00:00:07 Nazish: What if true healing isn't about fixing what's broken, but about aligning what's already true? So many of us carry stress in body because parts of us have been working against each other for years. What changes when you are on the inside finally matches how you live on the outside?

00:00:30 Nazish: Welcome to Inner Peace. Better health. A space where we slow down, listen to the body and mind together and explore healing from inside out. I am your host and today I'm joined by Stephen McGonigal, founder of the Growth Mindset Initiative, a speaker, writer and an LPL certified coach who helps leaders move from internal exhaustion to clarity and confusion. We are talking about aligning who you are to heal within, and what happens when identity, emotions and actions finally work in harmony. Stephen, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:13 Stephen McConnell: Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

00:01:16 Nazish: Wonderful. So, Stephen, before we talk about frameworks and healing, I am curious when you hear the phrase aligning who you are, what does that mean to you personally and not professionally?

00:01:31 Stephen McConnell: Hmm. Well, aligning who you are. And what does it mean personally? To me personally, it means that each of us, each and every single one of us, has something that we are so passionate about that it speaks to us on a subconscious level. And when I say that the subconscious speaks a different language than the conscious, we speak verbally. We communicate very logically on the conscious level. Subconscious speaks in beliefs and in emotions. And um, so this passion that you have aligns with who you are. And if you're misaligned, if you're not representing that through the, uh, foundation of core values, you start to really just kind of do yourself a disservice in many different ways. So alignment to me means that you are acting within that passion, that desire, that growth, so that you are well, so that you are growing and learning towards it.

00:02:57 Nazish: Absolutely. You know, this distinction of between personal and professional already feels so important because healing does not start with performance. It starts with honesty.

00:03:12 Stephen McConnell: Exactly. Um, and the base level of alignment really unlocks everything within the external world. You have the internal world, which is us, ourselves. And so you have that personal level. In a lot of times. I've seen it so many times, time and time again, where this personal level not aligned, holds back everything else. All of it creates failure within one's life.

00:03:54 Nazish: Definitely. You know, many people think, uh, healing is about learning better habits or thinking more positively. But from your experience, what is the misconception people carry about healing from the inside?

00:04:10 Stephen McConnell: Hmm. Habits. I'm going to I'm going to go into a definition here. First habits. I will I will call habits as something that we tend to consider as something negative in our life, something that we repetitively do, an action that does not help us. So I'm going to go to routines as something that's positive and that helps us once again actions. Same loop. Where we're going with this is is before the human body. Before we act, we have to have the subconscious because our subconscious actually runs good. Large percentage of our day. You know, I would just say for, for just for comparison, eighty percent of our day is ran by our subconscious level. To give a quick definition to subconscious, that is emotions in learned beliefs. So when we're talking about healing, there's a large portion of self awareness to understand what your belief is and where it's showing up. As far as your actions, is it a habit or is it a routine? Therefore, going into your emotions, what is your emotional loops? A lot of us have coping mechanisms. Um, my personal history, I was, you know, I drank heavily, I was addicted to alcohol. Once I started becoming and this was a years long journey, many years long journey of becoming aware that I was addicted to alcohol, then realizing that it was a habit, not a routine. Then realizing that at some point I need to change my ways, change my habit, I had to first go into understanding. And this is this is not was at the time wasn't conscious. I now speak of it as if it was something that I realized, but it's not. It's a building of a self awareness level of this in my life. This feeling, this emotions loop, this belief loop needs healing. And then taking that through into the action world of building routines instead of habits. Does that make sense?

00:06:51 Nazish: It does. It makes a lot of sense. You know, instead of relief, people often create more internal tension trying to do healing and without actually changing how they relate to themselves.

00:07:07 Stephen McConnell: Hmm. Yeah. The, the, um, that pattern of intentionally that that's the logic based conscious thinking. Yes. And I would like to simply say that while that can work, you have to do the emotional belief work, too.

00:07:29 Nazish: Absolutely. I agree with that. You know, you talk about identity alignment rather than motivation. So where do these misalignments usually begin?

