Salome Schillack:

Welcome to episode number 103 of The Shine Show. And today we are going to talk about unlocking the secret language of success, and I can't wait to share this with you. Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi. I'm your host, Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you are ready to be inspired to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.

Lucy is a student of mine inside The Launch Lounge, and she recently shared this hilarious story with us. She said that she was contacted by her daughter, who is five-year-old, her daughter's teacher at school, and the teacher said, "Yes, your daughter told us all about mommy's meetings today." And her teacher wanted to ask her if she could maybe explain mommy's meetings, because she said what her daughter had told the class is that, "Every night mommy drinks wine and talks to ladies all over the world on the internet until late at night." You can see why the teacher was like, "Hello? Why is she telling the class about your secret meetings?"

Now, of course, it's totally true. I am in Australia and Lucy is in the US. We meet every Friday morning and Tuesday morning, which is Thursday and Monday for Lucy. On the A-Lister call and the Launch Lounge call, Lucy is free to drink whatever she wants, and so she gets together with ladies on the internet until late at night while drinking wine. We absolutely cracked up about this.

But the thing is, the reason it's funny is because it's the actual words that came out of Lucy's daughter's mouth that made it sound like something completely different. And that is how it is with language. We often don't know we place limitations on ourselves or on what we believe we can achieve. And very often, we are so unaware of it. It is so far in our subconscious mind or our unconscious mind that we don't even know that it's there until the words come out of our mouths. And when those words come out of our mouths, we can go, "Oh, holy cow. I did not even know that I had these beliefs but clearly judging by the words coming out of my mouth, I must have these beliefs." So language is exactly like that.

And that's why today I want to share with you three ways in which your language is shaping your success or keeping you from achieving your online course launch goals. And once you know these things, you can start to free yourself from the constraints that we collect as we grow up and that allows us to let go of the limitations that we put on ourselves, either by society, or by our family, or that we put on ourselves by ourselves. When we learn to articulate what we want, which is half the battle, once we know what we want, we can start seeing ourselves create that and moving towards it and we literally can start to call it into our lives by naming it and programming our brains to look for it. That's what I'm going to teach you today. And it also puts us in the driver's seat of our life and of our business, and who doesn't want that. So let's dive in.

Now the first way that language shapes who we are and the way that we can unlock our secret language to success is to think about how language shapes who we are, how it shapes our identity. And to demonstrate this for you, I want you to think about... No, hold on. I want you to not, do not, whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant. Do not think of a pink elephant. Don't think of a pink elephant. What did you think about? Did you think about a pink elephant? Of course, you thought about a pink elephant. We cannot not think or not visualize the sentences that we say to ourselves inside our heads. So the language that comes out of our mouth and that our thoughts, which are really just sentences inside our heads, we cannot not see them. We cannot think of them in the negative. So when I say, "Do not think of a pink elephant," you just think of a pink elephant.

When I started practicing meditation, one of the first and most profound things that I learnt in meditation is that it teaches us to observe our thoughts without judging them. And I was like, "What? Observe without judging? How do we even do that?" But it's about just allowing that thought to come in, seeing it for what it is, and then just letting it be there without the need to go, "Oh, you go away. You're good or bad," or however.

We are not our thoughts, we are the thinkers of our thoughts. But when we hear something, when we repeat something to ourselves in our heads, we cannot not hear it. And when it has an identity attached to it, like, I am, or I am not, or I am just, then our little brains take that as law. It takes that as reality. And so it becomes important for us to identify these I am sentences that we use.

Some examples for you that I used to live with, that I feel have held me back, were sentences like these ones. I am bad at maths. I am a bad speller. I am an introvert. I am unfocused. I am undisciplined. I am easily distracted. Those are all I am sentences that I had to identify in my life and go, "Well, hang on. Is this a fact or is this subjective? Is this someone else's opinion that I have put on myself, or is this something that I just don't even know where I picked it up from but I tell myself that in order to justify some kind of behavior?"

