00:08 Hi, I'm Denise Simpson, a master life and leadership coach who helps women step into their authentic and feminine power. So they can lead like visionaries influence with grace and create a, a legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems, navigating their success in life, business, and career. If you are ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.
00:47 Welcome leader. You're here. I'm here. Let's get into this discussion of joy. Joy is on my mind right now. I am intentionally thinking thoughts about circumstances, situations that bring me joy. So the thought that I have creates the emotion of joy, I get to choose the thought. This is the most important lesson for this episode is that we get to choose intentional thoughts. We don't let our minds just think thoughts, although that happens. It's natural. That's neuroscience. That is something you have zero control over. They are automatic. They pop up into your conscious mind from somewhere deep in the depths of your mind, as you are witnessing, as you are experiencing, as you are thinking. So thoughts pop up and some of these thoughts are very negative. I mean, think about it. 65,000 plus thoughts a day research shows that it's between 65,000 and 90,000. For those of us, as in you and I, those of us who are leaders, we are synthesizing information. We are thinking at higher levels. Our minds probably are on that higher end of thoughts per day. The reason search also shows that 70% of those thoughts are negative thoughts, negative thoughts.
02:35 And there's another percentage. 90% of those thoughts you had that you had today are the same thoughts you had yesterday. what, so of course we're re heating history. Of course we are using these habitual perpetual thinking patterns to create our daily lives, right? So when you question, why you can't create a particular result in your life, it's because of the thoughts that you're thinking about that circumstance. So a lot of you know, that I am obsessed with neuroscience. I used to say I had a regret that I didn't get a PhD in neuroscience. That's not true. Actually. I used to say that I'm very happy with the PhD I have in leadership studies, but I get to be mentored by one of the best neuroscientists in the world. And she is Oxford, true reigned neuroscientist, Dr. Sarah McKay.
03:45 She is someone who I admire. She is someone who I take everything at face value, every, you know, article journal, published, journal, or book that she writes. I am hanging onto it for dear life because of the information that she provides that is layman. It is simple to understand it is something that I'm able to then implement into my coaching practice. And by the way, I'm part of her neuroscience coaching network. So she is bringing neuroscience to coaches like me who want to provide accurate neuroscience information in a very simple way into our coaching practice to help our clients brilliant. So of course, I had to join her in that new project that she is, um, overseeing right now. So I'm learning so much from her and my colleagues in this network. And we are always discussing neuroscience. We meet once a week, we talk about what we can use, what is, what is helpful for some coaches, what hasn't been helpful for others, how their clients are responding, what results our clients are getting.
05:00 And so we talk so much about D aspects about your emotional habits, your physical habits, how we create resiliency in our lives, how we manage our thoughts and our emotions so that we can create particular specific results in our lives. And many other aspects about neuroscience. And one thing that we talked about recently was this idea of results and creating specific results. And how do you do that? How do you help your client do that? And I shared with them what I've always done. And this is something I learned through my coaching certification process was this simple linear pattern. This simple near progression of the belief creates the thought, the thought creates the emotion. The emotion creates an action or an inaction, and that then creates a result. So if you look at somebody's belief systems, what they value, what's important to them, what is in their core?
06:09 What, what do they, what is moral to them? What, what, what drives their actions at the unconscious level are ultimately their beliefs. And when they have a strongly held belief system about a particular circumstance or subject, like let's say money, okay, love that. I love talking about money. So let's say the belief system that she has about money is that it's hard to get, and you have to work extra hard because you're a brown or you're a black woman, or because you are a woman in leadership, you're going to have to prove that you are worthy of that six figure seven figure salary, right? So you have these strongly held beliefs. Now, many of these beliefs are conscious to us until you work with a coach until the coach like me tells you, your actions are interesting, cuz the results you're creating are not enough money.
07:13 Maybe perhaps making a six figure salary, but going bankrupt in your personal life, right? Able to manage debt, unable to, you know, save and send your kids to college. So those are the results that you're creating. So I always look at the actions that got you there. And I do a reverse engineer. I, I go back to, well, what thoughts drove those actions was was, was the thought that you had had influenced by this belief system. And of course it always is. So I'm always looking at your beliefs that influence your daily thoughts. Those thoughts influence an emotion and that emotion influences an action or inact and those actions or inactions ultimately create a result in your life. That's it? That it's as simple as it gets. It's simple, but not easy to apply. And this is why I have a living doing what I do.
