KTR 117 Nathalie Plomondon-Thomas

 

We are our own harshest critics. And oftentimes, the negative self-talk keeps us from going anywhere in life. After spending the last decade studying neuroscience, Nathalie Plamondon-Thomas has created the system to reprogram that negative self-talk. Now, she is the Founder and CEO of the THINK Yourself® ACADEMY, working with people who want to find Confidence to unlock their full potential and bringing entrepreneurs the Clarity they need to make money living from their passion. In this episode, she joins Kim Hayden to share with us this amazing system, along with the back story that gave birth to it and how she discovered her passion for helping people, entrepreneurs, quit their full-time job and live from their passion and make money. Overcome that negative voice inside your head and find the confidence and clarity you need to start living the life you want. Follow this conversation as Nathalie tells you how.

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Overcoming Negative Self-Talk And Living From Your Passion With Nathalie Plamondon-Thomas

I’m super excited. Do you know why I’m excited? It’s because you are sharing your time with me and what a gift. Speaking of gifts, my podcast host, speaker, author, and everything else is definitely a gift to us all. She was born in a small town outside of Quebec City, Canada. You got to check it out. Quebec is gorgeous. She knew from a very early age that she wanted to help people. She was always active. She loves music. It sounds like her parents were pretty awesome.

She grew up and did her job there, but then as life does for many of us, she decided to move to Toronto, Ontario. She took a trip and started finding herself. She got seriously into fitness, personal training, and nutrition consulting. For nearly sixteen years, she was in sales in the natural food industry. That’s not going to be an easy mark, especially when we go back in the Wayback Machine. That would have been a new front.

That led to her number one fitness instructor status in Canada. Where do you go when you’re number one? That’s the time we pivot, re-look, take that time-out and say, “What’s next?” Nathalie took time and decided, “I like to help people. I have this in me. What’s next?” She took time to study Neuroscience and the astonishing powers that the brain holds. What is special and unique about Nathalie and how can she share it?

Getting her Neuro-Linguistics Programming Master and a Life Coach Certification, she has spent many years developing systems and combining her experience as an entrepreneur. With the health and wellness knowledge that she has, by leveraging and creating the specific processes, that she is able to help over thousands of people reach their full potential.

She is an author not of just a single book but of a gazillion of them. You got to look it up. It’s the THINK Yourself book series. She is also a fabulous host of her own podcast of the THINK Yourself CONFIDENT Podcast. She is a speaker. I may need to have her come down to my Kansas Thanksgiving with my crazy family because she talks about confidence and focus.

These people are out chasing squirrels half the time. She could absolutely help my family. Here’s the thing that blew me away. Over 400 international media have chosen to listen to Nathalie. Please sit back and buckle up. You’re in for a treat. Let me welcome Ms. Nathalie Plamondon-Thomas. Welcome, Nathalie. Did I miss anything in that? You have such a robust bio. I’m blown away.

I’m stunned. It was pretty impressive. Thank you so much, Kim, for all this research. It’s an honor to be on your show.

Tell us who you are and what you do.

You’ve probably, like everybody else, sometimes experienced a bit of negative self-talk. We talk to ourselves, not in a very nice way, but we don’t talk to other people like that. You don’t walk around saying, “You look fat in these jeans, or you’re starting your own business. It’s never going to work. You’re not good enough.” We don’t say that to other people, but we trash-talk ourselves all the time. Who would want to be your friend if you talk to them the same way you talk to yourself?

I’ll take you back years ago. I was starting to speak professionally, and I needed a video done. We had three cameras, one for the wide-angle, one for the closeup, and one from the back to see the large audience, but the problem came. There were only twenty people in the room for my demo reel recording. We kept asking people to move from one section to another, so then when we put all the segments together, it would look like there was a large audience.

If you do not have a clear why, you do not have your purpose. Click To Tweet

I remember that video reel got me a gig. I got a call from an organization that wanted me to train their sales force and they asked for my rate. I didn’t have a corporate rate. I go, “$250.” I had no idea. They said, “For the four-hour training, that would be $1,000?” I almost choked because I meant $250 for the whole thing, but I go, “Yes, that’s correct. $1,000.” I hung up the phone and got the contract. I should have been excited, but I remember sitting in my office feeling like a fraud.

