How To Focus, Cope and Be Kind When Life Feels Overwhelming

SPEAKER_1: You’re listening to She Grabs The Mic, and I’m your host, Cole Baker-Bagwell.

SPEAKER_1: Every week, we’ll explore what it means to be happy, present, and whole.

SPEAKER_1: You’ll hear from courageous women who are kicking ass in their lives, and leave with actionable tips that you can apply to reset from toxicity, tune into your gold, and live powerfully from the bedroom to the boardroom.

SPEAKER_1: Right now, it’s time to grab your headphones, kick back and relax, and get ready to be inspired.

SPEAKER_1: Welcome, Amazing Ones!
SPEAKER_1: I am so glad that you’re here today and that you chose to tune in.

SPEAKER_1: Tapping into the power we have to refocus our mindset has never been more important.

SPEAKER_1: I know that right now, so many things seem to be going wrong, and that life feels really freaking hard for millions and millions of people around the world.

SPEAKER_1: So many of us are grappling with financial stress and inflation, mental health and extreme weather.

SPEAKER_1: We’re outraged about gun violence and frustrated by our lawmakers.

SPEAKER_1: We’re concerned about AI and how it might impact our jobs.

SPEAKER_1: We’re feeling the effects of geopolitical uncertainty, division, and wars that never seem to end.

SPEAKER_1: And we’re already weary by the vitriol and rhetoric surrounding the upcoming presidential elections here in the United States that will surely impact most of the free world.

SPEAKER_1: We’re wrestling with all of these things as we meet everyday challenges like work-life balance, getting through traffic, buying groceries, paying our bills, and raising our children.

SPEAKER_1: What’s going wrong can consume our focus and limit our ability to see everything that is going right.

SPEAKER_1: And when we’re in that place, that does a number on our mindset.

SPEAKER_1: It limits our creativity, our cognition, and our ability to control our emotions.

SPEAKER_1: We feel distracted, fearful, depleted, angry as hell, and powerless to move the needle in the right direction.

SPEAKER_1: But we can shift our focus, our energy, and our mindset because these hard things are real, but we are not powerless.

SPEAKER_1: We can be healthy, happy, and in control of our emotions.

SPEAKER_1: We can understand and relate to one another with respect and compassion, and we can create unity.

SPEAKER_1: We can discover solutions to the hardest global problems we’re facing because when we work together, we are that damn good.

SPEAKER_1: And when we’re in that space, when we’re in that mindset, we can realize new possibilities, and it totally changes the game.

SPEAKER_1: So, this week, we’re going to talk about how to focus on what’s going right and be kind when so much seems to be going wrong.

SPEAKER_1: I’m going to tell you how prolonged exposure to uncertainty, fear, anger, and negativity impact your body, brain, and mindset, how sharing and receiving kindness creates the opposite reaction, what kindness is, why it has the power to radically transform our world, and why adopting a mindset of kindness has never been more important.

SPEAKER_1: And I’m going to give you three actionable steps at the end of this episode that you can take into your life today to help you develop your kindness muscle, flex that baby like a champ, and flip your mindset to leave yourself and everyone around you better, and to focus on what’s going right, especially when life feels so hard.

SPEAKER_1: Tony Robbins says, “Energy flows where focus goes.”

SPEAKER_1: If you’re feeling energetically zapped, frustrated, depleted, angry, or fearful, your focus is likely the culprit for all of the reasons that I mentioned at the start of the show.

SPEAKER_1: I want you to know that you’re not alone.

SPEAKER_1: I’ve been feeling it too.

SPEAKER_1: And so have so many other people that I love, know, and coach.

SPEAKER_1: It can be tough to focus your mindset and energy on what’s going right.

SPEAKER_1: Your brain is hardwired to focus on negativity.

SPEAKER_1: Your thoughts automatically tend to focus on what’s going wrong, because you have a built- in tendency called negativity bias.

SPEAKER_1: And I’ve talked about this before.

SPEAKER_1: It’s part of your primal brain and your survival mechanism. We all have it.

SPEAKER_1: Continually focusing on the hard things in your life and in the world creates fear and anger that trigger your sympathetic nervous system, your flight, fight, freeze response.

SPEAKER_1: Staying in a state of negativity and high alert for a long period of time creates collateral damage to your body and brain.

