A candid discussion about activities we do that make us successful in business and life.
We talk about the importance of confronting fears and anxieties head-on, what drives our decisions, and the powerful transformations that follow once you tackle them.
As we near our 100th episode—yeah, you heard right, 100! we'd love to hear from you. Please give us a rating or share a review.
Join The Ascension Circle @alannabankscoaching.
Join Ryan's The Simple Social Sanctuary.
A few excellent ways to support us are by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.
Joining the community on Instagram @itsthenoexcusespodcast and learning more about what we offer @alannabankscoaching and www.alannabanks.com and @ryanmontisnlp and www.ryanmontis.com
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A candid discussion about activities we do that make us successful in business and life.
We talk about the importance of confronting fears and anxieties head-on, what drives our decisions, and the powerful transformations that follow once you tackle them.
As we near our 100th episode—yeah, you heard right, 100! we'd love to hear from you. Please give us a rating or share a review.
Join The Ascension Circle @alannabankscoaching.
Join Ryan's The Simple Social Sanctuary.
A few excellent ways to support us are by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.
Joining the community on Instagram @itsthenoexcusespodcast and learning more about what we offer @alannabankscoaching and www.alannabanks.com and @ryanmontisnlp and www.ryanmontis.com
BUY A MUG! Visit our merch store, No Excuses Outfitters.
Want to sponsor an episode and promote your business and social media profiles? Send SPONSOR to @itsthenoexcusespodcast, and we'll get back with the information. Investment is under $20 per episode.
Hey Ryan.
Speaker 2:Hey, what's happening.
Speaker 1:I wanted to have kind of like a more personal episode today. Do you have marshmallows in that coffee? Oh no, ok, I do not.
Speaker 2:No, there are no marshmallows in my coffee, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:I thought you were drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows for a second.
Speaker 2:No, it's a latte with espresso in.
Speaker 1:It Sounds lovely, yeah, anyway, as I was saying, I thought it would be fun because we've been doing a lot of episodes with lists and everything and we're going to have a list today. But I wanted to get kind of more behind the scenes or have more of a personal conversation around the activities that you and I do individually to up level our life and our business and how we approach our own entrepreneurial endeavors and life, because it's all the same, really the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Cool, that sounded very vague and abstract, so we're going to talk about stuff we do that makes us successful.
Speaker 1:Yes, cool, exactly.
Speaker 2:All right, I liked the way that you said it. It was just there's a lot of words.
Speaker 1:I know, and that's just me, that's me. I'm a very chunked up person and you're more chunked down, which is why it's like a perfect match.
Speaker 2:Now we have all the bases covered, like the listeners who want that deep philosophical understanding of what we're talking about. Got it, yeah. And then the people who are like what? What is Atlanta talking about now? Stuff we do, that is good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stuff we do. That makes us successful Good stuff or that we think makes us successful. I don't know, maybe it doesn't, but it's stuff we like. Yeah, stuff we like to do Cool.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So we've got six items, because I have three and you have three.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so we're just going to go through those six items randomly as we go.
Speaker 2:Let's do it OK. So let's start with Atlanta Banks. What's one of the things you do that has made you or you believe makes you successful or thrive, or whatever?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, for me, my first one on the list, or the very first thing I thought of, was an NLP breakthrough, and I put this on my list, not because this is something that I do on a regular basis, but in 2017, I was introduced to NLP and hypnosis, and all because I had put this article.
Speaker 1:I was featured in this article in Shadalane Magazine, where I exposed my phobia of throwing up, which has a word which is called a metaphobia, actually and I was at this kind of point of desperation and the total stranger reached out to me and told me that I should go have an NLP breakthrough. He didn't use those specific words, but he was like go see this person. So I didn't really know what I was getting into. And I had this almost four hour session with an NLP practitioner and it was like there was life before that day and then there's been life after that day and it totally changed a lot of things for me, not necessarily from a business perspective, but just my life in general completely changed. It just opened my mind to so many new possibilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that was a huge up level. And then that kind of led me down more of a path to changing my career, because at that time I had my online fabric store and I kind of like changed it. I don't know what it did, but it shook me out of wanting to just do that and then wanting to help people the way I had been helped. So then I went further and I studied NLP with you. So I had another breakthrough there and that's when I decided I'm going to sell my fabric store and I'm just going to do this full time. And then recently I had another NLP breakthrough and that's when I went viral on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Boom yeah.
