148. Official Internal Policies
Are you sensitive to the opinions of other people?
Do you find it hard to hang on to your own beliefs when you encounter people with differing thoughts?
Have you ever noticed a change in how you feel about something, just because someone offered a critique, or you imagine they would?
As social mammals, we are highly influenced by other people, what they think, and even what we fear they might think.
It may feel uncomfortable to believe in something if others question it.
It may feel forbidden.
It may even feel unsafe.
And this tends to be especially true if the thing you’re trying to believe in sounds very yummy.
If, for instance, you are trying to believe that it’s possible to find a delightful partner and have fun doing it, but folks around you are always lambasting the dating apps.
If you’re trying to believe it’s possible for you 2x your income without 2xing your working hours, but your colleagues can’t see any way it could be done.
If you’re trying to believe it’s possible for you to become a best-selling author while still working your 9-5, but your friends and family roll their eyes whenever your bring it up.
If you want to do something unusual, especially something unusually delicious, you will likely need to cultivate beliefs and actions that are also unusual.
If no one else is doing the thing you want to do, or if only a tiny fraction of people normally achieve it, folks might think it’s wild of you to try.
They might think it’s absurd or even unwise.
That doesn’t mean you have to agree with them.
And, in fact, it’s imperative that you don’t.
But how do you stick to your intentional beliefs when everyone all around you is offering you their opinions?
You create official internal policies.
What is an official internal policy?
It’s a chosen way of thinking that you bring yourself back to when your brain gets distracted by other people’s thoughts.
Official internal policies are the secret to keeping yourself on track when you feel tempted to trade in your beliefs for those of the folks around you.
Join me today to learn more about why official internal policies are so valuable and how to design yours on purpose.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What a thought infection is, how you get one, and how to treat them.
How a thought infection can block you from having the experience you want.
Why it’s beneficial to create your own official internal policies.
How to be less susceptible to other people’s thoughts.
Some of the official internal policies I live by.
How to be purposeful about designing your official internal policies.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about Official Internal Policies.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I took a bike ride this morning, it felt so nice. I’m so excited to be back into taking bike rides as an adult. I definitely rode bikes as a kid, kind of like most people did, at least where I grew up. And it’s so fun to get back into it. In the spring I was just like, oh, I think I need to buy a bike. Sacramento is very flat, which makes it really nice for biking. And it’s super fun.
I love the way it feels breezy even if it’s not breezy because you’re biking quickly through space. Very enjoyable. And also it can be inspirational. So if there’s something you used to do as a kid that you haven’t done as an adult, but you’d like to get back into, maybe give that a try. Or you could go rent something if you don’t want to make an investment like buying a bicycle.
Another one I think about is like rollerblades. So if you went to rollerblade or roller skate, you could go to a roller rink. You don’t have to buy the new equipment, you can just try it out and see if it’s something that still feels really yummy to you and if you maybe want to incorporate it into your life moving forward.
So this week we’re talking about a new coaching concept I’m calling official internal policies. And this concept came up in conversation with one of my amazing one on one clients.
So this client in particular, we were talking about we have ideas and beliefs of our own inside our own head. But then when we encounter other people who have different opinions, sometimes it can be hard to hold onto our own opinions and to not upload those other people’s opinions and start thinking them.
For instance, if I were thinking like, I love my business, it’s so successful. It’s doing really well. And then I encountered someone else who maybe had criticisms of my business or maybe they’re like, oh, it seems like it’s fine, but it’s not for me. Or if they were like, oh, you think that’s successful?
And sometimes this happens really in life, like someone actually says those things to you and sometimes we actually do this thing where we just imagine the other person is saying it to us. So it could be anything, right?
It could be maybe you want to get into freelance writing, and you write your first article. And you’re feeling really good about it and your writing is really strong. And then either someone else actually is like, oh, it’s okay or it’s not that great. Or maybe you just in your head you imagine like, oh no, what if the editor doesn’t like it? That sort of thing. So that’s the thing that can happen to a lot of us.
And I like to kind of use the metaphor of infectious disease for this. So it’s like you have your ecosystem and your thing is working. And it’s all going as you want it to, right? Like healthfully, I guess, would be the metaphor. And then we introduce a germ or a bug, right, a bacteria or a virus that comes in and can kind of change the whole ecosystem or cause an infection, right?
And so what we’re talking about here really with beliefs is thought patterns. And so it’s sort of like a thought infection, right? It’s like we feel good about something that we are doing or something that we’ve made or something we’re working on, until someone else comes along and either actually offers us the idea that it’s not so great, or we kind of imagine that they would offer us that idea.
And I think this happens to people all the time, right? And especially when we feel vulnerable. Like if we’re making something creative, right? If we’re doing art, if we’re doing creative writing, but also something else that could feel vulnerable, like we want to start a new business, or we’re worried what people will think about the business or we’re worried what people will think about us as a business owner versus whatever else we’ve always done that they know us as.
