232.Reading Inner Excellence | Transformative Principles Unveiled

🔗🔗🔗Links for today’s episode:
Work with Us: https://www.kathieowen.com/work-with-us
Book Inner Excellence: https://amzn.to/4lGMuz8

In today’s episode, we discuss:

Exploring 'Inner Excellence': Foundations and Key Concepts

In this episode, Kathie Owen introduces the book 'Inner Excellence', a foundational resource for her coaching and keynote speeches. Kathie discusses how this book, drawing from various authors and studies in sports psychology, offers principles for overcoming anxiety and achieving peak performance.

She explains the importance of aligning one's inner world of thoughts and beliefs with one's outer performance. The episode delves into the preface of the book, highlighting the significance of belief systems, mindset, and relationships in defining the quality of life and performance.

Kathie shares her personal journey and insights gained from years of research, emphasizing the integration of mental and emotional growth to achieve an extraordinary life. Listeners are invited to reflect on how these principles can be applied to their own lives.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Inner Excellence
00:46 Foundations and Influences
02:35 Presuppositions and Assumptions
03:19 Quality of Life and Performance
04:05 Journey to the Desert
06:20 Extraordinary Performance and Life
12:14 The Heart and Beliefs
14:45 Empowering Presuppositions
19:59 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

Kathie (2): 0:02

Okay, so I'm going to start reading from the book Inner Excellence and um, I'm just gonna be reading from it and giving some thoughts on this book. And this book is something that I base my keynote speech off of and I talk about often. It includes all of the concepts that I coach from, and I think you might find it interesting too, read along with me, and as I read, I'm going to be giving some input on it and some suggestions. Okay, it's go time. Let's do this and we'll get into the introduction next. So I guess I wanna put this at the beginning of the video because I wanna say this. This book has all of these solid foundations that I have read across all kinds of books. Reality, trans surfing, a New Earth, and. Just things from Eckhart Toi, Vadim Ze, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and in my study of sports psychology, it just applies to life in general. And as you listen or as you read this book, and as we talk about it together, think about how it applies to your life and what. You what you can think and notice that's going on in your world and challenges you may be facing. As you may or may not know, I have had anxiety all of my life, and here lately, I'm about to make a big breakthrough in my life and my anxiety is off the chart. It's, I am healing from anxiety and I'm also learning, relearning, and as life is, it's constant journey. I'm learning that these principles that he's talking about here are just the basics. It's so simple and it all points to the same truth. All of these authors point to the same truth. You'll notice biblical referrals in this book as well, and it, it's all pointing to the same truth. And that truth is inside you, it just wakes it up. And I invite you to look at it like that. So without further ado, let's get into the preface of the book. You're listening to Kathie's Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen. So we're gonna start with presuppositions or assumptions, and. It says here, says the quality of your life is based on three elements, your inner world of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires. Two, your frame of reference mindset from which you see the world. And three, your relationships. How you think and feel is a result of the assumptions and beliefs that have formed in your heart and subconscious, which we'll get into later. These assumptions and beliefs create a certain mindset that impacts how you relate to yourself, to others, and to everything in your life. The quality of your performance is also based on three elements. Number one, your belief about who you are and what's possible for you. Number two, your ability to focus and be fully engaged. In the moment, heart, mind, and body note, heart and spirit will be used interchangeably. Number three, your freedom to play like a kid. Curio, curiously, exploring possibilities, excited for challenges that may arise. The three elements that determine your quality of life and three elements that determine the quality of your performance are deeply interwoven. I started writing the first version of this book in 2004 after moving to the Soan Desert in Arizona to live a life of relative solitude. I got rid of my television and over half my possessions with Winston Churchill's words endlessly floating across my laptop's. Scream, saver, those destined for greatness must first walk alone in the desert. I went to the desert to live deliberately in solitude so I could live out. Churchill's words. Words that also penetrated my heart were from Henry David Thoreau, who went into nature as well. Like Thoreau, I wanted to do front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when it came to time to die, discover that I had not truly lived. I did not wish to live what was not Life living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life to live so steadily and Spartan like as to put to route all that was not life. To cut a broad swath and shave clothes to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms. I ended up spending five years in full-time research interviews. And writing two and a half years of it in the desert, I was obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with confidence and poise under the most pressure. The main question I studied and posed to sports psychologists all over North America was this, how can an Olympic athlete train