Speaker 1:So for me the breakthrough is huge and I think honestly everybody in the world should have at least experience at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you don't have to have something wrong with you. You don't have to have something like I went specifically because of my metaphobia. But even if I didn't have a metaphobia I would have benefited from going. That, for me, was just the instigator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the breakthrough process definitely huge, definitely something that I have benefited from myself as well and something I've taught to people. So, yeah, powerful, powerful stuff. I'll agree with you there. It's like man how would you describe it in lay person's terms, I don't know like a decade worth of therapy packed into four hours. Hours, five hours and different breakthroughs will be different lengths, sort of the. Some people do them in a 10 hour process, some it's a single longer session.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think the way I would describe it is it really it takes kind of like how you see the world and like turns it on, turns it on its head that's how I would describe it Like it helps you look at what you're believing and what you've always believed to be true from a whole different perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, one of those things you really got to experience it to truly understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true, but I think that you know if there's something that's not working in your life or you're feeling you have like a lot of feelings, or you know what I mean that are maybe not appropriate, like anger or a lot of sadness or a lot of fear which was my thing, I had a ton of fear and anxiety like you, will 100% benefit from going through the break through process, because it really kind of like pulls apart those feelings and the beliefs that are associated with those feelings to the point where you're like, oh well, it doesn't really matter that much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, beautiful, all right. Yeah, that's a good one, that's kind of a good explanation. Been a game changer for you. It's been a game changer for me. I know a lot of people who have had NLP breakthroughs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Game changer yeah same yeah Cool. All right, all right. So what's your number one? The?
Speaker 2:mine is a totally different vibe. Over here. I call it routine iteration. One thing that I do that I have found has really helped me to be consistent in being successful, and just consistent in being consistent is what I call routine iteration, and what that means is I try to always have a daily list of things to do. That I know if I do these four or five things or six or seven things, whatever it is, however many on my list each day, particularly in business, but some of them are not business related. Sometimes I know if I do all of these things every day, then I'm doing good work and I'm growing my business or I'm excelling or I'm moving forward in life.
Speaker 2:And the reason I say iteration is because this list is very much a dynamic list that I'm constantly evaluating and reevaluating and eliminating things and or adding new things or reordering it or adding little caveats. And it's a simple list. But just having that as sort of, as one of my coaches said, having this as like a North Star, like you wake up, you don't have to think too hard off the bat because you know you've got this little list and each line is only two or three words and worst case scenario. If all you do is most of the stuff on that list, even not even all of it, you've had a good productive day, and so it's easier said than done. This is one of the things that I share with my clients and my coaching program, but it can make a world of difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How productive a person is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it gives you a lot of clarity in terms of like it's not like you're ever waking up and wondering, like, what am I going to do today? Yeah, and some days it might be different than others, but like, that's just sort of like how you operate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like your manual.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your daily manual, I call it routine iteration, because it really is like if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, I should do that, you really got to remember to continually reevaluate this list to make sure it's reflecting your needs and where you are and where you're going. You can't just like, make it and forget it and expect to do the same six things every day for the rest of your life. It really needs to grow with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like, just so the listeners can like visualize this, like for like one or two things that are on your list, like what would those look like?
Speaker 2:Let me pull up my list and I have it in my Apple Notes as an actual. Like checklist and Apple Notes you can make it have a list of Little bubbles yeah.
Speaker 2:Bubbles you can check and uncheck. So the first thing on my list is to update my business tracking spreadsheet. So I have a little spreadsheet in Google Sheets where I track how many members I have in my two memberships, how many contacts I have on my newsletter list, how many people are in my Facebook group, how many followers I have on Instagram. You know a bunch of like really simple to track metrics, right. So I try to do that every day, yeah, in the morning. And then you know another simple one is just to clear my social media inboxes To make sure, go through any messages that's unread, to either give it a response, delete it if it doesn't require a response, or whatever leave it or action it or whatever. Right, those are a couple and it's just. It's just simple stuff. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:Cool. I like, it All right and feel free everyone to adopt these, these activities.
Speaker 2:No, they're just hours. They're hours. They can't have them. Don't take my activities.
