The 3 Most Disempowering Thoughts Holding You Back & How to Flip the Script

00:01 Kinsey Machos

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

00:56 Kinsey Machos

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category queen show. Hello my fellow category queens. So good to be here with you today. It's actually in the evening time at the time of this recording, I'm definitely just getting in little pockets of work. We are still in the thick of summer and OMG, is it ever the thick of summer. I'm definitely feeling very expansive and you know, I was just having a conversation with my husband actually about this and how summers used to be a little bit more easeful and just less chaotic.

01:46 Kinsey Machos

But as the kids have gotten older and there's just a little bit more of a carryover from sports and they have their own activities like church camps and sports camps and all the things, it definitely feels so much more busier than a normal summer. But it is good. It's so fun. And I can't believe literally we only have one more month of summer. I think the kids go back to school in about four to five weeks, I believe, so we're just going to enjoy every minute of that. But as we dive into today's topic, I wanted to really share with you some of the most disempowering thoughts that I see get people the most stuck and frazzled and overwhelmed, and also thoughts that I myself continue to bump up against and have to shift out of.

02:43 Kinsey Machos

If you are familiar with my work or have been in any of my programs, you know that thought work is the biggest piece to making anything work for your business or even in your life. We know that your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts impact how you feel, your feelings impact your behaviors, and your behaviors impact your results. And so we have our clients really understand their thought protocols and understanding what's working for them, what's not working for them. When you have over, I think, 60 to 90,000 thoughts a day, the majority of those are subconscious, meaning you don't even know that. You don't even know what you're thinking, which means you're unaware of how your thoughts are creating your reality.

03:37 Kinsey Machos

And so if you're getting results that you do not like, we need to really reverse engineer that and understand where the thinking patterns are coming from. And so this is something that you will really want to dive into, but not just as kind of like a start and stop, but just infinite. Like, this is a journey that you will go on as you. If you want to grow, if you're somebody that desires to grow personally and professionally and evolve as a woman, you know, as a mother, as a wife, as a friend, this is the work that we're being called to do. It's not outside of us. It's truly inside of us. And it all starts with our thoughts.

04:25 Kinsey Machos

And I'm going to share the three most disempowering thoughts that are going to keep you where you're at and prevent you from getting the results you want. And this is, again, based on real life examples. So this is based on the hundreds of women that I've coached and really studying their thinking patterns and helping them shift into more intentional thought protocols and also my own personal experience. So this is a little bit more of a shorty episode, but I I want you to really take note here. And as you hear me talk about these different thoughts, instead of sort of rejecting them or immediately disconnecting from the idea that this may be, you just kind of sit in it with curiosity. I think that sometimes the more that we study things and learn things, we can get in the trap.

05:21 Kinsey Machos

I know I can of, quote unquote, knowing it all. And so if we continue to hear the same things, our brain might want to say something like, oh, I've already heard this before, but typically, we have to hear things over and over again and also hear them differently and in different ways to really anchor into these concepts and make them a part of our day to day life. And so ultimately, that's what I want to do for you, is equip you with the right tools and resources to live your best life, even when you're sort of in the valley of, you know, tribulations, trials and tribulations. But I know that just by studying your thoughts and being able to shift them into thoughts that will better serve you.

06:12 Kinsey Machos

You will be more likely to succeed in all areas of your life and really pick yourself out of these slumps, if you will, a little bit faster. So let's talk about the first, most disempowering thought that I hear people say all the time drives me bonkers. But again, no judgment here because I'm guilty of it, too. But it's the thought, I don't know. This is huge. And if you've ever been coached by me, if you say this to me, I will stop you right away and I will turn it back to you and I will say something like, if you did know, what would the answer be? Now, again, we have to be really careful about the things that we say. Now. Notice how I'm kind of interchanging these words of thoughts and phrases.

07:08 Kinsey Machos

And so what I want you to glean from that is what you're saying, obviously a manifestation of what you're thinking. But those are just the thoughts that you're more aware of, obviously, because there becoming more of a reality as you speak them out into existence. But there's whole other world of thoughts that you aren't aware of. And the point is to really bring those to the surface so we can weed through which ones are supporting us and which ones are not. But if you have either ever said out loud, I don't know, or perhaps you are somebody that continues to tell yourself you don't know, I promise you, this is really, really keeping you stuck. And it's also you giving all of your power away. I actually learned this from one of my mentors, and I heard her say it years and years ago.

