Ep 95 Transcript: Why Positive Thinking Isn’t Enough and What Actually Creates Breakthroughs with Rusty Osborne

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Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today's guest is going to look and sound just a little different than what you're used to on this podcast because today I'm being joined by Rusty Osborne and he is the go-to mindset coach for entrepreneurs who need to get out of their own way. Rusty, can tell you, has helped hundreds of business owners use their negative self-talk to ditch overwhelm.

and break through the mental blocks that keep them stuck, even when everything of course looks fine on the outside. I'm fine, right? We're always fine. He's also the author of The Power of Negative Thinking, which is available now on Amazon. And Rusty is one of my success partners, which means he works with my clients. So I have seen firsthand how his work creates real shifts in my clients. And honestly, for me too, we're talking about how to break mental blocks, how to stop the overwhelm spiral and head into 2026.

with a whole new way of leading. So Rusty, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to have you. And I will say that you are the first male that we have had on the podcast. And something that I do want to make very clear to the audience is that at no point have I ever discriminated and said men couldn't be on this podcast, even though we are called the real women, real business podcast, because we want to be an inclusive space. And if we as women want to have equality.

and be inclusive and promote inclusivity, we have to of course express that as well. So I'm not going to ever exclude someone from my resources and keep someone from my clients who I know can genuinely help them. And I gotta tell you, Rusty, I have seen firsthand the work that you have done with my clients and you have helped me through some mental blocks over this past year as well, which sometimes our mental blocks, we don't even know that we have. And that's the coolest thing of how you're able to work through it.

Let's start at kind of the beginning. I think one thing I didn't mention in your intro is that a big part of what you're doing is neuro-linguistic programming. And I'd love for you to just explain to our audience a little bit about what it is that you're doing and what got you into this. Definitely. the what we're doing is pretty simple. It's find where you're screwing up and figure out why.

Why is it? Why do I hold myself back? Why do I do this to myself? Why am I still overwhelmed? No, everything's fine. I'll just show everything's fine. But inside I'm dying. You know, like we're going to find out what's starting that up and let's move that out of the way so you can finally relax a little bit and show up confidently, authentically and break past those ceilings that you put on yourself, you know? So, yeah. Sounds perfectly easy when you say it that way. And I think this is also the thing that I do want to

sort of emphasize is in working with you, you do have this way of being able to work through things quickly. mean, like I've talked to people who are like, I worked with a therapist for the last three years and then I had one session with Rusty and that whole thing I had holding me back, it's gone. Like it's literally gone. Like I have had these conversations with clients where they've got this massive block. I'm like, listen, you gotta go see Rusty. They'll come back to me. like, no, it's gone now. I don't, it's, doesn't even exist. I can't even believe it existed in the first place. Like they're so shocked at how, I don't want to say it's easy to let it go.

but you have a way of helping them to really remove things. What's the secret sauce? ⁓ Me, of course. Naturally. So the difference is, so I love, and I get this question a bit, like, what is the difference between what you do in therapy? Like what is happening here? A lot of therapy is very past focused, right? We're looking at what happened. It's bringing awareness to all these parts of ourselves that we otherwise don't know and is unconscious. And

pretty much everybody that comes to me at some point has had therapy, has done some sort of inner work and they're like, why am I still in my way? And our job is to then face forward and say, well, all these things happen for a reason. Your negative self-talk is not to be avoided. It's actually the thing that's pointing you towards your biggest breakthrough. And so our job is to find which of those stories is keeping you from the progress you wanna make and rewrite it. And it's pretty good.

This actually brings me to one of the big questions that I have because your book is all about negative thinking. this is in a world at a day and age where we're all like, think positive, just think positive. Like if you just have positive thoughts and don't let the negative thoughts in, then positive things will happen. And you're basically saying, and I mean, obviously correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure it's not quite this simple, but you're basically saying, let's embrace all those negative thoughts. Why?

Why? mean, what made you, what made you want to focus on the negative thinking instead of just think positive? Cause positive sounds really fun. gotta tell you your way doesn't sound as fun. It does not sound nearly as fun, but let me tell you. ⁓ so, so let me give you the backstory and how I got here. So I had a coaching business that I started in like 2019. I was doing weight loss coaching and it was fun. were making a lot of impact, but I couldn't break through this. Like, God, what is stopping me? I'm.

building the team, I'm doing the right things, I'm working the messaging, I'm scaling with the right team members, doing the, why am I stuck? And I couldn't freaking figure it out. like one day my wife looked at me and she's like, you know what? We should get jobs. Oh God. What every entrepreneur wants to hear. Those magic four words. like, oh God.

And so we still love you. we love her. She's the best. She's the real. And I'm still alive. ⁓ and so we did, we had to go get jobs. Like we couldn't, couldn't solve the problem and we, had to shut down this business, not out of lack of results or the ability to deliver or like all these things, but there was a, tactically speaking, there was a product market mismatch. I was selling high ticket weight loss to musicians and the

I could have seen that one coming, right? Anybody does, but like I had such belief that they could do it. Um, and that's one of the reasons we got results is we were able to get so in depth with these people by having just a handful of clients, but it wouldn't scale to the level that we wanted. And so the reason that we never solved that is because I was doing what the experts said. Think positive, focus on what's going well.

keep, put your vision board together and think about it every day. Use your affirmations and your, know, read, think and grow rich and use that self-confidence formula as an affirmation that he has in there. Do it every single day. And so I did. I, I'm very persistent. When I decide I'm doing something, it's in. ⁓ in. All in. And so I did it for years and nothing shifted. And so we shut down the business and I went on the exploration mode. Like why?

