#110 How to think and thrive under pressure

Rachel Denning (00:01.07)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Hope you're having a fantastic day. And if not, switch it up. Let's switch it around. Make it a great day. Do something right now. In fact, move your body right now in a way that moves your mind. Because if you want to move your mind, you have to move your body. We'll talk about that later. You got to move your body. So do something. I mean, you could just stop. Whatever you're doing, if your day's going bad and you're just throwing this on.

Like you could just move your body, like do some jama jazz, turn on music and just dance like wild for 30 seconds or three minutes or get a hard workout in for 30 minutes or whatever. Just move your body and just shift things and you can choose right now this minute to do something that's special, that's meaningful, that matters, to forgive, to give a compliment, to go hug someone, to go just have some self care, quiet time. I mean you can just stop whenever.

Whenever you're going along and you notice the pattern is going against you and you're having a bad day, switch it up. Boom, get back in it. Move your body, move your mind, and get back in the game. Today we're going to talk about how to think and thrive under pressure. Because the level of your thinking dictates the level of your life.

Whoa, and I know we get that, you know that already on a kind of cognitive level, but the question is, what does that actually look like? What does that mean that the level of my thinking dictates the level of my life? And I remember thinking that for years as I was learning about the power of psychology and the power of mindset and how our thinking determines our life, but it seems so abstract.

It seemed like I wanted to grab hold of something tangible, but it seemed like there was nothing to grab a hold of. And I was like, what do you mean? My thinking. I just get up and think about what I have to do, and then I go about my day. What are you talking about? And so I want to talk about and give you strategies to do this. And let me ask this question. How many of you are really strategic and purposeful?

Rachel Denning (02:18.51)
about the quality of your thinking. How many of you are examining constantly your awareness of your thoughts is really alert and there? How many of you are strategic in your plan and the execution of your plan for your thinking? How many of you have a thinking plan in place where you do something every day to make sure

your thinking clearly. I just have found in my own experience that too few of us are really intentional about driving the quality of our thinking, controlling and directing it so that we get the results we actually want. Again, I'm going to come back to that statement because I believe it is absolutely solid. The level of your thinking

dictates the level of your life? And then especially, how can we think and thrive under pressure? Right? Because, oh man, this is everything. And you know this already. You know these things. You're aware of it. But we've got to keep revisiting it and be strategic about it and give you more tools, strategies, resources, plans so that it actually becomes a very natural, normal thing, a very...

automatic habitual thing where you are taking daily action strategic steps to make sure your thinking is solid because if the thinking is broken then it will break your life and if the thinking is off then it's so easy to slip into erroneous conclusions and this is where and this is where it gets

real. When the thinking is off, your self talk is part of your thinking. The things you say to yourself, if that is off,

Rachel Denning (04:28.558)
then think how simple it is, and this will resonate with you, you'll know what I'm talking about, think how simple it is to start coming to the wrong conclusion. Because my thinking is off, let's say my thinking is off about my marriage.

Pretty soon I could come to an easy conclusion that, well, it's my wife's fault, she's the problem. Or I've even met people who came to the conclusion, look, marriage just doesn't work and anyone who thinks it does is lying to themselves. That's the conclusion they come to. Or it's easy to come to a conclusion that this marriage will never work. Or we could do the same with the work. You might be...

at work and if your thinking is off about your work, think how easy it is then to come to a conclusion of, well, I'm in the wrong line of work or this business will never succeed or, oh, it's just the economy or it's somebody else's fault. You see what I'm saying? You could come to all kinds of erroneous conclusions. So when our thinking is broken, it breaks our life and it ...

again, dictates the level of our life by the level of our thinking. And so if any area of your life is off and you continue to get poor results, please look to your thinking.

Do it right now, Ashley. Consider, carefully consider any area of your life that you're not getting the results you would like.

Rachel Denning (06:12.142)
And the first place you need to look is to your thinking about that thing and thinking in general, because if we, if we get into poor thought patterns and poor thought habits, it will easily carry over to other areas of our life. So if I have some erroneous thinking about life in general or about

the workings of just how life works. If I'm off in my thinking, then that's going to trickle out. It's going to have this kind of echoing or ripple effect through all the other areas of my life and my results will be off. And so I have to look to my thinking. I have to look to my philosophy. I have to see if my thinking is neurotic. Meaning it just doesn't make sense. You know?

