Manders Mindset
Are you feeling stuck or stagnant in your life? Do you envision yourself living differently but have no idea how to start? The answer might lie in a shift in your mindset.
Hosted by Amanda Russo, The Breathing Goddess, who is a Breathwork Detox Facilitator, Transformative Mindset Coach, and Divorce Paralegal.
Amanda's journey into mindset and empowerment began by working with children in group homes and daycares. She later transitioned to family law, helping people navigate the challenging emotions of divorce. During this time, Amanda also overcame her own weight and health challenges through strength training, meditation, yoga, reiki, and plant medicine.
Amanda interviews guests from diverse backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and wellness experts, who share their incredible journeys of conquering fears and limiting beliefs to achieve remarkable success. Hear real people tell how shifting their mindsets—and often their words—has dramatically changed their lives.
Amanda also shares her personal journey, detailing how she transformed obstacles into opportunities by adopting a healthier, holistic lifestyle.
Discover practical strategies and inspiring stories that will empower you to break free from limitations and cultivate a mindset geared towards growth and positivity.
Tune in for a fun, friendly, and empowering experience that will help you become the best version of yourself.
Manders Mindset
What's Actually True? Redefining Self Worth | Kurt Bush | 147
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What if imposter syndrome was pointing you toward your true self?
In this powerful and heartfelt episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Kurt Busch, certified Internal Family Systems practitioner, trauma-informed coach, and co-founder of Brimstone Coaching to unpack the deep roots of self-doubt, false narratives, and the incredible freedom that comes with owning one's truth.
Kurt shares his raw and relatable journey from getting fired at 19, to feeling like an outsider around “smarter” voices, to building a coaching practice rooted in presence, reflection, and purpose. The conversation dives into the subtle power of the promises people make to protect themselves, and how these invisible contracts shape how they show up in relationships, work, and everyday life.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t belong, struggled with self-worth, or simply wants to show up more fully in their own skin. For listeners seeking lasting transformation—this conversation is the spark.
🎙️ In this episode, listeners will discover:
🔎 How imposter syndrome silently hijacks confidence
🛠️ The power of protective promises—and how to rewrite them
💭 Why reflection (not hustle) is the gateway to real transformation
🌱 What it means to live in alignment with one's true self
💬 The one question Kurt asks that breaks false beliefs instantly
👟 Why red sneakers became a symbol of personal growth
🧠 The role of nervous system responses in everyday decisions
🕒 Timeline Summary:
[2:00] – Who Kurt is at the core and why he feels made to coach
[7:10] – Midwest roots, sibling dynamics, and early ambitions
[13:35] – Getting fired and the inner meanings we attach to failure
[21:40] – Reframing past experiences: from shame to self-discovery
[27:05] – The role of reflection and the question: “What’s actually true?”
[34:30] – Leaving ministry, entering coaching, and building Brimstone
[42:15] – Protective promises and rewriting internal contracts
[50:45] – Imposter syndrome at the boardroom table
[58:20] – Living in alignment: what wholeness really means
[1:08:50] – Final reflections, legacy, and the quiet power of presence
To Connect with Amanda:
Schedule a 1:1 Virtual Breathwork Session HERE
📸 Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess
Follow & Support the Podcast:
📱 Instagram: @MandersMindset
👥 Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!
To Connect with Kurt:
Brimstone Coaching: www.brimstonecoachinggroup.com
Brimstone Coaching Podcast – available on all major platforms
Follow Brimstone: @brimstonecoaching
Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers and a variety of other people when your host, amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective and her guest's mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life, will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Amanda's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Russo, and I am so excited to be here with today's guest. And I am here today with Kurt Busch, and he is a certified internal family systems practitioner, trauma-informed coach and the co-founder of Brimstone Coaching. After walking through his own journey with imposter syndrome, he now helps others come home to themselves. He's also the co-host of the Brimstone Coaching podcast, where real conversations lead to real growth, and I am so excited to chat with Kurt today. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. It's fun to be here.
Speaker 2:So who would you say? Kurt is at the core.
Speaker 3:Boy, that's a deep question. I am going to need like an hour and a half, if that's okay.
Speaker 2:I've got all the time in the world an hour and a half.
