It’s a big day at Brave Women at Work! I am excited because I have my first Scottish guest and Australian resident, Mags Bell, joining me today. Besides having a beautiful accent and being a wonderful conversationalist, Mags brings the goods during our show. She is very knowledgeable on all things related to mindset and confidence, which are foundational for self-aware leadership. Listen in as Mags explains her easy-to-understand models and tools. You’ll want to take notes during this conversation or listen to the show twice!
During our conversation, Mags and I discussed:
- What led Mags to go from a corporate role to coaching and keynote speaking.
- Her early ego journey in management and how it has changed over time.
- What being in the movie means and how we can snap out of it to a more balanced ego.
- Her LeadingMe® model and how it is critical to the middle ego path in leadership.
- The 4R’s Release Model® and how it helps us silence our inner critics and Imposter Syndrome.
- And other ways we can release our “shite” aka shit to be better leaders.
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Listen to the podcast here
Achieving A Balanced Ego With Mags Bell
I’m so glad you’re here. Everyone, how are you doing out there? Quick personal update, my kiddos are going back to school in the next 10 to 11 days. I’m counting as the show goes live. Can I get a yay? Can I get a yes, a yahoo from all the working moms out there? You know what I’m talking about. We love our kids and summer and going to the pool and maybe some unstructured time, but when it’s time for kids to go back, we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief. We’ve made it again. Am I right? I know that I’m right. I am very excited about this transition. How about you? How has your summer been?
Are you joining me in a deep breath as we approach the end of summer and we will all soon be onto a new season? I love fall. It’s my favorite season of the year. I’m already dreaming of football. We’re in August. I’m already dreaming of football, sweaters, and pumpkin spice lattes. I know I need to wait a bit and be patient, which I say to my kids all the time, patience is a virtue. I’m saying it for myself because I am not a patient person, but fall is coming, people, fall is coming. I need to enjoy the last little bits of summer, but my beloved fall is on the horizon. Another reason that I am very excited is that I have my first Scottish guest on, although she lives in Australia. My guest’s name is Mags Bell.
Besides having a beautiful accent and being a wonderful conversationalist, Mags brings the goods, AKA the knowledge and the experience to the table. She is knowledgeable on all things related to mindset and confidence and what it takes to be an excellent leader. These two things, mindset and confidence, we know here at Brave Woman at Work, they’re foundational for us to be self-aware leaders. We are not, like I think Vince Lombardi said, “Leaders are not born. They are made.” We have to be self-aware to do that. Listen in as Mags tells us her easy-to-understand and easy-to-implement models and tools. You’re going to want to take notes during this conversation or listen to the show twice.
During our conversation, Mags and I discussed what led her to go from a corporate role to coaching and keynote speaking, her early ego journey in management and how it has changed over time, she uses this metaphor. You’ll have to listen in. This is a little bit of a teaser. What being in the movie means and how we can snap out of it to a more balanced ego, her leading me model and how it is critical to the middle ego path in leadership, the four R’s release model and how it helps us silence our inner critics and imposter syndrome, yes, please, and how she has other ways we can release our love. She says shite, AKA shit, to be better leaders.
Here is more about Mags. Mags Bell is an international speaker, author, executive gemologist, and awareness expert who works with major influencers and leaders around the world to cut, polish, and reset their inner diamonds, allowing them to step up into leading me. Her book, What the Bleep is Coaching, lifts the lid on the mysteries of coaching and allows you to see real accelerated results from people who have gone through the process with her. Twenty-five years plus in business and speaking, also over 60,000 hours, everyone, in coaching, that’s amazing.
She assists those top influencers and leaders to their authentic, balanced selves, which makes them better decision-makers, leading to a less complicated life, both privately and in business. She enables them to bring out their brilliance, which propels the creation of powerful results. She lives with her love and partner in life of 34 years, Paul, and her fur baby, Rory, on the Gold Coast of Australia. If the show has made an impact on you, please make sure to share it with a family member, colleague, or friend. Your ratings and reviews help the show continue to gain traction and grow. If you can do me a favor and spend like five minutes leaving that review, I would so appreciate your encouragement.
If you’ve already done that, I thank you so much. It means the world to me. Also, if you haven’t yet downloaded one or all of the freebies from my website, check them out at BraveWomenAtWork.com. There are three out there, and you never know, maybe more to come in the future, 24 Career and Leadership Affirmations, 5 Ways to Managing Your Imposter Syndrome, and Getting Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips. Also, a couple of other quick announcements. I do have one spot for individual coaching. If you are looking for some support in any of the areas of mindset, confidence, negotiation, a leadership presence, anything that will assist you in getting to that next level in your career, please go out to BraveWomenAtWork.com.
You can download the freebies that I just mentioned, or you can book a discovery call. Discovery calls are 30 minutes in length. They’re completely at no cost to you. We can just have a conversation about where you are in your career and your goals, and we can jointly determine if coaching may be the right fit for you.
One last thing, my latest book, Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership, is available for pre-order in hardcover. This is the third in the series of women’s anthologies. There’s Brave Women at Work: Stories of Resilience on the topic of resilience. The second one is Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Confidence on the topic of confidence, which we cover all of the topics in the podcast, and the most recent, Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership.
The author team and I for the leadership subject have a big, hairy, audacious goal to reach a New York Times bestseller this fall. I would so appreciate it if you could pre-order a copy before it comes out in late September. This book and the entire series have been a true labor of love. Walk with us as we lead out loud with this book. Any support you can give us, we would so appreciate it. You can pre-order a copy of the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, or wherever books are sold. Let’s welcome Mags to the show.