08:05 Kinsey Machos

That I don't know is just a thought. And I think that when we are in these scenarios of feeling really confused or lacking clarity, it can feel true that you don't know in that moment. But if were to back up and really understand what thoughts are not facts, right? They're really stories. And so if wear these stories as our own, they will ultimately become our own truth, which does feel factual. But we have to remind ourselves that these are just stories that we're wearing.

08:44 Kinsey Machos

But the danger in saying or thinking, I don't know, is a you're not exercising the part of your brain that is ultimately going to leap you into that next level, you're not exercising your critical thinking skills, and you're not opening yourself up to the new ideas and new ways that are going to ultimately get you into that next season of growth, whatever that looks like for you. Whether that's even personally or professionally, but I don't know. Is literally like closing a door before you've even tried to open it. What I see from people that say this is that they're closing themselves off to possibility. It's also like a self imposed limitation. It's sort of like we're just capping ourselves at the knees without even really giving ourselves the credit to know.

09:49 Kinsey Machos

So let's walk through some examples of what this might look and feel like so you can start to really put yourself in these circumstances so that next time this comes up for you'll really understand the power of eliminating, I don't know, from your vocabulary and what to do instead. So a lot of times I'll have clients come and get coaching on certain things, and they'll say things like, I don't know how to increase my conversions on my webinar, or I don't know how to get more clients this week. And so what we do there is we really unpack these different circumstances and start to. What I want to do is start to show them that they actually do know and that what they're looking for, typically, is more of that validation of either, like the fear of unknown, fear of failure, fear of judgment.

10:49 Kinsey Machos

Right. And so if you were coming to me and you said something like, I don't know how to do this thing, I don't know how to fill my webinar. I don't know how to get fully booked this month, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you exactly what I said. But if you did know, what would the answer be? And it is so profound, the answers that women end up finding within themselves. This is really powerful, because what it does is, again, we're getting our power back and we're building that self trust. Right. We're kind of really understanding that, I don't know, is a protection mechanism and that we actually do have the answers. But the maybe unclarity or the unsureness around all of that is just a little bit unsettling. It's a little bit uncomfortable.

11:44 Kinsey Machos

And so, I don't know, kind of protects us from the thing that we need to do on the other side of that. So anytime you feel like you don't have the answer, a really simple thing you can do here is ask yourself or tell yourself, but if I did know the answer, what would it be? Remember, your brain is a problem solving machine. It wants to find solutions for you, but it can only find solutions for you in the way that you present it, right? So if you're going to ask it things like, why does this have to be hard? Your brain is going to continue to find reasons and solutions of it being hard. But if you can ask it things like, how can this be easy, what is the answer to this?

12:32 Kinsey Machos

It will help you resolve those scenarios in a way that's going to, again, set you up for success. So this is a power hack, too. And anytime you're sitting in a room full of leaders and people that are going to expand you will not hear them say, I don't know. Now, if you're asked a question that you really don't feel comfortable having the answer to, right.

13:01 Kinsey Machos

This is different than saying something like, I don't know how to do this thing in relation to my business or a specific strategy, but if there's like a controversial topic or maybe a complex problem that you really need some time to sit in, then instead of saying, I don't know, which again is very disempowering and gives off an impression, I think, to other people, that probably isn't something that you want, but we can say things like, I'm actually going to look into this a little bit more. I'm going to need some more time. I don't really know much about this yet, but I'm excited to dive in.

13:41 Kinsey Machos

So this is your final warning to remove, I don't know, from your vocabulary or at least catch yourself the next time you do it and start exercising your problem solving skills and your critical thinking skills and really just sort of seeing it for what it is, which is ultimately a protection mechanism and get back your power. So fun. Now, the second most disempowering thought is similar to I don't know, but it's different. It's got a different energy to it, I think, and it's something that I hear so much. And it is this. I am stuck. This is something I don't necessarily use a lot because from the get go, it always just left an icky energy in my body.