Speaker 3:If that's okay, I've got all the time in the world. Well, I mean, I'll say this I think how I would describe Kurt today is I absolutely love the work I get to do. I think I am made to coach people. I think I am made to ask the right question at the right time. I love what I get to do. This is a gift to wake up every day and say that I run my coaching practice with my best friend. My coaching partner's not here, but he is one of my best friends. We get to do this together every day. Yeah, I think what's true for me is I'm a different person today than I was yesterday, honestly, but I mean, five years ago I was a whole different person thanks to some wise guides that helped me along the way. Yeah, I think transformation is real. Transformation happens slow, over time, but I think we can see it every day. So, yeah, I don't know what more do you want to know? Amanda, I feel like I skirted around that question. I didn't mean to skirt around that question.
Speaker 2:A lot of people skirt around that question. Can you take us down memory lane a little bit? Tell us about childhood family dynamic, however deep you want to take that.
Speaker 3:Yep, so I grew up in Northwest Illinois, typical Midwest town right in the Mississippi River, little Dutch community actually. I grew up there until I graduated high school. I have two siblings much older. I am what you call a tail ender. I think that's better than oops. You know people always correct me like don't say that. So tail ender, oops, whatever you want to say. But I'm much younger than my older siblings so I always say I'm like an only child, grew up in a house that really felt more like an only child than anything else.
Speaker 3:I graduated high school and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I really liked cars as a high schooler. I went to tech school for a year. I quit that to work at a shop to work on cars and realized that I kind of sucked at that and I got fired from the first full-time job I ever had, which is a whole different podcast. It was devastating, it was crushing, it's still. The effects of it still hang on today. Yeah, from there I found my way into a manufacturing company. I worked for about a decade, had the opportunity to work as a recruiter there, eventually in HR and doing benefits administration and labor recruiting. Then after that I boy winding road, amanda. I actually went to seminary. I got my master's degree late in life. As a dad, I've got a couple of kids and a wife did the whole grad school thing. Second career I served a local church for a handful of years as well, and then I got my MDiv to be a minister.
Speaker 3:So I served as a pastor in a local church for a little while and then about a year ago, my friend and I we've kind of been coaching together in a volunteer kind of informal basis for nearly a decade now. So about a year ago we said, hey, let's try this thing out, let's launch a coaching practice for real and let's do this thing. So that's sort of the path. I'm one of these people, amanda. I like to do a lot of things. I don't like to be kind of pigeonholed into one thing. If I could do something different every day of my life, that would be ideal for me. So I've got quite the pathway here, but it's been really fun.
Speaker 2:Are you still involved in the ministry?
Speaker 3:No, I'm not. I stepped away from that to start coaching practice. I give all my attention now to this coaching practice. My wife and I have a little side hustle. We do on the side. We own a small entertainment company as well, but most of my energy goes to this practice.
Speaker 2:Now I'm curious had you ever thought that you were going to do anything like coaching, or even maybe counseling like anything like, because coaching probably, like 15 years ago, wasn't that popular, but any type of like counseling you ever see yourself doing anything like that?
Speaker 3:no, here's what I will say. Do you know the enneagram at all? Amanda, are you familiar? Yes, so I'm a nine enneagram. I all Amanda. Are you familiar? Yes, so I'm a nine Enneagram. I'm a people pleaser. I have a hard time speaking positively about myself, so I'm going to try. I can look back now and see over the years. One of the things that I've always been able to do really well is to make people feel comfortable around me, either by asking questions or just by not rising to a level of anxiety or whatever it is. I think I can look back now and say I certainly would have never thought that I would be co-owning a coaching practice, but I think that trait that allows people to feel comfortable around me pretty quickly. I think that really is just a key part of how I ended up coaching.
Speaker 2:It makes a lot of sense. I'd love if we could backtrack a tad. You mentioned about getting fired from your first full-time job.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I'm curious what you did post that. What was post next step?
Speaker 3:skills or tools, mentally or emotionally that I have now. You know, I was a 19 year old kid. I had no way of coping or no way of understanding anxiety. So it was crushing right. I loved this job. I loved the work I got to do, I liked the people. So it was devastating.
Speaker 3:I was engaged. You know, like three months from that moment of getting fired I was getting married. And what the heck do you do without a job when you're getting married? So it was crushing. I remember just melting down. I lost control, I was scared. I was kind of stuck Like I was frozen. I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3:Luckily I sort of lucked into this manufacturing role. A friend had a role that was opening up and I said, no way, I'm never going to go work in this manufacturing role. That is not for me. Turns out it was actually the start of a really great season, but it took a little while I had to kind of get in the mindset to say, hey, this thing I really wanted to do is gone. I still tinker around and kind of use some of those skills and it's not gone. I don't. I don't have to set that part of me aside never to come back. But, yeah, I had to deal with that idea that this thing I wanted to do was gone.
