[00:00:36] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna Hrsto.
[00:00:39] Today I'm gonna talk about. How to do well in hard times. So if you are feeling the pinch anywhere in your life, whether your business, your personal life, or your relationship, and it kind of feels a bit hard right now, then this episode is for you.
[00:00:52] So I've been speaking to people lately and clients who are feeling like businesses. Tough a little bit harder. Things are harder in their personal life, their financial life, in their relationship. And so if this is you, then I wanna share some of the advice that I've given to other clients, and it may be helpful for you and it's advice that I've used for myself during hard times as well.
[00:01:13] Firstly, we need to understand moods, our personal moods, right? So you can imagine, and you've probably seen for yourself, that tackling a problem when we're in a.
[00:01:23] Bad mood or a low mood is not the best place to tackle a problem. We're probably not gonna get a very good solution, but when we're in a high mood or in a happy mood, things feel much easier, right? I think you would agree that your mood can really affect how you see a problem and how you deal with a problem.
[00:01:40] One, you can feel hopeful, and the other one you can feel hopeless. And then we need to understand the nature of moods, the nature of moods, our personal moods for everybody on the planet is that they go up and down and that's very natural. Okay? I think we are taught, and we come to believe through the things that we hear, is [00:02:00] that, if it's low, then there's something wrong, right?
[00:02:02] There's something wrong with our biochemistry or there's something wrong. With our partner or our job or something in our life. Right. That it's not normal to have a low mood. And the other thing is
[00:02:11] feeling low doesn't feel good but it's a natural part of a human experience.
[00:02:15] Okay. And the problem is when we don't accept a low mood, we fight against it.
[00:02:20] We try to fix it, we try to get rid of it, And all that does is keep the mood. Even lower for longer. Okay. It's the irony of it. Okay. But that's the way that it works. So if we understand the nature of moods, that it's very natural for it to go high and low. We don't have to have anything on a low mood.
[00:02:36] It doesn't have to mean something about our life. So
[00:02:40] our moods will go up independent of our circumstances. And that's really important for you to see. And I don't know if you've ever seen it for yourself. I'm sure you have. I certainly have. There'll be times where in the past when I was struggling with my business one day, I'd wake up and I'd be like, oh my gosh, it's so bad.
[00:02:56] I'm so worried, I'm so anxious, I'm so stressed. And the next day I would wake up. Optimistic and hopeful, And nothing about my problem had changed, just my mood did. Okay? And that's the impact of our moods. And if we don't see it, we don't understand what, what's really at play here? What's really affecting our experience?
[00:03:16] Now your moods are not controlled by your circumstances, so things can go wrong. And sometimes you're like, oh, okay, we'll, we'll work that out. And sometimes we catastrophize, right? we fret about it. We stay up awake at night. So your moods are controlled by your thinking. they're kind of like your inner GPS telling you where your thinking is at.
[00:03:32] If it's low, you're thinking negative. You're thinking low thoughts, right? And if your mood is good, that's just a natural state as well. Okay, so we've got really positive thoughts coming through. Both are normal, right? We are not going to, it's like having the seasons, you know, the seasons throughout the year. That is a natural process. Right? And even though I had a conversation with someone the other day, 'cause it's winter here now, and I was like, oh, I don't like winter. I don't know how people like it. People talk about they like it and it's [00:04:00] not logical to me that you would like dark skies and rain and cold, but some people do.
[00:04:05] Right? And that is the same with our mood, right? They go up and down just like the weather and there's nothing on it. But when our mood stays low for too long, and if we fixate on it, it is because
[00:04:16] our thinking has become too negative for too long and it's lowered our mood.
[00:04:21] So when your mood is low, it's an indication and take that as a signal. To not focus on the way that you feel or not focus on your thinking, or not focus on the problem so much, right? Because you're really getting stuck. You're getting tunnel vision, and it's like rumination. You may not realize it, but your mood is a really good signal of where your thinking is at.
[00:04:42] So the best you can do, spend less time in your head because as your thinking settles, your moods mood will naturally rise. You'll start to feel optimistic, you'll feel hopeful. You'll have better ideas, and everything will look different from that perspective. And I guess the reason why I'm, I'm focusing on the outlook that you have, your perspective is because it does really matter to any problem that you have in your life.
[00:05:06] Because quite often we have a lot of stressful thinking. We have a lot of worry and anxiety and rumination, and that is actually the worst place to solve a problem or come up with a new idea. Right. And we think the more we think about it. Then more will find a solution, but that's not the way that the mind works.
[00:05:22] Okay. Particularly with that stressful thinking.
[00:05:24] number one was really understanding moods and the nature of moods. They will go up and down. It's controlled by your thinking, not by what's going on. The second thing is to remind yourself that you have been through hard times before. You know, I was having a conversation with a business friend of mine and she was really down and she felt like she was in a really dark spot in her business, and she kind of reached out and you know, gave her some advice, business advice.