Let's say I'm like I'm struggling with my kids and it's just perpetual now. It's just this chronic problem It's easy to blame it on the kids And right come to erroneous conclusions It's my kids they do this and they do that and they do this and they do that We're clear thinking and you know learning to think and thrive under pressure the pressure and kids add pressure

Nobody's going to argue with that. Kids add pressure.

But clear thinking says, wait a minute.

Rachel Denning (07:43.342)
They're just children. They don't know any different. They're just cute little adorable people. Yes, even your teenagers are just cute little adorable people who are trying to figure out life. They're trying to figure out themselves. They don't know. And so I, as the parent, am responsible for their training.

And for the most part, I have created them, right? And I've created sometimes even just by allowing those behaviors, I've created them. And by not training them really well to do one thing, I have by default trained them really well to do the other thing.

So clear thinking comes back and says, OK, no, I'm responsible here. I'm the trainer. And everything that's in our life, you guys, here's another one that I think sometimes where some, well, it starts to get, it's broken thinking or even neurosis. And this is profound. What I'm about to say is pretty profound. Like everything you do, you've trained yourself to do.

And that includes even like poor sleeping habits or again poor thinking habits or poor eating habits or whatever like even your tastes and preferences. You might just think well no I just prefer that kind of music or I just like those kind of things. You have trained yourself to that. It's...

It becomes broken thinking when we play the victim even to that, to our preferences or the way things are happening. And we come up with this identity piece of like, no, I'm a slow reader. I just can't do that. That's not who I am. We train ourselves into something and then we think we play the victim to it like it just happens to us. Again, erroneous conclusions around our thinking, our philosophy.

Rachel Denning (09:57.966)
So as we're going through this, and this is gonna be just this brief hit it hard, like think and thrive under pressure, or just in normal life, right? How to think and thrive. I want you to do three Rs. To review, to refine, and to revise. Review, refine, revise. Jot those down. So as we're going through our thinking, when you think of any area of your life,

and just say, okay, how am I thinking about this thing? And jot it down. You might actually literally just jot down your thoughts. You might identify your self -talk. You might identify the conclusions in our extraordinary marriage course. We have you do that. You gotta sit down and write down all of the thoughts you have about you in marriage, about your spouse in marriage, and about the actual institution of marriage, your thoughts and beliefs, because it's dictating ...

your feelings and your actions. And so you have to have this awareness. You've got to review. So look at any area of your life where things are kind of off and you're struggling. Maybe you've kind of just come to these conclusions that life's just a grind and you've stopped dreaming and you've stopped hoping and you've stopped believing in the potential for an extraordinary life and you just have kind of settled in and acquiesced because you're looking around, you're surrounded by all these people and just going through the grind and whenever you mention a dream or a goal, they're like, oh.

Come on, come back to reality. Life's just hard. You just go to work every day. You do what you have to do. You pay your bills and that's just life. Right? And so you come to a conclusion like, I guess that's the way things are. But look at whatever is frustrating, whatever is irritating, whatever isn't working, poor results, or just if it isn't like exciting, if it isn't good.

Really, really good. If it isn't extraordinary, examine your thinking. Review all your thoughts around that. If you need help with this, sign up for a coaching session. This is where high performance coaching really helps, because we just get in there and I can ask the right questions. I can notice things you don't even notice about yourself. And we just kind of pick through that and go, no, no, no, oh, there it is. Boom. You just said that. And often with my clients, I don't even notice it. They just have, it has become so automatic, these conclusions, the identity, the thinking.

Rachel Denning (12:23.981)
They're like, what? What did I say? And like, that, that. And they're like, yeah? And they're like, no. That's the turning point right there, is you've come to a conclusion. It's just become automatic. Like, well, yeah, this is what I think about it. And that's where the problem starts. So review your thinking. Get it all done in writing. Refine it. Compare it to the thinking of the greatest thinkers, leaders, people you know. Like,

Read from the great books. That's why we have to constantly be reading for the great books every single Day, you should be reading from great books It just has to be a part of your life Just like you eat just like you drink water just like you go to the bathroom Just like you go to bed. You have to read from great books It doesn't have to be a significant amount of time the more the more the better But let reading from great books not just whatever books right not just mediocre books reading from great books Let that shape your thinking

It'll begin to help you think differently. It starts forming and molding your thinking patterns and habits. So we're doing that at all time and then it gives you contrast where you compare your level of thinking with the level of thinking from these great thinkers, right? And so that helps you refine it. So review it, refine it, just ask yourself, how would I think better about this? What would be bigger thinking? What would be more effective thinking around this?