Welcome to Brave Woman at Work, Mags. How are you?
I’m very well, and thank you for having me on, Jennifer. I’m so glad to be here.
I’m so glad, and thank you for joining me so early. I did not know this, I totally omitted the time, but thank you again for just being so professional and ready to jump in.
No worries at all.
Career Journey
I always love to jump in right feet first on the background story. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you’ve got to where you are?
I would say it was by sheer accident, mistake. I should have been a PE teacher, a physical education teacher, and I’m not. That was my goal at school. That’s what I thought I was going to do, and it didn’t turn out that way. I ended up in sales, and I was a manager at the age of 26, but I can honestly say that was my ego. I talk a lot about ego, but that was my ego. I just wanted to wear a badge called manager, and I got it at age 26.
Was I good? I think there were certain things I was good at, and those who weren’t the same social style as me probably had an absolute hell of a time, but you live and learn. I ended up in the pharmaceutical industry where I went back to what we say, carrying the bag, when you’re in sales. I went back to sales, and I love sales. Anyone who says they don’t do sales, well, then they’re not a child, a parent, a friend, a teacher, because we all sell. I love sales, and I love good sales. I love when someone sells well to me.
One of the really good things I had to learn was the listening part, and the more I got to listen, the better it became. I ended up in management again, and this time around, I went in for the right reason. I went in realizing it’s not about me. It’s actually about them, and that’s where leadership really kicked in, and it went from strength to strength. It was at that stage I started coaching. I was put on my first coaching course as a leader. I didn’t really get it, and I thought, why am I here? It’s a waste of my time. I need to be out in the field, I really did.
But then the second time around, which should have taught everyone a lesson, particularly me, that I was being put on, for the second time, a course to teach me to coach. I had an issue with a member of staff, and I thought, oh, I wonder if this will work. So, I became more attentive this time, and I started writing my notes, and practiced, and then took it back into the field and realized it worked. I thought, wow, this is a great tool, and it became the one tool that I pulled out of my bag more often.
Then I decided to go out on my own, leave the industry, and start a coaching business, which was complete naivety. You’re in a multinational business, you’re running teams and whatnot.
You think it would be really easy to just go out on your own, and then I realized that, yeah, so I’ve got delivery. Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got selling. Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got accounts. Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got marketing. Yeah, that’s me.
Everything was turning back to me, and I was like, okay, I need to get a team. So, you get the team together, and I’ve done a couple years. I’m originally from Scotland, for anyone who’s thinking, is that an Aussie voice? I live in Australia. I started my business for about two and a half years in Scotland, and then I moved halfway around the world with no connections whatsoever and started a business here. So, I’m nearly sixteen years in business in Australia, that’s how I came to be.
There’s a win. There’s a win right there. You survived. Most coaching businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs, never make it, but you said you’re sixteen plus years, so congrats.
Thank you very much. Sometimes it’s not so easy.
Before we dive into more about your programs and all of the wonderful resources you have built through your company through the years, I wanted to know if there was a pivotal moment. You said at one point it was about ego and about you, and then it became about them. Was there anything that made you start listening, or no, it was just a gradual awakening over time?
Personally, for me, I think it was much more of an awakening. I think that job as a manager at that time, I would get frustrated with things, and of course, it was their fault, which is the unbalanced ego. It’s them, and why can’t they do it, and they’re the problem, and it’d be so much better if we didn’t have people to manage, and we just got on with it, all the things that many people have said. When I went back to sales, I was again seeing it from the other side. I saw some really bad managers, and I’ve seen some great leaders, and I do think there’s a distinction between leader and manager. I then started looking at what was really good, what wasn’t, and that, I think, is what opened my eyes up and made me realize if I’m going to go back into management, then it needs to be about them, not me. It’s not about a badge.
It’s actually about if I create the environment of motivation for that. I can’t motivate anyone, get that clear, apart from myself. However, if I can build an environment of motivation, and I know what motivates each of my team, then I can build that environment that will make them grow and help them deliver what they need to deliver. It was the realization, slowly, I would say, that I eventually got there.
Leaders must build an environment of motivation where every team member can grow. Help them deliver what they need to deliver. Share on XLeader Vs Manager
What is the difference to you? We’ve all seen the memes. We’ve seen the articles. There have been many studies all over the internet about this, but what, in your mind, is the difference between a leader and a manager?
It would be easy for me just to say leading me, because it encapsulates quite a lot. For me, a manager is someone who just gets the job done, whatever the job, so KPIs. Sometimes they don’t even manage that, but they’re so stuck on targets, KPIs, the getting things done, the doing, they forget about the people. It’s the day-to-day, the management of the business. For me, a leader is someone who understands they don’t know it all. The manager usually thinks they know it all.
The unbalanced ego is very much at play. The leader usually has experienced a lot. I definitely was a manager at the beginning, I became a leader over time. But it was understanding that the people’s need, my people and their need, came first, because then that would serve the customer so much more. I had to be very aware of their motivation, what drives them. In sales, a lot of people would say it was the money.
It never is money. I used to prove that when I would ask it. It was one of my questions I would ask when I was interviewing people, and I’d say, “What motivates you?”