Speaker 3:But I think, more than anything, like the crippling effect of it was this fear of like I'm not good at this. What does this mean about me? Right, the crippling was I made a meaning of what it means for somebody to get fired. Right, good workers don't get fired, good people don't get fired. It must mean I'm not a good person or I'm not a good worker, or whatever it is. So I think the crippling part wasn't how do I find another job, how do I, you know, support my soon to be wife or pull my part of that relationship? The crippling part was like I don't know how to process what this means about me, or what I think it means about me, right, so how did you process that?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll be honest, I'm still processing it. I think you'll appreciate this. I think the thing with mindsets are I made that meaning right. That thing happened, that experience happened, I got fired. I associated a meaning to it that was disempowering, it was negative, and that meaning held on for years. And the truth is that it was years till I knew how to think about it right, it was years before I started to do my own kind of self-work and my own self-discovery and my own sort of mental, emotional work. So I mean that time, that spread of years, just allowed that meaning that I made to sink in right. So I still notice times where that fear or that anxiety or that feeling of like I'm not going to do that again, that still crops up. So I'm not sure that I'm fully through it.
Speaker 3:I think that there's been a number of wise guides. I've had a couple of good coaches. I have a good counselor that helps me sort of get at the root to say what's actually true. That's a question I love to ask my clients. Is what's actually true? True, that's a question I love to ask my clients. Is what's actually true? The truth is, I got fired because I was not performing at a high enough level to remain doing the job that I had. That's true. That's factually true. What's also true is that does not mean that I'm unhirable. It does not mean that I'm less worthy of accolades. It does not mean that I'm less worthy of accolades. It does not mean that I'm less worthy to get another job. It doesn't mean I'm less valuable as a human being. So I think the work of saying what's actually true and what's a meaning that I'm making, that's actually been the work and the work that still continues.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that happens to so many of us like, no matter what it is, whether it's a job, maybe you didn't get the job, and we make it mean this. One thing like this means I'm not good enough, this means I can't do X, this means like, and we make it mean something for so many things. But I love that question what's actually true?
Speaker 3:Yeah, our coaching practice is kind of based on this idea. We have those encounters all the time, right, we have those encounters as kids, as elementary school kids, as middle school kids, as high school kids, and that meaning we associate with them just hangs on into adulthood and it just controls how we show up, for sure.
Speaker 2:I like that question a lot, though, like almost forcing the mind to be like okay, what are the facts? You can have your opinion, but is that actually factual?
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, cause what's true? I mean, I don't know. You can push on this if you want, but I think often what I've experienced, the meaning that I make of hard encounters usually is like the most unlikely meaning, or the most unlikely, the least likely to be true and the most negative. You know, there's a million meanings to make One of them's true and that's not usually the one that I make in those hard circumstances.
Speaker 2:So I'd love to transition back. You left the ministry and then you started. Was there something that you were like, okay, now we're going to start this volunteer coaching that we first started doing. What made you guys decide? Now's the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good question. So COVID happened right. I don't know if you remember 2020, but that was a thing. There was this big thing that happened in 2020. This was a terrible time. This was I shouldn't say terrible, I mean it was terrible. This was a really hard time to lead anything right. So, you know, covid happens in the Midwest.
Speaker 3:Covid was just viewed a little differently, like it was really hard to lead well, through COVID. At the same time that was happening, the denomination I was ordained in was sort of imploding and dividing and having this sort of identity crisis, and we were having to navigate that too. What I learned in those hard times is you know, I wasn't asking for hard times, but what I learned was people that I was leading would come in and talk to me really anxious and really angry or really stirred up, and what I learned is I loved the work of helping them navigate their own anxiety. I loved when someone would come in my office amped up, worked up and leave thinking differently, maybe not changed, maybe not agreeing with everything that we talked about, but at least calmer and able to kind of ask that question what's true? So I learned in that really hard season that sort of coaching work is just where my heart beats.
Speaker 3:And what happened is, over the course of time, the people that I led, the culture of that group, had changed. I didn't need to coach as much. The hard seasons had somewhat, at least temporarily, subsided, culture had taken hold and I found myself realizing like I wasn't getting to coach as much. Again, I don't know that I'm, I don't know that I was wishing that people would come and yell at me and be anxious. But on some level, you know, on some level, maybe a little bit, to think like I wasn't getting to flex the muscles to say, okay, let's sit down together, I'm going to help you navigate your own anxiety. That was just not happening as often as I would like. So it just became really clear over time that I needed to flex that muscle in myself a little bit more, that I needed to flex that muscle in myself a little bit more. And then, over time, it just became clear that the right way to do that for me was to jump into this coaching practice full time.