14:35 Kinsey Machos

And I recognized early on that anytime I have thought this, I realize that it just makes me feel even more stuck than I was before. It really is a cycle. If you go back to our thoughts create our feelings create our behaviors, our behaviors drive our results, and we start to really think about this. From the I am stuck protocol, you have a thought. You know, if you're thinking, I am stuck, what feelings do you think that really generates in your body? It's going to generate a feeling of stuckness, hopelessness, confusion, overwhelm. Right. Which then drive behaviors that match that. Which drive results that match those behaviors. And so even if you aren't sure, you know, we talked about earlier on of, like, starting to become aware of all the thoughts that you're thinking and which ones serve you, which ones don't.

15:36 Kinsey Machos

If you're not sure how it's serving you, walk yourself through this process to say it to yourself and really pay attention to how your body feels when you say it and start to walk yourself through this model so you can see how it truly is driving your behaviors and the results that you're getting from that, you're going to be able to quickly assess what thoughts need to go and what thoughts need to be replaced with it. So let's say you are writing content and you feel like you're coming up against massive writer's block, and it's this thought continuously. You're just saying to yourself, I'm stuck. I don't know what to say. This is frustrating, right? And it's creating this cycle of, you know, just spiraling out, which then you realize, you know, an hour later, you still have a blank page.

16:28 Kinsey Machos

And so instead of telling yourself you're stuck, what is a new thought that you could generate that's going to allow you to get unstuck? This is, again, similar to I don't know, because this is you telling yourself you don't know how to move into action. You don't know what next steps are. We all are kind of in this planet or in this world, kind of like in this video game, playing our way through these steps, nobody really knows exactly what any answer is to anything. Everything really is just a hypothesis. I tell my clients all the time, if you had to create a hypothesis for yourself based on what's coming up for you, what are the results you're getting? What would that look like?

17:15 Kinsey Machos

Because even if I'm the expert and I have insights of my own, and I can look at data and I can really clearly see what needs to be optimized, what needs to go, et cetera, it still is a hypothesis. And you have the ability to create your own hypothesis on these things. But let's go back to this idea of I am stuck, right? I hear this all the time. People come to me and like, I am stuck. Okay, tell me what's going on. Well, I don't know. There it is again. I don't know. I have writer's block. I don't know what to write. Or I'm in a dead end job and I don't know how to get out of it. Right. It all stems from the belief that you don't know something, which we've already covered ground on that one.

17:57 Kinsey Machos

And so I'm hoping that you already starting to see the patterns here and how to get yourself into momentum by just shifting how you think about it. But saying I am stuck is just going to create more confusion for yourself. And so if you need to shift this, you know, perhaps it's. I'm not feeling clear right now. I'm going to take a break and I'm going to come back and I'm going to try again. Perhaps it's even coming up when you're facing a difficult decision, which is so common, right, when we're forced or challenged with a couple of different decisions and they all feel like they could be the right ones or the wrong ones, and it feels like you're sort of at a pivot point of like, I have to make the right decision.

18:44 Kinsey Machos

And when you feel stuck in that place, it ultimately is, again, a protection mechanism because there's fear. There's fear of what will go wrong. What if I do this? What if that? What if that? Right. We have all these what if scenarios. It's always sort of the anxiety of the future, and so instead we can have new thoughts about that. What if any decision I made was the best decision? What if everything works out exactly how it's meant to? And so any decision I make is going to be a great one. So you can see how just by the way we think and talk to ourselves is going to completely change the energy in and around you, which is then going to change the action and results you get as a byproduct of that.

19:37 Kinsey Machos

So the next time you say I'm stuck, or want to say I'm stuck or thinking I'm stuck, what could you replace that with? It could be literally just taking an action, even though it feels a little messy. It could be, yes, coming back to it. But how do we remove that from our vocabulary and allow ourselves to get our power back and keep moving forward, even if that means deciding to be still but doing it with intention? I say that because, you know, a lot of people will say things like, I want to be more mindful and I want to slow down, but meanwhile, they're literally judging themselves the whole time they're doing that. Right.