A lot of salespeople say money, because what they’re thinking about is, “What are you going to give me as far as my salary is concerned, my package, and what are the incentives?” When I put the question to them, “Okay, I want you to go to the worst manager you’ve ever had in your life, and I’m going to give you $50,000 to go and work with them.” “No, no, no, I’m not going to do that.” “Okay, but you’ve got to stay there. It’s not even just going to work, you’ve got to stay there. Okay, I’ll give you $100,000. I’ll give you $150,000.” If money motivated them, then they would say yes to that, and it doesn’t.
It’s inquiring and finding what each individual’s motivation is and then being able to build the environment to provide them that motivation to go and do what’s best for the customer. For me, it’s much more about if I don’t know me, which is what Leadingme is all about, if I don’t know me, how am I going to lead others? I really, truly believe that people follow, they’re not really led, they follow. If I’m not being the person that I want them to be, if I’m not showing them by my example what I really want, I will get really annoyed. Often, you’ll hear people say, and you know this, Jennifer, you’ve been around the block, “I’ve told them that and they need to do this. I want them to do that, but they keep doing this.”
Can you just look at yourself? Which part are you playing in this? It’s usually this one, the other side of it. We may ask them to do something, but what we’re actually doing is showing them to do the opposite. A leader, for me, is very much about setting the example, which means I have to make sure that I know who I am, what I’m about, and what we’re trying to achieve so that I can get that over to people. If I can’t do that, I’m not worth it. That’s where Leadingme came from, really.
LeadingME®
Let’s go there. Let’s talk about Leadingme. Let’s give the listeners a little bit more insight into that program.
Leadingme is one word, that’s how I see it. It’s Leadingme, not leading me. People often create different models. My models just came. I’d be working away, and I’d be using coaching models, and then I’d be working with someone, and I’d try something else.
Eventually, various things came. I have several tools within the Leadingme toolbox that we teach and then use. You can teach as much as you want, but if you don’t practice the teachings, it’s like everything else, it’ll go. We tend to look at the balancing of the ego. When I talk about the balancing of the ego, the best thing to talk about is the ladder of leadership. This isn’t a ladder that goes up and down, this ladder goes side to side, but it doesn’t even go from one side to the other. Imagine you have one side of you, your right-hand side, and then your left-hand side.
What you’re going to do is actually come into the middle. This is describing the ego and what the ego does. All of us, there isn’t one of us, even people who are good leaders, we all go into begging it. The begging of the ego is really about the control and judgment. That control is, “It needs to be done my way. It has to be done like this. You shouldn’t do X, Y, and Z. It should be.”
This is all the judging of someone and what they’ve done, probably without even asking, we just jump to conclusions and we beg it up. The other side is belittling. That’s where we become a victim or we blame. We do the “Poor me. I can’t believe this has happened to me. Why? I never asked for this, or it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do that. They did it. They done it.”
We’ve all been on both of these sides. Can you imagine coming right into that middle section that I call leading me? That’s where we balance the ego completely. This is where we have complete confidence. This is where confidence really comes from, you’re balancing the ego. I’m on a mission, Jennifer, to stop people from saying things like, “Leave your ego at the door,” because we’re human beings.
Isn’t it part of us?
“I’ll unplug it and pop it outside.” We have an ego. We’re meant to have it. We’ve come to this earth with an ego. The thing we need to do is bring the balanced ego into the room. That balanced ego is about being response able, being aware, completely aware of what’s going on for everyone, including yourself.
That’s proper leadership and leading me, being balanced. I have a couple of tools that help people. One’s called “the three keys to eliminate your shite.” For anyone who doesn’t understand what shite is, it’s a Scottish word, but it just means shi*.
I love it, by the way.
The three keys to eliminate your shite help you go from the bigging it side right into the middle. If you catch yourself bigging up over someone else, you can get into the middle. On the belittling side, and usually this is where we belittle ourselves, although we can belittle others, but we’re belittling it, “I can’t believe this has happened to me. I’m not good enough. I can’t do that.”
I use the four R release model to get them back into the middle. I use these tools myself. The tools came from me having issues and then working out how I was going to actually change those issues. I had one of the biggest inner critics, and it caused me depression. Because when you think of the Leadingme ladder of leadership, if we are at the real end of bigging up, we’re in mania and OCD, because we are so in control.
We’re so busy trying to gain control. When we are actually at the bottom end of belittling and that victim mode, that’s depression, and because I caused my own depression. I would remember we live in a law of balance. Polar, the polarity in this world is all around us and everything, including our yin and yang. The same goes for, if you can imagine, the two sides of this as mental health. If we get ourselves into that middle section, then we are confident. We go with the flow. We don’t try and push upstream.
We’re not trying to push against anything. It becomes easy. Things flow to us that we want, because I prefer to call it the law of magnetism rather than the law of attraction. We’re electromagnetic beings. Whatever we put out, we get back. The thing is, if we say it’s the law of attraction, it sounds like nice things will come back, but trust me, if we put the shite out, we’ll get the shite back. We need to be really clear.
If we are in that middle section of Leadingme, so you imagine your body, one side bigging it, the other side belittling, you move right into that center ground. If you think about all the ancient wisdoms and everything talking about being centered, this is what it’s about. It’s actually your ego you need to center. The world’s your oyster. You can draw anything. The great thing is when people around you are cracking up about this and you’re bigging it up or belittling, you’re in that center ground.
You can observe it. You’re response able. The easiest way to explain this in an analogy is you’re in the movie theater and you’re in the movie. Imagine the screen is so big, you’re right in the movie. As you’re watching it, “Oh my God, I got a fright in my life there. Oh my God, it’s so sad.” That’s great.