Speaker 1:All right, so my, so this is number three. I guess my number two is for me, self-image work has been like a total game changer and this is like this is like my medium level. I want to say Like this isn't something that I'm like focused on necessarily every day, but when I decided to go full time with coaching, I signed up for like a pretty high ticket coaching program. That seemed a bit out of reach for me. Like being part of this group made me nervous because I thought all the women that were in this group were like way better than me and were making more money than me and all this stuff. And I learned in this group, oh, that self-image work, and I also learned that these women were dealing with the exact same problems that I was dealing with and that really was helpful to me to recognize that, like, even though I was really looking up to these people and thought that I shouldn't even be in this group, it was very confidence boosting to know that, like we were all dealing with the exact same problems, just different, right. And so self-image work for me was just like deciding what type of person I want to be, what type of coach I want to be, what type of mom I want to be, what type of like partner I want to be, what type of friend I want to be and I do this with my clients as well, and it just it kind of.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like your list, right. It gives you clarity in terms of like, who am I being in this world? How am I showing up? How am I showing up online? How am I showing up with work? How am I showing up with my personal life? So that's been a big game changer for me and that's kind of also how this podcast started, cause I decided I was going to be the person who followed through on intuitive nudges. That was like part of my self-image sort of list. And then I got the intuitive nudge to start this podcast and ask you to do it together. And I just did it Cause that's who I was, that's who I decided I was going to be, you know. So it just makes like navigating life so much easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so self-image work.
Speaker 2:How's the image work? Is that, is the recording of your self-image workshop still available anywhere?
Speaker 1:It's in, I think, one of your program. It's in your elite coaching program. Oh yeah, I believe so. Henquity is in that I've been through the role right now. But yeah, I do have it somewhere. I have it. I can like send it. If somebody wants it, they can just ask me for it.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a little town.
Speaker 1:I'm actually. You know what that's. I'm not going to send it out because I'm going to be running a workshop in the next, at least the next three months. That will be self-image work, but it's going to be mostly focused around like becoming the CEO of your business.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so look out for that, cause that will be coming. I'm doing a big planning session tomorrow, so I don't know when anything's happening yet but I will tomorrow, but coming nonetheless, okay Cool. Love it. Had to step into your CEO image.
Speaker 2:All right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited for that. It's going to be cool. There will be like hypnosis involved and like visualizations and LP stuff.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Plus just the good old self-image. How to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool, love it All. Right, let's go. We're good with that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we're good with that one, unless you have questions. That, yeah, I do.
Speaker 2:I don't ask my question, okay, okay, so next on my side is what I would call mission mindset. So talk about this a lot in my mission and movement Facebook group, which is a free group you can join, by the way but the mission mindset, which is something I adopted when I was in the military, and it is this mindset that, like when you have a mission, there are very few things that would or should cause you to deviate from your mission. The mission becomes very important. You fixate your attention on it and it is your goal to accomplish a mission, basically at any expense. And so this is something that and I talk about with my clients and with my students why I think former soldiers tend to do better than average as entrepreneurs and business owners.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, and I think this is one of the big reasons because of that mission mindset, adopting that mission mindset. So it's definitely something I've adopted in my life and basically it just allows me to say stay focused and stay on track and face challenges in business and continue to persevere and move forward, which is vital if you wanna be successful as an entrepreneur, as a coach, as a hypnotherapist, whatever. You need to be able to persevere and fixate your attention on your goal and not be easily taken off track or off route by every little bump in the road. Right yeah, you think about a soldier. The mission is to get to the objective, to the target. Doesn't matter if the bridge is out, doesn't matter if mom and dad says your little coaching business is silly.
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter, none of this stuff matters.
Speaker 2:I got a mission. That's all that matters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. It's interesting because I watched something the other day that was kind of talking about this and it was talking about the entrepreneurial mindset and anyone can become an entrepreneur, but this particular person was talking about how, if you have, typically entrepreneurs have come from a childhood or background who is maybe a little bit more volatile and where they not necessarily had to be in survival mode but maybe they moved around a lot or maybe they didn't have a typical upbringing where they had to become more resourceful or they had to be really focused on just getting through the next thing, those tend to be people who become entrepreneurs because that actually feels really comfortable and safe for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's like I think when you're an entrepreneur, that mission mindset is just sort of like this. It's almost like an obsessive direction towards a goal, because I definitely have that. It's not that I like moved around a lot or anything as a kid, but like I've always been and I noticed this in one of my kids as well Like he just gets an idea and he's like a dog with a bone, like he won't stop until he's like figured it out. And I can be like that too, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs have that sort of mission mindset and if you don't have it, it's like a good thing to know about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like a good thing to know that you're focused and it keeps you away from all the negative nullies who are out there. Being like this is never going to work. You should go and get a regular job, or? Why are you still doing that? Well, it's because you want to like. It's like a drug, almost.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's like a drug Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the mission mindset is almost like a drug, yeah, like I had my fabric store. Like every time I got a sale it was like a hit, like I was like, yes, and then get another one, and another one, and it's just like I want more right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that the dopamine fix or whatever it is, yeah.