And then how I take those I am sentences and put them in the context of trying to build an online business held me back for a long time. So let me give you an example. The I am bad at math sentence started in high school, even in primary school. I want to say when I was very young. Started, I am bad at math. Then I get to a point in my life where I am launching an online course, or I am trying to build an online business, or I am trying to understand my business finances, and it shows up like this, I am bad at maths therefore I can't be good at managing finances.

Another example, I am a bad speller. That's again, something that I have carried with me since I was very young. I am a bad speller therefore I can't write social media posts. That is the belief I used to have. And it took me the longest time and a lot of life coaching to get through that and to undo that Here's another example. I am an introvert, therefore I can't build an audience on social media because it requires me to be on all the time. I hope that if you are associating with that one, if you've just nodded along with me, you are in the right place. You know who you are my introvert friends, who use that as a reason to not build a business using social media. I will tell you, I am a great example, that you can build a very successful business and not slave away on social media. That's why we have Facebook ads.

Here's another one. I am unfocused therefore I won't work hard enough for long enough to get my webinar up on time. That is one that I used to believe. I'm undisciplined therefore I don't have what it takes to build a successful business. I'm easily distracted therefore I lack the focus I need to be successful. These are all the ways... I kind of sat and I did this little experiment and I went, "What were some of the I am statements that I have had to identify in my life and how have I used these I am statements specifically in a way to hold me back from launching an online course, from scaling an online course, from hiring a team, from managing my finances, from becoming more and more successful in my business?"

So I want you to do this. I want you to first make a list. Make a list of some of the I am statements that you know are sentences that you might use to describe yourself, and then use those same things, those same I am sentences to justify any reason why you may not be where you want to be. And then I want you to think about whose voice is speaking. In a lot of cases, for me, it was my mother's voice. I'll be honest about that. I desperately wanted her approval on a lot of different levels and she did not have the skills to give me that approval. And therefore I took all of those sentences and turned them into limiting beliefs. So ask yourself whose voice is it. Is it a parent? Is it a teacher? Is it a mentor? Is it a friend? Is it a partner? Is it a child? Is it your mastermind group? Is it maybe other students that you're learning with? Whose voice is it that speaks? That's the first thing I want you to do.

Then I want you to ask, what would compassion, kindness, and grace say? What would compassion, kindness, and grace say? When I did this exercise, it was the most freeing thing ever because I realized that, if I start speaking to myself with more compassion, kindness, and grace, then all of those I am sentences can stay there. I don't have to work to make them go away, they can all just stay there, but I am going to loosen my grip on them. I'm going to relax into them. I'm going to just like when we meditate, I'm just going to let them be there without judging it.

Maybe there was a traumatic experience that created anxiety around one of these things. Maybe you start seeing how some of them can really be strengths. So for me, I turned it into, I am a really great communicator. So maybe my brain just works differently with words, and that's okay, because I can start a podcast. And if I focus on what I excel at instead of staying stuck in what I feel is not my strengths, then I'll be able to move forward, and it just frees you.

Another way I reframed that from compassion, and kindness, and grace was to say, "I am an introvert, and I'm also really, really good at building a long lasting, deeper relationships with fewer people. And that's my superpower. My lack of focus is because I am so good at seeing the big picture. I'm always finding new ways to do old things even better. I'm an innovator. I'm a pioneer. I am most comfortable when I'm doing new things." That is the definition of an entrepreneur. So I took my I am unfocused sentence and looked at it from compassion, and kindness, and grace, and discovered that actually, actually some of the greatest entrepreneurs say that they find that they have a lack of focus. Isn't it brilliant what a bit of compassion, kindness, and grace can do for us? How it can free us.

So the first thing you do is whose voice is it that's speaking, the second thing is, what would compassion, kindness, and grace say, and then the third thing is, what is a new I am sentence that can become a mantra for you to start contradicting those old sentences. So now we are building it up. Now we are building these I am sentences that are positive. These are positive affirmations. They are nothing other than positive affirmations.