That video I had made to make the audience look bigger than it was and I made a corporate rate, none of it was real. I was showing to look more than I was because just me was not enough. I was hearing this voice in my head when I hung up the phone, “You’re not a real professional speaker. You don’t deserve a $1,000 paycheck for an afternoon.” It was telling me that I could not be a professional speaker because it was saying, “Do you want to speak in English? Do you want to write books in English?” I’m French and my English was bad back then.

I remember teaching yoga. At the end of a yoga class, everybody is lying on their mat and I’m doing the relaxation. I’m telling them to relax their body, face, and jaw. I ordered them to put their tongue on the roof of their mouth. I said, “Put your tongue behind your tits.” Everybody started to laugh. I didn’t know why. My English was bad. That voice in my head was right.

I thought, “Enough of this negative self-talk. I’m not going to go anywhere if I continue to talk to myself like that.” I spent the last decade studying Neuroscience. That’s when I created the system to reprogram that negative self-talk so that I can change the way I talk to myself because it’s not helping. That’s how it all happened.

I speak two languages.

Which are?

Kansan and English. We have cement patios and it’s up on the roof. You get me going and they don’t understand me either. I’m always blown away, having grown up in Wichita, Kansas and having been very poor, so never traveling and experiencing people from other cultures. I’m always blown away when I hear people who are fluid bilingually. They speak two languages competently.

I remember watching the news and they were interviewing this graduate class in Germany. First of all, it was cool. I watch a lot of foreign news. I love what’s going on over there because that’s my goal is to hit Europe at some point in time. You never know where the Resilient Series will take me. I watched these two young people, eighteen years old, and their English is better than half the people I’m related to back home. I was like, “Wow.” I commend people who can do two languages. Technology is a language in itself. You speak that fluently because you’ve got this great thing going on in the background.

There are so many people that think that they’re bad with technology.

You have to learn the language, so when it tells you to do something, you understand what it’s telling you to do that way you can do it. I spent six months with my head, deep-dive into Kajabi. I now can build out Kajabi and move stuff around with no problem.

KTR 117 Nathalie Plomondon-Thomas

Negative Self-Talk: Transitioning from the industrial age to the age of knowledge is shifting the way we work, when we work, how we engage, and who we learn from.

 

We learn. The base thing is you change your phone and we all have a dopamine-spiking device. Everybody has got one of those and we think we’re bad with technology. We keep repeating that in our heads, but it’s not helping us. We’re good with technology because we went from this to this with a keyboard and then we switched to no keyboard.

All of a sudden, they do an update on your phone and you can’t find the pictures you took of your dog wearing a bikini and you’re panicking. At the end of the day, it doesn’t help to say, “I am bad with technology,” because we all have a personal assistant in our head that’s listening to everything that we say or think and it writes it down.

The problem is people wake up in the morning. They look at themselves in the mirror and go, “I’m so tired and stressed out. I think I’m gaining weight.” The personal assistant writes it down, “Tired, stressed out, gaining weight. Got this. Perfect. Tired, what can I do about this? I’m going to keep her awake all night. If she is not going to be able to sleep, she is going to be tired in the morning. Check. Stressed out, I’m going to make her delete a very important appointment on her calendar. That’s going to be stressful. Check.”

“Gaining weight is an easy one. I can certainly find a chocolate bar or something deep-fried for her to eat today. Check.” Every time you say, “I am bad with technology,” your personal assistant writes it down and makes it happen. It’s very important what we tell our personal assistant in our head. We have to say what we want, not what we don’t want.

My understanding is that your brain cannot hold in the exact same space at the exact same time a negative and a positive. You cannot say, “I am not good at this and I am good at this.” You have to choose which way your brain is going to go. It’s interesting. All of it is crazy cool. I have to ask your why. I am a firm believer that if you do not have a clear why you do not have your purpose.

I believe we’re sitting on a teeter-totter. Your life is a teeter-totter. Your purpose is over here. Your pain is over here. If you’re working for that paycheck every day, you get that paycheck and then you spend it and now you’re back in pain. We don’t do what we do with this type of passion without having a purpose. Can you share with us your purpose? I know that’s deep-seated into your childhood.

It’s interesting because I have been criticized for my why and I’ll share it. It’s pretty simple. That’s my promise statement and that’s why I’m doing it. It’s very interesting because my goal is to help people, entrepreneurs, quit their full-time job, live from their passion, and make money. A lot of people have said, “Do you want to make money? How shallow. You want to teach people how to make money.”