Like what, how could I improve this? How could I level up? Just identify your thinking and then, well, okay, yeah, maybe I'm having some negative thoughts towards my, towards money or towards my body or towards my children or towards other people in general or just negative thoughts about life, about education.

about raising children, whatever it is, whatever it is, you just, ugh. How can you improve that thought? Literally do this, please do this. Write down your thoughts, ask yourself, how can I refine that thought? How can I make it better? And then right there, start revising it so you literally rewrite it. You might do it on like left -hand side of the page, right -hand side of the page. And revise the thought, and then start getting really strategic about reshaping your thoughts.

Rachel Denning (14:50.733)
Now this is where the plan comes in to make sure you're getting in the right headspace every day. Every single morning, the first thing you need to do is get in the right headspace. That's why we do the morning routines, that's why I created that program, how to totally transform your life before breakfast. It's all about getting in the right headspace so that throughout the day, you're thinking clearly, you're acting clearly, and especially you're learning to think and thrive under pressure. When there's any kind of pressure,

Again, whether it's health, marriage, finances, when it's mental, emotional, social, spiritual, whatever it is, you've got to be in the right head space and you've got to train yourself to get into the right head space on a normal basis where you're regularly living there. So when pressure comes, you're like, oh, wait a minute, I know what to do. Get in the right head space, think through this, act through this, right? So this is where affirmations come in. This is where these daily...

trainings come in because you're literally training your brain and as you're doing this you're so you review, refine, revise then you take that revision that thought revision and you're gonna repeat it to yourself you're gonna write it on three by five cards and carry it with you you're gonna put it on alerts on your phone you're gonna put it on your computer and around your house you're gonna memorize it in the morning in your own philosophy journal you're gonna memorize it with your children.

And you've got to be doing this with your kids. Every morning when you're doing your morning devotionals, like this morning we were memorizing, and most of the kids have it now, we're memorizing IF by Rudyard Kipling, right? You're just getting these ideas into their head, and when you memorize something, it becomes yours, and it's just kind of in there, it's in your head. And it'll just pop up at the most random times, or it'll pop up when you need it the most. When you're facing something, a line from a poem or a great quote or a scripture that you memorized pops up and you're like, oh, yes.

And it literally begins to dictate your thinking, right? It levels up your thinking, especially under pressure. You start feeling pressure and something you've memorized pops up. An affirmation you repeated 10 ,000 times pops up. And you're like, oh, I know how to think about this. So you're just literally being strategic about training your brain. Because, like I said a moment ago, you have trained your brain. The way you think right now is because you have trained it that way. And in part, yes.

Rachel Denning (17:13.453)
Some people have trained it that way. There's a little bit of outside influence that others kind of train your brain. So if the way you're thinking, you've trained it that way and you can retrain it, right? You can untrain it, unlearn some things, relearn some things. You got to train your brain. Some people think, oh, affirmations or declarations or repeating things is dumb, but just think about it. Excuse me. Your self -talk, you just repeat all the time.

Some of you are constantly, endlessly saying to yourself, you're not good enough. You're not good enough. Look how far you have to go. You'll never make it. Who do you think you are? Right? You repeat that hundreds or even thousands of times, why not choose to repeat something positive that you'd actually like to believe, like you'd like to think? So you've trained yourself to think that way in the negativity, and I want to invite you to train yourself to think in the positivity.

So, right out as part of this review, refine, revise, write out the thoughts you want to have. And you may not even, you may not be specifically tied to a problem or challenge, you might just take this opportunity right now and just capture some thoughts that you want to think. What are the, I love this, I love this, please do this. What are the positive things you want to think? What are the thoughts you want to think? What ways do you want to think? And just doing this exercise, you might stop and be like, you know what?

I want to be optimistic. I want to be energetic. I want to think well of others. I want to think well of life. You might say I want to think excited thoughts about life. I want to think excited thoughts about your future. Here's, yeah, this is awesome. Man, I'm getting excited about this. What kind of thoughts do you want to have about your past?

Well, my past was blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's not talk about what it is or what happened. What kind of thoughts do you want to have about your past? Yes, you can choose your thoughts. You can't change the past, but you can change the way you think about it. What kind of thoughts do you want to have about your past? The ideal, right? What kind of thoughts do you want to have about your present? You get to choose your thoughts. What kind of thoughts do you want to have about your future?