You’re reacting constantly to what’s going on in the movie. Your whole peripheral vision is the movie, and then you hear a rustle of a packet and you come out and realize someone, well, two people, have come along and sat in front of you, and you didn’t even see them because you were so in the movie at the time. They’d come in and sit, and I’d come out of the movie. I can see them. I can see the movie running. I can see some light. I can see my other half’s fallen asleep, that’s going to be a great conversation about this movie. All the things around you, you’re aware of everything.
I’m response able. The easiest way to see this is when I’m in the movie, I’m actually in the peripherals. I am bigging it up or I’m belittling, and I can catch myself there when I come out of that movie. When I come out, I’m centered. Out of the movie, I’m centered. In the movie, I’m in the peripherals.
If we can catch ourselves, which we can, if we become more and more aware, which is really what Leadingme is about and which coaching is all about, we become aware of self. That is, for me, what a real leader is about. I became really aware of self. I’m becoming aware of everyone. If I can stay out of that movie, I am Leadingme, but others are following my example.
A couple of questions in there. I know what shite is now. Shite is shi*. You’ve used the word bigging up a couple of times. I don’t know what that means to me. For others that may be like, what is that? What does that mean?
Bigging up is when you think you are right, no matter what. At this moment in time, the polarity in your country, but it’s everywhere. You have polarities of yes, for example. Nobody’s listening to anyone else. It just does. We are right. Whoever we are, we are right.
This is how it is. This is how it should be. That’s bigging up. The belittling part is when you start calling names to others because they don’t believe what you believe, or you start calling yourself the names.
Get Out Of The Movie
Totally clear. I love the visuals. Thank you about the movie metaphor. How do you help, through leading me, your clients get aware that maybe they don’t even know they’re in the movie? I don’t know. How do they get aware so that they know, and they can get that awareness of self, so they can start dropping the periphery and get hyper-present, and start coming from that neutral place?
There’s lots of different ways. I call them out a lot. I’m not the easiest of coaches. I often say when people come and say, “I think I really need to work with you,” I’ll start by saying, that’s just something often, because you need more. A lot of the time, I’ll call people out on it, and it’s not that only there’s only a few people out there who do this. I still do this. I still bigging up at times.
I still belittle at times, not as much of the belittling, because I’ve managed to eradicate that through silencing an inner critic, the four R’s. I say as in the letter R, because I roll my R’s and I’m Scottish. It is an R. There’s four R’s. The four R release model is what I use to get myself away from that. I’ve been doing that for quite a lot of years, it’s not often I go there. I don’t go into the pity party that often, but I still can get into the bigging up. I can still go into, because I’m a control freak.
Self-confessed, I am a control freak. I am much better at controlling that, and I can catch myself and pull myself back. This isn’t just for a client. I’ve been using these for years for myself, but if I’ve got a client who comes to me, and we all, we all start with complete unawareness of what we’re doing, and usually it’s the other person we’re blaming. As soon as I hear the usual words about, “Yeah, but you don’t understand, Mags, what they have done is,” no, I do understand. You’re in the movie.
We use that a lot. When they come and we’re chatting about what’s happened that month, and sometimes, “I lost it with such.” “Oh, so what happened? How long were you in the movie?” The good thing is, “I probably was only there for maybe a few minutes, and then I caught myself.” There are different ways. One of the many ways, there is yoga, there’s meditation, there’s breathing. There are all sorts of ways of getting yourself present.
Some work for others. Meditation was something that I would say I could never do because my mind was too active. Great excuse. Absolutely wonderful.
I was the same, Mags. I was the same, then I started meditating, and then I was like, “Oh, this is life-changing.”
Got it, Jennifer. I even went on a ten-day silent meditation course.
Oh wow. Next level.
As you can hear, I can talk, a silent meditation course called Vipassana. It was life-changing. The fact that some of these tools also came from that, the understanding of the ego, really cemented when I was doing that. I used to say, “Oh yeah, I’ve tried it.” The problem was I had tried it. I didn’t feel I could do it very well. I didn’t want to do it. My ego was saying, “You can’t do that. We’ll just push that to the side.”
It takes practice, just like everything else. I miss not doing it. Like you, Jennifer, I was like, “My God, this is life-changing. This is amazing.” When you find something that works for you to make yourself present, and there are lots of different things, a lot of the time for my clients, it’s learning the tools, using the tools, and being accountable to those tools. That’s really each month we sit down and talk.
That’s what usually comes out, and they get it. They go, “Oh God, Maggie, you’ll never believe what happened this month.” But they’ll also go, “The great thing is I didn’t go there this month.” “Oh, okay. What was the difference?”
“I actually started catching myself before I went there, and I realized, hang on, this is me.” Because it’s never them, to be honest. This is the bummer of the whole Leadingme thing. It’s never anyone else. It’s only ever you.
There’s definitely something in that, because I think when you’re blaming or you’re a victim, like you said, that’s the polarity, you are not aware. You’re in the movie or you’re in the matrix. I almost say to my clients, similar, different terminology, but I say, “You know, we’re working on shortening how long you’re not present, like you’ve fallen asleep or gone to the movie or whatever, so that you can take that responsibility, or like you say, be response-able so you can take action.”
Absolutely, because without awareness, nothing changes. You usually get awareness from a couple of places, feedback, or you learn a tool. That’s usually how it works. That’s why what you do is so crucial, because you are able to point out to someone that awareness for them to go, “Oh, oh yeah. I didn’t even realize I was doing that.” Now that I’m aware, I can do something about that and change.