SPEAKER_1: And that affects your mindset, your health, and the choices you make, how you show up in the world, how you feel when you’re at home, how you engage when you’re at work.

SPEAKER_1: And here’s why.

SPEAKER_1: Fear creates cortisol and adrenaline in your bloodstream.

SPEAKER_1: You can feel its effects in your breathing, your heart rate, and on your cognition.

SPEAKER_1: Prolonged exposure to cortisol leads to heightened levels of stress, anxiety, irritability, and depression.

SPEAKER_1: And it increases inflammation in your body, and it also weakens your immune system.

SPEAKER_1: Anger creates norepinephrine in your body.

SPEAKER_1: Now, this neurotransmitter affects how you process information and it affects your memory.

SPEAKER_1: Anger can lead you to emotional reactivity that results in regrettable choices and behavior, and we have seen so much of that on the news recently.

SPEAKER_1: These emotions can zap your energy and leave you feeling absolutely powerless.

SPEAKER_1: But when you understand how these powerful emotions affect your biology and your mindset, it’s easy to understand why it can feel so challenging to focus on what’s going right, why it’s so challenging to be kind, and how to flip that switch, because you can shift your focus, you can develop self- awareness, and you can adopt a mindset of kindness that will leave you and everyone around you better, and I’m gonna teach you how to do that.

SPEAKER_1: So let’s talk about kindness.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness may sound like a fluffy word, a woo-woo word to you, especially when we’re facing so many hard challenges.

SPEAKER_1: But here’s the thing, kindness is an irrefutable energy for good, and it’s measurable.

SPEAKER_1: When you’re being kind or being treated kindly, your altruism increases and your mindset focus shifts from me to we.

SPEAKER_1: Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

SPEAKER_1: Science has proven that kindness stimulates neurotransmitters like oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin that fuel your good vibe energy and your cognitive processes like objectivity, memory and decision making in your brain.

SPEAKER_1: Alan Luks calls this ‘the helper’s high’ in his book, The Healing Power of Doing Good.

SPEAKER_1: One of my wishes is that there will be millions of us on a helper’s high by the time we wrap today.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness also helps you think more clearly.

SPEAKER_1: And when you think clearly, your self-awareness improves, you are less emotionally reactive and more measured with your words and choices.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness also boosts your mood and feelings of happiness, your health, your outlook on life, and general sense of well-being- all of these things improve too.

SPEAKER_1: And when you feel good, you get into a magnetic flow of energy that opens you up to creativity, allows you to see the good things in your life, and create possibilities even when life feels hard.

SPEAKER_1: Let’s pause here for a minute.

SPEAKER_1: Think about your family members, your coworkers, your neighbors, and your community members.

SPEAKER_1: Think about your local representatives, our world leaders, and the decision makers at the largest global corporations on our planet.

SPEAKER_1: Now, I invite you to be daring enough to imagine what would be possible if more of us were operating in this feel-good magnetic kindness energy instead of the energy that we’re operating in right now.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness is actionable, and as I mentioned, its impact is measurable.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness changes your mindset because it changes the neurotransmitters that govern your energy, mood, and decision making.

SPEAKER_1: And it has the power to radically change our world.

SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it can be really hard to be kind when someone is unkind. I totally get it.

SPEAKER_1: When we’re met with hostility, we’re in a heated conversation with someone, and we don’t agree.

SPEAKER_1: When we feel triggered, afraid, angry, unseen, unheard, disrespected, my God, it’s hard to be kind.

SPEAKER_1: It’s hard to see what’s going right.

SPEAKER_1: I’ve taught people how to navigate challenges like these ever since 2019 when I was audacious enough to go public with the bold mission of systematically integrating kindness into the mindset, flow, and operations of business.

SPEAKER_1: Here’s what motivated me.

SPEAKER_1: A couple of years before that, I witnessed the power of kindness because I instigated it on Wall Street- one of the most unlikely places for kindness to take root.

SPEAKER_1: I saw how kindness transformed people’s mindsets and their conversations, how it supercharged their positive energy and their focus.

SPEAKER_1: Across those years, I learned that kindness amplifies our sense of compassion, helpfulness, and generosity.

SPEAKER_1: It shifts our focus from me to we.

SPEAKER_1: It helps us navigate really hard things, create solutions, and discover possibilities.

