Speaker 0 00:01 Welcome to digital detox secrets. Those three words can change your life. My name is Lisa buyer and welcome back to another episode. So this past weekend I decided to have my own little personal health and wellness retreat. I slept in a solid nine plus hours and got an 83 sleep score each night, which is very rare for me to get in the 80s and when I decided to get my nails done instead of driving, it was a beautiful sunny day. I walked each way one and a half miles and got in 10,000 steps. Yay. And then Saturday night, instead of drinking wine, I decided to make some chia pudding for myself. And if you want the recipe, you can get it in the show notes. But let's get back to the point of this episode. So a digital detox secrets is a book and now a podcast. Welcome to the latest episode.
Speaker 0 00:56 My special guest is Aaron file. Aaron helps highly successful entrepreneurs get out of their own way and change any negative belief systems rapidly. Aaron's company is called mind fix. How appropriate, why I invited her to be my guest today is because everyone including me, can benefit from Aaron's insights. As a matter of fact, Aaron is featured in chapter 16 of digital detox secrets where you can take her six second mindset test and know immediately where you might be stuck in life. Aaron talks about self sabotage and how social media can get in the way of our success and also ways we can use digital to our advantage. So let's welcome Aaron file and hear all about how she is changing the mindset one day at a time. Hi, so Lisa buyer here and I am very happy to introduce one of my favorite people, Aaron, who is part of digital detox secrets chapter 16 on the six second mine fixed test. Hey Aaron.
Speaker 2 02:04 Hello.
Speaker 0 02:06 Thank you for joining us for digital detox secrets. So we met at baby bathwater and we've been, we've probably known each other probably going on a couple of years and I'm just fascinated by the mind fix on your company mind fix it. Can you share a little bit about your journey, what, what your company does and then we can talk a little bit about the chapter.
Speaker 2 02:29 Sure. So, um, I ended up, uh, I ran an agency, a web agency for 16 years and ended up, um, at one point engaging in all sorts of self sabotage and I didn't know why and I was mean to clients and mean to my team members and procrastinating and avoiding. And it was so bizarre and I didn't know what was going on. Um, and I ended up having chronic pain at the same time and lots of anxiety and I kind of went off on a search of how I could change. Like, how could I get on stuck, how could I get out of my own way when nothing seemed to work? You know, I went to therapists and I read all the books and I had coaches and yet I just felt so stuck. And so mine fix was born because I essentially became my own science experiment and stumbled upon what I think is something along the lines of like a magic formula that helps people get out of their own way and unstuck and helps them overcome their biggest mental barriers and internal roadblocks in an incredibly short period of time with incredible consistency.
Speaker 0 03:35 And so that's so funny how you say you're your own science experiment because I kind of feel like I am way with digital detox secrets and that's what made me actually just write the book because I was kind of my own science experiment. So what, like you say, talk about self sabotage, like what were some of the examples, cause I think that's super relatable to a lot of our listeners.
Speaker 2 03:56 Yeah. So self sabotage, you usually know you're, you're engaging in self sabotage when you find yourself engaged in counterproductive thoughts or emotions or behaviors. And so when I say counterproductive, it means you're really clear on what your goal is and where you want to go, but you're acting or thinking or feeling constantly, regularly in ways that pull you in the exact opposite direction. So a super simple example is, you know, I want to start this new business. And yet if you look at your behavior over the course of the month, you're eating bond bonds and watching soap operas every day, even though he's so desperately really, really want to start a new business. So when you're doing the opposite and you're kind of sabotaging yourself, sometimes it's thoughts, sometimes it's feelings and sometimes that's behavior. And usually people know they're engaged in self sabotage or they're getting in their own way because they describe it as it feels like I have one foot on the gas and then one foot on the brake or like there's this internal invisible tug of war going on inside of them.
Speaker 0 05:04 Yeah, it seems like we could, um, use social media as a way that we are self sabotaging our um, maybe, you know, we're supposed to be doing something but we're checking Facebook instead.
Speaker 2 05:16 Hundred percent. Absolutely.
Speaker 0 05:18 Yeah. So I'm in digital detox secrets. I um, when the chapter it talks about the six second mind fix test and the prompt question you give is fill in the blank. What makes me important or worthy is blank. Um, so I was just super intrigued when I saw your posts with this and the examples of, you know, did you fill in the blank with working hard or achieving or taking care of others or making lots of money or having others think highly of me. Like those things are, you know, at first glance, like a lot of people would put the fill in the blank with that. But what you, what you said the answer should be is nothing. I just am so can you talk to us, talk us through that a little bit and how we fall into that trap.