Why did this happen? How couldn't I have taken better actions faster to pick a new market or a new product and try experiments faster? And it was purely because I was afraid of things. You know, like there's a long list of things we can be afraid of, but, ⁓ I just had crap in my subconscious mind that was holding me back. And one of my friends was like, dude, just like here, like try, try this out. And it was like a hypnosis style thing. And another mentor.

or someone I looked up to, she had an LP in her background and I said, Leslie, how are you so amazing? And we have almost a similar offer and I suck. Like, what's the difference? And she's like, come on in, I'll teach you how this stuff works. And it was really all like, I don't have to ignore my negative thoughts. that's my subconscious mind trying to tell me something's wrong. it's actually pointing me towards what's.

screwing up my business and I could just listen to what it was saying and it like have a direction for me. ⁓ And there's a caveat on that. Like if you just listen to the first thing your negative inner critic says, it says, you suck, you suck, you're an idiot, right? There's nothing constructive about that. No, no, no. So you have to listen a little longer to be like, I hear you. Thank you for letting me know that got it. Okay. I still suck. Understood. What's behind that? Why are you saying that? Tell me more. And underneath that there's always a message for like, man, I'm tired.

I'm burning out. We're not doing the right thing. Right? This isn't working. Can you please try a new strategy? Can you ask someone else for help? Can you take a break? Like that is always underneath the negative thoughts. Right. And so through that, as I started using it on myself constantly, well, the job that I had gotten after killing the business was a sales job and my, my enrollment percentage kept going up. I kept selling more and more people in more authentic and easy conversations. I could just be me on a call.

and close $28,000 sale, easy peasy. was like, what is this? was like, no. And so, yeah, it was a, like there was a little bit of a skill gap, I guess, but not that much. It was really the mindset behind it. And then I started showing other people how to do this stuff and they're like, let me pay you. Like I need to work with you. I was like, wow. Okay. So product market fit came back around and fit once my mindset was strong.

Well, I think it's interesting though, to what you're talking about is something that ⁓ a lot of us tend to fall into. Like you saw your success once you were working for someone else. And sometimes we almost need to be selling something that's not us because we can believe in something someone else has done more than we can believe in something we've created ourselves. And I see this time and time again with my clients and even for myself, I've told the story before and I apologize if you've heard it as well, but

I was a vegetarian working at a steakhouse as a bartender when I started my business. Yeah, true story. so every night, well, every weekend night, like every Saturday night that I worked, would sell, we would have some sort of feature to sell. And so they would show us what the feature is, describe it to us, and everyone but me would taste it to see what it tasted like.

And then the goal was to sell as many as you can. There was always a bit of a contest admittedly. If you're ever in a restaurant, they've got these cool features going, there's probably a contest about who can sell the most of them. And let me tell you, I can tell you who did it 99 % of the time. It was this girl. And it used to drive my coworkers mad because like, you don't even eat this stuff. How are you selling so much of this?

And a big part of it was that I understood the quality of what they were offering. I asked so many details to really understand how to describe it in a way that would make someone's mouth water because my mouth was not watering at the thought of this. So I had to find what are the kind of the trigger points. So I'd ask the chefs a lot of questions about the flavor profile and why they chose the ingredients that they chose, things that nobody else was asking. So there was that part of it. That's more of the sales part of it. But then there's the other element of let's be real here. People have literally come into a steakhouse.

and I am selling them steak. It should be an easy sell, right? Yes. I'm looking at everybody else and say, why aren't you selling it? Because it's easy to sell something when people have literally come to the steakhouse to buy steak. I have quality steak. How do you not sell it? Then I go into my own business and I'm like, I could sell steak at a steakhouse. I can sell anything. And I've always been a salesperson anywhere that I've worked. I'm a salesperson.

But now all of a sudden, and I didn't realize that at first, it took me a couple of years to figure out that I was getting in my own way because I'm like, it's a heck of lot easier to sell something that someone else has created rather than sell yourself. And that was the part that I knowing I had to stand behind my own value terrified me. I didn't consciously know it at the time. It was something that was at a at a deeper level, of course, that I had to kind of unravel over time. Man, I wish I had you at the start of my first business. Let me tell you.

What a save me a lot of time and agony. Yeah, it's it's incredible. Some of these blocks that we create for ourselves without even realizing it. So what are some of the most common mental blocks that you find when you're working with clients? I would imagine there's certain ones that kind of come up pretty frequently. I know a lot of the people that I send to you have similar things. And one of the things that as women we tend to struggle with is it's not just so much sales as much as it is our mindset around money. And you and I have even worked on this as well.

So I can personally attest to this, is I know with women, that's a common thing that I see, but what is it that you're seeing with clients? Yeah, it there is how it represents like the symptom that shows up and then there's the problem like what's causing it, right? So those are two different things. So you might say like, I don't know why, but I just can't say no to people. Nobody's ever done that.

No one in my audience is nodding their head right now whatsoever. I'm sure. Right. I'll just give them a deal this time. You know, I'll I'll just give this one. I really want this job. I really want this job. So I, I, I'll just make sure that I, yeah, I'll treat them really well. I'll give them a deal or whatever. Yeah. Right. Or, um, do you know what to do, but you're not doing it. Yeah. Right. Like these are pretty common and that could be like,

avoidance of like a big initiative or something that you could really do in your business. Like when I should have changed my product market fit, right? That was just a big thing I was avoiding. Or there's the little stuff just like, don't, I don't want to do that. You know, like I don't want to go on my spreadsheet. I don't want to download those numbers and go like put receipts and quick books or whatever. I just don't feel like it. You know, I don't want to do this or I don't want to go collecting voices. I feel icky asking for that money, even though I've already earned it. You know, right. Like those happen all the time. And so much of it.