I have seen firsthand what money can do. I’ve been a few times to Haiti. I worked with children in an orphanage and a school there. This is us on that image there, receiving their meal at lunch. One of the kids there, Yuri is his name, was sitting alone in a corner. I went to interact with him. For the two weeks we were there, he was glued to me and hugging me. We had a good time. Yuri’s mom is still alive. He is not a real orphan, but she left him there because he would have a meal every day there.

With money, we can do a lot of great stuff. I sponsor Yuri now and a lot of different kids. With my $30 per month, they get a uniform for school, a toothbrush, sheets for their bed, and a meal every day. Maybe a couple of times a month, they get extra proteins, so a hard-boiled egg or a piece of chicken. The thing is, $30 is not a lot of money, but I calculate things in a $30 range. If I want a pair of boots, that’s $90. It’s three children.

I’ve changed the way I see money. When you give money to good people, they do great things with it. If I teach people how to have the confidence and clarity so that they can make money living from their passion, then they’ll be able to help even more people because I do believe that money can do great stuff. I was that entrepreneur people that it took me sixteen years to quit my full-time job. I was building my business on the side because, “You need to keep your full-time job. You’re not good enough,” the voice was telling me.

When you give money to good people, they do great things with it. Click To Tweet

That’s important to me to teach people that you can do whatever you want. You can make money living from your passion because we can’t avoid money. It’s everywhere. Whether you’re a philanthropist or not, whether you want to make a living and provide for your kids, that’s a good enough reason to live from a job that you love and do what you love to do. Kim, you’re such in your element. You’re a natural. You’re the bomb. I believe you love what you’re doing.

I’ll let you in on an inside secret. I haven’t had a paycheck in many years. I was a waitress before this. I don’t know what I’m qualified for and that’s my self-talk. I sit here and go, “I couldn’t go and get a real job because I think I’m completely unemployable.” That’s okay. It’s funny because when COVID happened, I went through this whole thing where everybody says, “You have to have a program and a coaching for this one.”

Here’s the reality. I’m not a coach and I’m okay with that. I’m a community builder. I came out with a membership with the stage, books, and TV series because creating a community gives the opportunity for people who have incredible messages like yours another avenue and platform. That is my superpower. I love how you mentioned that you went and spent time and invested in yourself. A lot of people think that it’s just giving money. Sometimes, your superpower is creating space for somebody to raise their own money.

I was gifted the opportunity to help the first matey scout troop in Canada to go to the World Council. I gifted them with a table at the craft and trade fair that I hosted in McKinsey town in a community that I sponsored and helped build. They sold and got donations. They had bracelets and all sorts of little things that they had made. They sold and made enough money to design and manufacture their signature patch. They had their own badge to go to the World Council with.

What would they be more proud of? Me giving them the $500 or them raising the $500? When we talk about resilience, resilience is part of confidence and focus. When we look at this, you’ve been invited to be a speaker at the inaugural Resilient Women in Conference Tour in Calgary, Alberta, on November 2nd, 2021. You were selected because of your messaging because we believe it aligns with this mission and mandate we’re on.

At the conference, you’re going to be giving a speech, but right now, can you give me a specific example of how you have been resilient and how that has affected your business? Bring it down to a moment of resilience, something that literally took you out at the knees and you’re able to re-center and come back in your business.

It’s interesting enough. I’m going to talk about my second book. I’ve written sixteen. My first one took me about three years to write. It took me about three months to write, but then I sent it to the editor, which sent back their suggestion of changes. These changes took me three years to do because I needed to rewrite the whole thing because it was so bad. I was not motivated. It was staying there on the shelf and not happening.

The way I got around to do this is I had to drink my own Kool-Aid. I applied my D.N.A. System. I worked through the six layers of a person’s brain and I went okay. “What is the environment of people who are successful authors? What is their behavior? What did they do? What are their skills? What do I need to become good at? What are my beliefs and values? What is my identity?”

I used my system. I was able to, in a weekend, do all the changes in the book and send it back to the editor. It was published in no time, so then came my second book. My second book quickly became an international number one bestseller. I was very excited about it. Think Yourself Thin was my first because I come from the fitness industry. I was ecstatic and I was going to revolutionize the world. I created an online course to go with it. I had lots of followers on social media. People loved me. I had 4,000 likes on this video and 5,000 likes on this video. I was popular.