It’s amazing. I don’t know if you see this, but clients almost light up because they’re like, “Oh,” like they wake up, they come out of the movie. They’re like, “Oh, I have a lot more power. I have a lot more ability to change my life than I thought that I did.”
Absolutely.
4R’s Release Model®
Let’s go back. I want to hear these R’s, these Scottish R’s. Talk to me about the four R’s release model, because I’m curious about what the R’s are and how we can silence the inner critic. I will say one thing as a stop until, and we’ll get into the model is I don’t like when I see memes or articles where we’re going to beat up the inner critic or we’re going to kill the inner critic.
I’m like, no, this is part of the human condition. I call it part of the human condition that you’re going to be in. You’re going to have moments of imposter syndrome. It’s understanding how to manage it. You’re saying silence it, but it’s still part of you, almost like the ego, leave the ego at the door. What is your thought on that? And then let’s go into the model.
It’s basically saying, “Kill me,” because the ego is part of me. It’s like, “Yes, we’re going to kill me. I’m going to kill myself.” It’s like, what? Often I’ve heard, “Let’s leave the ego at the boardroom door,” and you’re like, no, let’s take our ego in, but make it balanced as it comes in.
Instead of leaving ego at the door, take it with you and make it balanced. Share on XI agree.
I don’t understand it. Again, this is bigging it up. “Let’s kill whatever.” That’s just bigging up.
That’s true.
I went and tried to control this. So, we can’t control it, Jennifer. From when we’re trying to control it, but we can make it balanced when we get into that middle section. The way to make that balanced is either using, for me, the four R release model. I do say silence your inner critic because, as I said before, I very rarely now need to use this model because I can actually silence the inner critic with that. The saboteur shuts up because there’s no way for it to go, basically, when I work on this model. If you wish, I can gift your listeners a free webinar on this.
Yes, please.
They can access it 24/7, on top of the hour, they can go on and do it. I’ll send that over to you, and you can put that in your show notes. I’m only going to give you an idea of this, but I teach the whole thing, and they get it for free, you don’t have to pay for this. When it comes to the four R’s release model, there are four R’s. First one is recognition. Recognize, and as I said before, if we’re not aware, we can’t change anything. We need to recognize first, and we need to recognize what that negative thoughts or negative phrases we use against ourselves.
I also use this tool for limiting beliefs because often limiting beliefs are negative too. Negative thought, “I can’t do this.” The most obvious, the one that actually killed me, drove me to depression, really, was the “I’m not good enough.” A lot of women suffer this. “I’m not good enough.” I remember being at a conference and a male speaker, he was the CEO of one of the big banks over here. I remember it was a Women on Board conference.
He said, “I try to get women into top jobs all the time, but the biggest issue I have is with women,” he said, “because we’ll have ten criteria, and a woman will go, ‘I can do that, I’ve experienced that, I’m really good at that.’ “You see, number seven, I’ve done it, but I’m not that good at it. Number eight, I’ve hardly touched that. Number nine, I’ve never done that one. Number ten, I don’t think I’m good at that.” He said, “Men, they take the ten and they go, ‘Done that, done that, done that, I’m on the fourth one.’ Couldn’t care less, I’m throwing my hat in the ring.” He said, “That’s what I face,” and he’s right. A lot of women need to be perfect at the ten before they’ll put themselves forward.
It’s true.
For me, mine was, “I’m not good enough.” It didn’t matter what I was doing and how good I was doing it, I still wasn’t good enough. Let’s take that, “I’m not good enough,” because it is the beaut. I have to, first of all, recognize that that’s a word or phrase that I’m using against myself.
To be honest with you, most of us know what those words and phrases are. That’s an easy thing to list out. The issue is we see it, we catch it, and then what do we do? “Oh my God, I’ve done it again. I put it way down again.” The next part is crucial, and the next part most people ignore. It was funny, when I first came up with this, it was actually a client who said to me, “Mags, how did you get me to do that?”
I said, and this was a very clever woman, doctor, professor, businesswoman, I’m thinking, “What, where am I going wrong here?” I said, “Well, I asked you to do this and this and this.” She said, “No, no, no. How did you get me to do it?” I’m thinking, okay, there’s something in what I’m saying here that’s not getting over. I tried again several times, and she went, “No, Mags, there’s a model on here.” I went, “Oh, right. There probably is.”
I’ll need to go and have a look. I had to move from that competency level back a level and go, what is it I’m actually doing? This is where it came from. When I first started teaching this, this second R, called reward, most people didn’t want to go to. The reward center is actually about you congratulating yourself for catching what I call the distractor voice.
To be honest, I call it something else, but I can’t possibly say this on air. The distractor voice that’s in there, that inner critic, I then go, “Right. I’ve just caught it. Well done, Mags.” This part is crucial. If I do not feel fun, love, whatever at this section, then I’m just going to change and go into the next one, which is rephrasing into the positive. What clients were doing was they were skipping a section, the reward, and trying to go to rephrase.
The issue with that is where we feel negative, we think negative with that. We feel negative. No problem. I talk about this in the webinar, but we have been duped for many years. Positive thinking does not work. I did say positive thinking does not work, because if it did, we’d all be walking about with exactly what we want, when we want, how we want, because all we had to do was think it.
Positive thinking will not give us what we want. If it did, we will all be walking with exactly what we want, when we want, and how we want. Share on XTrue.