Or actually when I was first kind of beginning to question my sexuality and to think like, oh, I think I’m not straight. Actually, I think maybe I’m queer there was a part of me that thought that was really fun and interesting and exciting. And then I was also worried about what other people would think, right? So that was one where people weren’t even necessarily saying anything to me.
But I have the internet so I could see some of the things that people sometimes say about later in life queer women or feminine queer women. And I could see those and so I was kind of at risk of uploading those to my brain. I was at risk of having a little thought infection from other people’s opinions which may have been said to me out loud, but in that case rarely were, or which I could see on the internet. Those did exist and so my brain was like, oh, these could apply to you.
And then also, sometimes we don’t even see the evidence on the internet, but we’re just like, oh, it would really suck and hurt my feelings if someone thought this. So then we kind of become obsessed with like, maybe someone is thinking that right now. So that can be a really painful experience and it can block us from doing lots of things.
It can block us from working on our creative writing. It can block us from sharing our creative writing with the world. It can block us from wanting to develop a new skill in our day job. And then if we even develop that skill, it can block us from wanting to share that skill. So this can be really disruptive on a lot of layers, right?
So how do we deal with it? What do we do? So this is what I was coaching my client on. My client has done a really amazing thing, she’s created something really wonderful. And now she’s at the part of the process where she’s sharing that with other people. And some other people are going to like it and say nice things, but she’s trying to actually get an outcome, right, where someone would need to say like, yes, I want that. And so far no one has said, yes, I want that in this one context. And some people have said, “No thank you, I don’t want that,” right?
So this is actually so interesting because sometimes when people say no thank you, they say a bunch of nice things, but then they say, no thank you. And then we’re like, oh, they hate us and think we’re terrible. Versus maybe they like it, but they passed on it for some other reasons we don’t really know. What we know is that they passed on it or we know whatever feedback they gave us about why people have said no.
So, anyways, this is where it comes back to official internal policies, because what we were talking about is how to be less susceptible to those thoughts of other people. Whether it’s literal thoughts other people are having and telling you out of their face hole or whether it’s imagined thoughts, like the thoughts we’re afraid someone has. Or whether it’s thoughts we’ve seen some people have on the internet, like as the example with my queer sexuality journey.
So, basically, what an official internal policy is, is you getting clear in writing what your official stance on the thing is, right? And what I like about this is it’s kind of like taking a page out of a kind of more corporate playbook, right? It’s like when you work in a corporate company or you work in a business, even if it’s not corporate, maybe it’s a smaller business. They have a brand, and they have official statements, and they have official positions on things.
And often as people we don’t develop our official positions, we’re just kind of like, well, I think this, or I think that. And there’s nothing wrong with the I think this, or I think that. But sometimes if we know that we’re going to be susceptible to the thoughts of others, it can be really powerful to have an official internal statement that you can go back to and review and remind yourself of when your brain is trying to become infected with that other person’s thoughts or when your brain is trying to upload an imaginary point of view that it’s afraid other people will have.
Okay, so what’s an example of this? So in my business I do sales, right? Like I sell coaching, right? I deliver the coaching also, that’s the part I really like, is getting to coach people and getting to talk about coaching ideas. But since I’m the only person in my business, I also do the sales, right? I do the marketing, I do the sales.
And so my thought about sales that I want to have, my official internal policy is that sales is just me having a conversation with another human being to see if it’s a good fit for us to work together and to see if it’s a good fit, like if the tools that I have and teach can help this person get what they want, right? That feels really yummy to me. That feels really aligned. It feels really good. It doesn’t feel like, oh, I’m a sales person who’s just selling to sell, right?
It feels like I’m just a human being having loving connected conversations with potential clients, and with existing clients, right? Because sometimes I sell things to people who are already my clients. But a lot of people could have other thoughts about sales. And if you get on the internet, a lot of people do have other thoughts about sales. And even if you didn’t get on the internet, my brain is so creative so it can imagine all kinds of negative thoughts that people could have about sales.
So if I want to have a good experience of sales, it’s really beneficial for me to create my official internal policy. And then second of all, to stay in touch with it instead of getting distracted by and attached to any thought that someone else offers or any thought that the internet might offer or any thought that my brain is afraid someone might have of me or afraid someone might have about sales, right?
So, for an example, somebody else could tell me, oh, I hate sales, it’s so hard. So they’re offering me that policy. And then part of what I can do is say, I don’t think I want that policy, it doesn’t match my official internal policy. So I’m going to say thanks, no thanks. I’m not going to adopt that policy. I’m not going to become infected with that thought pattern, right?
Or I could be on the internet and people on the internet could be like, oh, sales is so sleazy, it’s so manipulative. I don’t want to upload that thought either. I don’t want that to be my point of view because sales is something I do and it’s something I’m going to need to continue to do if I want the business to stay in business.
Also, I don’t want to be manipulative. And I don’t think that I have to be manipulative in order to do sales and to be good at it, right? Because, to me, being good at it is being kind to myself, being kind to the other person, seeing if I think it’s a good fit, sharing what I know coaching can do. And then trusting that if they’re supposed to be my client, this is a little woo woo, but I am a little woo woo on the inside y’all.
