In this positive mindset Monday with Jill McIntyre who is a property and life coach that uses experiences from her own life to help others. She has suffered many tough losses and has had to get back on the bike more than once. There isn’t anyone else more qualified to share with us some tips on what you need to do to continue to move forward in life.
Join us as we delve into the topic of ‘Back On The Bike’ with Jill McIntyre and she shares with us some of her personal stories of loss, some strategies that she urges people to implement into their day to day life, different concepts that can clear your mind and much more on this special episode of Positive Mindset Monday!
I had had a number of losses in my life from my husband dying onwards and pretty major events obviously that it got to the point where I had to decide, was I going to sink or swim. And with two young children, I decided that was it, I'm going to swim. But I was way out of my depth, didn't have self-esteem or self-worth back in those days, many years ago. But I had to keep a roof over my children’s head. I had to continue on and keep on looking for an avenue where I could bring in more money. And the property was one avenue that I started on. And of course eventually developed into what I do today as a life, business, and property coach. But when I was very, very green and naive in property and just starting out in a property course, I was introduced to a gift of the gab [inaudible] person and I eventually entrusted all of my money from my house when I've folded into a deal and got into three deals, which were all duds.
So a pickup point from that was, where do I go from here? And as shared in our last interview was what do we do when we have a massive loss? And today is all about how do we get on and move on from that loss. What do we do when we've gone in and looked at our emotions and looked at the healing process behind it and set some things in motion. And what we need to do once we make that shift in mindset that we are going to move forward, we are going to go back into, say, more property deals. What do we have to put into place to make it happen? For me, I sat down and I've worked on a number of different areas of which I called, ‘Get back into property or get into property’ because by then I had no money.
So apart from not having self-esteem and self-worth, I didn't have property know-how back then and I had no money. So I had a few things that weren't really on my side for want of a better word. I had to work through each of those individual situations. Instead of them being a problem or going to stop me, what solutions could I come up with as an outcome. And one of them says, for example, was I had to be a sponge and learn to be a sponge with everything property related. So that I could gain enough insight and knowledge so that I could really assess the situation as to where my money went. I want to take responsibility instead of leaving that decision for other people. And so even at that level, time was very tight because I was up to my neck in debt and I had, at one stage, three jobs that I was doing to keep afloat. So in a situation like that, we can tell ourselves and keep on telling ourselves, we don't have time. But the bottom line is we do have time if the why factor is big enough to move forward and make time. It might mean that you have got to get up at half-past five in the morning instead of six o'clock and in that half-hour you start working on your strategies, you're why factor, what motivates you or something that's going to be inspirational.
To get over a loss you need to find a reason that will motivate you to keep going. McIntyre talks to us about her why factor.
In fact, my why factor never ever goes back to where I was with my children when they were so young and these days I’m a grandmother. But I can say without a doubt that after my husband died for a number of years, I was living on struggle street mentally, physically and emotionally. I just felt as if I was the target for lots of things that were not in happy land, to say the least. Mentally, physically and emotionally and financially, it was a financial struggle all the way along and that had to be turned around.
After going through a loss you need to have a plan of action on how you are going to be able to move forward. We find out about some strategies that McIntyre used to get back on the bike.
I had enrolled in a property course and that property course was the beginning of me getting into another world. What I did was get out of my comfort zone and because I've got a hearing problem too, I don't always find it easy to hear in large areas, but nevertheless, I certainly got to the point where I would sit in the front row. I put myself out there, nearly shrivel up in fear that someone was going to ask me a question being in the front row but I had to be there. I also put myself out there to go and meet other people and work on what my strength was that I could contribute to their deals. What were my strengths? And at that stage, I was pretty good on numbers and I certainly wasn't good on property. I'd lost a lot but good on numbers and good on talking and starting to build up confidence to be able to talk to real estate agents and on the ground type stuff I was very, very good.
I didn't realise this until I got into it, but I had to look hard enough to find the pluses in me that I could call strengths and then start to monetise them. The more I got into those strengths, the more that the confidence built and the more that I was able to then get in to negotiating on deals in a team and being able to stand my ground and asking in-depth questions but asking it in such a way, that the people didn't realise I was really delving further down.
McIntyre had suffered some losses early on in her property career and there are various opportunities out there. Why did McIntyre decide to continue down the path of property?