And overwhelm, overwhelm is another big one that I see. Yes. ⁓ So it can really boil down to a lot. Mostly it's overwhelm and then not doing what you know to do. And these are successful entrepreneurs that you're working with, very capable, strong people who are still feeling that overwhelm. They're feeling ⁓ like they just don't want to do the things that they know that they should be doing. ⁓ What so what sort of

block exists? Like, because when we we talk about a block, I can kind of picture like this boulder standing in front of a cave and you just move the boulder out of the way and you can go in, you know, you can go in like it's like it's like something that's physically in your path and you basically clear it out. So what are some of these blocks? Like how are they? We now know how they're presenting, but how do we know what's actually blocking us to move away? That's a that's the question is how do we know what it is? Because it's hard to see your blind spots. They're blind, you know, like

I can't see it. It's in the name. It's right there. And so for example, not charging what you're worth or getting really overwhelmed or avoiding all these things. A lot of it right below that is going to be imposter syndrome. Yeah. A lot of the time or fear of success. I see that way more than I expected. Of course, fear of failure, right? It's almost always some sort of fear or a values conflict. So

I want to grow my business. I know these are rough, especially ⁓ this time of year when we're all setting goals and stuff, you know, we're like, we're going to, we're going to make $18 billion this year. if it's not aligned with your values subconsciously deep down, you're not going to achieve it. And if you did, cause some people have that ability to achieve anything, no matter what they they're the ones that are upset and sad and frustrated and unhappy that they made so much money. Okay. And so I actually, I want to.

touch on this a little bit because I see this show up constantly with my clients where they claim they want to be successful. And I want to say claim is kind of the wrong term here, but they outwardly say that they want to be successful. But when we get down to it, there's still this what I call the just enough thinking because as women, we feel like we're supposed to be modest. The idea of making money and maybe not doing something with it, for example, women are essentially taught to

earn what you need to live within your means, but not to be extravagant and outrageous with it. And I got to say, I've never really followed the Kardashians, but a lot of respect for how they were just like, go out and make your millions, ladies, and just do it and do it unapologetically and say what you will about them. This is not honestly an endorsement by any means, but I think we need more women proudly making money in this world.

Because this is one of the things so going back to what you're saying about values is like, well, I want to make I want to have a really successful year. I want to make a ton of money. But then deep down, they're like, shouldn't want money. So you probably come across this pretty consistently. How does how does a woman kind of reconcile with those inner thoughts that are telling her to not want more, to not be greedy? That's a feel a word that we feel.

and here inside our inner critic is saying like you're being greedy, you're being selfish. Those are words that our inner critic is constantly telling us. How do we clear those out? Yeah, amazing question. ⁓ The easy way, go get my book. Get it, walk through it. So there's that, like the steps are very much detailed and I know like people are listening while they're driving, like they're not about to type in the things. But ⁓ the step one is

Well, actually, let me give you ⁓ a phrase that changed everything. ⁓ What you resist persists. What you resist persists. So if we resist or avoid these negative thoughts, they will persist. I actually have the stat here. There's, ⁓ where did it go? So there was a study done actually in your neck of the woods at I think the University of Waterloo that

Right there. Okay, cool. So they found that you have about 6,000 unique thoughts per day. That doesn't necessarily take into context the subconscious thoughts, but those like the thoughts that you hear in your brain, there's about 6,000 of them a day. And about 80 % of those are negative. Attracts. Right? Right? So what if we're wired that way? That's just one thought. Like what if that's how we're supposed to be for a reason?

But the next piece of this is that 95 % of thoughts are repeated every single day So if 95 % of thoughts are repeated every day and 80 % are negative, that's a lot of negativity Wow Right constantly happening. Mm-hmm. And so if we keep avoiding it It's going to keep spinning at the subconscious level because it already is they're already repeating if we don't have a way to get into the unconscious mind and dig those up and see them evaluate them and rewire that

then they'll stay.

So that's where using our negativity is so useful. I we're all negative anyways. We just don't want to admit it. You know, like we're all constantly judging this person, judging myself. I'm a piece of poop. You know, like, no, I'm great. I'm grateful. I'm grateful for everything. This is wonderful that my life sucks right now. You know, like, thank you for the two minutes of energy I had today. You know, I love those two minutes. Like you're allowed to be grateful for that stuff, but let's admit what reality is because when we're really

able to see what reality is as objectively as we can, then we have more power over it. You we have more power to change. We can say, if that's my thought process, how could I change this?

Interesting. I'm sort of thinking about, ⁓ you know, things kind of show up for us sometimes that we keep pushing aside, but positive or negative, they keep reentering. Like I'm working on some shifts in my business that just kept showing up. was like, it was started, it by the time I finally listened, it was banging on the door so loudly that I was, couldn't ignore it. It's funny sometimes how we're like, yeah, no, I see you over there. I hear you. I see you, but.

I'm just gonna push you away for a little while. And at some point, that's why like what we resist persists. I really like that. Because it's not even a negative necessarily. For this, this was something positive in terms of shifting my business, but I was resisting it because it didn't fit into this pretty picture that I had created. And it of came up out of nowhere. And the more I was looking at it, I'm like, wait a minute, why am I ignoring this? This is right here, right in front of me. It makes sense.

positioned well to do this. I'm the best person to do this. I was the biggest thing that I think I kept coming back to that if not me, then who and it kept coming back to I am the best person to be doing this. So why was I ignoring it? So I like what you're saying about what what you resist persists.

because I'm looking at this from both positive and negative. Like, yes, the negative thoughts persist, some, those positive thoughts are persisting as well, but we're ignoring them because we just keep you getting used to shifting things aside. And, one more layer, a phrase that helps me remember this as well is the principle that if you don't listen to the whispers, you'll listen to the screams. You did tell me that one. And I think that was when I was finally like, so I should, I should really listen to this, this thing that's screaming at me right now because.

Yeah. Interesting. And so that's like, how these blocks get worse and worse if we don't focus on them. Right. And so you might have, everybody's got trauma. all, we're all, I don't know how your stance on profanity today. We're all pretty screwed up underneath. would like to keep this a non-explicit episode if possible. It might be the first one I've been on. So, so we're all screwed up deep down. We all have plenty of funny things happening and we're all perfect at the same time. Of course.

But when we resist it, push it down, imagine it's not there, avoid it. Even if you've done one of those rituals where you write down your problems and on a piece of paper and you burn it and you say, release this, like it didn't go anywhere. It's still in your unconscious mind. That's when it manifests as health problems, as your business shutting down, as self-sabotage, a team member stealing from you. Like all these things happen because you didn't listen to the whispers. The screams are showing up saying, please, please listen to me.