Speaker 2 06:05 Yeah. What ends up happening is, is when we're younger and we create some beliefs about ourselves that impact our self esteem, like I'm not good enough, I'm not valuable, I'm not worthy. We'd go off into later childhood and our teenage years. And what ends up happening is that depending on our environment and our family and how we're raised and our parents, we get um, feedback and praise and recognition that makes us feel like we're good enough or makes us feel like we're valuable. It makes us feel like we're loved and it's different for everybody and whatever, when we're younger kind of fills that hole in. We end up thinking that's what we need to do or how we need to be in order to be okay. So for some people it might be, you know, perhaps a child is, is given praise and love for being a caregiver for their younger children.
Speaker 2 07:05 And they come to the conclusion that being good enough and valuable or worthwhile is if they take care of other people, you know, if they put their needs last because that's what they got praised for and love for when they're younger. For someone like myself. I got praise and recognition and felt like I was good enough when I was smartest kid in the class. So I thought, what made me good enough? What maybe valuable, what made me likable was when I was better than everybody else. So you can imagine if you create that belief, it actually becomes really destructive because when you don't act a certain way or when you're not a certain way, you just know, you feel like you're not good enough. So it becomes a cycle. It almost becomes a compulsion. So I had created the belief that what made me good enough was actually being better than everybody else in my adult life.
Speaker 2 07:59 I couldn't go on a group bike ride or a group snowboarding ride unless I was the best, otherwise I would feel horrible about myself. And it wasn't overt, but it was always there nagging in the background where if I wasn't better than everybody else, I kind of felt like crap. I felt bad. You know? There was this nagging feeling of I wasn't, it wasn't good enough. Um, and I wasn't, I wasn't worthy. And so it's different for everybody, but you know, you have people who feel like they have to be funny or they have to put their needs last or they have to be smart or they have to be winning or successful and whatever you finish that sentence with, it's almost like you're guaranteed to have a compulsion that you have to be that way, otherwise you don't feel good about yourself. And of course this ties directly to social media and it's going to be how you want to present yourself. It's going to be who you're comparing yourself to on social media and it can turn into a pretty nasty cycle that that negatively impacts your self esteem.
Speaker 0 09:04 And today we depend so much on social media for um, for professional reasons. And you know, the way we met I mentioned earlier is through baby bathwater hu. Um, baby baby bathwater is a community of highly successful entrepreneurs and, um, you know, that's, I would describe that as your, your profile client, right? Is surprisingly entrepreneurs that are super successful that actually have these, um, you know, maybe self sabotage or, you know, how would you describe that with some of the clients that you're working with that is, um, you know, you would think, Oh, you know, somebody that's so successful doesn't have these problems, but really the opposite. We all have these anxieties and these demons inside of us.
Speaker 2 09:48 Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely has nothing to do with one's level of success. You know, you can have someone who's just worked a minimum wage their whole life. You can have someone who's started a small business. Um, you can have someone who's reached incredible levels of success and there are all sorts of forms of self sabotage and inner demons and challenges that people face. We worked with someone whose business sold for a quarter of $1 billion and you would think that he would just be so delighted and happy with his success. But after it happened, he was actually in agony. He was walking around every day. And not only did he feel like he wasn't deserving of the incredible success that he experienced, he felt guilty about it so he couldn't even enjoy it. And he had an incredibly deep, deep fear that somehow he was going to lose it all. And so here's someone who, you know, many people would, would say like he's reached the ultimate success and yet he was, he was so frustrated and so unhappy and you'd never guess that cause you, you'd say if I had that I'd be fine. But when he got there, he carried the same demons that you know, so many other people have with him. And it just kept pulling him backwards and holding him back.
Speaker 0 11:10 So interesting. And so what you do with mind fix, can you give us some examples of maybe how you work with clients to overcome some of these issues and get the relief of, of not having this, it seems like almost like this huge weight on your shoulders that you're living with.