Speaker 2:And now you mentioned you do this with your best friend.
Speaker 3:I do yes.
Speaker 2:Your idea Was this his idea.
Speaker 3:I'm glad he's not here. It was mine. So, yeah, he and I met at seminary and he actually invited me into some of this kind of self-discovery work. He was actually my first coach. We've known each other for about a decade and he sort of pulled me into this world of self-awareness and self-discovery. We've kind of grown in this together. We've coached together. I think I was asking these questions about vocation and about purpose and about scratch the itch of what I felt like I wanted to be doing with my life and my time. I was asking those questions before he was, so I called him. I said, hey, I'm going to do this. Do you want to do it with me? And he said no, he is also a full-time minister. He is serving a church today. He still works full-time there. So his initial response was no, and then he thought about it for like two minutes and then he said yes. So, yeah, that was kind of the fun story of how it went. It was an initial no, but eventually I sold him and I wore him down.
Speaker 2:I love that and it kind of came full circle for you. He was your coach and now you're doing this together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really fun.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us a little bit about this coaching that you guys do?
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. So I mentioned a little bit before our philosophy is based on a couple of things. The first thing is that the you and I and every other human have encounters that cause us to make meaning of how the world works. So an example a real example is I.
Speaker 3:In third grade, amanda, I was one heck of a speller. I got to tell you I could spell anything in third grade and I found myself in a little third grade spelling bee at my little Midwest elementary school and I was in the final three people and I was going to crush this thing. Amanda, let me tell you, if there was like a professional spelling draft, I would have been like prospect number one and I got my word this final round and it was farm, which I don't know. It was the eighties, I mean early nineties. It was weird. Farm is not a hard word. I don't know how a third grader gets farm. Anyway, I get farm and I spelled it. I said F R a M, farm, and the bell rang and that the bell means you're out and I immediately knew, oh no, that's not how you spell farm. So in that moment, this hugely embarrassing moment, I learned and being embarrassed sucks and it hurts and it's hard, right. So there was a moment there where I said I'm never going to let that happen to me again. We would call that a protective promise. I subconsciously made a promise to protect myself. That said, kurt, you are never going to feel that way again because that sucks. So the problem with that so that's the first part of the philosophy is to say we all do that, every one of us does that, and those things carry with us into adulthood because we just don't know any other way. Right, third grade Kurt needed it. Honestly, third grade Kurt probably didn't need it. Middle school Kurt probably needed it. Protection is okay when you're in middle school it's hard. But adult Kurt did not need protecting the same way that third grade Kurt did our families, as if we're still third grade or sixth grade. Right, the danger, the threat feels so real that we still just respond in ways that third grade or sixth grade Kurt did, even though it's not actually a real threat today. So we help people identify those protective promises and then we help them make new, more purposeful promises to replace them. And then we lastly help them navigate into what we call preferred promises. So three steps. Preferred promises like how do you go forward? How do you want to be going forward? So for me, in response to my FRAM, my preferred promise is I play full out, right, I don't hold back. So that's number one. That's a long. That's a long answer.
Speaker 3:But encounters from the past impact how we show up today. The second thing we use is what we call our transformational equation. Our transformational equation is E plus R equals T. Encounter plus reflection equals transformation. We believe that reflection is as close to a silver bullet for transformation as we can get. That when you and I have an encounter throughout the day that makes us anxious or stirs us up, if I can reflect on it and say what happened, what's the situation? Did I show up the way I wanted to? How would I rather show up? We think that reflection piece really is the secret sauce. So those are the two things that we base our practice on and how we coach our clients.
Speaker 2:Now you say reflection. That sounds broad to me. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Speaker 3:to show up differently. We still have those. Maybe we get an email, an angry email, or maybe a recording doesn't go well and we lose the whatever, and maybe we snap at our kids, if we have kids or whatever. We have these encounters every day.
Speaker 3:The invitation with reflection is to, on a regular basis, whether it's once a day, whether it's, you know, once a week, whatever. It is to pause, to slow down and say, okay, what encounter did I have today that stirred me up? And then to ask these questions what was going on right? What was going on when it happened? Who was involved? How did I feel right? What emotions were engaged? Do I like the way I showed up? Do I like what I did? Do I like how I responded? And then, lastly, how would I rather have shown up?