I thought that because I had that number one seller that my online course to go with, it would sell like that. Do you know how many I sold in the first year? Zero, none, not a course because I was doing it all wrong. I was not marketing myself and not doing social media right. My business was wrong. I was not equipped. My website was not transforming leads. I didn’t have a system. I didn’t do automation. I didn’t have a CRM and a social media strategy. I was just winging it.

KTR 117 Nathalie Plomondon-Thomas

Negative Self-Talk: You should have a strong enough reason to build your business or to achieve your goal so that if there is an obstacle that comes on the road, you keep going.

 

Let’s say you wanted to find somebody you’re dating. You go into a coffee shop and meet somebody for the first time. Would you drop on your knee, open the ring box, and propose to them the first time you meet them? They’ll look at you and say, “You’re weird. What’s going on here?” That’s what we do on social media. We go on social media. It’s the coffee shop to attract people to meet them, but we treat it as if we wanted to marry them on the first date.

This is not the way it’s done. It took me five years to figure that out. I have sixteen online courses and they sell very well. Thank you very much because I figured it out. I even have the newest course, THINK Yourself A MARKETING PRO. It’s explaining all the mistakes that I’ve made and what not to do. I was broken and I had to keep going.

That is why having the strategy and having a playbook is critical. People go to social media and think, “Everybody will buy it.” It’s funny because Bob Burg wrote a book, The Go-Giver. It was all on the know, like, trust foundation. People are going to be more willing to invest with you if they know, like, and trust you. Just because you’re behind the keyboard does not negate that.

You got two choices when you’re doing online. One is you either build their confidence and they get to know you and they like you, or you race to the bottom for the cheapest program out there. It’s one or the other. There is no in-between. I’m glad that you tackled that and went through it because our online education space was $116 billion in 2018.

This estimation was done before the pandemic. They are estimating that industry to be $325 billion by 2025. That is how rapidly it’s growing. Transitioning from the Industrial Age to the Age of Knowledge is shifting the way we work, when we work, how we engage, and who we learn from. Everything is shifting. It’s either you’re going to be part of that or you’re going to get left behind.

If you’re not in, you’re in the way. That’s from when I was teaching the spin classes like, “Are you in or in the way?”

That’s going to be your quote on this show. That’s awesome, “Are you in or in the way?” Overall, how do you make a business more resilient? We touched on that. Can you give me a little bit more as to, once you started figuring out everything, how did you go from zero to selling? How do you make that more resilient, malleable, or elastic?

The thing is, resources are out there and we know a lot more than we think. It’s important to align ourselves with people that have been there before. The shortcut is always to ask somebody that is successful, “How did you do it?” That’s the number one way. However, skills, everybody can get. Let’s talk a little bit about the brain because you can learn a skill, but if you don’t believe that you can learn it or you try to learn it at a logical level. I’m going to talk a little bit about the logical level.

The logical level can handle 5 to 9 things at a time. That’s pretty cool. You can multitask. I’m sure you have done your grocery shopping at the same time that you’re on a meeting on your phone. You keep your kid from falling from the cart. You still notice the guy in blue winking at the girl in the seafood department. You see all that at the same time, like 5 to 9 pieces at a time.

Have you ever caught yourself in your car, driving on a beautiful day? You’re going to a new address. As you’re slowing down to look at the numbers on the houses, have you ever caught yourself having to lower the volume on the radio? You have the foot on the brake, the foot on the accelerator, the red light ahead, the kid that’s about to cross the street, the lady that will probably cut you off, and then there’s the guy in the car next to you, winking at you.

Everything is shifting. And either you're going to be part of that, or you're going to get less. Click To Tweet

As you add, you’re looking at the numbers on the houses. The music becomes one too many. 5 to 9 pieces of information is not that great after all. In our logical mind, 70% of our thoughts are negative. Research shows that we trash-talk ourselves at a reason of 31 negative thoughts per minute. It’s insane. Out of 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day, 70% are negative.

Living at a logical level, we’re always trying to catch up. You have your goal. You want to build your business. You want to be resilient and you work hard. You go into all these workshops. You accept coming from 5:00 AM until midnight. You have to take your kids to school and sports in between your meetings. You post on social media. You need to spend time on Clubhouse and you need a podcast.

You’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck. You’re exhausted. You have zero life balance. You’re getting further away from your dream. It’s like you’re trying to go to New York City, but you’re in an aircraft that’s flying to Los Angeles. You can go as hard as you can and push it, but you’re never going to get to Vancouver if the aircraft is going to Halifax.