It was funny because when I was given a free ticket to this personal development in [inaudible] and going back a little bit from that particular situation. I was given them from a couple of girls that I’d met, they interviewed me for television interview on Today Tonight. I can remember as the event came closer I rang one of the girls up, they were the [inaudible] people and the camera people and we'd gotten to know them quite well and I'd say to them, “Is this going to be a waste of my time going. I won’t be able to here because, of course, I always found it difficult.” And one of the girls just said to me, “Go along and see what happens.” So I did. And strangely enough, the guy had a head mic and I could hear. I didn't have the money to pay for a big-ticket item in personal development or anything else, but I signed up. Because I could hear, that was gold to me. And that was the beginning. Then for signing up there, on the drive home, I thought, oh damn, how am I going to pay for it?
But it's funny. So there were a few sleepless, but it's funny. If you really look and this is what you're going to do, you will find the money. And yes, there had to be a bit of negotiation on when I would pay and these sorts of things. But I got the money. I went to that five-day intensive course and it was all on mindset. It was on share trading and it was also on property investing. And the guy who ran the main, who did the intro, he also ran the mindset intensive and he also ran the segments on property. The share trading guy was German and a very strong accent or do you think I could understand him to let alone hear him? The property was just something that I thought I'd rather get into rather than share trading anyway. So that's how I got into property.
You need to be able to think on the fly and overcome different obstacles which sometimes can be yourself.
Sometimes we’ve got to do some lateral thinking on where we find the money. I think there was a Sean Cannell vision last week, make $20,000 or something in a short space of time. And it's about selling something on Gumtree and it's about all of the ways that you can go and do dog walking, for example. Get up earlier and do dog walking in your area and pick up some money. Look after an animal in your home and there’s good money to be made there and you might only need one. But it’s good on a daily basis where a lot of people go away and want their animals nurtured at home. There are all different ways to make money but if we come at it from the point of view of, I can't do that, we'll stop there. If you look at it as, where am I getting the money from? How can I get the money, what's going to happen? Well, then the ripple effect of positive thinking has evolved. In that area, when you're sitting up, you know how I can get money, do you think that there are obstacles to climb overtime at each point?
And the biggest one is our ego. Because every time you come up with the positive thinking, your ego will try and shoot you down with a hundred reasons why as to why you shouldn't be doing that. Your ego wants to keep you in a stuck situation. It wants to control you and I now look at it from the third person looking in that anytime I'm doing something and if my stomach's all screwed up and I'm feeling that my ego is something that is giving me all of the reasons why I can't do something. I look at it from the third person objectively and think, is that my ego talking? Well if I do move forward and I make virtually a plan to move forward and try all different angles of that plan and strategy to put it into place. If I look at it like that strategically, if I fail, at least I've given it a go.
Not given up before I've even started because self-confidence will pull us back. But everything, related to ego. Everyone listening in, stop and think when you want to do something that's positive, but out of your comfort zone, automatically does your brain start to be thinking with a hundred things and reasons why you shouldn't be moving forward.
That happens all the time for me. Like even just yesterday after driving home, I was thinking to myself there are so many opportunities that I want to pursue, property development, do a few more deals, expand the podcast, so many different marketing options and so forth and automatically, and my brain is going, there's so much to do. I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I don't know if I can do this. And then I just got stuck. My brain just stopped. And this is perfect. Like, I love how you just said, just look at the different options and look from the third point of view to see how you can actually overcome that barrier. Because yes, it is the ego. It's telling you, you can't do it.
And it's toxic, but we don't realise that it's controlling us. And the more that we implode, I suppose is a good word, the more that we implode, we can't do something further down we go, we allow it to happen. And this isn't anyone else's fault. We are in control here, but if we’re not aware of the game we're playing we can't do anything about it. So it's about being aware that ego is stopping you. Like all of the questions that were coming up for you yesterday. How am I going to fit it into my day? I know from conversations you and I have had automatically when we have a session, you and I are going, okay, here's some ideas, let's do some brainstorming and it's fabulous. We all need someone that's on that same level of thinking that can think outside the square, that does dare to move beyond the line that's just sitting in front of us. It's imaginary but it’s there.
McIntyre has talked about some of the different strategies she uses but now she delves into how to implement them into your day to day life.
I think what's needed is that you've got to look at yourself from a very objective point of view. I always love going out of my body and looking at a [inaudible] as a third person, what are you looking in and seeing? Is it someone that really is stuck in their own way or not good at thinking outside the square. From an objective point of view, often we're too close to be able to be objective about yourself because we're so caught up on this should've happened or it hasn't happened this way or I haven't got time or all of the excuses. And having, this is what I do with my clients on a daily basis, is looking from the outside in and [inaudible] are not involved but I get so excited with building ways and strands of income and look at different solutions because the beautiful thing here is if we start to come up with some positive ideas they mightn’t fit at that point of time. But what they will do is, your possible solution you’re coming up with, it will raise your bar of thinking. That raised bar of thinking will then take you on to a different train of thought.