What does work is positive feel. Unless we attach that rephrased positive word to a positive feel, there is no turbocharging over. What people would do is they would recognize it. They’d try and miss out reward, and they go to rephrase. Of course, it sometimes worked and it sometimes didn’t, because all it was, was a word or phrase.
It was a nice positive one, but they didn’t feel positive. The whole point of that reward center is I need to feel good. We need to get our happy place. That can be love of something.
A lot of people, when we’re doing this, clients will choose the birth of a child. I don’t have a child. I go to a funny. If anyone wants to know what my funny is, go to YouTube and put in “Scottish elevator number 11,” one of the funniest scenes of two Scotsmen trying to get to floor 11 by a voice-activated elevator. Hilarious. Love it.
I’m going to go a look.
It’s fantastic. I go to one point in the scene, and I laugh my socks off. It needs to be a belly laugh. That’s what I have in my mind. The first thing I’m doing is I recognize I’m not good enough. I’ve caught myself.
“Oh, right. I’ve just caught myself saying it. Well done, Mags.” I’m going to call out and name my inner critic. I’ll call it out. “Caught you.” I’m starting to play a game. I’m moving from a negative feel of what I’m saying to self and to a positive, playful mood, and then I’m going to either love or I’m going to fun. I go to fun, and I see that elevator, and I have the biggest smile, and the whole of me lights up. Now I can move to rephrase. That makes sense.
It does. Absolutely.
If you don’t go to that fun, happy place, don’t even bother going to rephrase.
Because you’re not in a positive enough, happy enough, like joyful enough place to actually have the reframe or rephrase stick. Correct?
Correct. The wound. That’s why people will say, “Well, you just have to keep trying, and let’s try and do it less.” No, if you do this right, and I mean by that, you really go to that fun, happy place, and then I call out the inner critic. Then I go, “Caught you, you little person. Caught you in there.” I name it. I say it, and then I go, “No, that’s not true because I’m in a fun place, but I’m going to tell it.”
“That’s not true. I know you don’t believe that. I believe actually I’m good enough. If I learn how to do that in the right way, I could be brilliant at that.” I’ve rephrased it. Now I can believe it.
If I don’t rephrase while I’m in that positive, I can never believe it. It will never change. Because we are human beings and we get into habitual ways, and you’ve taught many times, I am absolutely sure of it, Jennifer. You know that sometimes people have to repeat, and that’s what the fourth R is, and that’s repeat. Some people will say to me, “How often do I need to repeat it, Mags?”
To be honest, if you do the first three really well, and especially number two, reward, and get yourself in that feel, you really don’t have to repeat because that inner critic, that ego, collapses. It goes back into that center ground, and that center ground is “I feel confident, and I feel good about what I’m doing.” When I’m there, it’s only if I’ve moved to either side. And if I’ve not gone to that reward center, I will say the phrase, but I’ll be moved straight back out to belittling. “Is that really true, though?” I keep that up. Whereas when I go there in the fun, you have to change that feeling, rather than seeing it as just positive, that feeling inside to fun or love, plain and simple.
It’s really just showing love for yourself. It’s showing that you’re worthy. That’s a conversation, a whole other book that I’m putting out there in the universe, Mags. I guess her name’s Jamie Kern Lima. She wrote the book Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life. I think that you’re talking all about that feeling of worthiness so you can take positive action.
That’s what Leadingme is. That feeling of worthiness is that middle ground. When I master my ego and it becomes really balanced, boy, is my ego great for me because I feel confident, not in a bigging-it-up confident way, not in a “Hey, look at me, I’m fantastic.” It is an authentic “I know what I know.”
I know that I don’t know a lot, and I’m learning, but I know that’s fine. I know that’s good when I’m there. That, it’s a wonderful place to be. If I’m bigging it up, and I’m like, “Hey, how good am I? Listen to me, I have got all the answers.” That was me when I was younger.
Me too.
I know what that feels like, but I also know the other side, because we live in a law, the law of polarity. If I’m bigging it, I then have to belittle. I just go, and it’s a horrible place to be. It’s so much nicer to be in that middle ground.
Middle Ground
I like this model a lot, and I hope that folks who are listening are taking notes, or you’ll have the webinar to listen to after. Thank you for your generosity there, Mags. I will say that if you face these things, which you may, because not all, and you’ll laugh, Mags, not all managers or leaders are sitting from the center of their ego. Some of them are like, yeah, they’re on the corners. They’re on the fringes. We need to know better, as Maya Angelou says, and then we do better. We need to come from that middle place, and this is a wonderful model to do that.
It’s easy when you’re in the middle to see where they’re coming from.
Agree.
The thing is, you don’t join them where they are, allow them to join you. When we are in the middle section and we are out of the movie, we can call them. It’s not that you go into that middle section and, laaah, everything is wonderful and I am joy. It’s not that. It’s “I’m here, and I can see what you’re doing, and I can actually call you out and say, well, actually what you’re doing there is that because I’m out of the movie.” I can be response-able for calling someone out, but it will be very articulate because I’m in that space of confidence.
I can see everything that’s happening, what’s happening to who, I can call that out. I can call behavior out. That’s easy. It’s easy from there. I’ll shout and bawl and tell people off if my ego is out of balance, and I’ll just look that bad to everyone else. When I’m leading me, what actually happens, including body language, if you look at any body language experts and things like that, when we go quiet and we come in and we talk with a lower tone to the person and slower and see to them, they will also mimic that.
