Breakfast with Champions Episode 221 with Susie Miller – Internal Conflict
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How are you, my friend? How are you, my friend? Welcome. This is the Breakfast With Champions Podcast, one of the most unique, amazing, and powerful podcast you’ll ever come across off in your entire life. Listen, we bring you motivation, education and inspiration and ultimately give you an opportunity to get a seat at the table to hang out with some of those that are doing the things you know, you can do that have reached some of those levels, you know, you can reach. What makes this podcast so unique and incredible is we have over 100 different thought leaders that are constantly delivering amazing over the top, powerful and impactful content in bite sized Nuggets that you can absorb, take action on and implement in your life. So with that said, make sure you filter through. There’s going to be some of these thought leaders, these experts in the industry that you’re ultimately going to connect with, you’re going to totally, totally resonate going to totally be your vibe. And then there’s going to be other ones that you’re going to be like, you know what I like, but I don’t know if I love them, and that’s what’s great about Breakfast With Champions is we have something for everyone.
So make sure you sift through, find the ones that you love and know that they’ll be coming back every single week to be able to deliver to you the motivation, education and inspiration that you need with that said, my name is Glenn Lundy. I am your host super excited to connect with you. And let’s kick off today’s episode of Breakfast With Tampa. I’m going to be with you for the next 30 minutes, and I’m really excited to talk with you today about something that came up as a result of this morning time where Nisha and Fanzo and Brad and Laura were talking about things that really landed for me on this idea of self awareness. I was a guest preacher at a Church in Connecticut just yesterday. We’re up in Connecticut right now, and the topic. The series was hot Topics, and the pastor had asked me to preach on conflict because there was just so much division and tension and strife going on. And he was like, Could you help come and inspire and equip us to handle it better? And so I was going to share on that. But after listening this morning, I kind of tweaked what I’m going to talk about because I feel really led to talk about our internal conflict. The algae is really bad here. Most of us are dealing with internal conflict somewhere.
We have conflict outside with the people in our life, maybe politically, maybe with our teams at work, maybe in our homes, there with our kids. But I want to talk for a minute about internal conflict. The conflict within. I will do a room on the other because I do tend to want to help people. I’ve gotten known a bit as a conflict Queen because I speak on how to embrace conflict and make it a win win. But after this morning, I have this thought of I really want to talk about internal conflict because this idea of self awareness sets us up to be better at everything else that we’re dealing with. In our day. David Speesiac talked about even sharing our goals with people and how we do that and how we handle the conflict with them that might come up if they’re not supportive. And so I wanted to pause and go, let’s talk about being self aware and the conflict within our own mindset, our own goals, what we’re dealing with, because when we begin to do that, we’re better equipped to deal with whatever hits us on the outside. And so I’m going to share with you in the exact 30 minutes, the framework that I use with CEOs companies, high performers, entrepreneurs, and with myself and with my kids about how to deal with internal conflict.
It’s adapted from Brook Castillo’s Top Model and self coaching, and I’ve adapted it just based on my work with people and how I and the research I’ve done on Neuroplasticity and really, this goes all the way from the boardroom to the bedroom people. This is how you’re going to handle conflict within so you can handle conflict without. When we talk about self awareness, we have to be aware of what’s going on inside of us to deal with these conflicting feelings or thoughts or beliefs or desires or goals. I mentioned our son, Zach, who’s 30, and he is at a place where he is just dealing with some major life choices, and he’s got some great options, and he’s trying to think things through, and it’s creating this internal conflict with him based on his thoughts and feelings. And so he called over the weekend and we had a talk and I kind of walked him through this framework. And so I’m going to share this with you. And I’m hoping that it will inspire you. And I know it’ll quip you, but I hope it inspires you to think differently about self awareness. I believe that we become self aware so that we can serve others. We have to practice self care so we can serve others. Breakfast with Champions is all about serving and equipping and motivating you others outside of ourselves.