00:07:45 Stephen McConnell: Misalignment, identity alignment instead of a motivation. The identity alignment is going back to that passion. I call it the North Star because a lot of times a passion seems so illogically unreachable. And I'll tell you, I'll personally for me right now, the The North Star for me that I'm so passionate about is solving world poverty. It seems to me unfathomably unreachable, but in my own way, I'm working towards it through addressing these conscious loops. So the alignment and the the that has to be something that's pulling you towards it. That North Star has to have a strong gravity, that is your passions, your beliefs and your emotional routines as opposed to motivation, which is in fact just a feeling. You start to do something and you feel motivated because you had a small little success and you're like, yeah, that's great. It's motivation. It's a feeling. And that's I would say that's, um, this might get lost in the conversation maybe or not. It's like the difference between lust and desire versus love. Love is a routine that you build a foundation upon that you continuously work towards every single day. Compared to this momentary desire, is that is that definitely?

00:09:23 Nazish: Yes, I agree with it. And the way you explained it, it is so clear to us now. Sorry. You know, it is powerful to see how the body keeps the score of beliefs or, you know, we once needed to survive. So, you know, I'm curious, how does these, uh, show up day to day, like, for leaders and individuals you work with? What are the quiet signals that the alignment is off?

00:09:55 Stephen McConnell: Oh, I've seen it so many times. Um, I can speak to. I'll just speak to one example of a of a client that I had had, um, really successful, um, was an owner in the business. They worked their way themselves up from the floor, from sweeping the floors all the way up to a part owner in the business. They sold their ownership in the business. So resourcefully financially, they were successful. On the other end of that, their family life, this person had gone through multiple divorces. And I'm not talking about one or two. I'm talking three, four or five. Um, there they had jaded relationships with their children. They had a difficulty connecting and building friendships in this way. And I'll tell you now about me. I am I, at one point in time considered myself an extreme introvert, where I worked at a company for many, many years and going into a meeting, I felt where I couldn't speak up. I couldn't do anything because I identified as this extreme introvert. As I went through the journey of understanding and aligning myself, I understood and I started to build something called social confidence. And social confidence comes into the root cause of personal self confidence. The basis of my introvertedness I'm still an introvert. I'm not an extreme introvert, but the basis of my introvertedness was from not being aligned with who I am and what I represent as I take motion into this world.

00:11:54 Nazish: That is such a beautiful thing to share with us, and I must say, the way you have mentioned it, it is something that has made it clear to so many of us. And, you know, I feel like a lot of people can notice the silent signs that we see daily, but we don't know what it means.

00:12:14 Stephen McConnell: Yeah.

00:12:15 Nazish: Yeah.

00:12:16 Stephen McConnell: Yeah, I was going to I was just going to touch base on the silent signs and that's, you know, um, I believe it's John Maxwell says you don't know what you don't know until you know that you don't know. And you go through that growing process of that. It all begins with curiosity, a foundation of curiosity. Why did I do that? I don't feel like that was truly me would be the ideal question.

00:12:50 Nazish: That is absolutely beautiful, you know? So if someone realizes that they are living out of alignment, where where do they begin with, like, without shame or overwhelming feeling?

00:13:03 Stephen McConnell: Oh, well, um, there's this radical honesty that comes with that, right? The radical honesty is I am here in this moment in time with that you you mentioned a very key component of it. We tend to shame ourselves. We tend to feel guilty. We tend to feel, um, that radical honesty just has to be, uh, in your logic brain. In your conscious brain as no judgments. This is exactly where I'm at. And then I would say build curiosity around that. Curiosity in and of itself is the self-awareness builder. So if you don't feel like, you know, going to somebody you trust and talking to them. Start a journal, start a journal and sit there and write. I did this today, and it was kind of strange. I don't know where it came from. And then build curiosity. Why did I do that? How did this come about? What did I feel I was achieving and remaining, um, within that curiosity to build the self-awareness, this curiosity. Self-awareness is the equation to create radical honesty. You must remain in the logical framework, not the emotional, because the emotional then turns into shaming guilty feeling this and that impacts those. Those are those, those are that. Um. Cognitive overthinking. Overwhelming. Staying stuck. Emotional. Loops. And even then, just bringing consciousness to that naming that I feel shame because of this, writing it down and being curious. Why is it that am I ashamed that I've done this or I feel this way?

00:15:06 Nazish: Yes, I definitely agree with that. You know that shift, that force is so beautifully explained to us today. And, you know, I know that healing isn't linear. So when old patterns resurfaces, what helps people stay aligned instead of slipping back into self-blame.