It’s all to do with NLP, and it’s the same stuff, but I have to be leading. If I’m not leading me, I’m joining them. My ego is mastering me. I prefer to master my ego, and then I can do it in the right way because I’m out of the movie, and I’m able to take my time. I’m able to point things out. I’m able to say, no, I’m not accepting that, in a low voice.
This is so critical. I say this a lot on the show, but I feel if you want to be a leader, I’m going to use the word leader because we talk a lot about leadership here. If, whether it’s leading your personal life or leading your professional life, obviously, we talk a lot about career on this show, this is foundational. That I, too, Mags, I raised the ranks, and then they put me in the manager role, and I had no idea what I was doing. I’m leading.
I had a team. I had folks that were much older than me, probably looking at me going, “Who is this young whippersnapper? Who is this person?” I’m doing the best I can and faced tremendous imposter syndrome that I’ve written about in some of the women’s anthology books that I’ve been part of. All of that to say that it took me so long. That’s one of the foundational reasons for the show, is me. I’d love to condense the learning so that women can advance faster, and these tools do that.
It’s foundational. I hope you all take this seriously, that really getting to the central place is important because otherwise you’re going to flounder around like, Mags, I’m going to throw you in with me, we were floundering around for a long time in management. I’m not going to use the word leadership and get scuffed up and beat up by life and work, not being a victim, but it just happened to us until we decided to learn and go, “Oh, I can teach other people about what I learned.” But if we can shortcut it for you, haven’t we done our jobs, Mags?
That is what my life’s about. The whole point of writing the book What the Bleep is Coaching, putting all these tools together, was to not have people go through what I had to go through. You’re the same, Jennifer, like, I don’t want people to have to go through depression to eventually come up with a tool that prevents that. It’s like, I know I’ve done it. That’s not the point.
I don’t want others to do the same. We’re on the same trajectory. We’re trying to do the same thing. There’s lots of us out there trying to do the same thing. I think we will succeed because it takes many. It’s not just one person who’s going to do this.
It takes many, and it takes many different tools and many different ways. That’s why coaching is so good because you have so many different types of coaches out there. Sometimes you may go to a coach and they don’t suit you, then don’t stay, go and find someone that will, because you will find tools and people who you migrate to. It works. That’s what we’re wanting. That’s what everyone’s out there trying to do, make it easy for everyone else.
Online Course
I think that’s great. There are a couple other tools that we may not get to in this conversation, but you pick, Mags, whether there’s one more tool that you want to leave our listeners with. I had a question on the bar model, and then I had a question, which maybe we go here, decision-making made easy, because I think this is also foundational and discovering our values, our purpose, our vision. If you want to quickly talk about that tool and that whole platform, that would be helpful as well for our listeners.
I think every coach usually starts there. In fact, all the coaches I know usually start there. When it comes to the foundation of Leadingme, the foundation of coaching is really about your vision, value, purpose, really. Most people who come to a coaching conversation, they’re usually a bit lost in some way. I can’t help anyone if they don’t know where they are.
They have to find out where they are, and that’s where decision-making made easy came from. I would take people through each section, and then I realized one of the quickest ways I could do it was to make an online course. I realized what these three things do is they make all my decisions really easy. The reason I came to that was I remember when I was younger, I went for a job, bigging it up, may I add, because they came headhunting me. I went into bigging it mode straight away. I remember the guy saying, “Mags, why should we take you?”
I said, “Wait a minute, Brian, what do you mean? Why should we take you?” This is how, when I think about it. “What do you mean? I’m knocking seven bells of shi* out of your supposed best product. I’ve got the biggest market in this area. That’s why you’ve come to get me.”
That, yes, it’s true. Yes, I was in, I was here, but part of me was bigging it up because I totally ignored what values they had in the company. I read it on the website, but I never questioned him. I never questioned some of the people around that I knew worked for them. I went bigging it up because somebody came for me instead of doing my due diligence on that whole job. If I had known what my values really deeply were, they wouldn’t have matched theirs.
What that taught me was, I realized I was in the wrong job with the wrong people who had a totally different set of values to me. I was like, “Couldn’t wait to get out,” but of course thought to myself, I must stay for two years because it looks good on my CV. What a lot of bollocks. I should have been out of there straight away, but I didn’t. Taught me a great lesson. When I started coaching, I didn’t even see it as it’s quite nice to have your values. I see it as crucial, and they’re not what you think. They’re not trust, honesty, integrity.
No, they’re not. They’re your words. You need to find your word, not gloss over the top. I go deep with this, and people really delve into “What are you, what are my values, and what’s the word and what does that word mean to me?” That needs to be, and it doesn’t matter if someone else has never heard of that word before. I’ve had some amazing things that people have got the words for, but they’ve got those words. I’ll give you a perfect example.
I had a client, and what people do is they come in, they do the decision-making made easy online, then with me, whatever they need help with, I help them along as we go. We teach the other tools. In that part, that’s when people go, “Oh my God, I didn’t even realize this.” The online course is just, here’s some easy exercises that just bring it out of you. Some people get stuck because they overthink it rather than underthink it. That’s usually where I come in and help them.
Once they’ve got that whole bit, I had a client who came, and we were working together, and her whole thing was she wanted to go and live in France. Her business, and it’s a professional business, so they don’t usually work offline, but since COVID, it was like, “Oh, that’s quite good.” We were working at the time, that COVID-y period. She thought she wanted to go to France. This was her whole thing. She could speak quite fluent French.
She was very good. She wanted to go. She went on holiday. She loved it. She came back. She said, “Yeah, I want to go and work in France, and I’ll work from here, and I’ll work in France, and I’ll have a really nice going.”