I will sabotage you and damn near kill you in order to get my message across. It's so true. I mean, as someone who's personally experienced burnout, I can tell you that ⁓ it can sneak up on you. even when going back to what you're talking about at the beginning of like when you think you're just fine, when everything's fine, like I was at the top of my game when I burnt out. I thought everything was going great. didn't necessarily.

mean that I was doing everything in the best way possible. It snuck up on me. And it was when I look back, it was showing up in little whispers until finally my body was like, listen, if you're not going to listen, here's some shingles. Go play with that for a little while and tell me how you're feeling after that. So it is interesting how connected our mind and our body is. And it's something that's been showing up for hundreds of years. This is not a new philosophy or concept, but recent studies are

really making that connection so much more. But I mean, if you go back to like ⁓ ancient Chinese medicine, especially there's a lot of ⁓ mind over matter, so to speak, oversimplifying it, of course, but they talk about how ⁓ your mindfulness and how your conscious mind, whatever you're thinking, if you are thinking those kind of those positive thoughts about things, how you can actually manifest that.

Again, going back to this negative thinking that you're thinking, like, when is the negative self-talk a bad thing? Is it just when we, if we just ignore it? so negative self-talk, you're not saying like we should be talking crap to ourselves all the time. That's not what we're saying here. Is it? There's a time and place for everything. Okay. So when you are going to be on a sales call, you're public speaking, you're on a podcast, like you're, you're client facing or team facing talk positive to yourself. There are studies that have shown that you're, you're

performance in that moment does better. You visualize how the meeting is gonna go. You see it in your head ahead of time. You know what you want. Like that does work for short term ⁓ high performance. Okay. So that's, that's when you use positive thinking or you just want to, you know, ignore your feelings and feel a little better for a minute. Then you can use positive thinking or like food ice cream works great. You know, that makes me feel good. Now the time and place to think negative is when you're, you back off from that.

Right? You're like, cool, I had my meeting. Let's review what went well, what didn't, or on that sales call, what went well, what didn't. And so I can improve. That's when you want to be as accurate as possible and say, this thing is the thing I did well, and here's something I did awful. Then when you want to do some problem solving and really uproot the subconscious gunk, you're going to be, ⁓ let me choose a different word. You're going to be really mean to yourself for a minute. And I want you to be the worst person of you, like be the worst version.

where you literally berate yourself, you scream at yourself, you say all those worst things because those thoughts are subconsciously happening. You're not letting them have any airtime. And so that's why they're persisting. So if you open up a journal and just write down all those awful things about yourself, everything that you actually do think underneath, but you don't want to admit it, just keep writing it, write more of it, let it all out, get all of it out onto a piece of paper. And at a certain point you're to be like, ⁓ holy crap. I didn't know that was all in there. Like, geez.

Wow, dude, like that's pretty intense. And what that does is it uncorks all this stuff so you can move it through and your brain immediately goes into problem solving mode subconsciously. So suddenly just by letting all that stuff come out, you have new ideas, you have new solutions, you have new ways of being, because you're not just letting that stuff stew subconsciously. You can't solve something if you're not aware of it. And so it builds, it brings that awareness to it.

Okay, I want to dig into this a little bit deeper. We're to take a really short break for this quick message and I will be right back. All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast where Rusty Osborne, our mindset coach is talking about negative thinking. Okay, so we just dumped out all of our negative ideas. I would imagine in doing this exercise and in fact, I've done it. I'll admit it's a hard exercise to do because it doesn't feel great doing it.

So how do we keep ourselves from staying in that negative place? You mentioned that our brain is gonna start thinking of solutions and such, but what if we feel like after we've dumped all of this stuff, we just feeling the weight of all those things, and now we're just feeling even more stressed and more overwhelmed. How do we, like do we just sit in that for a little while? Like what are we supposed to do with that? Yeah, it depends. It depends on what you want next. So if you really want to remove the blocks or the...

the subconscious stuff that's causing these thoughts, that's when we need to go in and do the actual rewiring. So by just letting it out is step one to like put it, put the crap on paper so it's not taking up brain space as much. if you have five minutes to get back in a better state, you're going to dump this stuff out and then practice some gratitude, do some positive thinking. That's fine to get you back up to get back to work.

Now that's not rewiring. That's not actually, that's not bypassing. Right. Bypassing. Good word. Yeah. Yeah. And so then it's still going to be there. ⁓ but it just won't have as much of a hold on you for the rest of the day. Okay. But it can show up again. This is just a way to like start moving it through and bring a lot of awareness and that that level of awareness does shift things not as powerfully as like the, deeper rewiring practices. So let's talk a little bit about

what rewiring looks like because I'm sure that some people here are thinking you're hooking people up to electrodes or something like flipping a switch here. Like what does it mean to rewire our brains? is this dangerous? Like are you going to get into my head and have me like clucking like a chicken or something? Like how does this exactly work? question. Great question. Yeah. Let's bust some myths on this.

When it comes to this style of work, all hypnosis is self hypnosis. Not that I'm hypnotizing you, but you'd get in a trance like state and all that means is you're in contact with your unconscious mind. So that, you know, that state like right between sleeping and awake and you're like not totally sure which one you're in. That's a great place where you've got access to what's happening under the surface. And so you can communicate well and that can only happen if you feel safe enough to do so.

So if you don't feel safe near me, there's nothing I can do about that. Like I won't be able to help you rewire if you don't feel safe. Like I can do my best. Like there are ways to help you feel safer. Sure. But unless you get into the, yeah. Right. And that's what all of the like negative side of the dark side of hypnosis and NLP and all, know, persuasion, like that's all based on building more trust.