00:15:26 Stephen McConnell: Are name it, first name it. And, you know, just like I was saying, oh, I'm feeling shame. Um. And I did this, I this this morning, I took a shower, and I was thinking of growth mindset initiative. I was thinking of what I needed to build out on mindset growth. Com and for whatever reason, something put me into a loop where I was ruminating about a past previous job. And then once I became, oh wait, I'm I'm ruminating about this. Why I named it. I feel shame because of this unspoken conversation that I need to have with this person. And in that way, I was able to to realize a self-awareness, b stop the rumination, stop that cognitive loop, and c be able to then have something to journal and be curious about. Well, I'm no longer in contact with that person. I have no way of getting Ahold of that person. How do I heal from this? Where do I grow from this so that I'm no longer in this habit? Habit of emotional loop.

00:16:44 Nazish: Absolutely. You know, I believe that setbacks aren't failures. They're signals inviting deeper alignment.

00:16:53 Stephen McConnell: Precisely.

00:16:54 Nazish: So for anyone listening right now who feels exhausted or disconnected, you know, what is the one general question they can ask themselves tonight to begin realignment?

00:17:08 Stephen McConnell: Um. One question. Feeling exhausted and misaligned. I guess that that where they would start, that would be where does their passion lay? Starting to build that that understanding of passion. And where they want to go as far as their, you know, their legacy. Not necessarily. And I tend to work with clients where I'm, I'm asking five hundred and fifty years in the future, if that makes sense, because it pulls them out of themselves. We're only limited time here on Earth and it puts them into generations ahead of them. What is their legacy? What do they want to be remembered as? And it's if it's that one answer, that passion, then build that into their lives. That passion is going to start to bring into their life a a source of energy that's uncovered. Unknown. They might have known it, but it's as they build it and as they grow it, it's going to be this strong, passionate, well, this strong force within their lives. It's just going to pull them forwards. Burnout is when you're not in alignment and you're working really hard because of somebody else's goal that you don't necessarily agree with. And when I say you don't necessarily agree with, that's more on the subconscious level. So the first question I would say is do the work and understand what you're passionate about. Make it bigger than you. And in that way start to feel that passion and where it grows and where it is and how it is. This is going to resonate deeply with your subconscious, resonate deeply within your internal, um, subconscious frameworks, and start to begin to build a level of alignment in your life and fuel. Not not energy for your burnout to continue to burn out, but fuel a new source of energy towards where you're going. What that looks like for for like my personal experience, I was in a corporate manufacturing job and I was burned out. I burned out many times. Time and time and time again, it was until I realized what my passion was. And I've already spoken once on this podcast. My passion is to solve world poverty. How do I do that? How do I do that right here and now, in this moment? In the moment I was in manufacturing, I was working on building a department. I could build that within my teams. Not necessarily lecture about poverty, but I could also empower each individual that I can so that they grow. And in that way, I built a almost a burnout proof, um, way, way forwards. So the question I would say is do some deep digging onto what you're passionate about.

00:20:40 Nazish: Absolutely. That sounds like such a perfect thing to do. And, you know, so mentally healing as well. I must say, and you know, healing begins when you are, you know, when you when who you are and how you feel and how you live. Stop fighting each other and start moving in the same direction. And Stephen, wonderfully explained by you. You know, for our listeners who resonated with this conversation and want to explore more about your work, the seven Laws of Personal Mastery. Where can they find you?

00:21:18 Stephen McConnell: Um, seven Laws of Personal Mastery is a book that's, uh, in editing phase and will be released here this year. Um but go to mindset growth com that's m y so my like you're owning your own mindset. My mindset growth com so m y n d e g r o w t com. And if it resonates with you, then yeah. Schedule a thirty minute discovery call for free. Let's talk about how we can get you empowered, get you aligned get you clearer and moving forwards. Also on the website, I have um, monthly memberships to just work through where you don't necessarily have to reach out to me. Some people aren't comfortable with a discovery call, so if you want to go work through stuff on your own schedule and go through one of the memberships, other places you could find me. I'm always posting on LinkedIn. So Stephen McConnell one on LinkedIn and I do Sunday lives. Uh, Sunday at eleven am eastern time. Facebook lives where I talk about clarity and alignment.

00:22:34 Nazish: Wonderful. I will make sure to include all these details into the show notes, so that a lot of people can reach out to you. Stephen, thank you so much for this grounded conversation and a deeply human conversation with you. It was so amazing.

00:22:50 Stephen McConnell: Thank you so much. I love the questions you had and I really enjoyed this conversation.

00:22:58 Nazish: Likewise. And to our listeners, may you remember that healing does not ask you to become someone new. It invites you to come home to who you already are. So until next time, take a breath, listen inward and be gentle with your journey.