It’s not over ‘til it’s over,...

…and even then it’s not over

A pilot’s job is to consistently bring the plane back on course throughout the journey. They do not immediately stop flying the plane as soon as there is turbulence or a disgruntled passenger.

Correct?

In this episode, I will discuss how it is important to refrain from making a conclusion about something while it is happening.

You can make adjustments moment to moment to consistently bring the plane back on course but you can not stop flying the plane.

When you have landed, you can then reflect on the experience and make assessments on what worked and what didn’t.

Before embarking on a new goal, set aside time to visualise the process and how it will succeed. If you are visualising everything negative that can happen it will end with anxiety and a raised heart rate.

Aim to be someone who is in control of the situation, is calm and in control of their thoughts, and is the one programmed to win.

Even when we make blunders, it is not really over. We can recover, assess how we went, learn a lesson and have another go at it!

See below for a full transcript.

Don’t forget to go to the bottom of this page and let me know in the comments any questions or what you think or just share the love on social. Thanks

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Transcript of Podcast

It's not over until it's over and even then, it's not over. I recently sent out an email to my email list, and it was inspired by a conversation that I had with somebody I told the story about how years ago I learned how to jump out of a plane without using any adenaline.

So we spent about a week, visualizing and preparing to actually jump out of a plane into a skydive while managing our heart rate and not kind of freaky out. I used to be a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and I had done skydiving before, and the experience of jumping out of a plane with no adrenaline is completely different because it was like, I was fully present, and it felt like a really, really, really long time, when I was falling through the air and taking in every single sight and sound and smell and sensation.

So it was really different jumping out of a plane with no adrenaline and I was able to do it kind of slowly and be present with myself. Not that you jump out of a plane any slower when you're present but it really did feel like the taken the entire experience.

The biggest lesson that I learned from that experiment, was that it's not over until it's over.

You see, when you're preparing to jump out of a plan which is quite an adrenaline spiking activity, it can bring up a lot of fear, it can bring up a lot of anxiety, even in the lead up to the experience. It's one of those things where you can start to let your mind wander in all kinds of different directions, in the lead up to the experience.

So, in the week prior, when we were visualizing, learning to kind of control what we did with our minds, and what we did with our breath, what we're going to be doing with our bodies in that moment. It wasn't difficult, it was just a constant and consistent practice, I noticed myself so often, like going off track.

If you can imagine- I don't know if you're listening to this if you remember, hopefully you do remember, or you've heard of before - cassette tapes. Remember when we used to watch videos and cassette tapes, and if you were listening to a cassette tape, and the thread of the tape inside the cassette was kind of, you know wonky or bent or folded or something, (some of us, some of you listening, you're gonna be like what is she talking about? it's kind of old) But if the cassette tape was bent or wonky, you had to kind of rewind it or stick a pencil in the hole and kind of unwind it a little bit, straighten out the tape, and then rewind it again or wind it back up again.

And that's kind of how we used to practice, coming back to the present moment and coming back to imagining everything going right and coming back to visualizing the things that we wanted to go well.

Going well, while we were in this high stakes environment, high stress environment.

So, what that looks like in reality was, we would imagine, touching down, and feeling the feelings of landing and again safe and wonderful and it worked and just feeling really happy and excited that it worked, and kind of visualize going backwards;

all of the events before that, before you land, and the moment that the parachute gets pulled out and the moment before the patient gets pulled out, coming out like jumping out of the plane and sitting in the plane before you jump in getting ready to jump and then you know the plane kind of flying along and in taking off and kind of reversing, all the way back to the very very beginning right to driving into the skydiving facility.

So what can happen is when you're visualizing something that you want ,is you can imagine it going wrong. Now, we all do this, this is what anxiety structurally really is. It's us imagining the thing in the future to go wrong, feeling the feelings of that thing already having gone wrong in our bodies and it kind of causes tension and it causes us to pause and stop and be unable to focus.

So what we're doing in this situation is really doing pretty much exactly, learning how we naturally started thinking about stressful situations and being able to control and be calm under fire.