Speaker 2 11:28 Yeah, absolutely. We actually work with clients in the same way as, regardless of what their challenges are. So a lot of the, a lot of the work is finding what are the blind spots, what are the challenges? And once somebody comes to us and says, you know, um, like this fellow that I was just telling you about who had guilt and felt like he wasn't deserving, he couldn't enjoy his life or his money and he was terrified that he was going to lose everything. We work with our clients in two ways. First, we align their conscious and their subconscious mind because that's where sometimes when people say there's an internal tug of war, it's because the conscious mind says, I want this. I want to be happy. I want a great family, I want to run a business. But the subconscious mind, which is where you have all of your tapes and all of your programming, all of the loops that are kind of running in the background all the time, it's saying, Oh no, you don't.
Speaker 2 12:23 You don't want that. We're going to pull you in the opposite direction. Because the way to stay safe is to not make money. And rich people are evil. And if you are really successful, you won't have time for your family. So all of these old things that we've picked up that kind of end up like swirling around underneath the surface are pulling us in the opposite direction. So we want to actually make sure that the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are aligned and going in the same direction to get rid of that foot on the gas foot, on the brake feeling. And then the bulk of the work that we actually do. And the reason why we can have such rapid results. And the reason why we can say that, you know, when, when people work with us, the change is long lasting if not permanent, is because we work with beliefs.
Speaker 2 13:11 So all of this old programming and these statements that we've been talking about are our beliefs that people carry around with them. And even if only a part of you believes that something to be true, it can have a massive impact on your life, right? So if you have a belief that cats are dangerous, guess how you're going to act and feel and think when you walk down the street and you see a cat coming towards you, right? Whereas if you didn't have that belief and you walked down the street, suddenly you have different thoughts, different emotions, and you act differently. Everything is different when you change your beliefs. So what we do is we go in and we find why people are stuck, why they have a fear of failure, why they feel like they're not good enough, where they're feeling of not deserving is coming from. And we'd go in, we identify the beliefs causing them, we eliminate them.
Speaker 0 13:58 Okay.
Speaker 2 13:59 Just like you eliminate a belief in Santa Claus. And once you do that, suddenly your thoughts, your emotions, your actions are instantly different. Just like with the, the cat belief example that I just gave.
Speaker 0 14:10 Yeah, I totally get it. So what are some, I guess, signs or maybe red flags that if somebody, you know, w what could I identify from, from maybe hearing this today and saying, you know, this might be something that I should look into? Like what are,
Speaker 2 14:28 yeah. Um, I would say the number one sign that you're in your own way or that your stock or that you're self-sabotaging is that you experience a lot of resistance in your life where you want to do something, but it just feels like there's so much resistance there and it's almost like it takes so much energy to do what you need to do. And um, it just, it feels almost sticky and that's going back to that foot on the gas foot on the brake feeling or where there's an internal tug of war where you really want to do something. But when you look at your actions and your thoughts and your behaviors, you're acting in a counterproductive way.
Speaker 0 15:09 Hmm. And as far as what maybe some advice you could give to somebody maybe doesn't have the means or resources to um, come to my insects. What are some things that you recommend that, like for example, you know, I know I do yoga, I got my yoga certification, I was like, I'm amazing personal development process that I went through. Um, can you give some, some tips on what people could do to maybe work on themselves a little bit?
Speaker 2 15:39 Sure. I mean, keeping your primitive brain out of fight, flight, freeze and, and keeping your nervous system as calm as possible is always an important thing. Like does it matter what work you do? If your nervous system and your primitive brain get ramped up and you're in a state of threat, you're never going to be productive or, or be able to achieve what you want. So that's why things like meditation and self care, eating right exercise are so important and they sound cliche, but there's a reason why taking care of yourself is, is so critical. We've seen people who've done incredible work, but then they'll go out and they'll drink and they'll eat really crappy and they don't exercise and they feel horrible. So even all the mental work, if you're not taking care of your body, um, really negatively impacts your mind. And then something else too that can bring a lot of awareness to people if people are acting in counterproductive ways, if they're self-sabotaging, you know, if they're finding themselves procrastinating or being perfectionist, if they're finding themselves, um, having difficulty setting boundaries or um, engaging in an avoidance behaviors, anything like that.
Speaker 2 16:51 The question that that's really interesting that anybody can ask themselves at any time is, what would I have to believe to be true in order to keep experiencing this over and over again? That's my million dollar question. And I probably ask myself that 10 times a day and we ask all of our clients that. And when you start figuring out what the beliefs are behind your patterns, that really shines a flood light of awareness onto what's going on and shows you that, you know, it may not be your personality, you may not be stuck forever. There's actually some old programming and beliefs that are causing you to be stuck. And once you have awareness that that's the first step and actually changing.
