#38. How’s Your Relationship Mindset with Self, Others and Your Job?

Episode Transcription

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  00:58

The three biggest decisions we make in lives are how we think about ourselves, who we give our love to and what we do for money. They are the biggest decisions you’re ever going to make. In this episode, I would like for you to do an audit around your mindset on these three things that I believe can make a massive difference to your life. I want you to be honest with yourselves. Check in right now on where your is mindset at on life? What do you think about yourself? Is it love or loathing? What about your relationships with others? Are you constantly in toxic relationships? Do you go to work every day simply trading hours for money? 

So today we’re are going to look at the these three key areas of your life, where you can make these changes. 

Every human being has the capacity to live an extraordinary life of joy, success, vitality, and achievement. But so many people make silly excuses and give inexcusable reasons as to what they can’t have, don’t have, and about what they deserve. If you haven’t impressed yourself lately with how much you can learn, adapt and contribute, then it’s time to challenge yourself with some big mindset shifts. Now is the time to check in with those beliefs that don’t serve you, and mind your mindset. I heard somewhere that THE MAIN MOTIVATION FOR HUMAN BEINGS IS TO BE FREE IN WHO WE ARE and to pursue what we truly desire.  And no one is saying that is easy. 

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  03:04

I am constantly checking in with the way that I am thinking about my life, my relationships, my work, my connection with others including my husband. I also check in to see if I am on track with my mission. I do trip up, sometimes more often than I care to admit and I can be really hard on myself. It is so important to me to live my best life every day and I can beat myself up when I don’t or I can’t for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter to me a trip up is a trip up. 

I look at where I am in my life right now and at my age, I have to be realistic, I have lived the greater part of my life and the future is unknown. I don’t know how many years of quality life I have ahead of me. But whatever that is, I want to live everyday feeling amazing, experiencing joy, surrounding myself with people I love and who uplift me  and being in the best physical, emotional and mental condition I can possibly be in.  I don’t want to waste a single day. Every day we have on this earth is so precious and yet so many people take life for granted by having a bad attitude towards life, but most importantly a terrible horrible mindset. 

I know shifting mindset is a huge thing and you may say ….I don’t know where to start?  I totally get it and I promise you, I had to take some big falls in life before I seriously woke up to myself. I have had everything taken away from me. My first husband committed suicide, I watched my father die, I’ve had an eating disorder, I’ve been bullied, I’ve been shamed, I have had death threats, lost everything and I wouldn’t change any of that because look at me now. If I didn’t hit rock bottom, I would not have been able to build myself back up again a bigger and better version of myself. I would not be doing this podcast and have the desire to help others live their best lives. 

But guess what You don’t need to go through all those terrible traidies do live a great life. You can start by changing your mindset. You are worth the effort, always have been and always will be.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  06:25

How is your relationship with yourself right now? Are you the person of your dreams? Are you aiming to be your best self every day? I believe that In order to find the person of your dreams, you need to become the person of your dreams. You need to be aware of your mindset around yourself as a human being and take accountability for your own life. Are you all that you expect of others or are you just looking to blame someone else for everything that goes wrong in your life? When you look in the mirror, and look at yourself, and I’m not talking about the Instagram version, how do you really feel about yourself? 

You want to be able to say that you embrace who you are, knowing and accepting that you have room for improvement, because it is ok to want to do better and be better. We can all do better. It’s ok to say there are some things that I am not proud of, but despite those things, I know I am going to do something remarkable with my life. I am going to make something of my life. I am going to do something that matters. You have to be able to say to yourself, I do matter and I am valuable. People have to believe they are valuable and people feel valued otherwise they will feel disconnected to their world. 

One of the most important things you can do to begin to value you and to change your mindset is to watch your language, that is to stop talking negatively about yourself.

