Franziska: The other week, I was having this discussion about this little voice that we all have in our heads. We discussed different strategies to make sure that the voice doesn‘t take over the way that we act and behave in business. Instead, this little voice can actually support us in whatever we set out to do in business or in life. So most people, unless you are a monk somewhere in the mountains meditating for 24 hours a day, we all have a voice in our head. Really, the main purpose of this voice is to keep us safe. So for example, when we are about to cross the road and it‘s a red light, the voice might scream at us and say, “don‘t walk!” It‘s to keep us safe. But oftentimes, this same voice also keeps us safe when we don‘t need to be kept safe.

For example, let‘s say you get invited to speak at an event and your little voice might scream straight away, “you can‘t do this, you don‘t know what to talk about, people are not going to like your topic, etc.” Really, what the voice is doing is to try to keep you safe. But you might not need to be kept safe in that circumstances.

So what I‘d like to share with you is sort of three steps that I use to be in charge of the voice.

1. The first one is to be aware of it. Just to be aware of it.

2. The second one is to acknowledge it. Because if we ignore it, it just gets louder. If we ignore it, it just gets louder.

3. Number three is to do it anyway.

So be aware of it. Acknowledge, yeah. I know you‘re there and I get you want to keep me safe. Number 3, I‘m going to do it anyway. I know I got this.

I did a whole experiment around this. About a year ago or over a year ago, I was in New York. I knew that when I was going to be in New York there was going to be the New York City marathon. I thought it would be cool to do a little mindset experiment and just run that marathon without training. I‘m not really a runner. I thought it would be fun one time in my life to run a marathon. But I didn‘t really want to do the whole training program and 10 months of nutrition training and all that. So two weeks before, I go into a running store. I was in LA at an event where we were speaking, and I buy some shoes, running shoes. I didn‘t even have any running shoes. The guy sold me shoes. When I just was buying them, I asked this expert, he was an older running expert. I said to him, “what is your number 1 recommendation for someone to run a marathon that is not really a runner. That hasn‘t done any training. He looked me in the eyes and he says, “don‘t do it.” I walked out of this store with my shoes under my arms and I‘m like, okay, I have to use my voice to support me to do this experiment. So I did it. Two weeks later I was in New York and I entered. The entire time, I was using my voice to support me throughout the 42.2 or so km of running. The whole time I was using the voice to say, you got this, you got this, you got this.

Every now and then, the little voice came in and said something else. Every now and then, after like 10 or 20 km, the voice said, “just take the subway.” Just take the subway and go to the end of the marathon. Then again, I was aware of it. I acknowledged it and I‘m like, hey, this is a great idea. However, I got this. I‘m going to keep running. So every now and then, the voice tried to trick me into giving up. I just used the voice again and I acknowledged it. I said I got this. Thank you for the idea. It‘s not what I want to do. I‘m doing it through the running, anyway and I got it to the finish line in just under 5 hours. Lots of blisters, a little bit of pain in my body, too. The whole point of this exercise was to prove that you can use your voice for anything. Whatever you set out to achieve, you can do it if you leverage the voice in your head.

I thought this is a great strategy to share with you because sometimes in business, there are challenges that you need to overcome and you can use your voice to help you overcome them. If you know anyone who would benefit from this specific tip, feel free to share it with them. As always, thank you so much for watching and thank you for making ripple effects together with us. See you next time.