for four years for an event that may last less than a minute, and have peace and confidence under that kind of pressure? As I drove into research, I realized that helping athletes win world championship or Olympic gold medal would be meaningless unless it improved the quality of their life, their inner life. So I started to study two main components, how to have extraordinary poise and mental toughness under extreme pressure number one. How to live the best possible life, one with deep contentment, joy, and confidence. Number two, in the desert, I had an astonishing insight. I realized that the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same path. This realization changed my life. I only wish I had learned it when I played in the Chicago Cubs organization. I could have performed with so much more freedom and confidence. I was playing the wrong game, but didn't know it. Most of us have been playing the wrong game our entire lives. We've been focusing on short-term wins, temporary happiness, and surface level achievements when we were created for so much more. Okay. We've been playing a zero sum finite game with a winner and a loser, A beginning and an end when it's really an infinite one. Life is meant to be a journey, connecting with others, growing together, discovering new and amazing things, rather than a game of constant comparison and competition. Always trying to fit in or be successful. We've been setting our sights too low. Going for the low hanging fruit on a single bush. When entire orchards, when entire orchards are awaiting. Which game have you been playing the best possible life? Absolute fullness of life is one with extraordinary experiences, deep and meaningful relationships, and most of all, love, joy, and peace. These three resources lead to an abundance of fruit that multiplies into so much more. Peace becomes patience. Patience becomes kindness. Then goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and ultimately self-control. Whatever dream you may have, I believe that in the end. What you really want is to be filled with love, joy, and peace, and all the other powerful resources that come with them. It's an extraordinary life and it's available to all of us, but the high cost is high. It takes clear intention and devotion. The willingness to be vulnerable in order to develop your inner world. To develop your inner world is to transform your heart so that what it loves most is powerful and meaningful. This enables you to grow in belief, focus, and freedom, the three key elements of extraordinary performance. It enables you to direct your thoughts and create mental patterns around extraordinary possibilities and what you're most passionate and excited about. What you were born for rather than being caught up in worry, stress, or anxiety. Most of us have had it backwards trying to be successful in order to be happy. If we focus on improving our inner world, however, we'll achieve our more. We can have joy and peace, purpose and power, which will maximize our performance as well. But we need to get the order right if we want Extraordinary performance over the long term and an amazing life, heart, first performance. Second inner world. First outer world follows. Besides an extraordinary outer world is worthless without a meaningful inner one, is it not? The journey toward the best possible life starts with adjusting the lens through which we see the world. According to Dr. Daryl Johnson, PhD, teaching fellow at Regent College, every human being has a vision of reality. Every one of us looks out at life from frame of reference. We all have deeply held presuppositions about the nature of reality. We may not be able to name those presuppositions, but they're there. They're reflected in the way we treat people. The way we spend time and the way we spend our money, or to put it more simply, every single one of us wears a set of glasses. These glasses were given to us by our families, by our childhood experiences, by the books we've read, by the experiences we've had by the movies, we've seen these visions of reality affect our whole of our lives. The most extraordinary performers and individuals who have ever lived perceived their circumstances in remarkably similar ways. They had a lens through which they viewed the world that was similar to each other's, but very different from everyone else's. This book will help you understand how those amazing individuals trained their minds and oriented their hearts so that they were always learning and growing, and how you can train your mind and heart to do the same. In order to have both sustained peak performance and fullness of life, we must examine who we are, how we're put together, and what drives us. In my five years of full-time research post master's degree. The same components stood out for both peak performance and having an extraordinary life. The heart learning that the heart or spirit is the key driver for both was the turning point in my research. The heart is where we store our hopes, our dreams, beliefs and assumptions. Out of the heart comes good or evil, love or fear. It's the source of our deepest motivations and greatest power. If we want to develop confidence and poise under pressure, as well as deep commitment, and I'm sorry, as well as deep contentment and joy, we need to challenge the assumptions and beliefs we have in our hearts to see if they are really true. We all have a story we've been telling ourselves over our entire lifetimes based on assumptions and beliefs that we have formed in our heart. Some of these are empowering and true, some are not. We also have beliefs that allow us to see possibilities and beauty no one else can see. When your life is based on the truth with a capital T, it expands every day like the sun's rays filling a welcoming sky, revealing unknown beauties. On this powerful journey of