But I think to do that well, we have to begin with our own self awareness. And so I’m going to tell myself a little bit. I’m going to share a bit of a story with you as we walk through this. The first thing in this framework is circumstance. The circumstance happens, we have an encounter, we have an event, we have a circumstance that is happening and that triggers the beginning of our engagement with it. And also this framework. And so whatever is going on, the circumstance happens and then the very next thing that I believe happened is what I’m going to call the name reframe section, and we’re going to talk about your thoughts and feelings. And I’m going to set this up with a little theory first before I go into the story behind it, because here’s the thing, just like the chicken and the egg. Some people are like thoughts and feelings, which comes first, thoughts or feelings. I think feelings come first. People think thoughts comes first. So I did all the research on this a while back, and actually, it doesn’t really matter where you land on this. It’s whether you do thoughts, feelings, thoughts, feelings. We get in this loop where our thoughts have our feelings and our feelings for our thoughts. Neuroscience has shown that our feelings come first.
It’s like when you smell a candle and you have a memory because of the smell and the sensory part of our brain engages before the front part of our brain, which is our thoughts. And so the thought and feeling loop is something we have to name and reframe. So I’m going to give you an example a couple of months ago, it’s been to about a month and a half. Now. We were in New York, New York City for the Breakfast With Champions event. And so my circumstance was that I was speaking at the Breakfast With Champion event, and I was really excited about it. And I wanted to nail it partially because I’m a pro and really want to nail what I do with excellent. But Glenn Lendy had no idea who I was. I was invited to speak by someone else and he took a risk and I was on the speaking docket, and so I really wanted to nail it. I wanted to show I was a pro. I wanted to give great content. I wanted to serve the audience for a couple of reasons. One, whenever I speak, I’m always about how do I serve the audience, but also with my own personal goals and business goals. I wanted to nail it. I wanted to be invited to speak again. I wanted to have opportunities, doors open. I wanted to get potential clients from it. I had a lot riding on that little ten to 15 minutes window.
It was ten minutes at that point to really nail it and get on Glenn’s radar. And so I remember waking up that morning. So my very first, the circumstance was the Breakfast Champions event. I was speaking, and my topic was how to make conflict a win win as a mindset shift. And I remember waking up that morning and feeling nervous. And so I have this feeling of nervousness in my stomach. And I kind of felt those butterflies. And I was like, I’m a pro. I’ve been speaking for 30 years, what’s going on? But this feeling of nervousness and the thoughts were all around the pressure to perform. I became very aware of this internal conflict. I have those insert moments that you might be able to relate to where you’re like, am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be able to deliver? Can I communicate my message in ten minutes? Those feelings of not quite sure, not so much imposter syndrome. But the pressure to perform was just growing in me. And I remember thinking, okay, I teach this stuff. I know what to do here. Let’s do the work that you help others do. Let’s put into practice what you preach. And so I paused. And I was looking out my window in this beautiful hotel overlooking the Manhattan skyline. And we had a rooftop party in that before.
And it was just beautiful seeing the water and the Manhattan skyline. And I was like, okay, I’m going to name the feeling. And so after you address the circumstance, the circumstance was the event. The name and reframe comes into the feeling, thought, feeling loop that we get caught in. And so I was like, okay, I’m feeling nervous. I’m feeling pressure, and I’m starting to get worked up. And that is never a good thing before you’re going to deliver to an audience. And so I stopped in that I want to stop that loop by going to the thought, what’s the thought? You better perform. You better show up. What if they don’t? And all of these thoughts and feelings were just as massive a loop in me. And I was like, okay, stop. I know what to do here. In this moment. I can choose to reframe my thoughts, to deal with this internal conflict in this internal moment of becoming self aware so that I am not going to let these thoughts and feelings drive the train. And so I began to think, Wait a minute. I am well prepared. I’ve done the work. I’ve practiced my speech. I’ve timed it. I know I can deliver it in the ten minutes. I know it’s good content. I’m a good speaker. I’m a great speaker. Actually, I’m excited about equipping these people and possibly changing their mindset.