A lot of people ask me, “How do you get off that plane? I need to get off that plane. Show me.” I say, “No, don’t get off the plane. Talk to the pilot and tell the pilot, ‘Do you mind turning around? That’s where I’m going.'” How fast is it going to go? How much further and powerful is the aircraft compared to if you work against it?

That is the way to become more resilient is to use the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind can handle 2.3 million pieces of information every second. It’s 5 to 9 for the logical mind. 2.3 million pieces of information every second. That’s where the power is and that’s your unconscious mind. That’s the pilot. That’s your personal assistant that’s constantly listening to everything that you say or think. That’s what you need to do is you need to learn how to talk to the pilot.

The pilot will then put you in the elevator at the right place at the right time where you’ll meet that person. You’ll happen to meet Kim that’s going to take you on our journey and teach you resilience. You’ll read our book, use the workbook from the Resilient Series, come to that conference, and learn something. Your personal assistant is going to look out for what’s on that list because if you said what you want when you told your personal assistant what you were after, your brain would deliver every time.

It will tell you where to go get the skills you need if you are missing skills, but pretty often, we’re not. The problem is not at the skill level. The problem is that we don’t believe that we’re worth it and good enough. It’s all at the beliefs and identity level. I did talk a little bit about all the layers of the brain. We try to fix with behaviors and skills the problems that are happening in beliefs, values, and identity, “I am not good enough.”

Men that believe that they’re not good enough cannot fix this by buying an expensive car. We can’t fix the “I am not good enough” with an expensive pair of designer shoes. That’s an environmental solution for a problem that’s happening in beliefs or identity. We need to fix the problem where it belongs. These limiting beliefs need to go. Sometimes we need the skill and the course. Sometimes you just need the skill and that’s fine, but identify where the problem is. That’s the main key.

When somebody has you in for a four-hour conference, do you do exercises with everybody to help them identify where those blocks or limiting beliefs are?

Yes, absolutely. When I do the workshop, there are tons of questions. The questions are designed in order to probe the unconscious mind. We do processes. There are different processes that they do.

KTR 117 Nathalie Plomondon-Thomas

Negative Self-Talk: Everybody has this drawer with all the knowledge in the world that they need. Get rid of the crap that’s on top of your answers.

 

I’ve got a few people right in mind that needs to go to your workshop. We’ve now gone through like, “How do you come back? How do you create resiliency so you can further your business?” Now, we’re moving forward. Here’s a question and I know it’s a bit of a crystal ball. You may need to take a moment to think about this.

We know that most female business owners are forced to be resilient out of necessity and circumstances. We also know that statistically, the average female entrepreneur makes less than five figures a year. That is a statistical average. How does one future-proof their company to build resiliency so that they could grow further?

The thing is, every single time that something happens to us. We don’t have a strong enough reason to be in business and you started the interview with exactly that question. Let’s say you’re driving home one day and there’s a tree blocking the road. You try to get to your house, but you can’t because there’s a tree block. Are you going to turn around and say, “I’m not going to go home? I’m going to miss my kids and spouse. I love them. I’ll never see them again. I guess I’ll have to go buy a new house and buy all new furniture.” No way. You would park the car and walk home or you would find another route or you’ll get a chainsaw. You would cut the tree. You would get home because there’s no obstacle that will get you to abandon your family and home.

The thing is, we abandon very fast. As soon as there’s a tree blocking the road, we turn around. We have to learn from kids. Have you ever seen an infant that’s trying to walk for the very first time that falls over and over that ever said, “That’s not for me? It doesn’t matter. I’m just going to crawl.” You have to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing so that there is no obstacle that could get you to abandon your family and home and it’s the same. You should have a strong enough reason to build your business or achieve your goal so that if there is an obstacle that comes in the road, you don’t go, “That’s not for me.” Your life is for you. That’s yours or, “It doesn’t matter.” You matter. You have to keep going.

I know that a lot of people believe that it is noble to be there for everybody else, but you can’t be there for your kids, spouse, and clients if you don’t have your back first. You have to know what drives you. What is so important to you that you would kill for it? If you go from purpose and that’s the top of my pyramid, that’s the most important part and it drives everything else. When you have a purpose, that’s when you can do what you’re good at. You have beliefs that are serving you. You love who you are in an environment with people that are supporting you.