Speaker 3:So, when I think of reflection, maybe you could interchange this with meditation, or maybe you could interchange this with self-reflection, but it really is about saying again, asking, asking a question like what's true, what actually happened and what would I have rather happened? And maybe the answer is I'm perfectly fine with how that happened and that's great. That even reinforces some of the things that stir up in us. Reflection really is as simple as looking back on a day, looking back on a meeting. Some of our clients will say you know we'll tell them hey, you got this hard meeting coming up. Get out of it. Get a notebook, write some stuff down, reflect on those questions how did you show up, how did you lead? How did you respond when things got hard?
Speaker 2:You know really, just sit, be quiet, be still and capture those things that we can see really clearly in the rearview mirror.
Speaker 3:That it sounds like it would help a lot with transformation. Yeah, we say you can't unsee something. You see, right. If I look back on my day, I have a couple of teenagers and sometimes I don't show up the way I want to with my teenagers, right, sometimes, if I can look back and say, gosh, I wish I wouldn't have said that to my teenager, well, I can't unsee it right, I can't unsee it. I can only now decide do I want to do something about it to change it, or do I want to ignore it and keep it the way it is? You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle. It can't put the toothpaste back in the tube Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 2:So would you say that they want to plan time for this reflection after these encounters?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's true for me if I don't, I just I mean, everybody's so busy, right? If I don't like. I did this thing for a little while. I love baseball. I absolutely love it. I love podcasts, I love all these things. It's baseball season. I can listen to a baseball game on the radio any time of the day. If I get my car, I can put a baseball game on the radio. But for a while I committed to saying I'm not going to put anything on my radio for one of the trips in my car. If I go somewhere, I would say I'm going to keep one of those quiet and use that as kind of a reflection time. I personally will just buzz through and push through and work, work, work and get stuff done, whatever that means. If I don't put reflection at least kind of as a placeholder on my calendar or in my daily rhythm, I just won't do it.
Speaker 2:Scheduling it so that you almost force yourself to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we always say like, do something manageable. I have a client that would say that they do like regular reflection in pretty big chunks of time. We always say, like reflection's hard and we don't do it naturally as adults, like culturally, we don't do this. So we always say do this and sustainable. Like get a win right If somebody is going from not reflecting or not doing any self-discovery. Take like two minutes over lunch. Like literally set a timer on your phone for two minutes, get a win. You know, let that timer go off and say hey.
Speaker 3:I did it today. Start somewhere, start small. Would you suggest people even doing something like this, even for their past encounters, if they've never really reflected, if the beginning of our sort of self-awareness is here? We just don't know anything about ourselves, right, we're just busy, we occupy our time, we think we know ourselves, but really we just kind of go through life, filling our time, doing the work, all the things. So we start not really knowing ourselves, not really seeing how we show up in these encounters, not really seeing oh hey, I did this thing with my kids again, I snapped at my kid again. Or hey, I kept quiet in this meeting when I wanted to speak. We just we were oblivious to them, right. But then we move into actually being able to see things in the past. Like that's the first step of growth.
Speaker 3:I don't think we could see anything in real time, like if, seeing it real time, if knowing, hey, I'm anxious, I'm stirred up, I'm about to, I'm about to snap at my kid, or I'm about to defend myself in this meeting, or whatever it is, we'll never be able to see those things real time unless we start by looking at them in the past and saying, man, I wonder what that's about Like why did I do that? Right, it's that continual dig Like why did I do that? What was that about? What was I scared of? What was the threat in the moment? Right, I think a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense, cause in the moment you can't really tell, even if you didn't like the way you handled something. I can't think of an example, of course, off the top of my head, but I have had times where I'm like I could have handled that differently. But I'm not really able to reflect on necessarily how I wish I would have said that, but what do I wish I would have said? I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It's so common for our clients to beat themselves up and say, ah, I can see it in the past, I can see it three weeks ago, but I didn't catch myself in the moment. And we always say like no, that's great, Like it's great that you can see it three weeks ago, Even if you can't answer what I would have done differently. Like seeing it is such a win. The in the moment comes much later. But, yeah, celebrate looking in the past. I think you're right. I think that's exactly where it starts.
Speaker 2:Now I'm curious, what would you say? Wholeness is in your words. That's a good question, I think, for me how I you say wholeness is in your words.
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I think for me, how I would define wholeness is that I am living in alignment with what I'm passionate about, what my gifts are, and that alignment is continuing to grow day by day. I think everybody would answer that differently and would be able to say differently what alignment looks like for them. I'm going to get this quote wrong. I'm going to get it wrong and I'm going to miss cite it, but I'm going to do it anyway. Why not?