So for me some of the examples I came up with is, I am highly creative. I am empathetic and can connect deeply with other humans. I am smart. I am able to explain complex ideas in simple ways because I know how to see the big picture and break it into smaller pieces. I am great at speaking, which means I can build an audience online. I am entertaining and funny. I am reliable and I show up. I am someone who attracts other awesome humans to me. That is what I came up with when I changed my I am statements into empowering statements. Now I hope that this little exercise will serve you well. And then you can go and sit with your journal and just do this little I am exercise and see how it changes the language around your identity. So the first way in which language shapes our identity is with our I am statements. The second way that language shapes our lives and shapes how we build success in our businesses is when we understand the difference between moving towards language and moving away language. Moving towards versus moving away.

The other day, I was driving with Elle, who is my seven-year-old, in the car and she was sitting in the back seat and out of the blue she asks me, "Mommy, have you ever been in a car accident?" And this is my more anxious kid. This is the one that every now and then throws me for a loop. I'm like, "Where are you coming up with this thing?" So I was a bit surprised, it came out of the blue, but due to her personality I'm already a little bit like, "Okay. Let's address the anxiety that's going on here." And I've actually been in a few car accidents in my life.

So she asks and I said, "Well, yes, mommy has been in a few car accidents in my life." And then her immediate follow up question was, "When the airbag came out, did you break your nose?" So I'm like, "Okay, bam. There is the anxiety, that somebody told her an airbag breaks noses and that is why she's asking this." So I can see that it's not about the car accident, it's about the airbags. The very specific thing. And then she says, "If we get in an accident, will the airbag hurt me?" I'm like, "Oh, my little baby." Her little brain saw the airbag logo on the side of the car door where she was sitting, and immediately her brain went to, "Oh, there's an airbag there, it's going to hurt me."

Now I hear language like this from my students sometimes. Not about airbags and car accidents, but I hear similar language around, what if no one buys my course? It's kind of the same as, what if the air bag breaks my nose? Or what if no one shows up for my webinar? Or what if I have to give a refund? Or what if someone steals my content? We want to what if all over ourselves. Our brain is designed to what if. It's designed to look for things that we need to run away from, like tigers, and leopards, and bears, and snakes.

Now, unfortunately now, or fortunately, there aren't any bears and snakes to run away from so what do we run away from? Airbags, and nobody buying my course, and nobody's showing up my webinar, and having to give a refund. And so our brain is designed to constantly come up with these things that we should be scared of and that we should be running away from. And that is the difference between moving towards and moving away is, understanding that our brain is designed to present us with these things that we need to be running away from. But it is when we learn to reframe that, when we learn to refocus it and turn it into something we want to move towards, then we actually start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We start seeing the goals that we set for us.

There is a part of our brain, it's called the reticular activation system or the RAS. And the RAS is literally a filter for information. Because our senses take in so many pieces of information every second, there has to be something that filters all this information otherwise we would literally go crazy. So the RAS is there to only present information to us that's relevant. But how does the RAS know what is relevant? This is the catch is, we tell the RAS what is important to us by focusing on it.

So it's kind of like a catch-22. So I'm driving and I have the ability to block out the majority of the stimulation that's coming through my windows, and coming through my steering wheel, and coming through the car seat, and coming from the radio. I can manage the stimulus that's being put in because I can tell my brain that the only thing I want it to focus on is on staying on the road and abiding by the road laws and looking out for other cars. But if I tell my brain that the only thing I want to focus on is not driving into someone else, guess what's going to happen? My brain is going to focus on driving into someone else because that is the information I'm telling my brain to focus on. It's kind of like a catch-22.

So we tell our brain, "No one will buy our course," our brain goes, "Yes, sir. Filtering in all information to support the hypothesis that no one will buy our course." And then we start seeing evidence of this. And as we see evidence of this, we start to believing it must be true and we start behaving differently. We start feeling low, and our energy drop, and we don't show up for the Facebook Live we were going to do. And then even fewer people know about the launch. And then what happens? No one buys. And bam, our brain has proven us right.

This is literally the brain system that manifestation is built on. When people say you're going to manifest things, it's because they want you to retrain the system in your brain, where you are filtering in evidence of the existence of things that are positive instead of the possible existence of things that might be negative, which ends up attracting those things. It's all the same thing as this woo-woo and manifestation, and what you focus on expands and where your focus goes, your energy flows. It's all the same thing and it's thanks to the system in our brain. It has everything to do with what you tell your brain to focus on and then your brain seeks out evidence of the thing that you've already told it you want more evidence of.