That’s when you can have the whole big deal and then you can reach your purpose. When there is a tree that comes in and blocks the road, you go get the chainsaw because there’s nothing that’s going to get in your way. You’ve got to know what exactly is driving you. We have so much to learn from children. One night in Haiti, I’m sitting in the courtyard with the kids and they’re listening. They’re so attentive. I’m teaching them the circle of excellence. I don’t know if you’ve learned this technique. You draw an imaginary circle on the ground. When you don’t feel good, you step into that circle. You power pose and then you start feeling better.

Angelina, one of the little girls, came to me and she said, “When again do we have to go in the circle?” I said, “When you don’t feel good and when you’re not happy.” She thinks about it and goes, “Aren’t we happy all the time?” I don’t know what to say. I was about to cry and I was like, “You guys don’t need this here. This is a technique for us in Canada. We do that when we’re not happy.” I’m not super proud of that answer, but that’s what I said on the spot.

Jurasli, one of the twin brothers, came to me, grabbed my hand and said, “You’re not happy in Canada. You have everything in Canada.” By then, I was sobbing and I was like, “I don’t know what to say.” He gave me a big hug. They all joined in and hugged me to console me because, poor me, I’m not happy in Canada. If these children that have nothing can be happy all the time, we’ve got this. We’re going to make it.

This is why, people, we have to get out of our insulated environment. We have to go and meet other people. I know it’s hard to do during COVID. I get it. We’re moving out of this, but we have to engage because you’re not going to learn everything you need to learn. You’re not going to experience everything you need to experience in this life if you’re sitting behind your computer all day, every day. Here comes the hard questions. Best book somebody should read? Every female entrepreneur, what should she read aside from your sixteen books? Once we get through those sixteen, what’s a book that impacted you?

Og Mandino’s The Greatest Miracle in the World. It was my very first audio course because my parents were freaks. You mentioned it a little bit at the beginning. My mom and dad made us sit every Sunday through Og’s motivational cassettes. We had to listen to Og Mandino and we had to memorize. My brother and I would roll our eyes.

The problem is not at the skill level. The problem is that we don't believe that we're worth it. Click To Tweet

I have to say that there isn’t a day that I don’t hear Og Mandino’s voice, the guy that dubbed him in French, “Say to me the main rules of a successful business.” The Greatest Salesman in the World and The Greatest Miracle in the World, those two were on repeat in our house as I grew up and I know it from top to end. It’s an amazing book.

That’s books. Aside from your podcast and my show, what’s a podcast that you enjoy that fills in? At times, I can feel very alone. When you operate at a specific level, there’s not a lot of people that will be local, live on your street, go to your kid’s school, and shop at your grocery store that will be able to understand the level you’re working with. Honestly, part of the reason I’ve done this Resilient Series is finding my own sphere, the sum of my five, like yourself. What’s a podcast you listened to that says, “I’m good. This is awesome?”

I’m a member of Audible.com. I listen to a lot of audiobooks more than podcasts, but there’s one podcast that I like because they’re short. There are two of them. One of them is BV-TV. It’s BizVision or BVTV. It’s Malcolm from the UK. The guy is a professional. He was an anchor on TV for a long time. It’s well-run, fast, and quick. The other one is Randall Craig. It’s called So Here’s Your Challenge. They’re five minutes. He is the most brilliant mind I have ever listened to. He is smart and got a good way to explain things.

Everything is five minutes. He poses a problem at the beginning and then he tells us how to fix that problem. The name of the podcast is So Here’s Your Challenge and then he solves a problem. He is a forward-thinker. He was the one that created the website of the Toronto Star. He is on the boards of huge companies. They hire him to think for them because he has natural thought leadership. He is a super-smart man. I love his podcast as well.

This is one of my favorites. What is a quote or saying that has been your North Star?

“Knowing and not doing is like not knowing at all.” There are a lot of things that we know, but if we don’t do it, then it’s like we don’t know it. It stayed with me. Jackie Mills told me this. I was teaching the Les Mills Program in Toronto. I spent a month in New Zealand training with the best of the best. Jackie Mills is Phillip Mills’ wife. She is also the creator of BODYFLOW, one of the programs I was doing. I went to a workshop and then she said, “We’re going to review this thing today.” I said, “I’ve already done that workshop. I already know it.” She looked at me and said, “Did you implement every single thing that you’ve learned? Nathalie, knowing and not doing is like not knowing at all.” It stayed with me.