I’m here to serve Glenn and the breakfast with Champions Club. And as I began to say those words out loud, my thoughts began to change. My energy shifted. My energy shifted because I began to go in a different direction. And so I began to step out of that thought loop and name the feeling and reframe the thought. And here’s the good news. Neuroscientists have found that we can change the way our brain works. We can change our thoughts, and we can, actually, as a result, change our brain chemistry, the pathways in our brain. Here’s how it works in a layman’s terms, if you think about this is how I always explain it. If you think about, like, an old country road and you turn down the country road and it’s all grass except for the two ruts that are Brown, the dead grass, the cars and trucks have driven down that country road over and over and over again. And so you turn your truck down that road and you kind of slip into those ruts and you just go down that road, it’s familiar and you know it, and it’s kind of smoothed out from the rest of the road. That is what our brain does with our thoughts. What we are able to do, they find is literally, if you think about picking up the truck and moving it over to new grass and starting a new groove down that road, you can do that with your thoughts.
You can create new neural pathways where new thoughts begin to take over and you don’t have to slip back into those old truck rods. As I call them. We can actually reprogram our brain. And so we can create new ways of thinking and new ways of believing, a new understanding in the way that we handle this internal conflict. And so I had that moment of, like, what ruts am I in? What am I feeling? The nervousness, the pressure. And I went through this exercise to lift up my truck in my brain and move it over to create this new groove, this groove of I’m excited. I’m prepared. I’m here to serve. I don’t have to stay in that negative loop. I can reframe it. I’m not going to deny it, because if you bury them, I guarantee if you bury your feelings, they’ll pop up somewhere. And I’ve talked about this before where if you think about pushing a beach ball underwater and you try to push it underwater and it pops up, you can’t do it. And feelings are the same way you press them down. If you don’t deal with them, they will pop up somewhere. And we don’t want them to pop up at the most inopportune time, like when we’re trying to give a speech. So as I began to reframe my thoughts and reprogram my brain, my feelings began to follow my thoughts. And so that’s what’s so important that you hear.
You can get out of this loop by naming and reframing, you can look at the circumstance. You can name the feeling and you can name out loud the thoughts and then go, OK, what do I want to be feeling? Well, I wanted to be feeling excited and positive. I wanted to be feeling other focus, service focused, not self focused. As I said earlier, one of the most important things about becoming self aware is because when we are self aware, we can be more present. We can serve others. We’re not caught up in our own insecurities. And so as I woke up that morning feeling very insecure and nervous, I had a choice. I had to work through this framework to go. I don’t want to let this feeling and this internal conflict drive my day. I want to allow my thoughts to reprogram my feelings. So not only do I feel confident as I walk in and do my own speech. I can be present to all the other people and all the other things that are going on in the day and really show up and serve. And what’s really funny is as I began to get ready and did my we joke because I always tell people it takes a lot of body and Fender work for me to show up looking good, and so I did all that, did my hair, did my makeup, got ready, went downstairs. I was earlier in the day in the morning to speak, and I remember sitting there thinking, I’ve reprogrammed my thoughts. I’ve reprogrammed my feelings. I’m feeling confident, prepared, and it really did work. So I’m excited. I greet my friends.
I sit at the table, I’m present to the morning programming and Glenn Mundy introduces me, and again, Glenn didn’t know me, that it means who I would he I didn’t even off the clubhouse a couple of times, but he invited me to stage to introduce me, and I watched them step back into the audience off to my right, and I stood up and I delivered my speech. And honestly, you guys in all humility, I nailed it. What’s really funny is in the middle, about two thirds of the way through my shoe broke. I had to be slamming heels because we were in New York City and we were rocking the runway and it was so much fun to get dressed up again. After being inside for Covet and my shoe broke mid speech, I turned to my left to say something because the room was long as I was turning to my right, just kind of including everybody in the conversation and my shoe broke and I just kept going. And I believe that the reason it didn’t cause me to pause or skip a beat was because I had done the work up in my room to reframe my thoughts. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t feeling pressure. I was excited. I was there to serve. I was prepared, and so I will never forget the moment I delivered my speech.
