Story Time…my story and how it relates to you

Recently when I put a post out in my Instagram stories (If you’re not following me already head over to @franexcellcoach pronto!) asking what people wanted to hear from me and my story was a clear winner.  

And one I’d shied away from for a while.

I share tidbits of who I was before my mindset jiggery pokery and who I am now but there are some hefty chunks I miss out.

 

Your story is not always just YOUR story

 

Partly because so much of it really isn’t just my story to tell so in all honesty I didn’t know how to and i’m sure many of you can relate to that.  

Partly because so many people have been through SO much worse and I think it’s always important to keep that perspective, but at the end of the day your story is your story and it shapes who you are and it’s not really about comparing.  

 

It’s how you’re wired

It’s your programming, it’s the wiring in your brain, it’s how your world is shaped.

But mainly because I felt that people didn’t NEED to know a lot of it because what I do is about them, not me.  

It’s got nothing to do with helping people push through the inevitable mindset gremlins to take action in their business and build a life that they actually love living right?

 

But then I thought…but what if it does!?

 

What if some of the things I’ve been through and how I’ve dealt with the belief systems and thought processes it left me with can help someone else going through or who’s been through similar?

At the end of the day our personal lives and the way we think about ourselves and what we believe we’re capable of is inextricably linked to things we’ve been through in the past and what we go through in the present.

It’s why in my mastermind (The Proactive Pants Mastermind) the personal ‘stuff’ is talked about JUST as much as the business element.  

When we have things going on personally now, or in the past, it can and inevitably WILL affect your business, so it’s important to deal with it all as a whole.

 

We’re on autopilot most of the time

 

When 95-99% of what we do is running on autopilot, automatic thought patterns and belief systems, then knowing the things that could be holding you back are going to be REALLY helpful right?  

Especially when we haven’t linked the two together which SO often happens.

So I’ll risk it for a biscuit in the hope that it helps even one person.

Now, I’ll try not to give my ENTIRE life story but the cliff notes of what I’ve felt has been important in shaping who I am today.

 

The awkward teenage years

 

So much of our programming happens when we’re young.  The main imprinting stage is 0-7 but when we’re like sponges taking in everything around us without as much of the rational conscious mind analysing it all but we all know how much of an effect our teenage years can have on us.  

My teenage years were really good on the most part, I have an incredible supportive family but I was very shy and had a crippling case of the ‘I’m not good enoughs’ which was only exacerbated by being bullied at school, like so many of us are.

Mostly I was bullied for the way I looked. Or who I was as a person.  The irony is that the second one was always from people who really didn’t know me AT ALL but you just don’t make that link at that age.

What this did was lead me to the belief system that to be liked I had to be attractive, that how I looked was directly linked to being good enough and being worthy of other peoples’ friendship.  

Never mind the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and every person truly does see something different, my belief was that I had to be a certain way and look a certain way to be accepted and liked. I didn’t think I fit that mold.   

As a result of this I struggled with eating disorders which started very innocently as not wanting to eat in front of boys (I know, I know!!) and quickly escalated.

I continued to yoyo between ‘you’re too fat’ and ‘you’re too thin’ in a cycle of self loathing, probably until I was about 30 when I started to really work on it and thankfully had a husband who literally thought I was the most beautiful thing on the planet so that helped and really highlights to me the importance of being with the right person.

I kept repeating the same patterns of extreme dieting and comfort eating.  

What this of course did was kept me in an eternal loop of thinking I wasn’t ‘thin’ enough or I was ‘too thin’ to be attractive and therefore liked and accepted and meant I had incredibly low self esteem.

 

The bad boys!

 

Something that also really contributed to the lack of self worth and belief that being liked was directly linked to the way I looked was being in an emotionally abusive relationship for over 3 years.

Being stood in the mirror and told ‘see, I told you your ar** was bigger than mine’ and being told I ‘looked better thinner’ consistently reinforced my beliefs.

But I realise now that I only attracted that relationship because that’s where my self worth already was.  

I believed I didn’t deserve to be treated any better, that I should be grateful that anybody wanted to be in a relationship with me in the first place.

My feelings of not being good enough, self worth and confidence were on the floor but I know now that because it was what I expected, my brain looked for all the evidence to prove that it’s true, in the form of someone who was constantly reinforcing those beliefs.  

 

Time to get to work

 

I needed to work on my belief systems around all of that and my fear of what other people thought and of not being good enough or worthy.

Now to quickly relate this back to your business…Do you think someone feeling that way would be able to get on video and social media and put themselves out there for the world to judge?  