So here's a little exercise that you can do to play around with this and to start identifying where you're using the language that describes things you want to move away from, as opposed to using more empowering language that describes things that you want to move towards. So the first thing I want you to do is just start listening to your own words. Start listening to your own conversations in your head and catch the sentence, what I don't want. What I don't want. Because it comes up so often and we don't even hear it anymore because we're so used to it. We're so used to identifying what we want to move away from. So just catch those sentences.

What I don't want is for people to think that I'm pushy or salesy. What I don't want is to show up on live video and no one else joins me. What I don't want is to spend all this time creating a sales page only to have no one buy from me, or what I don't want is to spend a lot of money on an ads manager and still not be sure that I'm going to make money. Write down what I don't want and start hearing it. Just create awareness of it. Create awareness of how often you are saying to yourself the exact things that you want to move away from.

The other sentence that you need to look out for is the, what if, and then insert anything you don't want to use. Just like Elle, my daughter, was saying, "What if the airbag deploys and it breaks my nose?" I hear this as well a lot. It's the what if they don't buy? Or what if I get a refund request? Or what if people judge me? Listen for those what if sentences and then do what we learn in meditation. Just allow it to be there without judgment, and then ask yourself, if this is what I don't want then what do I want? What do I look forward to?

And that could be, instead of saying, "What I don't want is for people to think I'm pushy or salesy," instead we could say, "What I do want is to show up for anyone who purchases my course and serve them to the best of my ability. What I do want is to show up on live video and even if no one joins me to share my best content and learn from it." Maybe it's what I don't want is to spend all this time creating a sales page only to have no one buy it, and then you go, "What I do want is to learn how to create the best sales page I can so that I can move closer to somebody purchasing it."

Do you see what I did there? I took the what I don't want sentence, I used that to make me aware, used that to build the awareness, and then turned it on its head and completely reframed it into something I do want. And what's going to happen is your brain is going to start looking for the evidence of the thing you do want, which gets you a lot closer to getting the thing that you do want. All right. So that is the second way our language shapes our world, and that's the moving towards versus moving away language that we use.

And the third way that our language shapes the success that we create in our businesses is what we call, victim versus curiosity, or at least I call it victim versus curiosity. The first time I entered the room at the school where I was doing coaching training, it's a school in Melbourne, here in Australia. And the first thing you do is you go for what they used to call intake weekend. It's like a three-day immersive coaching experience. Coming from a South African background, like we are really pragmatic and practical. We're just, just give me the to-dos. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. So walking into a room and hearing words like mindset, hearing words like manifest, like those words, I was like, "Wow. Where am I?"

But then when people start talking about me being a victim, or about victimhood, or about limiting beliefs, that's one of the things that still makes me cringe, the word, limiting beliefs. There is something that rebel inside of me whenever someone calls me a victim. It's just maybe a personality thing, I don't know, but I can't stand it. And so for the longest time, I rejected the idea that I am in any way, shape, or form limiting myself by keeping myself a victim. Just that thought of it was like, "What are you talking about? I am not a victim and I am not limiting myself in any way." I thought, "I didn't have any limiting beliefs because I see myself as an achiever. I'm someone who overcomes. I've overcome a lot of things in my life. I'm a fighter. I'm a survivor."

But then I started to realize how many things I say about myself, my life, and my business that sounds a lot like I am at the mercy of something or someone else. That I am in some way, shape, or form disempowered. Like I am caged in by my circumstances. Like I have limited choices, because I used to believe that somethings just are what they are instead of reminding myself that I always have a choice and that I am always in a position of power to choose again if I don't like the circumstances or if I don't like the beliefs that I carry with me.