Since then, I’ve been continuing to learn. Often, people are like, “I’ve seen that. I know that,” but are you doing it? Did you implement that? Especially entrepreneurs, we are getting excited by the next thing and we don’t take time to implement it. We keep pouring water in a glass that’s already full. Take a step back and say, “The knowledge that you already have did you implement it? What’s holding you back?” That’s what I do. I help people get rid of all the stuff that they’re carrying that keeps them from doing what they know they should be doing because people know. We got this. We know we should eat healthily. It’s just that sometimes there’s stuff that are keeping us from doing that.

I’m like a brain dentist like, “If you have a cavity, the dentist will fix that. It’s not by brushing your teeth well and flossing. You’ll get rid of a cavity.” If there’s some stuff that has accumulated from your past, some bad habits that you have, some trauma, anger, fear, hurt, sadness, guilt, like all the bad stuff, we go through stuff. Stuff gets accumulated and it’s our decision. It blurs our judgment moving forward. I believe we need to get rid of all that crap so that we can see clearly and get confidence and focus, so we can unlock our full potential.

We’re going to wrap this up. First of all, I want to find out what advice you would give your eighteen-year-old self, knowing what you know now.

I would say, “You are awesome and trust yourself.” The best advice that you can give anybody and then if you want to write that down, it’s three sentences. I use it with the kids all the time. Everybody wants me to give them advice. “Nathalie, what would you do?” People don’t want advice. Have you ever had a friend that comes to you and says, “Kim, I’m going to do this?” You’re like, “I’ve been telling you to do this for three months, but no, you just thought about this by yourself now?” Nobody wants to hear advice. What I always say and what I would have loved to tell my own little self at eighteen-year-old is, “You are resourceful. I trust you. You will figure this out.”

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Telling that to anybody that’s facing something is much better than telling them what you would do in their place because you’re not in their shoes. You were not there all their life. They say, “I want to maybe break up with my boyfriend.” You don’t know their boyfriend. You’re not there all the time. You only have one version of what they told you and a little section. You don’t know. They do. They know everything. Everybody has this drawer with all the knowledge in the world that they need.

Get rid of the crap that’s on top of your answers. Tell them that they are resourceful to dig in that drawer because they know what to do. We’ve got ten billion neurons in our brain. There are so many different neuronal connections in our brain that form the synapse, the path that we’re going through, but there are 100,000 of them that are in our belly. A lot of people don’t know that. The brain cells are not only in the brain. One hundred thousand cells are in our guts. This gut feeling that you have, you’re thinking with your gut. Listen to your gut. You are awesome. You got this. You are resourceful. You will figure it out.

I’m so excited to see you live in action. If anybody out there is looking for you, can you share with us your website, email, and social media? How can they find you?

Go to ThinkYourself.com. That’s the simplest way or Nathalie@ThinkYourself.com. If you want to download the confidence guide, I do have a free confidence guide, ThinkYourself.com/ConfidenceGuide. That can help you. If you want to book a free fifteen-minute with me, I would be happy to have a virtual coffee, ThinkYourself.com/Schedule. Let’s have a virtual coffee together. I would love that.

Guys, you’re in for a treat. Do give her a shout. Until next time, until I see you live, Nathalie, thank you for sharing your most valuable resource, your time, energy, purpose, and passion. I want to thank everybody out there for sharing your time with us. As we come together as a community, create and move forward, we’ve got this, as Nathalie has said. Please take time to subscribe and share. Thank you for following Kim Talks. You can connect with me through KimTalks.club or ResilientSeries.club. Join the movement and be part of the club. Remember, your past is not your present. Anything is possible. Thanks for joining me.

 

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About Nathalie Plamondon-Thomas

Nathalie works with people who want to find Confidence to unlock their full potential and she brings entrepreneurs the Clarity they need to make money living from their passion. She is international No.1 Bestselling Author of fifteen books on success, communication, wellness and empowerment. She is the Founder and CEO of the THINK Yourself® ACADEMY, offering keynotes and trainings, leading-edge online courses, laser-focus business strategy and one-on-one transformation coaching.

Along the past 30 years, she has inspired over 100,000 audience members and empowered thousands of clients internationally to get rid of their negative self-talk. She combines over 10 years of experience in human resources, 25 years of experience in sales and over 30 years in the fitness industry. In 2007, she was “Fitness Instructor of the Year” for Canada and just received the 2021 Canadian Presenter of the Year Award.