I landed the plane and Glenn Lenzie walked to the front of the room clapping and he looked at me and he goes, wow, just wow, who are you? And we just smiled and we went on and to the next speaker and I sat down and I was so grateful that I had done the work of being self aware and that internal conflict in my room. I showed up and served as the best version of myself. And again, I say that so humbly because I already told myself how insecure I was. How if I had let my thoughts and feelings stay in that self defeating loop versus the self aware loop that moved me to the how do I serve loop? I would have been more nervous. I probably would have fumbled with my shoe and I wouldn’t have had that moment of I was satisfied with what I delivered. I showed up, I served, I delivered, and I had the action, which was I showed up and actually delivered my speech well. And the result was Glenn Lundy looked at me and went, wow, who are you? We need to talk. And now I’m on breakfast with Champions Stage. And so as I go through that framework, the circumstance, the name and reframe, it produces a different kind of action. Once we do that, because we’re now driven by our intentional thinking. We are selfaware. We can serve. It produced the action of showing up in a way that was present and serving others.
And the results were I was able to connect with the right people. I got a couple of opportunities to actually talk about conflict and teach it to some teams who really are needing some conflict shifts and ability to handle in a win Winway. I wasn’t thrown at my shoe broke, and I really had fun doing it. I really had a great time doing it as I was able to show up and be present. And so I share that because as we deal with the internal conflict, of what’s going on in us as we deal with imposter syndrome, we talked this morning about how to be self aware, how to not be an Ostrich. Fans talked about showing up and raising his hand, and he calls it press the damn button. I was thinking and listening. I was like, but I’m always the howgirl how do I do that? How do I take what I’m learning and actually apply it to what’s going on inside of me? And so I think in frameworks and systems, I’m a very strategic thinker. And I thought I need to share my framework. Somebody today needs to hear that whatever circumstance you’re going through, you can pause. You can name the feeling you can become self aware. You can reframe your feelings and your thoughts and create new neural pathways in your brain so that those thoughts are positive, they’re self affirming.
They move you forward in truth, so that you can show up and serve so that your action is other centered and other focused, not insecure and self focused, and that the results will be more than you had imagined and bargained for. And so as I share those things, I’m really curious in the next seven to ten minutes that we have left. If there’s anybody who’s had an experience or would love to have me help them reframe a solder and internal conflict that you’re going through. Because this framework that I shared with you, it works. It works from the you know, I worked with politicians outside of DC all the way down to the story I told you about our son and me who’s in the middle just trying to show up and serve every day to the best of my ability. So with that, I just want to see if there’s any questions or any thoughts or someone who might have. And, hey, how do I do this? How do I take this? Can you help me reframe this? Suzy, I’m going to look for some Mike flashes here. I see. Jojo. Jojo, tell me how I can help you. Hey, Van, nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Susie, you are terrific. This is my first time talking on this stage. Welcome to the stage. Welcome to Breakfast or TF and welcome to the stage. Good for you. Thank you. So I love the topic of creating new neural pathways. I’m always telling people that it’s possible to do it. You just have to change the channel. So the question to you is, how long does it take to create a new neural pathway? And does it make a difference what the situation is?