That could be in another total angle because you could raise your bar of thinking, about how am I going to fit it in? What's going to happen? And if you stay in that negative state with ego controlling you, you're not going to go anywhere. If you think there's a solution to be found here, strangely enough, three days later you could ring me up and say, “Jill, I've just had an interesting conversation with a guy who does A, B, C and D and that will take over the situation that you or the seed that you planted that will then raise you the solution came to you two days later. But if we work with a closed mind, nothing happens. No one comes into us. I always say, have you got the shingle out the front of your shop that says you're open for business today or is it closed.
We find out about the concept of visualisation and how it can improve your mindset and get you back on track.
If we work on a loss, we quite often go down into limited thinking. I can't do this because of whatever and fear is our major one and the fear stats are quite interesting. 40% of what we fear is in the future. 30% of what we fear is in our paths. So before we go anywhere, if I'm looking to move forward in property, say, for example, I've had a loss, all of a sudden, anything that might happen, ‘Oh I could lose my job’. So that'll come in as a fear of the future or the plug was pulled out of my property last time so it's going to happen again. So 70% of our fears are consumed from future and past thinking, 12% of them are on our health and well-being. And you've heard me say before if I've got a sore toe today, I'll get onto Mr. Google and by tonight it’s got gangrene and needs to be amputated.
We overthink what we're doing and then we've got 10% are miscellaneous fears and the last 8% are really legitimate fears but only 4% of that can we actually change. So we spend so much time worrying about future things, worrying about past things, worrying about things that maybe could happen. When it all boils down, there's only 4% of things we can change. So why do we waste time dying with fear? What we need to do is to bring our thinking back to the now, if I work on them now, I don't have future or past fears coming in. When I'm working on a visualisation for where I'm going. I do this every month with my intentions.
I do my long and short term goals, but I'll work on my visualisations and my intentions. What have I achieved one month on? And I write those intentions, which is all part of the visualisation. I'll write those intentions as if it's already happened. I've got to paint a picture of my subconscious of the outcome. What does it look like down to the feeling, smelling, touching, that it's so real to me that that outcome has evolved and visualisation can take you to another space? It can also help you very much with creating a direction that you haven't had before, but you've got to have the peace of mind to allow you to visualise too. Because if you're out of peace within your own head, you won’t even get two seconds past closing your eyes and you won't be able to bring any further in.
McIntyre is a big proponent of clearing your mind which enables you to make better decisions.
We can always meditate, but I love hypnosis and I can sort of make it down to that meditation if it's a guided meditation because I've got a hearing problem. Whoever's presenting if it's a guiding one, their voice comes down really low and of course, I get frustrated because I cannot hear. Wherewith hypnosis, I love it because it's like a crescendo building up and the momentum building up but that’s only a personal thing. You could put some music on and totally relax with some deep breathing. And I'm not talking about rap here. I'm talking about something that is going to be slowing you down. It's all about slowing the mind down. It's about slowing you down, slowing your body down, taking the tension out of your body.
And quite often when we've got a very busy day or something happening like that, I do it every morning in the shower. That's one space with the water coming over me, yes, I love the heat of the water, but it's also even as I know that I'm going to be talking to you today, it's all about put the words into my mouth and [inaudible] into my mind to make it flow. And it's part of my daily ritual that I do with all that I have got. So visualisation is very much about projection. Where are you going? But you can visualise and you can project, but unless you take ownership of that visualisation and projection, it's useless.
One of the biggest problems that people have is creating that habit, McIntyre talks to us about the easiest way to fit these strategies into your routine.
It comes back to why are you doing this? Say at the moment I’m losing weight because I have to lose weight. I'd gone and had an angiogram and was told by the heart doctor that I had to do something about it. And I hopped on the scale this morning and I've lost four kilos and I'm pretty excited because it's really been pretty easy. But obviously I know that I've got to go back to that guy in another five and a half months. Do you think he's going to give me a hard time if I hadn’t lost any weight and I'm not grossly overweight by the way? It is just something that I have to get more exercise in and I've got to lose weight. These are things that my why factor is that I want to live for another 25 years at least.