Speaker 1:Cool, so so yeah, so that is some mindset.
Speaker 2:That's obviously served us well. I hope that it will serve you well if you choose to adopt it Also. Listeners yeah, okay, cool, all right. So the last one, from Alana Banks.
Speaker 1:Last one. For me so this is something that I just this is sort of like my number one. I would say it's just like something that I do every day to keep my mind clear, to keep myself focused, to keep myself like in the game is hypnosis, or the tools that I use and teach to my clients. So for me that's hypnosis. Like I listen to hypnosis almost every single day, either right first thing in the morning, like as soon as I wake up, I literally grab my phone and put my earbuds in and I listen to a hypnosis. That's my favorite time, because I find at the end of the day I'm too tired and I fall asleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah Cool.
Speaker 1:So I'll listen depending on like what I'm focusing on in the moment, or like how I'm feeling or where my mindset is at. I have like a few that I like to choose from. Right now, for example, I'm listening to a prosperity hypnosis. That is really great and I just shared it, actually, with all of the people in the Ascension Circle. So, you want that? Join the Ascension Circle. You get little free things like this and, honestly, every time I listen to this hypnosis I get a new client.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, wow. Can you send that over to me?
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. What is it called? I'm calling it a prosperity hypnosis.
Speaker 2:How long is it?
Speaker 1:It's 16 minutes 16.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's time to welcome prosperity in their life. It's going to take 16 minutes, jeez.
Speaker 1:Yeah, send that to me Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one, right Like visualization, self-hypnosis.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody should do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's. So it is honestly the most powerful thing you could do, yeah, every day, is just listen to hypnosis. I had one for a while that I was listening to. That was just around just being me and being my authentic self I hate that term, but just really stepping into my own uniqueness and that really helped up level me and my messaging and just showing up the way I wanted to show up and being confident about who I am and not trying to be like other coaches out there. Yeah, and you can make these yourself. Some of the ones I listen to, I just go into cracked open and I'll listen to. I think I have one in there around getting calm or if I'm feeling very stressed out or something like I'll listen to that one. I listen to my own recorded hypnosis. Is that weird? No, it's not yeah.
Speaker 2:That can be very effective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, your subconscious mind loves the sound of your own voice. So I mean, obviously it doesn't have to be you, you don't have to record them, and sometimes I just go on YouTube or I'll go on Spotify and type in like what I'm looking for specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Use your tools. If you're a hypnotherapist, hypnotize yourself every day. It works yeah.
Speaker 2:It really is. It's good for you. I have a hypnosis circ weekend coming up, oh good. I'm doing one in Feb.
Speaker 1:Oh, you are yeah.
Speaker 2:February 2 to 4. So it's a hypnotherapy certification, but it's also the best way to learn self-hypnosis too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's actually another workshop that I'm going to be doing this year. Hypnosis yeah Cool. I don't know when or like how much it's going to be or anything yet, but it's coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'll after tomorrow, after planning day.
Speaker 1:After tomorrow.
Speaker 2:All those details, yeah Cool, all right, that's another one we agree on, obviously. Okay, are we ready for the last one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the finale. What is it?
Speaker 2:It's what I call forcing logic. One thing, that one practice that I'll have for myself to move myself forward is called forcing logic, and what this is is when I notice that I'm letting sort of the way I feel or my emotions, or even just like sometimes it's my intuition I'm letting it take too much control, letting these things take too much control. Where there's something like it's like you know, where there's something like it's like I'm feeling stuckness or I'm feeling resistance and it's like I know I need to be taking action, I'm not. I'll like, literally like pick up control of myself and just hand it to like the logical part of my mind and be like just do what you know you must be doing right now, regardless of how you feel and I actually had to do that today, or something I had to do, this particular task in my business. I was feeling all this resistance around it because it's something I haven't done in a while and like and I just had to be like okay, let's just, but everything else on hold, what do I logically know I must do? Can I do it right now? Yes, okay, it's happening.