Yes. I’m going to answer your second question. First, it matters what the situation is. So the timing is different. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I do study. So if it’s a trauma based neural pathway, it takes a different kind of intervention and timing to change that. If it’s an old story that you’ve been telling yourself, a lot of our neural pathways are formed when we are young and we began. The image I use for people is back in the day. We had cassette tapes and we would have to literally press play to record, press two buttons to record on our old big boom boxes. And we actually would record on a tape. Now CDs and streaming all that. People don’t even know what it’s like to have a tape, a Beta or a VHS or a cassette tape that we put in our car. And so we used to make mixtapes and we would write songs and lay tracks on the tape. And so the image I always tell people was you’ve got to put that tape in the recorder and play new things over and over and over again. Sometimes you need to rip out the tape and start all over again. Yes, Jojo, it does depend on what the circumstance of how that thought formed. Because depending on where it’s encapsulated in our brain, we have more subconscious investment in it being true. And so without going into a lot, I’m going to try to answer this in a quick way, because that would be a whole nother room.
But we tend to believe the thoughts that serve us. So we tend to believe things that how do I say this? We have an antenna. I’m going to go back to what Laura said, where we are almost like scanning for frequencies that self validate us. So the work. It’s kind of like when you go out to buy a new car. And I decided I’m going to buy this really cute red Jeep at one point in time. And then I started seeing red Jeeps everywhere. And we have at the bottom of our brain. It’s a reptilian part of our brain, the reticular activating system. And it actually kind of seeks out, like heatseeking missile, what we’ve already programmed in our brain. And so we have these self fulfilling prophecies. So we begin to see what we’re looking for. And so when we have a thought in our brain, we have to really work hard at stopping and understanding. How does that thought serve us. So let me go to my story. If I stayed in the nervousness, if I stayed in the who do you think you are? You’re speaking on stage with lots of brilliant people. If I stayed in that insecure place, that would have served an old version of myself or that pressure to perform, I better do. Well, it’s like when you step and they say, if you stand up at the batter’s box and you say, don’t strike out, don’t strike out, don’t strike out. Guess what you do.
You strike out. And so for me, if it was performed, pressure, pressure, perform, you better make sure versus letting that go and forming a new neuro pathway of okay, I’m going to go with confidence. I’m a pro. I’m going to serve the audience. And so for me in that moment, that was an easier switch because I’ve done that a bunch. That’s not a whole new neural pathway in my brain. And so, like, if you think about that truck ruts, if you go down the country road, I’d move that truck over enough times that there was the beginnings of some new matted grass, and there was some smoothness in my brain that I was able to click over to that neural pathway much easier. When I first started, it was like, eat down the Hill. So it takes time based on how cemented in that pathway is. But the framework works. No matter where you are on the pathway, you’ve got to capture and name the thought and feeling that’s driving you and reframe it to a new thought and feeling that serves you and your goals better. I hope that answers your question and gives you some insight. It does. Can I ask you another question? Sure. If it’s a quick one. Okay. We have our gut and we have our brain. And they say that when you go with your gut, that’s the truest feeling. So how different is the gut pathway versus the neural pathway? If that’s even a question, it is a great question. It’s a much longer answer and some of which I don’t even know. I will say this to you.
The gut is our feeling, and our emotions and neuroscience shows that triggers first in our minds before we move to the frontal cortex, which is where our brains and our thoughts and our rational and irrational thoughts come from. So that’s where that gap is. And so that’s why the gut, they say, go with your gut because it’s instinctive. And then the thought moves forward to our frontal cortex and we go from there. So I’m going to keep that short in case anybody else has a question. But that’s a great question. Jojo, come back, be part of our room. I’d love you to follow me. I have these kind of geeky conversations because I geek out on brain science because I really feel like we’re thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you for asking anyone else have a quick question in our last few minutes together. If not, I’m going to unpack a few more things. Who do I see here? Let me look down here. I got a hand raised. Hold on. Let’s see. Virginia, let me move you up here. Invite to speak. I’ve invited you to speak. Can you see that? Okay. Let’s see. Virginia, you have a question. Hi, Virginia. Welcome to the stage. Hi, Susie. I love what you’re teaching here. I’ve been a student from Doctors Dispenser for a very long time, so I resonate so much of what you’re teaching.
