoughts. And instead of falling to pieces I stop and ask 3 simple questions to check in: 1. What emotions am I feeling? Why is this situation causing me to feel this way? 2. What are the options in front of me? 3. What is this situation trying to teach me? Or, what can I learn from this? When you are learning you are growing, and you are NOT failing. It's during these challenging moments that we have the chance to zoom out, look for higher perspectives, and tap into our intuition to find the solutions to move forward with ease. Conquering the fear of failure always begins with a process of self-discovery. The inner work for emotional healing may require patience and perseverance, but please know you are not alone! There is guidance and coaching available to support you, whenever you are ready. ![]() About the Author: Janel Briggs is a NLP and Timeline Therapy Practitioner on a mission to support women across Australia and Singapore in healing their professional anxieties, insecurities and imposter syndrome to build unwavering confidence and self-belief. The goal is to level up your life and career by learning how to to live fearless and anxiety free! Connect with Janel on social media via Linkedin or Instagram.
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Have you ever started a new habit, or made a big change to your eating and exercise routines, only to quit a or few days or a week into it?? You really WANT the end result, you know that changing your habits will give you that end result, BUT making those changes EVERY day just feels so overwhelming or exhausating... I think we that we sometimes forget that: Old habits take time to shift, and new habits time to form. Nothing happens immediately. Our habit self is formed through repeated past experiences. Continual repetition of the same experience over and over again biologically imprints the habit into our brain and our nervous system. There is a learning process for forming each new habit. We have to RETRAIN our mind AND our body. And it's likely that we may not get it right first time! As we've been operating on this same cycle or habit pattern for a very long time. Where I see the biggest mindset shifts need to happen for life changing success: 1) Reframing thoughts of failure to compassion If/when you fall off the wagon it's so easy to notch it up as a "failure". Giving the green light to quit and allowing all the negative thoughts in "you can't do this, it's too hard, why try?". But instead... Why not treat yourself with compassion? Accept that everyone slips up, and use it as an opportunity to learn from it. Asking: What is working here and what isn't? * Did you make the changes and process fun? Or did you dread it? * Did you look at the change as a great opportunity? Or as a punishment? * How could you make this process easier and more enjoyable? 2) Small steps, give us big results long term What can you do to make the changes less "overwhelming"? Did you take on TOO MUCH change at once and exhaust yourself? Instead of trying to make a number of BIG changes all at once, is there a baby step you can start with? Start small! Break it down, and build your habits in blocks. What is one step you can take this week? Focus on that ONE THING for the next 3-4 weeks until you get really good at it. Then, you add another step for the following 3-4 weeks. If your habits don't line up with your dream, you need to either change your habits OR change your dream. - John Maxwell The truth is, habit change ultimately feels hard because it requires us to break free from our automatic behaviors and deeply ingrained patterns. Our brains are wired to seek out familiarity and routine, making it difficult to create new habits and replace old ones. However, if we can approach the habit change with more self-compassion and make it esier with smaller more achieveable steps it is possible to create lasting change! By doing so, we can break free from old patterns and live a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life. If you have any questions or comments about this topic please reach out! hello@janelbriggs.com ![]() About the Author: Janel Briggs is a NLP and Timeline Therapy Practitioner on a mission to support women across Australia and Singapore in healing their professional anxieties, insecurities and imposter syndrome to build unwavering confidence and self-belief. The goal is to level up your life and career by learning how to to live fearless and anxiety free! Connect with Janel on social media via Linkedin or Instagram.