So here's an example of that. One of the beliefs I used to have that made me feel like a victim was, I have to cook dinner for my family. Now, if you've ever met me, you might know how much I hate to cook. I don't cook. I don't like thinking about food when I'm not hungry. I particularly do not like grocery shopping. So if I don't want to think about food when I'm not hungry, and now I need to eat, I want the food in front of me when I want to eat. I don't particularly enjoy the process of preparing food. I also don't enjoy the process of thinking about what I need to buy in order to prepare food. So it's a bit of a torturous thing for me.

But I had this belief that I have to cook dinner for my family because I'm at home. Most of the time, that time of the evening, my husband would still be in the office so the responsibility fell on me. But I also know that I want to be a good mother, and I want to make sure that my kids have nutritious meals every day and I want to take care of them. And that means that every night around 6:00 PM, these people need to be fed and the responsibility mostly fall on me.

Now, when I learned how much I am boxing myself in and creating this resistance by having this belief that I have to cook, I realized that it's making me feel stuck, it's making me feel victimized, and it's making me feel without a choice whenever I say that. Whenever I'd say, "I have to cook," or, "I hate cooking," it's very disempowering. But when I started playing with it to make it more empowering, to make it more like the choice that I do have to reflect the choice that I have, I started with statements that I knew were true, but maybe not necessarily as specific.

So I turned, I must cook, into, I love taking care of my family. Now that feels a whole lot better to me than I must cook. I can live with, I love taking care of my family. I don't want to live with, I must cook, that makes me feel like a victim, but I can live with, I love to take care of my family and I can nurture them and look after them. So then I got really curious about how I can find other ways to love and take care of my family and their physical needs at 6:00 PM every night when they are hungry. And I came up with, how can I take care of my family at 6:00 PM in a way that feels joyful to me and is a choice I would make easily? So instead of saying, "I must cook," I said, "How can I take care of my family at 6:00 PM every weeknight in a way that feels joyful to me and is a choice I could easily make?"

Now I wonder how you can take any victim phrases that you have around building your business or launching your course, anything like, I must be on social media every day, or I have to be on TikTok, or everyone says I must be on clubhouse, or I have to use a webinar to launch, or my sales page must convert this time. How about we turn that into, I love serving my students online, and then get curious and say something like, "How can I consistently build an audience and serve my students in a way that feels joyful to me and is a choice I would make easily?" If it feels joyful and it's a choice you would make easily, doesn't that just feel so good?

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to write down the sentences that you have in your head that leaves you feeling disempowered in your business. Anything that comes up with or starts with, I can't, I must, I don't know how, I don't have, I have to, I wish. Those are all disempowering sentences. And replace them with curiosity statements. Statements that is going to open up your mind to go and start searching for solutions that feel joyful and make you feel really good about yourself. And those are sentences like, I wonder how, I'm curious about, what I can do is, if it was easy then, if it felt light, I would be, the loving thing here is, how can I.

So I'm willing to bet that anything in your business where you are feeling any kind of ickiness, any kind of yuckiness, any kind of stuckness, or hardheartedness, or resentment, or like you are a victim because you believe that is the only way you can build an online course business, or because everyone that you've learned from has done this one thing but that one thing doesn't work for you, I'm hoping that you can sit down and really honestly, look at those things, just like I had to do when I realized how disempowered I feel when I have to cook, and you can turn it around into curiosity. How can you do this in a way that will feel joyful and make you feel really good about yourself and still meet that higher need, the need for serving your audience, the need for taking care of your family and thereby making sales, making money? So I hope that you can play around with this and start to see how you can free yourself from any closed off expectations.

So just like Lucy's daughter's teacher who heard the same sentences Lucy's daughter said about her mother and formed a very clear, but totally mistaken image in her mind of what exactly Lucy gets up to in the evenings with her friends in Australia, when she's drinking wine, remember that your subconscious mind is also listening and it's paying close attention. So make sure that you give that mind of yours the right picture by being totally deliberate in the choice of your words.

If this resonated with you, I would love for you to send me a DM on Instagram. I'm @salome.schillack. Send me a DM and tell me, what is the most freeing thing for you that you are going to be doing with joy and with all the good feelings now that you can reframe the way you speak about it. All right, my friends, have a lovely week and I'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that Subscribe button so you never miss a thing.