So my question is, speaking of Doctor Dispenser, I’m in a space right now where I am doing his meditations daily. His visualization meditations daily. And I feel like I’m in a space. I don’t know if you can relate where I see the visualization, I am moving towards it. I am being that person right daily. But I feel like there’s a gap like this space where I’m pushing forward, but I’m not quite there yet. And so I don’t feel like truly aligned. I don’t know if you can speak into that to that space, like in between space. If that makes any sense, I think it does. Let me see if I can clarify. I think what you’re saying is you’re visualizing the end result and you’re visualizing what you want and meditating there. But there’s a gap between that and what you’re actually feeling and achieving at this point, correct? Yes. Okay. So, yes, that happens. Yes. That’s very real. And I’m going to give you a little tip, and this will help everybody. I think visualization and meditation is so key and so important. But one of my mindset coaches years ago taught me this trick, and it is so helpful. And that is so many of us. We take the picture of the house and we post on our vision board. We take the picture of the body we want, and we posted on our vision board. We take the end result, the check, the goal, the achievement, and we put it on our vision board and we begin to visualize that happen.
And we visualize ourselves in that house. We visualize ourselves on that vacation, and it’s amazing. What we forget to do is visualize the effort, the effort to get there. So, for example, I had a goal after dealing with a lot of lung disease, to be able to run again. And it meant walking slowly at first. And when I first started walking, I walked very slow I shuffled like an old lady because my lungs were so weak after dealing with any chronic illness. And so last October, as I was walking, I was doing these really slow 20 minutes mile shuffles and I really wanted to be able to run a three and five and ten K again. And so I had the little pictures on my board, even if they were virtual. At the time I had signed up for a virtual five K. I was really excited about it, but I was walking slowly to get there. And what I began to do as I visualized being at doing the run actually on the route and visualizing the run was I visualized myself putting in the effort to getting there. And so as I would lay in bed at night, I visualized myself putting on my shoes and putting on my we were in Denver and it was snowing 1 November morning, getting up and putting on my layers of clothes and putting on my north face and heading out into the snow for my walk, getting a little faster and visually myself doing the effort because what we do then is we begin to bridge that gap.
So if I want to write a book and I mean, I’m an author and I have a picture of a book I used to visualize myself actually getting up and doing the writing. If I want to increase my sales, visualizing myself making the sales calls, not just landing the sale. So wherever you are in your life, whenever you’re wanting to do more of and do better, you want to visualize yourself actually doing the effort because what that does is it plants in your subconscious mind. You’re doing it. And what we know is that our subconscious mind does not know the difference between a thought and an action at that level. And so it begins to program your conscious mind to do that. And so then when you get up and you’re putting on your shoes and you’re headed out in the cold, you’re already excited and involved in it when you’re picking up the phone and that it doesn’t feel like £10 because you visualize making the sales calls. The resistance is lower and so you get the results. Does that help? Yes, it totally resonates. Susie, thank you so much. You are so very welcome. Like I said, I love talking about this. My goal is always aligned with the breakfast champion goal is that we are people who equip and inspire. And so I hope in this little segment you are inspired to rediscover self awareness and the internal conflict that we deal with and how we create the life we want in a new way that you embrace self awareness as an Avenue to serve.
So that when we get out of our own way, when we’re self aware enough to put down our own securities and reframe our thoughts and then move into action, we can actually show up and serve in new ways and make a difference in the world and change lives. That is just such a powerful feeling and it starts with the internal strength of self awareness. Thank you for joining us on Breakfast With Champions. If you want to catch the live version, you can follow us on Clubhouse and listen from 05:00 a.m.. To 11:00 a.m.. Eastern term time Monday through Friday, Saturday, six to noon and Sundays with our 111 Sunday service. Make sure you’re keeping up with Breakfast with Champions and getting yourself a seat at the table