08:09 And so when I wanna talk about joy and I wanna talk about joy with you, what brings you joy? Is it the thought of your children? Is it the thought of your partner? Is it the thought of your business? Is it the thought of your employees? Is it the thought of your leader? Is it the thought of your government? Is it the thought of your extended family members? Is it the thought of your culture? What is it that brings you joy? Are they simple actions like going for a 5k run every day or once a week? And that brings you joy because you accomplished this task that you set out to accomplish, or perhaps it's eating on plan, meaning that you prepared a meal ahead of time and you, you plan this on your eating protocol and you came through, you can check that off and say, I accomplish that.
09:10 Does that bring you joy or does joy look like spending time at the spa, releasing all of that stress, recalibrating your nervous system and walking out, feeling replenished and ready for whatever comes your way. Does that bring you joy? How about just having a cup of coffee without any running around the house, without anybody asking anything of you, you can just sit there and have a cup of coffee. I did that this morning. I had a cup of coffee and I put on a YouTube video, which I always do every morning. And I follow all the videos on Abraham. If you don't know who Abraham is, go to Abraham hicks.com, Google them, find them, learn everything you can about this collective energy that is called Abraham. I've been following the teachings of Abraham since I was 18 years old. I found them when I was, uh, a freshman at university in my, in my, uh, college town of San Antonio, Texas.
10:23 And they were there. Their headquarters are still there. And I learned about the law of attraction at that time and was looking for something other than Catholicism was really looking for expanding perspective on spirituality, on new age, on metaphysics, on quantum physics. And in doing that, I stumbled upon their books, not always a con it's never a coincidence. It was meant to happen and have been following the teachings of Abraham since. And because of the teachings of Abraham, I found really just inner peace and freedom with my life, with every stage of my life, with every circumstance I face, I look at life very differently because of the teachings of Abraham. And so this morning, listening with a cup of coffee, brought me so much joy. It was intentional thinking. I didn't let my mind run with all of these thoughts that I had to do today.
11:31 I had to meet with three clients. I have to record three podcast episodes. I had to include my two hour cross training at the gym. I'm also actually going to run on my treadmill in my house and do fi a 5k before I make dinner. And so, so many things on, on the list today. And I wanted to center myself and I wanted to be intentional in what I wanted to think today. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, instead of feeling like I'm rushed or this chaotic kinetic type of energy, I wanted to start this morning with a very strong foundation of joy. And as I was journaling, did I do that either during the, the YouTube video or shortly after. And I pause all the time. They're, they're short 15 minute videos, but I'm always pausing between what a Abraham says. And I wrote down how I wanted to set up my day, what I wanted to feel by the end of the day, what I wanted to feel throughout my day, how I wanted to interact with my clients and interact with my gym mates or interact with my spouse.
12:52 I wanted to be intent. Didn't want my brain to run wild with all of these thoughts, 70% of them being negative and 90% of them coming from the day before . So I wanted to be intentional in the thoughts that I wanted to think today. And these thoughts were focused on creating the emotion of joy, joy to be alive, joy, to be able to move my body in this way, to lift weights the way I do to eat the way I do to properly nourish my body the way I do, to be able to be inspiring to my, my clients, to be able to be active in listening to them and caring for them and serving them. I'm I'm very intentional in how I wanna show up to my client sessions. I do pre-work I do the energy pre-work before I get on a zoom call with my clients, or when I visit them in their offices, I do so much mind and energy work before they even feel my presence in the parking lot, or they feel my presence while they're waiting in the lobby.
14:07 In my zoom room, I do so much work to do, to, to be prepared in this way, because I, through my energy is setting the intention for this session, setting the course for the, for the, for the session that we have. I am driving that through my energy. I don't have to say a single word. They feel my energy. They feel the presence of confidence, of certainty, of mastery. And in turn, they feel nourished and peaceful and they feel like they have the freedom to speak. However they wanna speak, share whatever they wanna share, divulge any information they want because of the energetic presence that I purposely intentionally work on before we are physically looking at each other through zoom or physically in the room together, this is what I get to do. And this is what get to do as a leader is to prepare the environment.
15:16 You are pre paving, the, the way to the environment, right? You are on that journey every morning. You get to set the path and you get to set it with your energy. And you do that through the thoughts that you think and the emotion that you tie to these thoughts. So joy joy is the foundation. Joy is I think, and I believe one of the natural states of our, of our beans, but unfortunately through childhood experiences through of not so great behaviors from our well intended parents and leaders in our families, to our, our experiences as young adults in high school, through our experiences in college, through what society has told us, we can or cannot do what our culture has pre-programmed us to believe and think so. I believe our baseline is joy, but through living life and through experiencing what we've experienced, joy is feels joy feels like it's unattainable now, and, or it's harder to attain, or it's harder to tap into. But I want for you to know that you have the choice to feel as good as you wanna feel, to feel joy every day. If you please, this isn't positive, psych G by the way, this takes effort. This doesn't mean put your head in the sand and don't care about those that are suffering. It's, it's tending to your energy first and being intentional in choosing the thoughts you wanna think so that you can feel the emotion of joy.