Wow this is something that I have had to learn the hard way and I still catch myself out doing this now, even if it’s in jest, I still have to learn to stop putting myself down. How can I expect others to respect me, when I disrespect myself? As a young girl growing up, all I got from my family was that I was not good enough, smart enough, and that I was useless and lazy so talking badly about myself came easy. I was just validating what others were saying about me. This became a habit. Not only that but I have had to stop doubting myself to my own self. This self-talk is so destructive and it gets you nowhere.

You know, how you talk about yourself to yourself is a reflection of who you will become in the future. Unfortunately what you say to yourself will manifest. Don’t underestimate manifestation. It’s a real thing! There’s no doubt about it. So when you speak negatively about yourself you can become that negative person who attracts more negativity. You will attract all those things that you are speaking about. You will bring this bad energy into your life. It will filter into your work, your energy levels, your daily routine and your relationships. Garbage in, garbage out will not serve us in life. This negativity will drag you down and who wants to live like that.

The lesson here is that it is hard to accomplish good things in your life with that terrible mindset. You’re showing the whole world that you think you’re not worthy of greatness and your life literally sucks. 

First and foremost, if we want to have a healthy mindset about yourself, you need to pay attention to the information you are feeding yourself and how you process it. So your job is to be on the watch for negative self-talk. When you catch yourself saying something negative about yourself, you need to start talking to yourself like your best friend, not your worst enemy!!!  Prove yourself wrong and see how life changing this can be. No one is perfect. Life is never perfect so stop!! Be grateful and embrace who you are. You are worthy. Changing your mindset does work, and this has been life changing for me.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  11:36

How is your life being peopled? Relationships with others and being connected is so important to our mental health and quality of life. You need to ask yourself… Who are the people in your life? What are the relationships like in your life and how fulfilling are those relationships? How much do you nourish others and how much are you being nourished by them in return?  There is a kind of emotional generosity when people start to see the good side of the other person. It is about you showing to the person who means the most to you who you truly are and that means allowing yourself to be vulnerable and authentic in that relationship. 

When was the last time you did an analysis of the people you surround yourself with and the information that is coming in from them? What is the emotion and the energy and the information they are sharing with you? For me, I am so extremely controlling of all those things in my life. I don’t surround myself around negative people who feed me negative information. Be mindful of the people around you and if they are having on influence on your mindset. Even though you may have many many people in your life, those relationships may not matter the way that they should. 

When I turned 40, I did a spring clean of my friends. I know it sounds harsh, but when I surround myself with negative people, I feel physically ill after a while and they leave me feeling as though I have no energy. I find these people exhausting and they are a waste of my time and energy. Please don’ think that I am unkind and I am heartless but I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves or are in denial and don’t’ accept responsibility for their lives. I have zero tolerance for people who play victim. These people hinder your life and stop you from following your mission and your path in life. You begin to fall into their trap as negativity spreads like a bushfire that is out of control.

So stop listening to negativity and trying to please everyone. No matter how generous you are to others, someone is always going to have an issue with you. It’s not your issue, it’s theirs. Just stay true to you and stay focussed on what you want deep down inside and use this as a reminder that it’s simply not possible to please everybody. Making others happy may not make yours happy as well. 

What about the conversations you have with your friends. Do you gossip about others? OMG!!!! Small minded people talk about other people’s problems. You know gossiping about others might inflate your ego and in the short term may help you feel better about yourself by pulling others down, but in the long term, most people don’t want to be around that. And this may be you. So stop!! Instead, elevate the people around you with your conversations, and focus on the good qualities in people, champion them, become cheerleaders and not haters. Support others, uplift them, stop being mean and miserable.

Think about your relationships with others and how you spend your time with them. You may need to change your mindset and learn to talk about your ideas, create solutions, focus on dreams, talk things that inspire you, but most importantly ask people genuine questions about their lives, show them you care through your curiosity about what they are doing. Build people up. Do not tear them down. Be a lover and not a hater in the world and be honest with yourself about whether this is you! Stop blaming others for your poor relationships. Relationships require honesty, transparency, presence, attention, and intimacy. 

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  17:29

Another measure of mindset is checking in with how aligned are you with how connected are you in your current job? 