So, what we noticed happening was in the days leading up and even on the day, you'd start to visualize the thing that you wanted happening, but the visualization of a strategy would go awry, at some point, so I might be seeing or imagining, everything's all good. And then, imagining that I'm sitting in the plane and the whole plane starts to shudder and something goes wrong, or imagining that we're about to jump out of the plane and I'm not strapped in properly and I fall, or imagining that the parachute doesn't pull out or whatever.

So you can imagine all these things go wrong, and the way that I like to envision that or make that into a metaphor is like, that's where the tape or the cassette has kind of folded and gone all crinkly. What you want to do is rewind and straighten it out. So what we would do in those moments is rewind the visualization and come back and train ourselves to visualize things going exactly the way that we wanted and then follow through the visualization right until the end was so powerful.

And the biggest lesson there was, you know, how often we can be sitting in a moment and the bad thing hasn't happened yet, but we are projecting so far out into the future that we're imagining the bad thing to happen, or we're trying not to imagine the bad thing happening more like it, and it's causing us to feel certain feelings in the moment and make decisions about how we're going in the moment, as it's actually happening.

So another thing that I used to do was, I would assess how I was going in lead up to a tournament for karate or I would assess how I was going in this experiment, of trying to control my adrenaline, while jumping out of the plane while I'm actually in the plane, trying to control my adrenaline.

And in those moments I would have moments where I would feel it spike, I feel my heart rate rise and it was because I was visualizing something to go wrong, or someone would crack a joke and I was just feeling nervous or something unexpected would happen.

But what happens is in those moments, you can really start to judge how well or not well, something is going and make a decision before it's actually happened, so I've not landed on the ground yet. I've not taken off the parachute I've not walked over to the shed, where we have a debrief about how it all wen , I'm still in the air and I haven't even jumped yet. And I've decided I'm doing it wrong because I'm having a negative thought or I've decided I'm doing it wrong, I'm not doing it well enough, I'm not good enough, because I'm having a funky feeling inside of my body, and that is precisely where your strategy goes awry.

So, when I was an athlete, I love using my athlete metaphors because I talked about this with athletes and performers all the time in my coaching practice. When I was an athlete, we could be in the middle of a tournament, and you have three minutes per round to actually fight your opponent and win, now inside of those three minutes literally anything could happen. You could be winning all of the way and then injure yourself, and you can't defend yourself and then the other person wins. You could be losing all the way and then your opponent relaxes and then you're able to kind of make it back and make an epic comeback. It could be nose to nose right up until the very last moment where one person just happens to be slightly faster than the next in that specific moment, anything can happen in those three minutes.

And the key to making sure that you're the person who is, you know as best as you can, in control of the situation is the person who is more, I want to call it programmed to win,…

I want to call it the person who is more conditioned to remain calm and clear and in control of their thoughts and not deciding how it's going as it's going except deciding that it's going to work, except deciding it is working out in your favor, except deciding that you just have to get the next point, except deciding that, from this moment, anything is possible.

And what that really is, is an invitation and an opportunity to stay completely present. That's all it is, completely present.

So why am I bringing this up? I had a conversation with somebody recently, and they were talking about a launch that they're doing inside of their business. Now this person was, I don't know midway through the launch, they still had a long time, enough time inside of their launch that I would consider it to be a launch inside of itself, it was quite long inside of the business. And this person had been not getting the results that they wanted to get in that moment, they were overthinking it, and had decided that it just wasn't going to work. That's it.

Now, what happened was that that person had a conversation with somebody who was kind of in the same industry as them, who said to them, it's not going to work because people don't want to buy this particular thing on this topic at this time it's just a bit too difficult. People want other things right now, which is complete and utter nonsense.

They had someone close to them, who they trusted, tell them that they're some kind of statistic inside of their business wasn't particularly good enough for what it was that they were trying to achieve, which again is absolute nonsense, and the reason why I say it's nonsense, is because anytime someone tells you something or you believe a thought or you start thinking something inside of your mind. And you can actually find evidence of the opposite like right now people are buying this or not buying that. Or there's someone with exactly those kinds of numbers inside of the business who's killing it.