SPEAKER_1: But, kindness can be confusing, right?

SPEAKER_1: Today, I invite you to think of kindness as an action, a discipline, and a mindset.

SPEAKER_1: I want you to think of it as a way of life that begins with one commitment to leave everyone and everything better with your thoughts, words, and actions.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness is a muscle that we can develop with mindfulness, self-awareness, and consistent practice, and it does take practice.

SPEAKER_1: Here’s the really cool thing about kindness.
SPEAKER_1: When we give it and receive it, we create a measurable chain reaction.

SPEAKER_1: That’s why it has the power to transform our world.

SPEAKER_1: I’ll be the first to admit that it can feel super challenging and even impossible to be kind when emotions like fear, anger, and frustration are running hot like they are right now for so many of us.

SPEAKER_1: I’ve been there.

SPEAKER_1: I’ve felt it.

SPEAKER_1: But here’s what I want you to remember.

SPEAKER_1: You can choose your mindset.

SPEAKER_1: You can choose where you focus.

SPEAKER_1: And you can choose to be kind.

SPEAKER_1: Brain science has proven all of these things.

SPEAKER_1: It has proven that we can override our primal hardwiring if we practice consistently.

SPEAKER_1: My work in Corporate America proved that widespread kindness radically transforms us.

SPEAKER_1: I spent years teaching corporate leaders and teams how to develop kindness as a core competency for business because I knew that it would change everything for the better.

SPEAKER_1: My first step was helping people understand that kindness is an individual and shared commitment to leave everyone and everything better.

SPEAKER_1: And then I asked them to focus their energy on their intrapersonal communication, the internal dialogue and conversations they had with themselves that framed their thoughts and their language.

SPEAKER_1: After a couple of weeks, this really amazing thing happened.

SPEAKER_1: By observing their internal dialogue through the lens of kindness, they began to understand how their mindset influenced their emotions, their response and their behavior, and they were able to change those things.

SPEAKER_1: They were able to get in control and be in the driver’s seat of their experience.

SPEAKER_1: Focusing on kindness created a gateway for more kindness to flow.

SPEAKER_1: And from there, we focused on systematically bringing kindness into the flow of work and to things like internal and external communication, relationship building, collaboration, engagement, conflict resolution, problem solving, and innovation.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness became a compass for the leaders and teams that I coached, and over the course of a few short months, their health, communication, feelings about work, all of that improved.

SPEAKER_1: And so did their business outcomes.
SPEAKER_1: When we measured key performance indicators, the case for kindness was crystal clear.

SPEAKER_1: By focusing their energy and mindset on kindness, the leaders and teams radically transformed their thinking, their mindset, the way they worked, and the outcomes they created.

SPEAKER_1: And we have the ability to do the same thing in our micro and macro worlds. SPEAKER_1: Kindness took root in an environment that is not traditionally thought of as being kind.

SPEAKER_1: But a shared commitment amplified the best in people, the best in humanity, and it spread like wildfire.

SPEAKER_1: Again, kindness can transform our world in the very same way, even when it seems that life is hard and so many things are going wrong.

SPEAKER_1: Adopting a mindset of kindness has never been more important.
SPEAKER_1: I wrote a series of articles mid 2020 because it was a really hard time in our history.

SPEAKER_1: We were feeling so much fear, uncertainty, anger, exhaustion, and division, and I wanted to get the word out about kindness.

SPEAKER_1: Four years later, what I’m realizing is that our mindsets are being consumed by these very same emotions.

SPEAKER_1: So today, I’m grabbing the mic with the same bold call to action I made in 2019. SPEAKER_1: I’m asking you to say yes to making kindness important.

SPEAKER_1: I’m asking you to commit to doing your human best, to leaving everyone and everything better at home, at work, and in your communities.

SPEAKER_1: I know that we can navigate the hard things we’re facing.
SPEAKER_1: I know that we can realize profound possibilities.
SPEAKER_1: I know we can leave one another better today and well into the future that we will create.

SPEAKER_1: Think about the positive impact on legislative action if every single member of Congress took a pledge to share, live, and lead with this one commitment.

SPEAKER_1: Consider how a shared commitment to kindness could radically shape the conversations our world leaders are having, how it could change their choices and transform societies.