So then you can help someone self-hypnotize into doing what you want them to do. Right. Right. And so that's not my realm. I don't play in the dark arts. It's not, it's not my thing. I attest to this firsthand. Yup. Yeah. And so what you'll do, and I've got guided meditations that work really well for this as well, is you press play on one of these things, or if you're in a session with me, I'll have you like relax a little bit. So you can get in that relaxed state, that meditative state where you get in contact with your unconscious mind.

and then I'll have you think negative. You'll think those bad thoughts that you thought before and those bring up feelings. Those feelings are a direct line to the unconscious mind. So you feel a tightness in your chest or your shoulders get all tight or you know, your hands get tingly, whatever it might be that you can ask, Oh, what's inside of this? What emotion or belief is living inside this feeling? And it always brings an answer. And it could be shame. It could be guilt. could be fear.

Or it might bring you straight to a moment where it's like, that boyfriend I had, it was just such a piece of work. You know, like it can bring you right to those things. And those are things we've been suppressing and avoiding. So the rewiring looks like, wow. I don't like this feeling, but it's got a piece of gold for me. There's a nugget here. There's something it's trying to give me or else it wouldn't have shown up. And once we find that and hear that, then the brain's like, ⁓ that's the purpose of this shame.

And it suddenly shifts from shame to love or something really wonderful. Right, right. And like I'm thinking kind of in therapy terms, that's where people are saying they're being triggered. that's, we're finding out what those triggers are and then reframing them. And I'll admit like there are times where ⁓ you and I have had conversations and to be clear when I talk about even working with you, this is not necessarily that.

Rusty and I set out for him to cure all that ails me or anything. just in a conversation. He can't help himself. And we naturally end up getting into some of these conversations. But I know in my case, there's been times where I feel like I have healed from something. I've had a negative experience in some way, some sort of trauma. I have healed from it. But I'm aware that there are still triggers that immediately will bring me back to almost a reflex type of

response to it. so despite the fact that I feel like I have fully faced what I dealt with, I have addressed it, I have healed, I have grieved, I have done all the different stages that I feel like I need to do. And I've done the inner work. There's clearly something lingering there still if I'm still getting triggered. And sometimes we don't even know how that's showing up. And in my case, for example, there was we had a conversation, I think this was when we first started.

connecting to be honest about someone in my life who I really trusted and had betrayed me in a pretty serious way. And again, I'd gone through all the work and I'd healed from, and I wasn't really holding onto the sadness or the hurt or those negative feelings with it anymore. I was treasuring the part that that person played in my life for the years that he was in it and ⁓ wasn't harboring any sort of negative resentment towards him or anything. However,

What I had found was that because he had turned on me in a way that was unexpected to me, because we had such a trust level, the way that he turned on me made it so that I was doubting my ability to judge character. And so in realizing that what I ended up doing was not trusting my gut, and you helped me identify that, that this is how it was manifesting now. So while I dealt with...

his actual actions and the hurt and the grief and embraced all the things and all the feelings. What I didn't address was this lingering thing of like, can't trust yourself because you trusted him and look at what happened. So don't trust any of your own ideas and any of your own thoughts. And it kept showing up in different ways. Like it wasn't like there was this obvious like, obviously I don't trust myself. I thought I trusted myself, but then it kept showing up again and again and again. And you were able to help me identify how that was showing up.

And once I was aware of it, kind of going back to the rewiring part of it, part of what rewiring was just being aware of it. So now when I'm second guessing a decision, I'm able to be more conscious about why am I second guessing this? And I'll admit it wasn't an easy change either because I was also like, okay, so now should I second guess this or was my initial instinct like it was because I'm like, I don't know what my gut's saying anymore. Like I literally had to.

reconnect with my gut basically and now I listen to it so emphatically that I'm like, no, no, my gut's saying this move on. And it's wild the difference. But again, I didn't even know that that existed. Yeah. And let's, let's touch on another, I would call it a myth as well. just, it's a common thing that we do, especially the, those of us who are like kind of type A and we, have a goal. We're going to go for it. We're perfectionist like, Nope, I checked the box. This one is done. I have healed this trauma.

Yeah, I don't know you're talking about. That's not me at all. Never, When it comes to the inner work, the subconscious stuff, the traumas and things that we have, we can think of it like I have processed this to the utmost that I know I can. And that doesn't mean it's gone. So the thing that I find holds people back in this way is like, oh no, I healed that. I fixed that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you did that part of it that you needed at the time.

It will revisit when it's time to teach you a new lesson, right? When it's got a new gold for you, it will come back up. So here's another really important thing is that perception is projection. What you see in the world around you is a mirror of your unconscious mind. If you're suddenly judging a whole bunch of people, you're judging yourself at the same time. It's a mirror. It's reflection. If you're, it's the wildest thing. If you see, ⁓

You know, it was yesterday. I was at the grocery store and everybody I saw was like this. And these people just look kind of like sick. Like they don't look healthy. We're at whole foods. They all should. Right. In Boulder, Colorado, like one of the literally the least obese place in America. ⁓ And I'm like, why am I only noticing that? That's interesting. So that would be a mirror back of like, I should check in on my health. ⁓ I am feeling a little under the weather. Let me take some oregano oil, get some extra sleep, hydrate some more. Right. So it was reflecting that back.

as opposed to the times where I go there, I'm like, everybody here is amazing. We're having a great time. Like, you know, then I'm in a great state subconsciously for that to happen. So that means that we can look at the external circumstances and use those as a mirror. So if you get triggered again and it brings up that trauma and you say, healed that you're resisting and it will persist.

Right. It's interesting too, because I will tell you, it doesn't land well when I tell people, similar to what you're saying, ⁓ if it seems like everyone around you today is an idiot. Guess what? Guess what? Because it's usually, and for me, one of reasons why I'm bringing this up is often it's how burnout tends to, some of the early signs of burnout tends to be. ⁓

less patience and feeling like everyone around you is stupid and an idiot and disorganized and whatever. And it's because you're feeling inside, things are unraveling a little bit. And you are the common denominator in it. I gotta tell you, when someone's in that irritable state, they're not overly interested in hearing that they're the problem. But it is important for us. I think it's important. It's something that I 100 % hear you, because it's something that I've practiced long before I even met you, was that

If I felt like I was seeing something all around me, I would reflect on like, what is it that I'm feeling inside? And part of that comes from back when I was a teenager, I felt constantly judged. And ⁓ for anyone who knows me, and especially if you've even just seen a picture of me, you know that I don't necessarily fit the mold. Like I'm someone who nowadays in today's society and culture, I am so grateful for how embraced that uniqueness and your individuality is celebrated.