I have never understood why people complained about their jobs, and yet didn’t take any action toward changing the situation for themselves. They go on and on about how they are mistreated, or undervalued, or underpaid, or bored, or “burned out,” or don’t like the people they work with, and yet day after day continue to show up, continue to endure, and continue to turn up everyday.

The truth is, most people stay because it’s secure. They would rather suffer and be guaranteed work than take ownership of their future. This is a terrible way to live and to spend the greatest part of your life.

I’ve never shared this story before but many years ago, I was teaching singing in the music department at a private school where I found myself in a toxic work environment. I didn’t realise this at first as I was very grateful for this amazing job. I taught there for 4 years,  Wednesday for a full day and without fail every single Thursday morning for that whole four years, I would wake up with a migraine and neck and shoulder pain. It was unbelievable. 

Not only that, but I found that every time I tried to sing while I was there, I would be so constricted that the sounds I produced were awful!!! It was so embarrassing and it had never happened to me before in my 20 years of teaching.  I  can’t explain the feeling other than I literally felt as though I was choking. I was so constricted! I decided to seek help and started working with a Feldenkrais practitioner and during that process, every part of my teaching day went under the microscope. How I sat, How I stood, How I played the piano, which way I was facing. How long I was sat for without moving. How I carried my bags from my car to my teaching room. I did a check of my water intake. I literally looked at everything and I did make many significant changes to my postural alignment but nothing worked!!! It was simply bizarre! These severe headaches, neck and back pain continued every week and the sounds that I made at that workplace were far from my best singing. I was beside myself. 

Then I had a lightning bolt moment. What about the social and other environmental aspects of my job, could they be contributing to my physical pain? After an intense conversation  with my boss one day, I had a revelation that I always felt extremely undermined by him and I found myself so wound up and really upset.  I honestly felt that I was being micro managed and under so much pressure to prove myself even though I was the most highly qualified teacher in the music department and I had the best retention rate by far. 

I found myself trying to be invisible and stay under the radar as I moved around my work place. The impact of this stress on my body, my voice and my mental health was manifesting into a migraine every Thursday.  This JOB was having a devastating impact on my physical, mental and emotional heath. It was all too much and I ended up leaving after enduring that situation for way too long just for the security of the money. 

I had to change my mindset AND remind myself to trust in my worth and my abilities. Plus I had to remind myself that out of every bad situation, comes some good.  So what happened next!!! I did replace the income immediately. I was offered another job as soon as it was known that I had left that school and secondly, all the students from the school followed me to my home studio located miles away from the school. I promise I did not poach them, they just wanted me as their teacher. Best of all, working for this boss, inspired me into doing a PhD in the field of CCM, which in turn has led to writing an academic text book due to be published in this month. So thank you boss, you will be receiving the first copy!! 

Do you relate to this? Are you in a job that you don’t enjoy or there is something going on in the work place that is not allowing you to shine? Whatever your work situation is that may be causing you to feel that it’s all too much and you have started to lose that passion, it will have an impact in other areas of your life too. 

Most people have the mindset that they have to power through, but powering through won’t help you deliver your best work.  

You need to have the self-awareness to remove yourself from this situation, you can recalibrate and realign yourself and learn to trust in your worth, your abilities, that you can do better, be better, and you can create and sustain an income around what you truly love to do. I urge you, don’t put up with pain like I did. No one needs to stay in a job they hate or where they don’t feel appreciated. You need to shift your mindset and move on and find the joy in your passion and purpose in life.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  25:30

I want you to reflect on these three things – your mindset around self, your relationship with others and your work. Which of these do you need to have a mindset shift around? Go and look at yourself in the mirror and be honest and identify which of these are you guilty of. Which of these affect you the most? And once you are aware of these things, start the journey of letting go of this terrible mindset so you can start pursuing your own personal greatness without negativity holding you back. Don’t live the rest of your life with a hand break on. You are worth the effort. Value yourself and be willing and prepared to do whatever it takes to make this happen. 

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