Speaker 2:I call it forcing logic when I need to guide myself through that process and when I learned this, I actually learned this back way before I had the level of emotional regularity that I have now, way before I learned NLP and had my first NLP breakthrough. And I still younger me was still like I have problems with anxiety and a lot of emotions that really were not serving me, and it became a matter of necessity to ignore those emotions and just let my logical mind take control every now and then, because the emotions were just wrong. Right, the emotions were saying stay in bed all day and don't talk to anybody and like give up. Right, so clearly that was not going to be helpful, right, so I had to force the logical part of my mind to be like, no, maybe you should like go to work and eat and seek help for these challenges you're having. And so even now that I'm very grateful to say I've learned about, like I said, emotional regularity and clearing out unresolved problems in the unconscious mind and challenges, still like I'm human.
Speaker 1:Of course, every now and then.
Speaker 2:I have these feelings, these resistances that are not serving me. It's a really cool ability to be able to be like okay, let me put that on hold for a minute and just like do the job, do the task.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super important. I think we can all like a benefit from forcing logic sometimes because, like you got to get stuff done.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right and sometimes you don't want to do the stuff that you got to do, but you got to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then it takes a lot of strength.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it takes. Yeah, it's like easier said than done, forcing logic. It's like a lot of times it's outside of our conscious awareness that our emotions are driving our behavior. So right, like we just we're just going with the flow and our emotions are driving us to stay still. You know, in a lot of cases you kind of have to have that ability to like snap out of it, dissociate from what's happening and be like wait a minute, like I got stuff to do. I know what I need to do. Why am I not doing it Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, that's another skill, that's another fun life skill to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Nice, and especially for this time of year too, because like I heard recently that like I think this time of January is when everybody is sort of give has, like kind of given up, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like blue, blue January or blue yeah, it's like blue Monday, I think.
Speaker 1:Blue Monday 2024.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's coming.
Speaker 1:I think actually it'll be the day this releases.
Speaker 2:Uh-oh, is it yeah, blue Monday 2024. So blue Monday is typically observed on the third Monday in January. So in 2024, it's January 15th, so yeah, which will be Monday, the day this comes out.
Speaker 1:So, according to this random website, that I just discovered blue.
Speaker 2:Monday is a day to acknowledge and address feelings of sadness that some individuals may experience, especially during winter months. It serves as a reminder to prioritize mental health. Okay, so people have kind of reframed that Blue Monday to be a mental health awareness day, which I think is a great idea. The concept of blue Monday was first introduced in 2005 as part of a marketing campaign for a travel company. What the formula used to calculate the date takes into account various factors such as weather, debt, time since Christmas, et cetera. The scientific validity of blue Monday has been questioned, but I think a lot of people kind of have that experience Like the holidays are over, we're in the middle of winter, the weather sucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've probably dropped the ball on your worst year Just giving up on your New Year's resolution, right, yeah, or whatever, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if that's the case, then focus on this forcing logic and just be like you know. Okay, so what? I didn't make it to the gym this week, but I can go today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, cool, cool. I think this was a great little inside scoop into how we live our lives, yeah. How we stay motivated how we've continued to keep it up and up level.
Speaker 2:Really good tidbits in there, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I hope everyone enjoyed that. If you did, let us know by reviewing the podcast on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts or even just rating it, just giving us the like five stars. You don't even have to write anything.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I want them to write something. That's extra work for some people.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're not going to rate us at all because we're not going to rate you because I want you to write something, then, yeah, just leave five stars and don't write anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it's all the same audience and you rate five stars and you get that little comment box there put like Ryan's hair or like Alana's vibe or whatever. Nice.
Speaker 1:I like it and this is, I think, where are we at? I just wanted to check here because, like I'm like gunning for 100 episodes, like I'm super excited but I don't know where are they right now. Here we go. Okay, so this is episode 88. So 12 more episodes and we're at 100. Cool yeah Wow we're getting close, I know Real close. And then we also have to decide too is this the end of season four, and are we starting a new season?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we got a start, all right, yeah, we'll figure that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. Well, that's it.
Speaker 2:Bye everyone.
Speaker 1:Bye.