It is not something that was happening in the mid 90s in the same level that it is today, and especially in certain areas. And so as a teenager, I was very much judged. And as I grew and through my university days, young adult, I made a conscious effort to not pass judgment and not just outwardly, but inwardly that like I would see someone dancing down the street. You might be thinking, my gosh, what has gotten into that person? And instead of being like, man, they look like they're having fun. Like I want to be in their head right now.

You know, and just like, reframing it. And I still find myself sensitive to judgment. And what I find is when I am feeling that judgment coming at me, I realized that I've been judging. So it's interesting that you say that because it's something that I became aware of, like I said, and that's the one place that I can really ⁓ relate to it. And I'm sure it shows up differently for everybody else. But I feel like everything that you're saying here all makes sense. It all sounds.

So doable. You know where I'm going with this. I think people listening to this are going be like, OK, in practice, in every day, how am I supposed to remember all of these things? How do we keep ourselves alert to these blocks and being able to move through them? I'm sure there isn't just this magic fix of like, here you go, step one. mean, yeah, again, get the book. And one thing that I should mention is that Rusty has been incredibly generous.

And just for the listeners of the Real Women Real Business podcast, you can actually get the ebook and a bunch of bonuses for free. I'll put the link in the show notes, but it's at the powerofnegativethinkingbook.com/shaunalynn which is incredibly generous. And I think that's a great place for people to start. But again, it's we want to leave as much mental baggage back in 2025 as we possibly can. As we're moving into 2026 here, we want to start fresh. What are some tools that we need in our tool belt to be able to pull on them?

when we actually need them. There's two ways that I think about this. One is if you feel triggered, you should listen. In regular life, like, why am I so angry? Why am I so, I'm hiding it pretty well, but just so you know, I'm really pissed off. Why is that happening? And in the moment, you might not be able to work through it, but you can write it down in your notes app and just be like, I'm gonna visit this right when this person leaves.

so I can dig this up and see what's happening underneath. ⁓ So that's option one is as you go along and life sucks for a minute, ask why. Okay. So the next piece is just like a business where if we want a specific output, we build a system and then we run the system. Right? So if I want to make sales regularly, I should check in on my CRM. Like is the pipeline moving? You know, like pretty simple. ⁓ Similarly,

we could do that with our health by going to the gym or doing some sort of exercise every day. We could do it for our mental health by having something every day where we just check in. And that's my system. And what I recommend for everybody is like journal a little bit, then press play on one of these, we're wiring meditations. So it brings up the subconscious gunk proactively and you can move through it and rewire it. Yeah, I like that.

⁓ I'm a big fan of journaling. We've talked about this before. I'm a big fan of journaling. think it's such a powerful move to get your thoughts out onto paper and regards to what your journaling looks like. think that's the other thing people like, I don't know how to journal. There are a gazillion ways to journal, like find the one that works for you. ⁓ But I like what you're saying though about having, ⁓ writing down the note. I love that one because I feel like sometimes we hang on to something and we're like,

And again, you don't, can't always deal with it in the moment, especially when you're in a heated conversation or something. ⁓ but I love the idea being able to revisit that when you're in a bit of a different state. ⁓ and it, it's, it's, it's uncomfortable, I think at any time for us to look at something and be like, ⁓ I'm not actually perfect. I'm not actually okay. yeah. Well, and here's the, here's something important that I wanted to touch on as you say that, like when we have that discomfort and we don't want to go into it, that's why we get addictions.

bad habits and traumas and stuff that sticks up our ⁓ inner world and gives us like the bodily blockages where you get liver cancer if you're angry forever, like those things that have been shown in other studies. So if we avoid these things, that's what causes our bad habits. And so if you find yourself doom scrolling or buying a bunch of stuff suddenly, cause it makes you feel better or the thing that I, that

has always been my go-to is eating. Like I was just, I was a kid. So that's the way that it worked out. ⁓ And so any time that I, that or you find yourself in one of these bad habits or addictions, then the question is, what am I avoiding? It's always an avoidance or a numbing behavior. And that can bring us back to why this work is so much ⁓ better than just the addiction.

you know, or avoiding it or trying to bypass it with something else like working all day, every day, which is another common addiction, right? Okay. So it's funny that you say that because I do have a question about addictions here. And I know we're running a little bit past our time, but I feel like it's just such a good conversation that we're just going to, we're going to keep going a little bit longer here because, uh, for anyone who knows me, they know I'm a runner. It's not a secret. I talk about it openly and as often as I possibly can. Uh, but there's a, an ongoing.

joke of course and sort of within the inner running world so to speak that we're running from our problems. So what about when you have an addiction that presents as a good addiction? Like people are often commenting on my discipline of running and I will tell them like don't have a choice no it's it's a legitimate addiction like I there I I feel like my day's not going to go as well if I don't go for my run in the

I run a minimum of five times a week, usually closer to six. And if I don't run for a scheduled run, like there are days that I schedule as off days and those are okay. But for a day that has a scheduled run, if something goes wrong and interrupts my run, I feel like my entire day goes downhill. So like, I feel like this is an addiction that it is a healthy addiction. Ish.