See my grandchildren married and grow up and really be an inspiration to everyone that I touched with my family and close ones. And that's a driving force for me now. So we've got to have something that is going to make you accountable to keep you on track. If you are going to set out that virtually I’m going to do something, always prepare what you're going to do at least the day before so that you know what time in the day you're going to get up or do what. Know what you're going to do. Don't go into that part in the morning at 5:30 and then, what would I do today? I’ll just get a coffee first of all and the time will be wasted. If you write down in your diary what your plan, and you could even do this on a Sunday night. Write down in your diary what the plan is every single day for the seven days. I'm a great one at working off a daily planner, a weekly plan, a monthly planner, and it might sound funny, but I've got the big A4 diary because this is where that sort of stuff is written in, apart from everything else in my diary. It keeps me accountable.
Can you elaborate a little bit more on this weekly daily planner as well, for people who might not know how that works?
Anything that I do that is forward-thinking, say if I need to follow up in readiness for you and me to talk today, for example, three days ago I wrote that in that I wanted to contact you yesterday and then I'll put it out of my mind totally until I found it in the diary at that specific time. It also helps me not to work on overload in the brain. It's a way that I can then, once it's in the diary and everything goes in the diary when I've got to pay from my phone on a monthly basis, when I've got to pay for things, it's like dumping it. Once it's in there, that's a time that will come to me that I need to work on it because I’ve set my plan in place to do it. But never get up not knowing what your plan is for the day of the week and so this is where it's very important that you spend time on your planner.
This is where coming back to my intentions, my intentions are set for my month ahead as if they've happened. From each of those intentions I then work on, if I'm going to say I'm getting into my next property deal and I’m going to have found it one month on, I've got to work on my game plan, what am I going to need over the next week to make that happen. What am I going to do by the second week looking for financial and money partners? What am I doing by the third week, it becomes my timeline from that intention as I work backward. Do the same with your day whether is creating a habit. A habit doesn't happen because you do it for three or four or five days. A habit is created over weeks or months and don't let your ego talk you out of it.
I actually totally resonate with the weekly and the daily planner as well and I've actually been doing a lot of time blocking because last week I was just saying, I've got X, Y, and Z that I need to complete. I need to actually look at my planner. How do I block these out? Otherwise just ended up putting two to-do lists and sometimes I just don't know how long it's roughly going to take, but when you actually mentally look at your calendar and you block it out and say, look, that's going to take an hour. That's going to take two hours to do. It actually forces you to mentally prioritise, which are going to be the most important tasks to do because we can all have a list of hundreds and hundreds of tasks, but not all of them are all necessarily the highest priority.
In the diary, I tick everything as I'm doing it. Also, I mark a line, a vertical line down the beginning of the page where all that day’s actions are. And at the end of the day, I can look back on any day in the diary and if there's a line all the way down, I know everything's done. If there is something missing, was it a must-do today? Was it vital to mark off today? If it’s vital then I've got to do something about it and get off my butt. If it isn’t vital when could I reallocate that to a time? It couldn’t have been on top of my priority list or is it something that I'm putting to the last because I really don't want to go there.
If that's the case and we all have suffered from it, there are no doubts about that. And if that's the case, well shake yourself off, get up and go and do what you want to do. My rule of thumb is that I'm not allowed to go to bed at night if it's important until I've done something about it. Come to terms with or worked on a practice to make it work. Stop giving yourself excuses and ways out. You know, there's a good show on television, I'll watch that. Or I've just had a good invite for dinner, but I might be the instigator of the good invite for dinner. Show up, it's your life.
McIntyre details 3 of the biggest steps you can take in order to move forward from your loss and get back on the bike.
What's your why factor first of all. How solid is your why factor? Bringing in that you're going to also be working on having people that are going to keep you accountable. Every day I've got a good mate, even this morning, I spoke to her before, early, early, early and on a daily basis probably five or six days out of seven, we have a very early morning call just to keep each other accountable. That is important. You want some of that thought that they're going to make you think, give you direction and keep you on track. You also need to be thinking about working on your visualisation and your intention all in the now and in working on a visualisation that happened. What do you actually want to have achieved one month on and they've got to be realistic things, but they've got to also raise the bar? So all of these things are very much upon creating a habit. What would it mean to you 12 months on to have a given outcome that you've done a quick buy, reno, subdivide, sell the deal. And it's only about 15 minutes from where you currently live. How good would you feel to have another $100,000 in your bank account by doing that? Is that motivation that's going to get you going or are you going to be caught up with the excuses and that'll be your ego.