17:15 You have the choice. And this, my friend is what we call freedom. It's called sovereignty. It's called inner peace. You get to be intentional and what you wanna think and how you wanna feel and how I wanna feel every day is joy way. And listen, there's days where it's harder to feel joy. You know, when my husband was in Poland, you know, he got COVID and, you know, helping the refugees out of Ukraine, he, you know, was doing an amazing job, but I was rocked my, my safety, my nervous system was rocked. It was triggered. And I had a really rough time that month and a half that he was gone for. I, I was, I couldn't feel joy because I was worried about his safety. Usually I'm worried about mine. I'm super hypervigilant, especially when he travels, but because he was in another country, my attention turned on his safety.
18:19 So I was neglecting my body. I was neglecting my nervous system and I bypassed all that, so that I could focus on his security. Like I could do anything about it here, his safety and security. Right? Really no. And so I had to do small things to adjust my thinking and feeling about his circumstances, where he was at and where he was living was even being fed. He's obviously sick. He has, COVID he contracted COVID by helping these patients by helping these refugees. And so, so many emotions were coming up from me. So many thoughts were coming up from me. And so there are times when you are gonna have a challenge, it'll be a, to be intentional in your thinking, but on, on, on those days, which are most probably of your days, you get to set the tone and the pace through your energy.
19:25 And it starts with the thoughts that you wanna intentionally think. So I, I recommend that you either set some time, be intentional in your, in your block of time, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, max, where it's just you and your brain. You can do what I do and watch a video teachings of Abraham, or by the way, the, the YouTube channel that I subscribe to is called animated. Abraham. , they're just really cute little animated, um, 15 minute videos on Abraham, or just go to their channel or excuse me, go to their website and you can pull up some of, um, Abraham's videos there. You could do that. Or you can set aside some time to do meditation. If you are a new meditator, your mind's gonna wander. It's gonna find all the reasons why you can't do this. So for those that are new to meditation, I always say, how about we do instead, some self hypnosis self hypnosis is active meditation.
20:37 You are guided through a script and you are put into, uh, an area or place. I should say, where your brain is, um, calm and able to receive information at the unconscious level. And so it's, it's about brain activity and brain levels, but self hypnosis is something I've done for so many years. And so I have two apps that I highly recommend. It's grace space, hypnosis, it's run by gray Smith. That is a paid, uh, app. And another paid app is the harmony app. And this is a gentleman ad of great Britain. And, um, he's amazing. So both of 'em are paid, um, subscriptions, but they're wo well worth it. And they have topics on different, uh, challenges that you may be having, uh, or just, you want to have a better night's sleep. You can do that too, but use this in the morning before you start your day, or here's a third option, you just get to sit with your thoughts with no, maybe pen and paper is all you need.
21:52 And you write down what you wanna think about how you wanna feel today. And don't worry about the actions. Don't worry about the results. Those were will come naturally. And at the end of the day, you're gonna reverse engineer gonna go. Wow, because I felt so much joy today. I actually did all of these things on my to-do list that I was dreading doing. And the result I created was definitely in my favor. So just pay attention at the end of the day, what results you've created because of this intentional practice that you are going to do in the morning.
22:30 I want for you to choose joy. This is my sales pitch to you, that you deserve to feel joy, that you get to do this freely. You get to write down what thoughts you wanna think today and carry those thoughts on a paper and go back to them because that thought or those thoughts you've chosen are going to create the great joy throughout your day. And you're gonna find yourself interacting with people, interacting with your spouse or your partner, interacting with your employees, your supervisors, your leaders. You're going to find yourself more patient with others, more calm within yourself. You're gonna feel peace inside. Like right now, I'm this is my third episode that I've recorded today. And I met with three clients today, did a two hour training at my gym and in about another hour and a half, I'm going to get on the treadmill and do my 5k run.
23:35 And then I'm in a cook dinner and I feel so calm, so peaceful. And truly because I did the inner work this morning, and it's carrying me through this energy is carrying me through the rest of my day. And this is what I want for you choose joy. And this is how you do it. All right, my friend, I hope you found today's episode. Helpful. Let me know how this works out for you. DM me over on IG at Dr. Denise Simpson. All right, my friend, I'll catch you on next week's episode. Take good care. Bye for now.
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