To be able to stand firm in their knowledge and opinions knowing not everyone is going to feel the same?  

To go to networking events and talk to strangers?

To talk on stage?

To launch service based products?

To charge their worth?  

Or is someone with those beliefs more likely to struggle with feeling like an imposter, compare themselves to others, undercharge, self sabotage and make excuses?

Can you see how important it is for us to work on these underlying beliefs because the pattern spills out and repeats itself in all other areas of our lives?

When you align your thoughts, beliefs and actions that’s where the magic happens but you can take all the action you like and if underneath it all you believe it’s not for you then you’ll feel like you’re pushing water uphill and wonder why you’re doing all the things and it just feels so damn hard and like you’re not getting anywhere.

When you work on changing those belief systems and challenge those thought processes you can completely change how you view everything, which is what I did.  

Now, through the work I’ve done on my mindset If someone doesn’t like me that’s cool, no problemmo, i’m not for everybody but there are some people I AM for and those are the ones I focus on and the ones I can help and I certainly don’t link it to how I look and I’m 100% comfortable with who I am as a person so it truly doesn’t bother me at all.

Much easier way to be right?

 

Eeyore on a bad day

 

Next thing I want to talk about briefly is the fact that I was an incredibly anxious and stupendously negative person.

There is a reason I refer to myself as a former Eeyore on a bad day.

I was always trapped in victim mode wondering why me in this little bubble of ‘not my fault’.  

Feeling like I wasn’t in control of my own outcomes.  

I’d think the worst in any situation as a means of self preservation but I was just creating self fulfilling prophecies.  

When things went wrong it was ‘see, I told you so’ but knowing what I know now I see how destructive that was.

As part of my anxiety I catastrophised everything.  

But what I was doing was creating that as a reality in my body and wiring it into my brain.  

The mind and body are a linked system and the brain doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined so I was physiologically making these thoughts real and affecting my health.

Now I know I was essentially putting everything in place for my brain to prove me right.  It was trying to protect me but in doing so was really holding me back.

At the height of my anxiety we lost almost everything. This is the part that really isn’t just my story to tell but the need to know stuff is it was ironically my trigger point for where I am now and became something that i’m actually very grateful for.  

Where we are now versus where we would have been had it not happened is waaaaaay better!

We ended up having to move in with my mother in law while we picked ourselves back up.  

The day I went into the doctors about my bad knees and came out with antidepressants, which I never took, was my turning point.

I went down the rabbit hole of personal development and decided I could get myself out of the depressed, anxious hole I was in.

 

And that led me here!

 

Now for FUN I study psychology, neuroscience, quantum and metaphysics, I read over 100 books per year in personal development, brain sciencey stuff and marketing and like to collect qualifications and I’ve never felt more me.  It’s not for everyone and that’s fine.

I am 100% myself and am so comfortable with that it doesn’t bother me if people don’t like me.  

I choose to surround myself with the right people and people who lift me up and I can lift up, of course there’s a sting when someone is negative or doesn’t like me because I like to be liked and i’m human.  But it doesn’t stay with me.

When negative things happen I can always find another more positive way to look at it.  It can sting, but it doesn’t stay with me.

So I hope what you can take from this is we all have a story that affects how we run all areas of our lives.  

It shapes who we are but you get to re-write yours at any point you choose.  

You get to say the past is the past, I shape my future and I’m going to live in my present.

Who you are today doesn’t have to be who you are tomorrow, whatever level you’re trying to reach.

You can choose to stay ‘safe’ in your comfort zone with the thoughts that make you self sabotage, make you feel frustrated and like there’s something wrong with you and make things feel ten times harder…or you can choose to change it and say NO, there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m capable of more, I want more and I deserve more.

 

If you got value from this and you know in your gut that now is the time to step up and start rewiring your thinking and changing things for yourself then book in a free discovery call so we can work out what needs to happen to get you from where you’re at right now, to the action taking success you know you can be!! If you want my eyes and ears on YOUR problems I work with people 1:1, through the Proactive Pants Programme and 1:1 full day intensives, stop waiting for if and when and decide to change things now!

Fx

Fran Excell, Subconscious Success Mentor – Helping Business Owners Overcome Self Sabotage & Get More Done In Less Time at www.franexcell.com

RESOURCES:

Check out The Positive Pants Podcast here

Download your FREE Stressed To Success Meditation here

Shop Printables & Meditations here

Grab your 365 day ‘Attitude Of Gratitude’ Journal here

Grab Your ‘Positive Pants Firmly On’ Notebook here

Book In a Free 20 Minute Discovery Call here