20:27 Kinsey Machos

It's like when you decide to cut back on your hours and then the whole time you're not working you're thinking, I should be working, but when you're working, you're actually thinking, I should be with my family. It's all in your head, right? So we have to really clear that clutter and come back to intentional thought protocols that are going to align with the results that we want. And understanding that these are the things that do serve us. These are the things that do not serve us. Which moves me into the very last, most disempowering thought you can have about yourself or life. And that is this. I am not good enough. This one's deep, this one's a little bit heavier.

21:15 Kinsey Machos

And it's interesting because I don't actually hear women say this as much out loud, but it's the dancing and skirting around that they absolutely do. It's I need more experience. I'm not ready. I want this thing, but I'll never get it. There's a lot of other iterations, but ultimately it comes down to feelings of unworthiness and lack of being good enough. I think that this is a theme for every body, everybody. And it's kind of the epicenter of so many different spokes of limitations and beliefs and stories that we create about what's possible for our lives and what's nothing.

22:03 Kinsey Machos

But as you start to notice your thoughts, and even through the lens of this idea of not being good enough, I want you to start really seeing phrases or stories that you have that may be closely tied to this theme of unworthiness or not being good enough. And I want you to start to become more aware of how often that comes up for you. I used to never resonate with unworthiness or things like shame or anything like that. And I feel like I've had a pretty good level of confidence, you know, over the last six to seven years. But I will say this is actually feels so much more true now than it ever has before. And I think it's just because as you reach new levels, success of life, of awareness, in my opinion, you just, again, you know, more.

23:03 Kinsey Machos

So there's more exposure to failures and pain and challenges, which plays into new levels of self confidence and self concept. And so I am not saying that this is never going to show up again. That's not really the point of this conversation. The point is, are you becoming aware of them and then allowing yourself to have new stories, allowing yourself to have new thoughts that will serve you? But I am not. Good enough is so deep. And we really have to get to the root of our own self limitations and why we believe the things that we do. But a really good exercise for you to do is to really think about all the things you desire in your life and your business. And I want you to catch yourself anytime you start to think about something, but immediately suppress it.

24:04 Kinsey Machos

Or you write down something and your brain immediately tells you, oh, that would be nice, wouldn't it? Or that will never happen to you, or you're too late for that, or you don't have enough experience for that, or you didn't come from money, whatever it is, you will notice as you expand your thinking, expand your possibility, there will be sort of that immediate reaction from your brain of like, again, just keeping you safe. Anytime we stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone, that does send a signal to our brain that something's wrong. So naturally we're going to have thoughts that come up that are counterintuitive to that. So this is a good reminder for you to just become more aware of those instances or scenarios or even concepts that you have in your life. Right?

25:00 Kinsey Machos

Where are you playing, small or not living into your true potential, because there's some sort of layer or piece of you that doesn't believe you're good enough to have what you desire. That's a bigger one. That's a deeper one. Again, I don't hear as often those exact words coming from my client's mouths, but it's again, very similar phrases and actions that are stemming from that core belief. We need to shift the belief I am not good enough, transforming to I am more than capable. Success is inevitable for me. I am worthy of all the things I desire. I am worthy as I am anything that really feels true to you in this moment. Continue to wear that and then notice how conflicting thoughts or beliefs are going to pop up to, again try to attack this new belief of yours.

26:04 Kinsey Machos

And that's okay, that's normal. But now you have the tools to see it for what it is and then move yourself into those new thoughts and stories that will align to your truest desires, your truest future that is meant for you. And that's how we can again get our power back and live our life to the fullest while also allowing our brain to get us there. Our brain is again, a very powerful mechanism, but we have to work with it. We have to be with it. We have to, you know, not fight against it, but work with it. So here's your little gentle reminder. Take your power back today, release those thoughts and really sink into those new thought patterns that are going to set you up for amazing success.

26:58 Kinsey Machos

All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll talk to you next time. Hey. If you're ready to stand out online and get pain clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen school, where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free. You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund. Just head over to kinseymackis.com thecq school and join today to get instantaneous access. We'll see you inside.