I don't know. Yeah. So what do you do when you feel like I like it is a coping mechanism as runners? We are well aware of this, but I'm also like I am processing things. There are amazing things that come out in a run. But again, it is a vice for lack of a better of putting it. It's just it's a it's just free because it's such a healthy thing to do. Right, right. It gives you control. You know, it you feel like you have control over something. And so with things like this that we think very black and white, typically like

Running is good. I'm addicted. You know, it's like, that's the only options here. Or the other option is I don't do it and life sucks. Right? So there's no good way through that. And so this is where, so whenever I have something like this, I, when I notice I'm really attached, I know that when I'm attached to things like I tend to make worse decisions for the sake of the thing instead of for the sake of growth and goodness and you know, universe peace or whatever you want to call it. So, um, this is when I start questioning like, okay,

What am I getting from this? What is the negative? Like what are the, what is the negative self talk that I have about running? Okay. You know, what is it that I'm judging about myself? What am I afraid of if I don't run? And I think those thoughts is, is, is negatively as I can is, is maybe like petty be the worst middle school version of you, you know, like, what that'll do, like we said before, is it'll bring up a feeling which will get you deeper into the unconscious roots of it. And this way we can come at it from a

A clean energy, you know, we can, we can release the negative aspects of it and then you'll listen to your body more probably, you know, on those days where it's like, know I scheduled five miles, but I'm feeling awful. So I should probably just do one, you know, but I want to do something because I know it does make me feel good. Right. The, you can, you have nuance now available. It's not just like the gray area in between, but like technicolor, you know, you've got so many more options and availabilities. Right. ⁓ the,

Law that we work with when we're doing this unconscious work is that every procedure has to increase your freedom, increase your choices, your available options. And so if you're afraid of losing your edge or being undisciplined or losing this thing, like, well, on the other side of that is even more freedom. And you'll probably make that choice to run or not to run or to do other activity in a way that's more ecological for your life, right? It's better for you, better for them, better for your business, better for whichever.

Right. That's always on the other side is a new higher level of you. I like that. And I will say, as you know, knowing you as long as I have now and working with you and work with, with our, clients, ⁓ I've seen firsthand that you do really practice what you preach as well. And at no point have you ever claimed to be perfect at any of this. Imperfect. Definitely. ⁓ but.

Just when you're talking about the freedom there, like, I mean, I know that you've built this wildly successful business. You help people in phenomenal ways every day, but you also have strict boundaries. And when I say strict, I don't mean like rigid, but I just mean that you protect your freedom and your time and you do it in a way that fulfills you. So you are living proof that practicing this actually does work if you give it the right attention.

Would that be accurate? Yeah. Yeah. There's, if, there's ⁓ a secret thing I'm working on helping people with, there's, there's two pieces to it. One of them is freedom. I want you to have more freedom, more choices. Like if running is your vice, like I want you to know what life is like on the other side of it, addicting you, you know, like where it's just your choice. Like I used to be an alcoholic and I legit, and obviously there's a lot of stigma around alcoholism. did this process with alcohol.

And I took significant breaks. It was like six months off, six months off, and then a couple drinks here and there, and then a party, crazy. Okay, another six months off. But with this inner work, like I'm able to have a drink, two if I'm feeling wild, then my body says, hey, I'm good. So it's not even a conscious choice. It says, no, thank you. Like that was enough. Right? We can, we can learn how to move these things through. I a food addiction has been one of the biggest problems of my life. You can't just walk away from food. Right. So

You know, when it shows up, like I, went from fat to orthorexic where I'm like, everything must be the healthiest possible in doing this. And it work helps me find when it's useful to have tacos and ice cream. You don't want it's useful to not eat like a child, you know, and it's not like a major hard conscious effort. It's freedom. It's like, you know, I don't feel like that. Let's do this one instead. And now my brain power is freed up to be creative or go be inspired to go for a hike or play with my dog, whatever it is. Right. There's freedom. So.

Obviously I'm passionate about this because I just went on way longer than I planned on about that. The other thing that I'm secretly doing is helping people trust themselves. Yeah, that's powerful. That's really the goal here. If you really trust yourself, you've got so much freedom. And I think that's, I was just going to say, I feel like that's got to come before the freedom because I, and I think that, ⁓ it's something that I don't think a lot of people are as aware of their lack of trust in themselves.

and where it even comes from. And I know in my work with clients, a lot of it is coming from external sources that have, when you hear a voice in your head, it's not usually necessarily your own voice. It's someone else's voice that's saying things. And that can impact us and cut deeper than we expect it to sometimes. And I know that not everyone has the strong support systems that I've been incredibly blessed with.

you know, we've got to find those supports as well. And so it can be difficult sometimes to break through some of the self-doubt and the imposter syndrome and the trust, but I can't stress it enough. If you're going to start anywhere, start with your negative thinking and Rusty's book. It's honestly, it's a game changer. And Rusty, you've been such an incredible ⁓ success partner to have for my clients. And I've seen, like I said, firsthand the work that you've done.

And I can't say enough things to endorse the quality of what you do, really. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It means a lot, thank you. So as we're heading into 2026 here, and if someone's listening to this episode today, and we definitely went on longer than we normally do, I'm not upset about it at all because it's just been such a beautiful conversation. I think it's such an important conversation for this time of year. But if there's one thing someone listening to this episode can take away from it, what's that one thing you want them to really hold on to?

I'd like to implant deep in their subconscious mind that you can trust yourself all the time, but you know, that's a process. It's not just like snap your fingers and trust. So the process to trust yourself, the process to break through your blocks, the process to build your business to a new higher level than you ever thought possible is to listen to your thoughts. Just listen. Like what you resist persists. So if you remember that, if you're resisting or avoiding something, all you gotta do is open up a journal and start writing. Just be like, okay, what is that negative voice saying?