[00:05:46] But then I said, you know what? Just remember. You have overcome challenges like this before you've done it. You've got really good evidence because you're still in business, right? And so whether it's not, you [00:06:00] know, business or something in your relationship or with your family, you have to look at the evidence of overcoming this in the past.
[00:06:06] So I know for me, when I hit challenges, I'm like, oh no, and your thinking really kicks up, right? This is bad. This is not gonna be good. This is not gonna end well. All the worst case scenarios, that's what our mind does. It becomes completely irrational. And so I take the most logical step. I'm like, okay, this doesn't look good, but.
[00:06:29] I have overcome a lot of challenges in the past that also didn't look good. And this will be the same. Okay. I just, I need to keep myself so logical. So I look for that evidence and go, okay, that is gonna be okay. And so I speak to my clients about this because they often will say to me, you know, they have issues with cash flow in their business.
[00:06:48] I'm like, okay, so have you had this in the past? Yeah, I've had it much worse actually. And so we forget this, we forget all the times we've overcome obstacles because in that moment, our mind becomes really irrational. And it looks like it's painting a picture that's not going to look good.
[00:07:05] And it feels very real. but you have to look for the evidence, right? And I also had this mindset that when something goes wrong. I know that when I overcome this problem, when I find the solution, I will either one, not have this problem again in the future, or two, I'll have a roadmap on how to get out of it really quickly.
[00:07:25] I'll have the resources, I'll have the skills, I'll have better insight, better knowledge. And that's the way you've gotta look at it. Don't look at it like you're never going to get challenges. That doesn't happen. Okay. I wish it really did, but it doesn't. And I think we have to accept that the nature of life is that we have challenges, okay?
[00:07:43] And we are so resourceful and resilient to overcome those challenges, but we just have to remind ourselves in those moments.
[00:07:49] As a really good friend said to me, if you're in business, you will relate to this. I remember once I had a business problem and I was complaining about it, and a good friend of mine who'd been in business for years, he said, well, vest, if you don't [00:08:00] have problems, you're not in business. Because really business is about solving problems.
[00:08:04] and I also think life is about solving problems. If we can accept that, that we can't avoid pain, we can't avoid suffering, that is. Part of our experience on this earth. Then we, we kind of step up to a new level where we go, okay, so we don't resist it.
[00:08:20] We're in it. How are we going to get through? Okay? It's the resistance that keeps us more stuck.
[00:08:25] And just remember, you have the ability to find your way out of this, and you will find your way out of this, okay? Just give it time, give it a bit more space, and you will come up with a solution. The third thing I wanna talk about is becoming discouragement proof. I heard this term when I was doing a coaching program and I completely related to it because I would say years ago, discouragement was something that really had a hold of me.
[00:08:50] Okay? When something didn't work out, I took a personally. That I had some personal flaws or that it was never gonna happen. My mood went down. I was really discouraged, right? I felt really hopeless, pessimistic. It wasn't going to be a good outcome. It's no use. What's the point in trying, right? And that's discouragement.
[00:09:10] And if you don't understand that discouragement is also
[00:09:13] thinking creating that feeling,
[00:09:16] then you are going to listen to it.
[00:09:17] It's going to be something that. You take as information real, but it's not So the idea with discouragement is not to make yourself miserable with it or to give up. On what you want. Okay. Or give up on finding a solution, but it's to get over yourself quicker, right? Get over your thinking quicker. If you can see that once this passes, there'll be again, many times when you've been discouraged and you won't even remember it anymore because you've overcome it, right?
[00:09:46] And this will be exactly the same scenario. So the quicker you can get over yourself and your thinking and not pay attention, and not take it as real information, the faster you'll get to a resolution. Or at least to a good feeling. Okay. I [00:10:00] think ultimately, if we're in a good feeling, we can handle most things on our plate.
[00:10:03] And the final thing I want to talk about is get yourself out, right. If you are going through a hard time, don't stick to the same routine. Okay? I don't think there's anything worse than sticking in the same environment and having the same thinking and having the same feeling. There's no circuit breaker there, right? During lockdown, I actually talked about this. It was about keeping up morale, and I talked about how in the, the military, like during war or combat, where the soldiers were going through really heavy emotions, like if they had lost a friend. Or they had, strong fears and doubts and insecure thinking and anxiety or uncertainty about tomorrow.
[00:10:40] The military understood that it was really important to keep morale high To keep people's spirits high. so they introduced games and exercise and routines and busy work, not to distract them, but to keep them happy and calm, because that's the best place that we operate from.
[00:10:57] Now, you don't have to distract yourself, but I do say take yourself out of your environment. Sometimes when we are just stuck in the same environment, it's just kind of embedded in the space and we get into habitual thinking and habitual patterns when we're in the same environment. Right? It's almost like we're programmed straight in, so you don't have to distract yourself with games or exercise or whatever, but it is good to break your environment, but your mind will also figure it out.
[00:11:22] Okay? As soon as. You take your mind off what you're worried about. Your mind will find the answer It'll handle the problem or the scenario or the insecurity that you have about the future. if that looks like taking yourself outta your environment, then do it.
[00:11:39] But just remember that you will overcome this scenario.