It's just proof that whatever we're saying to ourselves or whatever, others are saying to us is one option of many right (options). So we were having this conversation, they're part of the way through their launch they've on some level decided it's not going to work, and all of the reasons why it's not going to work, and this person had kind of just resigned to the fact that this wasn't necessarily going to be a successful experience, and whether it is or isn't going to be successful, doesn't really matter…

…But what matters more than anything, is that, you know, halfway through the experience, we don't make a judgment on how it's going, because anything can happen from here. It's an attitude and anything can happen from here is what calls us back into the present moment, brings us back, our power brings us back, opportunities to shift and change gears, along the way. And that actually helps us to take back control of a situation that may actually not be working.

So it's not about being in denial that something's not working like if you're in a relationship right now. And something's not quite feeling great, inside of the relationship. It's not about, you know just breaking up the relationship and walking away, so that you can then go yeah now I can see that didn't work. No, it's about thinking about things that are ongoing, ongoing experiences like a relationship. Think about it like a pilot who's steering a plane. A plane when in flight is 99% of the time, off course, a pilot's job is to consistently bring the plane back on course.

So what we're doing and we're being present, and we're trusting that anything can happen from here is staying in the now and deciding what it is that we want to decide about the next minute the next hour the next couple of days of your launch the rest of your life with your relationship. The next conversation, whatever it might be, so we're not making up a conclusion about where it's going. As we are in the moment, except to decide to readjust or reframe or remove or disprove or do something in the moment that's going to have us more connected to where it is that we want to go in the future.

So if it's something that's finite, something with a beginning, a middle and an end, such as jumping out of a plane or a launch inside of your business or you're writing a book or you're creating something for yourself, well, you know,..

it's got a beginning, a middle and an end, anything like that. You want to make sure that while you're in it, you are adjusting moment to moment for the outcome that you want.

Despite what external factors, ie, results of other people, other conversations, your thoughts are telling you about how it's going. So if you've got people telling you,

‘oh this is not the type of thing people want to buy right now it's not very successful, oh hey the economy's not great right now, don't you know people are in lockdown, they're not really interested in learning, or I don't know, conversion rates are not that good so therefore this equals that strategy, etc.’

You know we can start looking at all the things and make up our mind about why something will or won't work. Or we can come back to the moment and decide that you can take back control wherever we want.

So if it's something finite, don't make an assessment about how it's going, while you're still in the middle of it. A negative assessment, because while you're still in the middle of it, you have an opportunity to change that. So only make assessments about what you can do to improve.

If you're in a situation that is more infinite, so say parenting, or a relationship that you are committed to for as long as you know, until death do you part, something that's more infinite, you don't just want to like, stop and then assess, but you might create points in time, where you stop and have a team meeting with yourself right, so you might stop and go.

‘You know what, let's have a little meeting between the two of us, what's working, what's not, what can we readjust, where are you happy where are you not happy. Where do you feel like your needs are not being met. How can I do better. How can I receive better how can I take care of myself better,…”

Like these little moments in time where you can kind of assess how you're showing up without exiting. But one thing I love to do is have a regular meeting point for that.

You see something that I find a lot of people do is they wait until New Year’s to review their year. Like after the new year period in that new portal when it's all the newness of January, we start thinking about what we want to cast our visions forward for for the future. We look back on the year that was and we assess it.

But a year is such a long time, to me it's the most boring thing ever to go back over an entire year of my life and try to remember who I was in January, I’m not the same person I was in January as December. I'm not the same person January to February. So I like to have on a more infinite scale in terms of running a business which is more infinite, having regular points in time where I sit down and assess how I'm going and adjust course, as I'm going.

But you can find finite moments inside of infinite contexts, like a finite moment might be a launch inside of a business, a finite moment might be a weekly meeting inside of your relationship or a monthly date inside of your relationship where you talk about what's working and what's not and how you can improve. So, find those finite times.