And so if that's all you did, if that's all you took away is that I'm not going to manifest negativity by thinking negative. I think that's what so many people are afraid of. That is the big fear. I wish we addressed that earlier actually. So we're going to go on a little longer. I want to hit this one. So let's hit it. No, when we were myth busting earlier, this is one we should hit on. This is a big one. So manifestation doesn't happen from your conscious thoughts. If you think I'm going to think positive and manifest, well that is 5%.

of your capability because your conscious brain is up to 5 % of your cognitive capabilities. The other 95 % is subconscious. This is why this work is so critical. We're going into that subconscious mind, looking at that 95 % that's driving all of your actions, your habits, your behaviors, the thoughts you think, the things you say, all of that is driven by your subconscious mind. And that's what manifests things in the world. So what we're doing by

thinking positive, saying, nope, not gonna listen to that 95 % powerhouse of every, like, it's like having chat GBC closing in the closet. Yeah. You know, and it's like using just your conscious mind is like trying to use windows 95 to run a business today, right? Which one's gonna be more powerful? The AI is gonna beat you to death over and over. Sure. Right. The subconscious mind will run the show always does. And it doesn't do it logically. It is not the logical brain.

It is in charge of keeping you safe and alive. Right. And so if there's negativity in your subconscious mind, it will stay there until you have a way to route it out and find it and see it and work with it and heal it. And that's what we're doing. The.

A funny way to say it is it's not the amount of positive thoughts you have, but the less amount of negative thoughts that you have. If we can take away more negatives, it's like if you're trying to climb a mountain and you have a hundred pound backpack, if you want to go faster, drop the backpack. You know, it's, that's, it's pretty simple. And the way we do that is by finding our negative thoughts, rewiring those at the unconscious level, not just thinking that we healed it, but really doing the process.

And over and over a year, it's wild, magic that we see. didn't, we didn't touch on the magic cause you know, it's a little woo woo, but like it's crazy. The things that we see happen when we start letting go of some of this stuff. It's unbelievable. It honestly is it's. And again, like I've, I've explained earlier about these clients that would come back to me and they're like, Oh no, it's not, it's not even an issue. Like, it's not even like, it just doesn't even exist anymore. Like it's just, it's gone and they can't even believe that.

this block existed for them in the first place. We can call it magic. There's more to it, obviously, than that. But it feels, it genuinely feels like magic, the way that it works when it works. And you have to be open to it. It is a little woo woo. And I mean, you know, from the very first time that we met, like, listen, I'm a skeptic. don't know that I believe that this all works. But anything that is science backed, I'm all in on.

I am anything, I'm very data driven and there's too much science in this to ignore. And that's one of the reasons why I've leaned so heavily into this. And I have had people on the podcast who have talked about the law of attraction and ⁓ neuro-linguistic programming and positive thinking and visualization, manifestation, all these different things. And it sounds very, to your point, woo woo. Well, it is if all you're doing is just trying to like,

I'm going to go to bed tonight. I'm going to think about the million dollars I'd like in the morning. You're not just going to wake up to a million dollars. It's it takes action. It does. There are actions that need to to accompany these things and actions might be thoughtful actions. It doesn't have to be like something physical that you're doing necessarily. But all these things still require some sort of action. You can't just think you're going to be successful, but not put any actual efforts towards being successful. It's just get the negative things that are in your way.

that are keeping you from doing the things you need to do to be successful. And I think that's where that misconception comes in is we see these people who are like, but I, I dreamt of this house and then I found it. Cool. That sounds like a great story. And I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying that at some point you had to go and look at a house to find this house. it's right. you to, you had to believe that you could have it enough that you would look in the right neighborhood.

Instead of like, I can't afford that. Let me look at something similar in this other neighborhood that I don't like. Yeah, there's a lot more to it. But I think that the to your point, the magic that happens is actually very real. And if, if ever there was a skeptic out there, mean, again, I met, but I truly, truly believe in what you do here. Thank you. Thank you. Skeptics are welcome. I've worked with a lot of them. Like when you see, I don't do anything unless there's results consistently being driven from it.

Like not just for me, but also for my clients. And that's why I keep doing this. Like, my God, it keeps working. This is wild. You know, this is amazing. Let's keep doing it if it works. Right? Of course. Wouldn't we all do that? If you find something that works, don't you repeat it over and over and over again? So if you're a positive thinker, you don't, you repress it, you avoid it and it'll just, you'll sabotage yourself. But if you want to do something great, then yes. Right.

So no, think if you want to manifest positive things, the answer is not necessarily just positive thinking to your point. We need to address the negative things that are getting in the way. And I hope that coming into twenty twenty six, we leave as much of the negative stuff as we can behind in twenty twenty five. But it's not like you're just going to like wake up tomorrow and cool all that baggage I was carrying. It's poof gone. No, you've got to work on it and don't try to set some unrealistic goal that it's all going to be gone tomorrow. But definitely check out Rusty's.

book and give him a call because seriously, it's amazing what he can do. So, Rusty, if someone wants to find you other than going to the powerofnegativethinkingbook.com / ShaunaLynn to grab your ebook, what's the best way for them to connect with you? Yeah, the book is I did my best to try and put myself out of a job. So I put all the magic in there that I could without it going too far, like not being 6,000 pages. So.

That's a great place you can get it from that link or if you're a paperback person, you can also get it on Amazon. And that's a great place to start. When you get the book, you will get an email from me. And if you have any questions, you just reply to that email. I look at all the replies that come through. My world is in the emails. So ⁓ that's the best place to be. Or you could reach me directly rusty at rusty Osborne.com.

And I can attest Rusty reads all the emails himself. He responds to them all himself. They are not AI written or responded to or anything. It is an actual human being that you are getting behind all of these things. I can attest to that. Honestly, Rusty, I can't even begin to thank you for joining me on today's show. And we definitely went past our time, but I think this is the perfect way to close off 2025. So thank you. course, time's relative anyways. We were just having fun. exactly.

Amazing. So as I mentioned, I'm going to make sure that link is in the show notes. And if what we've been saying here today is resonated with you, I hope that you will continue to allow me to be a part of your journey of entrepreneurship and tune in each week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. And remember, the best way to support not only this podcast, but your fellow women entrepreneurs or let's face it, because we're all inclusive today.

any entrepreneur that you know, be sure to share this episode with someone that you know can really benefit from it. And honestly, like your list should be 10 people at least who you should be forwarding this episode to because everyone needs to hear this today. So until next time, keep thriving.