Speaker 3:I think it's Frederick Buechner, maybe has said that vocation which like vocation is usually used as like a broader term of like how we use our life right. He has said vocation is where our deepest passion meets the world's deepest needs, or something like that, assuming then we are made to fill a need somewhere, right, our passions are aligned somewhere with something that the world needs and that sounds really grandiose and really noble. It is, and I don't think it's limited to things like coaching or podcasting. I think this is even the person that goes into that manufacturing plant, like I did, and works just as a laborer. I think that applies too. So I think for me, wholeness is alignment with my deepest passion and the world's deepest needs. Alignment with my deepest passion and the world's deepest needs. Are you familiar with? Like false self language?
Speaker 3:I'm sure you're familiar with this language. Yeah, I think, if I can live my life out of my true self, not my false self, if I can walk into a meeting, if I can walk into a social setting, if I can walk into a work setting and show up as my true self, I think that's that's the other piece of wholeness for me. If I don't, if I can walk into a work setting and show up as my true self, I think that's that's the other piece of wholeness for me. If I don't, if I'm not hiding, I think that's wholeness.
Speaker 2:Now is there something that has helped you be able to not hide Because you struggled with imposter syndrome before, so has something helped you. You shift that.
Speaker 3:I think it all comes back to this question of what's true, right. Here's the easiest example for me. I went to grad school. As an adult, I'd never like I didn't have a four-year degree. The school had a process to take in second career people without a bachelor's degree, and they let me do that, which is wild in and of itself. But I've never written a paper at a master's degree level, like what the heck am I doing? So every paper that I would write it was an online course. I would hover my mouse over the submit button, every paper, and all I would feel was this is going to be the paper. This is the one where they're going to realize, like Kurt doesn't belong Right. The feeling of like professor's going to see that Kurt's got to go, that Kurt's not pulling his weight, right. That's the imposter piece, and I can trace that back.
Speaker 3:I can trace that back to something that happened in middle school from you know something that was said by someone who really loved me and meant really well, but made a lasting impact on me on me and what that looked like was I took my first job in a church. I live in a town with a little college in it, so I found myself at this church around a table with professors, with academics that were way smarter than me. I had colleagues around the table that had been doing this way longer than me and I found myself around that table having that exact same fear that I had when I was submitting those papers. The fear was, if I open my mouth, they're going to kick me out of this table. If I share something, it's going to be bad or it's going to be dumb, right, it's going to be inferior to all of these professors. So I just hid, I just held it in right. The protective promise was never look incompetent, right. Right, the protective promise was never look incompetent, right. So I did everything I could do to not ever show that I was incompetent. No-transcript can't.
Speaker 3:And my voice is needed just as much as theirs is. What's true is none of them think I'm dumb. You know all those just continuing to chip away at what's true and having to see that it is actually true. Transformation is a long process, over time, you know. I had to see little by little. Hey, I'm going to go into this meeting today with these people around the table and I'm going to share my voice. I'm going to do it in a way that's like taking a small risk oh, those people didn't think I was done like I get to chip it away, chip away at what's true and then I get to see that it is actually true, right. So I think that over time for imposter syndrome and it still flares up, right, like I'm not sure it's ever gonna go away the hope is that I can build the tools and build practices that help me address it when it does flare up you know when I think that same question about like, what's actually true is even gonna help.
Speaker 2:Whatever is holding you back or keeping you stuck, whatever it may be like, is it actually true? Or like even that limiting belief if you have have it like asking yourself is this true? There's a lot of thoughts that we have that aren't true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I might even love to hear your thoughts on this too. I told you I might ask questions. This might be the time where I ask you a question, amanda. I wonder what you think about this. I actually might go as far to say I think all those things that contribute to our false self are probably rooted in some sort of feeling of a threat. You know, if this, then this will happen. If I do this, then this happens. If I don't do, this happens that all of those kind of false self waves are actually a protection from a perceived threat. So I think then, is it true? Applies to all of them? I think I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm a little confused on that. Can you explain that a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yes, if we think about these as protective promises, right? I have a client who says that she will never be controlled, that her protective promise is I will never, ever be controlled by another human being, which is, like, on some level, really valid, right. But the origin of it, back in first formation, not a traumatic, catastrophic event, it was a, we would say, small t trauma. It was like this thing in middle school happened, that hurt and it sucked and I'm never going to let that happen again, right? So the protective promise is I'm never going to be controlled.