And while you're in that finite time and you have set an intention for what it is that you want to do inside of that finite time don't make a judgement about how it's going until you have some closure on experience.

Instead of deciding it's not working, it's all gone to, you know what, stop, pause, and remind yourself, anything can happen from here, just come back to the intention of where it is that you want to go.

So with that, I'm going to give you one more insight around this, if you don't set an intention. If you don't take responsibility for that intention. As you move into, I guess a chapter of your life, and then set a time for when you're going to assess it, it's really quite difficult to manage how it is that you're going.

Imagine a pilot, taking off in the sky, wanting to land in another place, they don't just take off and decide where they're going, once they're in the air, do they, they have an idea about where they're going, we check the weather, they make sure that everyone's safe, they have got all their mechanics in order in the plane, and then they take off.

So we have an idea or intention for what it is that we want to create. Now during the flight. There might be some turbulence, during the flight you might have a crazy customer on the flight, or someone gets sick or something goes wrong. In the moment, you wouldn't stop flying and go and focus on whatever it is that's happening, and let the plane just do whatever it wants, you actually would deal with it as you're flying, and not decide that the whole flight is a mess because something has happened on the flight, you would experience it, do it, deal with it, deal with it however you do stay on course.

And when you land, make an assessment, look at what you can improve, look at what didn't work. What did work, take responsibility for yourself. I hope this is making sense.

So inside of the infinite, there's always finite moments where you can assess. Before you begin, each finite chunk, set an intention. And while you're inside that chunk of time, please, don't worry about making an assessment about how it is going

…or whether it's working or whether it's not working or rather deciding that it's gone to poop before you've actually landed just focus on what can you do right now, make sure that you're constantly checking in and staying on course, and then at the end, assess.

So I hope this has been helpful. It was inspired by a real conversation, as all these conversations are, and what I'd like to invite you to do is if you haven't yet, head to the Self Coaching Guide on this website, which people rave about from all around the world and I love it myself so much, I learned how to assess finite chunks of time for myself every week and every 90 days a long time ago. It became a life changing practice to just kind of stop, drop in and assimilate what I'd learned, week to week, and then of course re-assimilate every 90 days. I have a free tracker that you can download and use yourself from wherever you are with instructions on how to use it and some incredible questions that will have you thinking in ways that you've never thought about before about your life, potentially, and it's free. You can download it from my website so two things.

Number one, I want you to think about what are the finite chunks, it might be a day in your life, what's a finite chunk don't asses how the day's going until the end of the day or even the next day. It might be a launch inside of your business, it might be a particular chapter of life with your children. It might be a certain time period like a week or a month.

It could be during the middle of a project inside of your life like writing a book, or writing a song or cooking a cake, right, it's not about assessing how it's going until it's completely done because even when we make blunders, big blunders, if you've ever been with me in the kitchen, you know there are big blunders that happen. Even when we make blunders, we can recover and assess how we went, some of that assessment might be, you know what, I stuffed up these two ingredients, I had meltdown in the kitchen. Not saying this is anyone that I know😉. And it still worked out okay so next time I might choose to like not melt down.

Anyway, I hope that's really helpful, and I really, really, really hope that this inspires you, next time you go out and you venture to do something new to put yourself out of your comfort zone to try something you've never done before, to have your own version of jumping out of a plane with no adrenaline.

I really hope it invites you, it encourages you to

stay present, and stay in the moment, and do what you can with what you have and then assess, at the end, and take responsibility and learn.

The beautiful thing about doing that is you realize that even when it's over, it's not really over. Because once you learn the lesson and you assimilate what has happened for you. You really get it, you don't make the same mistake again. And it becomes really exciting to have another crack at it. And every time you then have a new crack at it, it gets easier, it becomes more fun, it's more inflow.

So there's always another opportunity around the corner and that's why the title of this podcast is, it's not over till it's over and even then, it's not really over, because you can always have another go. So I really hope that this episode has inspired you and that my self coaching guide can help you with that. I'm really looking forward to seeing you again.

Stay Curious, Stay open. The life you crave is so much closer than you think.

LOVE