Speaker 0 17:30 That's awesome advice. And it just made me think of a question that is related to, we're coming up on international women's day on March 8th, and I'm just wondering what you see. I mean, you know, we've come a long way, definitely. Um, but we're still, I feel like, um, you know, there's still the struggle is real for, for women. Um, so what advice do you give women who, um, you know, are just, you know, in the entrepreneur world and, you know, have challenges that, you know, shouldn't really be, but they're there. Um, do you, do you, do you have any special advice for women?
Speaker 2 18:11 What do you mean they have challenges that that shouldn't really be there?
Speaker 0 18:15 Well, I mean, just like in the, in the workplace or you know, you know, for example, like, you know, men, business owners might be able to, you know, for whatever reason women might feel like they charge less or, or aren't worthy enough, um, as a business owner and they have challenges. I mean, it's just, um, overcoming things like that. Like, do you have any sense?
Speaker 2 18:37 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would say so many of those challenges that we as women experience, they tie back to what we believe to be true, right? Like we feel like we're not worthy or we feel like we're not going to be, we're not as, we can't be as successful because we're females or we are at a disadvantage. And if we believe those things, we're going to show up differently in the workplace. We're going to show up differently on phone calls, we're going to take different actions. We're going to feel differently as we go throughout our work days. And so I think I can go back to the question I asked before. When a woman is finding herself, feeling that resistance, feeling stuck, feeling frustrated, looking at whatever pattern she's experiencing, like, Hey, I feel really worthless at the end of every day. That's a pattern. If it's repeating. And it's like, what would I have to believe to be true in order to keep experiencing this will then shine a light on the beliefs that are causing that pattern. So instead of feeling like this is just how the world is and this is how everyone is, if we take ownership and understand that our programming and our beliefs are actually what are driving the patterns we're experiencing, because not all women experience the same things, it starts to give us more power and we take our power back. And that self awareness is literally that first step towards being able to change.
Speaker 0 20:04 I love that. I love that. Um, I want to be, I'm super mindful of time. Um, so given the topic digital detox secrets, do you have any of your own personal, um, what are, what are some of your tips or, or, or hacks on how digital can be used in a positive way or, um, how to avoid digital being used in a negative way from an entrepreneur stamp?
Speaker 2 20:27 Yeah, I think I've noticed that. Um, I, one of the biggest changes that happened for me, it's so simple is when I just turned off notifications on my phone when there wasn't a buzz or a ringer every three seconds. And I wasn't always looking at my phone that helped me start to detox from it. I, I'd start looking all the time and it really brought awareness to how much I was looking at my phone throughout the day. But that one simple thing of turning off notifications so that I chunk things out and I would foe, I would have focus time and then I would have very set breaks during which I would be on social media. I made a really, really big difference for me. Um, I also found that when I switched communications with a number of people in my life, like my mom for example, from text to Marco polo where I'm watching them through video and it's more conversations instead of want like short phrases that required ongoing back and forth. Um, the communications actually deepened and I didn't feel the pressure to be, to reply so quickly. Um, and I would have more sporadic asynchronous communications over the course of a week and says these constant texts going back and forth. Um, but that was, that was something for me personally that that made a few small differences.
Speaker 0 21:48 That's great. That's great advice. I'm actually gonna like take that tip in and do it myself. Um, I interviewed Tim power, um, and we talked about him basically giving them this phone and what a difference that made. So, you know, the whole notification, like you don't have to go all the way and you know, go as extreme as giving up your smart phone. But turning off notifications can make a difference.
Speaker 2 22:12 Yes. So much.
Speaker 0 22:14 Well, Aaron, thank you so much for being a guest on digital detox secrets. I really appreciate it. I'm going to put in the notes, the show notes, how, um, any entrepreneurs that are interested in working with you, um, can get in touch with you and I'll have your social channels that we can connect with you on and follow you.
Speaker 2 22:32 Beautiful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 0 22:34 All right. Thanks Aaron. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you for listening to this episode of digital detox secrets. If you liked what you heard, check out the book on Amazon or follow our
[email protected]. This episode was sponsored by the buyer group, a social PR agency, striving to keep our balance and the digital world practicing yoga, meditation, and occasional wine drinking for the best creativity and results. Not mistake.