Speaker 3:So how that can play out in a work setting is dominance in a meeting, right? It's overpowering somebody in a meeting or speaking over somebody in a meeting so that person can't control her. Right? That would be a false self way of being that's rooted in this threat of being controlled. I might say under all those false self ways of being is a protection of a threat that is either real or perceived then even with that, like she's protecting herself, yeah, like I don't know if I told you that I'm not a neuroscientist, but our nervous system does this thing our fight flight freeze, right.
Speaker 3:This is a super important part of being a human. We are really good at keeping ourselves safe. The problem is we're not really good at assessing whether we need to be kept safe, right. So this client of mine, her nervous system says danger right and gets into action right away. That nervous system isn't really concerned, or her nervous system is not really concerned about whether or not it needs to. It just is going to protect, right. So there is this real beauty of protection, like we are really good at protecting ourselves. The question is do we need it and is it benefiting us?
Speaker 2:no, I think that's a great follow-up question. Is it benefiting us? Yeah, because your mind might have that like oh, I do need to protect myself from this because of whatever, but is it benefiting you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, can I give you a silly example? I say it's silly, but it's not silly at all. One of my protective promises that I made from way back was that I will never stand out, for good reasons or for bad reasons. Just, I will never stand out. I'm going to be seen, not heard. I'm going to kind of follow the path, right, I'm going to follow the crowd. I'm not going to stand out.
Speaker 3:I have a pair of. I'm a sneaker head, amanda. I have a pair of red sneakers, bright red, and I like them. I like them a lot.
Speaker 3:But there's something in me that says, no, those red sneakers, that's going to stand out too much and somebody is going to think, somebody's going to think something about you, somebody is going to make a comment under their breath when you walk by them. Right, so that protection comes up all the time. But I don't need that protection, right? If I'm walking down the street and somebody is like, look at that dude's red shoes, I don't care, right, I like the red shoes, right? So does that protection that says, leave the red sneakers in the closet, like that's a protection, is that benefiting me? No, no, because adult Kurt knows I don't really care. Don't really care, like I don't really care what someone thinks about my sneakers. I think it really does kind of come into play on a daily basis and things like that all the time and frankly, it just doesn't benefit us like it once did, right, like I think these protections did once keep us safe.
Speaker 2:Probably not anymore even like you mentioned the spelling bee and when you were in third grade and sixth grade it probably would have mattered, because kids can be cool. You had the bright sneakers. I really like that follow-up question and that. No, that makes so much sense. Now I'm curious. A lot of people have had, but I'm curious if you've had a really big standout aha moment the guy still to this day super respect.
Speaker 3:This person taught me a lot, like I'm probably not a coach without this person. During one of these harder seasons of leadership, he and I had a hard conversation and we always had hard conversations really well. We sort of had this culture as a staff that said we do these things Well, we can do hard things Well. This conversation was really hard. It was about my performance getting fired Right. It stirred up that same response and I felt it like my ears got hot. Like you know, we have these anxiety responses physically.
Speaker 3:I knew like I'm getting kind of pissed here, you know like I'm getting defensive. He paused and he looked at me and he said what's this response about? Cause he could tell I was getting defensive in ways that normally he and I wouldn't like I would not have gotten defensive with him. And he paused, he cared enough and he said what's this about? I can tell something's going on and honestly I mean that was the moment where I went, oh okay, like this is still not done, this is still affecting how I show up. I will never forget that question and that pause and, honestly, the care and the respect that this person had to pause a hard conversation to ask you know what's going on, what do you need? That is one of the most obvious aha moments for me.
Speaker 2:And how'd you adjust from that? Did you tell him?
Speaker 3:I did, yeah, and you know, like I would never tell my clients, you know, just tell everybody everything willy nilly. But you know, I had a relationship with this person where I could say that, which led to deeper relationship, which led to a greater working relationship, led to nothing but positive. But yeah, I named it. You know, I think there is something freeing about saying oh, I think this is stirring up something I haven't felt in a long time. In that moment I was not in danger of getting fired, right, like people have hard conversations all the time, that doesn't mean someone's getting fired. But my nervous system went it's happening. I was responding as though I was going to get fired. The adjustment was in the moment I could say listen, curry, this is not happening. This is not 15 years ago, this is not 20, however many years ago it was, this is different. Be present.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, Kurt, I really appreciate it. Yeah, so I'm curious have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty?
Speaker 3:No, tell me about him.