SPEAKER_1: Consider how this commitment to kindness could transform the leadership mindset in the largest corporations in the world, how kindness could help them be profitable while also making choices that honor every living being on the planet and the planet that we call home.

SPEAKER_1: Consider how a shared commitment to kindness could bring us together, improve trust, amplify compassion and generosity, and get us to a place where we can focus on what’s going right and solve what’s going wrong together.

SPEAKER_1: All of this is possible.

SPEAKER_1: The starting point is you and me.

SPEAKER_1: We have to shift our focus from me to we.

SPEAKER_1: We have to shift our focus to what’s going right and find common ground to solve what’s going wrong.

SPEAKER_1: We can heal our division and create a chain reaction that will transform our world by doing these things.

SPEAKER_1: Now, here are three actionable steps that you can take today to develop your kindness muscle, flex it like a champ, and flip your mindset to leave yourself and everyone around you just a little bit better, especially when so many things seem to be going wrong and life feels so hard.

SPEAKER_1: Number one, observe what you’re thinking and your feeling.
SPEAKER_1: It’s easy to react and be unkind when we’re moving fast and we’re distracted.

SPEAKER_1: Observing your thoughts and feelings builds self-awareness that helps you shift your focus and your mindset away from negativity, to everything that’s going right, and to kindness itself.

SPEAKER_1: Number two, turn down the heat.

SPEAKER_1: When you observe thoughts and feelings like fear, anger, and uncertainty, hit your mental pause button.

SPEAKER_1: Breathe slowly in and out of your nose for a few breaths, and then ask yourself, how can I leave myself and the people around me better right now by turning down the heat that I’m feeling?

SPEAKER_1: Number three, challenge your thoughts, words, and choices.

SPEAKER_1: A ‘me’ mindset is all about you.

SPEAKER_1: Kindness begs us to turn our mindset, energy, and focus to ‘we.’

SPEAKER_1: By challenging your thoughts, words, and choices, you’ll start to understand where you have opportunities to leave everyone better, to leave everything a little bit better, including yourself.

SPEAKER_1: Here are a few questions that can help you jumpstart that internal process.

SPEAKER_1: You might ask yourself, how do I want the person or people I am communicating with to feel right now?

SPEAKER_1: What kind of energy do I want to share?

SPEAKER_1: What kind of energy do I want to create?

SPEAKER_1: How will my thoughts lead to words and choices that leave everyone and everything better in this moment and possibly into the future?

SPEAKER_1: As we wrap up, here are today’s key takeaways.

SPEAKER_1: Number one. We are powerful.

SPEAKER_1: We can choose where we focus our energy and mindset.

SPEAKER_1: We can choose to focus on what’s going right and solve what’s going wrong even when life feels really hard.

SPEAKER_1: Number two. Kindness is a way of life.

SPEAKER_1: Its foundation is one of an unwavering commitment to leave everything and everyone better.

SPEAKER_1: Number three. Kindness transforms our thinking, energy, health, happiness, and every single choice that we make.

SPEAKER_1: If we commit to doing our human best to leave everyone and everything better, we will create a chain reaction that will radically transform our world for the better and the future that we’re building right now.

SPEAKER_1: Before we scoot today, I want you to remember one last thing.
SPEAKER_1: There’s only one you in this big world.
SPEAKER_1: And in case no one’s told you yet today, that’s the thing that makes you simply amazing!

SPEAKER_1: Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_1: Thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_1: I hope you’ll come back again next Wednesday and every Wednesday after that to tune in and refocus your mindset. Let’s focus on all of the good things that are going on in the world right now and be part of finding a solution to all of the things that need our help.

SPEAKER_1: Until then, big love, everyone.

SPEAKER_1: And that’s the end of the show today, everybody.

SPEAKER_1: I hope it has served you well.

SPEAKER_1: Thank you so much for tuning in.

SPEAKER_1: If you’ve liked what you’ve heard, please drop a review wherever you grab your favorite podcast.

SPEAKER_1: Please subscribe so you never miss an episode.
SPEAKER_1: And please be sure to share this podcast with another woman that you love.

SPEAKER_1: If you’d like to learn more about me or my work, check out my website, colebakerbagwell.com.

SPEAKER_1: Until next time, remember to be super kind to yourself and do your very best to leave everyone and everything just a little bit better.