We’d done our Vision, Value, Purpose. In the midst of it all, she realized, “My connection, Mags, my value of connection, I’m not really going to get that over in France, am I?” I said, “Well, you tell me, will you? You may, but would you?” She went, “I suppose I could start connections, but what about my connections? My connections are really important to me,” and then all of a sudden she was like, “Oh, I don’t.” It blew that up.
Blew it up.
Didn’t know, and I said, “Well, just sit with it. Things will come.” Later on, she ended up going back to where she was born, New Zealand. She found a place that she absolutely loved and realized the connection back to her homeland and everything else. It was only across what we call the ditch between Australia and New Zealand. She’s realized this is where she wants to be.
It turned on its head only because she really knew. She didn’t just stick with a goal because that was the goal, it was actually, “The most important thing to me is connection.” She realized that was gone. We sometimes don’t realize how important our values are, our purpose, what our purpose is for everyone. People think the purpose is their work, and they’re doing their work, and then they end their days at work, and then they drop off this mortal coil because the purpose isn’t there.
Purpose is massive to us, and then the vision, it’s taking people out 10- or 20-years’ vision, not just 3 or 5 years. You need to go all the way out because you don’t want to put, the ego will run away with you and give you information that is, “Well, I can’t do that because that’s a 3-year or a 5-year vision.” You go out ten years, you can have anything you want. You can imagine anything.
That sounds so yummy. Doesn’t it sound, let’s take that as a takeaway, like a little piece of homework. I’m going to put it in the follow-up notes. It’s like, what is the ten-year vision? Doesn’t that sound good? It just sounds like fun, and like to have a white piece of paper and just dream.
Play, play.
Episode Wrap-Up
Absolutely. Mags, I have so enjoyed chatting with you today and just soaking up your Scottish accent, quite frankly.
It is the worst part, Jennifer. When I’m speaking and I come off stage, and someone says, “Oh, Mags, I could listen to you all day,” I go, “Did you get the message behind everything?”
No, I got it. I got it loud and clear.
I’m happy.
I got it loud and clear, and I hope everybody else did too. I ask all of my guests this, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. What are 1 to 2 ways that women can be braver at work?
It’s only one for me, and that’s leading me. It’s the most obvious to me, leading me.
Leading me.
Because if I’m managing and I am mastering my ego, I’m in that center ground. That center ground is where I am at my very best. I feel amazing. I feel confident. I can be as brave as anything when I’m in that middle ground. That’s where I would go with that. Get yourself into the middle, stop bigging it up, stop belittling, and get yourself into the middle ground in whatever way works for you.
Stop begging it up or belittling. Get yourself into the middle ground. Share on XLove it. Where can women find you and your work online?
Best place? You’ll find me everywhere and everything. If you go to MagsBell.com/blog, you’ll find everything there. You’ll find YouTube, you’ll find, if you prefer, podcasts, there are newsletters, there’s social media. I’m on most things. You can follow whatever suits you.
Basically, you should be able to follow that, and you’ll find I’m fairly regular in letting people see regular news pop up. It’s not that I do one every so often. It’s usually at least once a month I’ll do YouTube and Spotify. All the rest, I’m on there constantly doing all sorts.
Be sure to give me any links you’d like included in the show notes, and we’ll put them in there.
Great. No worries. Cool.
Thank you again, Mags, for being honest. It’s been so fun, and I’ve learned a lot. I love the models that you’ve created. They’re very easy to understand. That doesn’t mean that they’re easy to execute, but they’re easy to understand and get us to that middle way where the ego’s kind of in check and we’re out of the movie. Thank you again for being here.
Jennifer, it’s been an absolute honor and pleasure, my darling. You have a great show and that great audience. I’m just absolutely thrilled that I can share some of this that will hopefully, if people take it and use it, will actually help their life as well. I’ll always sign off with, “Stay true, stay you, and keep bringing out your brilliance.”
—
That’s a wrap on my discussion with Mags. I hope you found our conversation both valuable and inspiring. Here are a few questions for you until next time, how often are you in the movie, as Mags mentions in our conversation? How often are you in a control or victim mode versus coming from a place of neutrality and peace, that middle area of the ego, as we discussed? How can you use the four R’s release model to silence your inner critic or imposter syndrome?
Watch that training that Mags completed for even more details. The link for that training is in the podcast show notes. You can find that right on the podcast page on my website or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That’s where the show notes and the show links are located. As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other podcast platform you enjoy. Until next time, show up, get a balanced ego, and be brave.
Important Links
- Mags Bell Speaker
- Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life
- What the Bleep is Coaching
- Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
- Brave Women at Work: Stories of Resilience
- Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Confidence
About Mags Bell
Mags Bell is an international speaker, author, executive gemologist and awareness expert, who works with major influencers and leaders around the world, to Cut, Polish and Reset their inner diamonds allowing them to step up into LeadingME®. Her book ‘What The Bleep Is Coaching?’ lifts the lid on the mysteries of coaching and allows you to see real accelerated results from people who have gone through the process.
With her 25yrs+ in business and speaking, also over 60,000hrs in coaching, she assists those top influencers and leaders to their authentic balanced self, which makes them a better decision maker, leading to a less complicated life both privately and in business. She enables them to bring out their own brilliance which propels the creation of powerful results.
She lives with her love and partner in life of 34 years Paul & her fur-baby Rory on the Gold Coast, Australia.