Speaker 2:So he's a motivational speaker, he's a podcast host. He hosts a podcast called On Purpose and he ends his podcast with two segments, and I've stolen them and I end my podcast with those two segments as well. First segment is the Many Sides to Us. There's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm a little nervous, amanda, and are you going to answer these two? Or is this just me? Because that doesn't seem like you're answering me.
Speaker 2:This is for you. It's being your mindset coach, that's fair, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 3:Okay, go ahead, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as?
Speaker 3:Compassionate.
Speaker 2:What is one word that someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you?
Speaker 3:What's one word for good listener? There's got to be Listener.
Speaker 2:What is one word you'd use to describe yourself?
Speaker 3:Boy Amanda, why such hard ones?
Speaker 2:I didn't come up with them. Jay Shetty did.
Speaker 3:One word to describe myself. I'm going to say present.
Speaker 2:What is one word that, if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset, would you use to describe you as?
Speaker 3:I would hope, flexible, maybe not certain. I think they would probably say uncertain. I don't hold a lot of things too tightly, so I think uncertain would probably say uncertain. I don't hold a lot of things too tightly, so I think uncertain would probably be a word.
Speaker 2:What is one word you're trying to embody right now?
Speaker 3:Spontaneous.
Speaker 2:Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in up to a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 3:I had a mentor once say that how we do things matters just as much, if not more, than what we do.
Speaker 2:Why is that the best?
Speaker 3:I think there have been so many instances where I've been in a leadership role or some sort of collaborative role where I think I know the answer. I might even know exactly what needs to be done. But what I've seen over and over is that if I can follow a good process and do the right process to get to the right answer, that's way more important. Getting the right answer with bad process can actually be more detrimental than getting the right answer. That's way more important. Getting the right answer with bad process can actually be more detrimental than getting the wrong answer. I think that one process matters I think is how I shorten that up but how we do things is just as important as what we do.
Speaker 2:And the worst advice you've heard or received.
Speaker 3:I used to work for a person that would say I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's terrible. I think he was implying that should be everybody's mindset. I think that's terrible. I would not advise anybody to just wait to sleep till you're dead. Rest well.
Speaker 2:What is something that you used to value that you no longer value? What is something that you used to?
Speaker 3:value that you no longer value. I really used to want some sort of status, whether it was title or salary. Yeah, I think I really used to value status. I think I value wholeness and alignment way more today than I used to.
Speaker 2:If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?
Speaker 3:oh my gosh, amanda, these are the hardest questions of the whole podcast. I think I want my legacy to be that I loved well and listened well and cared well for other humans and that I strived for alignment and wholeness every chance I got.
Speaker 2:If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 3:And I want to know why it would probably be some law around kindness. I think there's so much to gain relationally in just being kind or at least withholding things that are unkind. I think it would be something around having to be kind or withholding things that are not kind. I just think there are so many gains to be made by being kind to other human beings that we're just not currently snatching up. Why would that be the law? I think there's relational gains and cultural, societal gains that we get by being kind to other humans that I think we're just leaving those gains on the table because our communities are so much better when we're kind to others. It's just not super common anymore to be outwardly kind thank you so much for speaking with me.
Speaker 3:This has been great. Thanks for hosting, amanda. Can I say a word about Brimstone real quick? Yeah, we're called Brimstone Coaching Group, which a certain demographic of people are going to hear that and be like fire and Brimstone, like we're going to yell at people and be mad and angry. No, brimstone is a species of butterfly and butterflies obviously are transformed creatures. They begin their life one way, they transform and they end their life as butterfly, and the brimstone butterfly is the longest living butterfly in the entire world. So we really hope to embody transformation for as long as we possibly can. So that's why we chose Brimstone, not any other interpretations of the word Brimstone. We do offer a free inquiry call. If people are curious about our services or what we do, people can hop on a free call with us. We also have all the socials right, all the whatever. I'm not a huge social guy. We also have podcasts Brimstone Coaching Podcast, wherever people can get their podcasts.
Speaker 2:I do like to just leave it back to the guest. Any final words of wisdom you want to share?
Speaker 3:Oh boy, I'm going to need an hour. I think the wisdom I would say is just do the work of transformation. It's really hard, but, my goodness, wholeness and transformation is so much better, so much better than our false selves and just surviving life. So do the work of self-discovery, even when it gets hard. And thank you, Amanda, for doing the hard work of creating a space like this where these topics can be on front of mind and be normalized. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for speaking with me, Kurt. I really appreciate it. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Mander's Mindset. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you, I'm booting for you and you got this, as always. If you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating, leave a review and share it with anyone you think would benefit from this. And don't forget you are only one mindset. Shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, Until next time.