Rachel Denning (19:35.245)
What kind of thoughts do you want to have about people, about life, about family, about education, about yourself, about your body? Get strategic about the kind of thoughts you want to have. Isn't this awesome? This is beautiful. Write this stuff down. Get clear about what you want to think. Measure that, of course, against the great thinkers, because you might inadvertently or accidentally come up with a thought that's not a healthy one. You're like,

I want to think that ice cream is good for me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Rachel Denning (20:34.253)
headspace. One thing I did for a very long time, still love to do, I do it on occasion now, but I used to do it every single morning without fail, is I would read a page or two from a little book called As a Man Thinketh. And I just think that's just rock solid strategic plan and pattern and strategy. So if you haven't done this, try it. Just do it for the next 30 days. For the next 30 days, read a page or two out of As a Man Thinketh.

And then after you've done that, and I did that for two years straight. So don't be like, oh, I've read this before. Just drill it. What you're doing is just drilling it into your head so it changes the way you think. You could also read every morning from a book called The Majesty of Calmness by William Jordan. Just these powerful books that you just read from every single morning. Part of that, I also read a page or two from How to Win Friends and Influence People.

because I wanted to transform the way I worked with people and the way I saw people. Because I sat down one day and I was like, I want to think differently about my social interactions. I want to be more, because I was shy and timid. I didn't know how to really relate to people or talk to people. I'd never been trained or taught. So I had trained myself poorly. I'd been trained poorly in social skills. So I wanted to change that, right? Just like I'm doing with you right now. I wanted to think differently about social interactions. And so I was str -

strategic about it. This is where most of us fail. We maybe never get clear about what we want and then even if we are clear about what we want, we don't come up with an actual strategic plan to make it happen. So then you read from something every morning, you rewrite your goals, you rewrite your thoughts, literally rewrite them. It doesn't take that long, it doesn't take that much effort. Rewrite those because you're training your brain. You're training your brain.

And then come up with affirmations, declarations, beliefs. Write out your beliefs. Write out the things you want to think. My wife has them up and she changes hers a lot. She's got them up on Post -it notes. She prints them out on beautiful pages around her desk. The way she wants to think about her past, about her present, about her future, about her work, about her health, about time, about abundance.

Rachel Denning (22:58.829)
just pick anything. I do it too. We all do it. You'll notice this. People who are good thinkers are strategic about what they think. That's all you're going to do. You might just say, well, what do I want to think about how money, what part money plays in my life? I don't want to think about that. What do I want to think about this child where you may have a child or a friend or a family member that's just really being

been bothering you and you find yourself thinking very negative, mean or hurtful or degrading things about the person. Well just pause and say, wait a minute, what do I want to think about that person? And watch how changing your thoughts changes your life.

For reals, this is awesome. And when you train yourself, right, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. It's archilicus, right? And excellence is not an act, but a habit. And it is one, excellence is one, by training and habituation. That's will to rent. So learning how to think and thrive under pressure is gonna be part of your training.

You train yourself day in and day out how to think clearly, how to control and direct your thoughts and beliefs. And then when pressure comes on, you can actually practice it. You can get in scenarios. You can do simulations, which is a great way to do that. You can do specific things like I became an EMT and worked on an ambulance. And I did other kind of training where you actually go through training courses to learn how to think and how to respond under pressure. And they just repeat it again and again and again.

Okay, this is happening. This happens now this distraction comes and this comes How do you think and you learn and you train yourself because it's all training you train yourself how to think and thrive under pressure? There's love of stuff you guys Love love love it. Remember the level of your thinking dictates the level of your life Make sure you get in the right headspace and as you're going throughout the day if something happens and you catch yourself off pause get strategic have your kind of go -to thing a little bit of reading maybe repeating a

Rachel Denning (25:19.021)
something you've memorized or a mantra or an affirmation and get back into the right headspace before you move forward. So if you're in a business meeting or you're on a call or somebody is distracting, disrupting, somebody does something mean or rude or throws you off your game, pause, get back into the right headspace and then move forward. Love it. Love you guys. This is awesome stuff. We gotta keep focusing on how to make sure our thinking is just rock solid.

and that we can think and thrive under pressure because again, the level of our thinking dictates the level of our life. Reach upper.