inner excellence, we're going to direct what you think and how you think towards what's powerful and permanent. First, however, we must let go of the assumptions. We'll call them presuppositions that may have been limiting our lives without knowing it. A life with unlimited possibilities is only possible when the assumptions that guide our lives are also free from limits. Here's some old presuppositions we're going to drop, and the reasons why I am my thoughts. Sometimes terrible or shameful thoughts flash through our minds that are not true and have nothing to do with who we really are. My value is based on my results. You may have grown up in a culture or family that has instilled this in you, but your self-worth does not increase or decrease based on your performance. The best performers were born that way. Whatever abilities you were born with can be improved far beyond what you've imagined. Largely through hard work, deliberate practice on specific skills that I will teach you and learning to direct and control your desires. Here are 10 empowering presuppositions that will form the basis of the mindset you'll develop as you read this book. Number one, every circumstance and every person you encounter is here to teach you and help you. It's all working for your good. You are created for glory, infinite inherent worth. The life you've been given is meant to develop your character and prepare you for that glory. Number two, your life is a reflection of your beliefs, the foundation for extraordinary performance, joy and confidence. And the primary skill to learn is how to believe beliefs are the control panel of your life. A subconscious thermostat. Keeping your life in line with your comfort levels to improve performance and your life in a consistent, powerful way. You must change your beliefs about who you are and what's possible. Number three. Self-centeredness is the root cause of fear. It leads to self-consciousness, concern about what others think of us over analysis and ultimately self-rejection. Our greatest obstacle is getting in our own way through arrogance or self-rejection, both of which come from self-centeredness. Number four, we all have the same deep needs and same deep desires. Every human heart desperately wants to be loved and accepted. Most of what we do is done in order to meet this need, our deepest need for unconditional love, and our greatest desire is to be fully known and fully loved. Number five, everyone does the best they can with what they have in their heart. It's that is according to their background, their understandings, their beliefs, their fears, their wounds, and their voids. Whatever, someone including yourself, acts in a way that is painful or hurtful. It is because they lack resources such as love, joy, and peace. Looking through self-centered lens of fear or pain. Number six, the map is not the territory. The world you see and interact with is not reality. It's the one your mind created based on the way you've interpreted and processed the events in your life so far. Number seven, you are not your mind. Your mind is a part of you that you need to train. You can learn to direct and control your thoughts. Just like you learn to control your body, the greatest freedom you have is where to place your thoughts. As you realize that you are not your mind, you will be less attached to the useless negative thoughts that come every day and direct your mind towards empowering ones. Number eight. The problem is not the problem. The problem is the way you're thinking about it. You're not happy or sad because of your circumstances. Is, but rather because of what you think about your circumstances, how you feel originates almost entirely from what you think the state you enter caused by how you think about the problem is the real problem. Number nine, there's no failure, only feedback, success and failure are highly interrelated, equally important, and labeled as opposites by our culture. Your ability to learn and grow and maximize your potential is directly correlated to your ability to embrace failure. Number 10, the person with the most control of their inner world has the most power. Mastery of the ego is the greatest challenge and greatest opponent in every competition. Selflessness, complete surrender of the attachments, concerns and fears of the self is the central component to extraordinary performance and cornerstone to creating beliefs that lead to absolute fullness of life. Note inner excellence definitions for some of the terms throughout the book are provided in the glossary. These presuppositions are a crucial part of the mindset you'll be developing the rest of your life. You'll be learning a lot of new information, and because much of this is new to you, it may seem overwhelming at times. Don't worry. My professional athletes have achieved extraordinary success through this process, and most have felt the same way at the start. Remember, this is a lifelong journey. This is a manual you were referred back to many times. As you go through the work, mark this section to keep these presuppositions and principles in mind. Commit them to memory and take notes, especially in the first few chapters as we analyze the challenging obstacles we all encounter. As you do, you'll begin to notice how these perspectives will help you gain mastery over your greatest challenges. This will set the foundation for the tools and skills you'll learn throughout the rest of this book. Alright, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. And if you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them, and I will be creating a playlist of this book. And where we host discussions on it and more. So be sure to leave comments below and let's talk about it, and let's talk about how it changes our lives. All right, until next time, I'll see you next time. Peace out and Namaste.