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Our minds are powerful and valuable, but they can be tricky to master when situational anxiety flares up. Some people find they thrive in new experiences and love meeting new people. If you are one of those people, my hat goes off to you! Like many others, embracing the new is something I have had to learn how to love. If you’ve ever tried to support a loved one with anxiety, you’ll know that new events and situations where they are standing an abyss of so many unknown’s and all the uncertainty their fear can be debilitating. When it begins to unfold in front of us it’s like the person is fighting a battle we can’t see. We don’t exactly know what to do, or how to fix it. We want our loved one to listen to reason and be OK. But their fear can be so convincing that they believe something (everything!) bad is going to happen. As a Mindset Coach I want to share with you a proactive tool to help you to help them deescalate the situation, using a concept called reframing fear to excitement. REFRAME FEAR - TO - EXCITEMENT This tool will help your loved one calm the mind and move forward feeling more excited and confident. 1. Listen for the core language of anxiety. Words can be your guide to understanding when a person’s fear starting to building. A tell-tale sign is: WHAT IF (a bad thing happens)? WHAT IF (a negative outcome)? WHAT IF (resistance language "I can't") OR when you hear the person worst case scenario planning. (plan A, B, C, D) 2. Immediately get them to stop and ask them to take a breath. This will halt the mind bringing their awareness back into the body, and circumvent the thought process. 3. Reframe their language. This may take a little practice but start by repeating their “What IF” statement BUT instead of a bad ending you insert a good, or happy ending for them. Shifting the mindset to a positive outcome. “What IF it all turns out better than you could imagine? 4. Make the “unknown” known. Anxiety often sparks due to a fear of the unknown or uncertainty. Ask yourself and affirm what is known. What do we know about this situation? What can we be certain of? What is within our control. 5. Help them to understand that anxiety and excitement have the same vibrational feeling in the body. “You must excited? Imagine all the cool people you are going to meet, and all the fun you will have. Those butterfly’s show up when you get excited right?” 6. Reaffirm the excitement and positive outcome. “I am excited for you! This is going to be so fun. You’ll have a great time. Everyone will love meeting you, you have so much to offer.” EXAMPLE OF THIS TECHNIQUE IN ACTION:Recently, my almost 10yo son joined a new activity after school in Singapore with a group of kids that were older than him on a subject he was lacking in confidence. Even though he originally said he wanted to do this activity, the day of the first group event was looming, and he was beginning to drag his heels saying he no longer wanted to go. I get it, kids making friends and meeting new people can be overwhelming. But as a family we decided a long time ago to always make an effort to give it 1 chance. Then we can decide after that whether we keep it or ditch it. Usually, we keep it – as we are not in the habit of letting our fear of the unknown rule our lives anymore. In the car on the way to there, I could see his mind start to tick, tick, tick. He began to ask:
Immediately I knew as soon as he said “WHAT IF” this was fear talking, not his rational mind. His core language trigger to me was the phrase “What IF” followed by a resistance word (don’t, can’t) and a negative outcome. I could hear his anxiety building and this was a great opportunity to help him de-escalate the fear. I asked him to stop right there and take a breath. We took a big deep breath together. I then proceeded to use the power of positive language to reframe and shift his mind from the most terrible outcome he is imaging, to a good ending. I repeated his “What IF” back to him with a positive outcome:
I then helped him to make the “unknown” known by focusing on a previous experience.
I reminded him that fear and excitement have the same vibrational feeling of alarm in the body. “You must be feeling those excited butterflies in your tummy again. Excited butterflies come when we do fun and exciting things right?” We walked into the building and up the escalator into the activity room, we took the long way to get there - moving the body is very helpful to release stress hormones. We arrived and he turned to me and said “Mum, I am excited about this 😊”. I said, “Yes buddy, I am excited for you too – this is going to be so much fun!”. And it was fun, he had a blast. We pre-framed it to be a good experience. I picked him up an hour later and he raved about the activity and everyone in it. He smashed the activity and cannot wait to go again. We pre-empted for a good ending and primed his mind for fun. He could now feel the excitement buzzing withing his body INSTEAD of the fear. The entire process took us 5 minutes. You can absolutely do this too! With children AND adults. It’s so easy to allow fear to jump into the driver seat and take control of new situations where there are so many unknowns. But every time we do, fear wins. It takes our mind away from the joy and the fun of living in the present moment. When we treat our loved ones who struggle with anxiety with a level of compassion that also takes positive action we can begin to help them to learn how to bring their own anxiety alarm down and enjoy new experiences for what they are, FUN. I hope these suggestions help you support a loved one with anxiety. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out. If you or someone you know is sick of struggling with their anxiety I run a program called “Freedom from Anxiety” for women who are ready to feel more carefree and confident in all areas of their life. To learn more about Janel's Freedom from Anxiety Program 1:1 Coaching head here. ![]() About the Author: Janel Briggs is a NLP and Timeline Therapy Practitioner on a mission to support women across Australia and Singapore in healing their professional anxieties, insecurities and imposter syndrome to build unwavering confidence and self-belief. The goal is to level up your life and career by learning how to to live fearless and anxiety free! Connect with Janel on social media via Linkedin or Instagram.
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Do you feel like you move through each day, month, year at the speed of light... but never actually achieve anything? I've been hearing this a lot from my new clients this year, like no matter what they do they still feel so far behind on those big life goals and dreams. Typically, when I hear a similar thought process a few times, I know it's valuable to share wider. So, I am giving you the exact tool I give to my clients in private coaching to increase their overall sense of well-being when goal-getting. It begins with a simple question: Q: When was the last time you celebrated YOURSELF and how far you have already come? The mind can so easily get stuck on "all the things we haven't done" or are "yet to accomplish". The ego telling us we are unorganised, lazy, and need to be "more productive". Essentially the mind's job is to assess for risk but, as you probably know these thoughts cause us to feel GUILT, perhaps like we aren't good enough. And guilt is 100% the biggest showstopper to any good action! Guilt creates resistance. We are less likely to do the things we want to do, when guilt is in the drivers seat. So, to cut the guilt and create more momentum it's time for a reality check. Here is the tool: At the end of each week take 5 minutes to sit and reflect. Grab a cuppa and a notebook and write down the answer to 3 questions: 1. What went well, or what were you proud of last week? |