So I’m like, oh, if they’re going to be my client, it’s going to work out. And if they don’t hire me, then that’s not what needs to happen and that’s okay, too. To me, that’s not manipulative. That’s a lot of just showing up and communicating honestly and authentically. And also trusting the other person’s knowledge and expertise.
If they think they want to hire me, great, and then we’re going to work together. And if they think they don’t, that’s also great. I don’t need them to hire me for me to feel good or okay about myself or to feel like the sales call was successful. Because to me, successful doesn’t mean they become my client, successful means we have a wonderful conversation and we figure out how they can move forward, whether it’s with me or not, right?
So we talked about already thoughts other people might say out of their face, thoughts the internet might say, and then human brains have this magical capacity to come up with what would hurt our feelings the most or what would be the most terrible thing, just in our imagination, right?
So in my imagination, my imagination could come up with another negative thought about sales. And then it’s my job to notice my imagination doing that and to say, thanks, no thanks.
Now, sometimes the internet, other people or imagination might bring up something you do want to consider. You might want to be like, oh, is there some useful content here? Do I want to address this? Is there something I need to learn more about?
For instance if someone was like, oh, there’s this sales technique and it’s problematic for these reasons. And let’s say someone says that and I use that sales technique, then I might be like, oh, let me look at that and let me see if I agree that that’s problematic. Let me do some research. Let me find out what they’re talking about.
So it’s not that we never take information from other people. The official internal policy is more a way to keep yourself on track if you happen to be highly influenceable. And a lot of humans are highly influenceable because we’re social mammals and we like to know what other people are doing and kind of fit in or belong.
And we don’t like to stick out and none of us want to be an outcast, right? Because there was a time in the history of our species when if you didn’t fit in and belong, you were probably going to die because humans weren’t capable of caring for themselves individually at that time.
We could get into a whole thing about community care versus self-care and if humans are actually able to care for ourselves individually now. But we’re going to leave that conversation for a different time because I want to stay focused, at least a little bit. You know I love a tangent, but I want to stay focused on this idea of official internal policies, what they are and how they can be useful to you, right?
Okay, so basically, you have your official internal policy. You’re going to design that on purpose. It’s not just going to be whatever bullshit your brain says to you all day long because your brain, if your brain is anything like my brain and my clients brains and everyone’s brains I know, it says a bunch of bullshit.
And probably a lot of that is stuff it just learned from socialization, like from the whole culture, or things in your house growing up, or things it inferred from TV and movies. It’s probably not what you want your actual official policy to be.
So official policies need to be created by design. What do I want to think about this? What do I want to bring myself back to when my brain finds a new idea that it might want to get distracted by or when my brain encounters a thought germ that it maybe is going to get an infection from?
And when you think about how to design your official internal policies, I think a lot of it’s like, what are your values? Who do you want to be? And then what policies are going to help you create what you want to create, right?
So do you need a policy about courage and resilience because you want to be taking courageous action over and over again, knowing that a lot of it won’t work out because that’s what’s required to go after the goal that you’re working on, right?
Like I have a business and having a business often does require, at least in my opinion, it requires taking action over and over again. And a lot of that action is not doing what you want it to do. And then you can choose to think that’s really brave, and that feels to me really yummy.
Or you could choose to think a different thing about it, which might feel less yummy. So if I want to do it and I want to keep doing it, then to me I need a yummy, supportive thought about it. So I would design a yummy, supportive official internal policy about that thing.
So you can sort of design these for any area of your life, but what my client did was she designed them for areas where she felt extremely sensitive to the opinions of others, and especially where that sensitivity to the opinions of others is going to create obstacles, right?
Like if you want to build a business but you are extremely sensitive to the opinions of others about building a business, then that might be a place where you doubly want an official internal policy because you need a policy to kind of protect your thoughts from other people’s thoughts.
And then especially if you know you have people in your life who are critical of starting a business or who are critical of your ability to start something, that would be a reason that you might want to create a policy so that you have something to come back to when you encounter those other thoughts.
And the reason I really want you to write the policy down is so you can revisit it. When we’re really sensitive to or easily influenced by people’s thoughts, when we encounter those people’s thoughts it can be hard to even remember what our thoughts are because we can kind of get on the bandwagon with the other thoughts so quickly or become infected with the other thoughts so quickly.
It’s like, if you want to go into the infection metaphor, it’s like a new thought comes in and then it proliferates, is that the right word? It creates a bunch more of itself and then you’re like drowning in the new thought, right?
So when you have that official internal policy, you have something you can come back to, not just in your head, but literally I want it to be a document on your phone, a paper on your desk, a bookmark in your book. Like write it down and stick it in there, literally, so that you have something where you can remind yourself.
It’s almost like a life raft to pull yourself out of the sea of everyone else’s thoughts and to get yourself back on track with who are you deciding to be? What kind of life are you deciding to live? What kind of things are you deciding to support?
How are you setting yourself up for success versus just getting bogged down with everyone else’s thoughts and allowing all those other thoughts and opinions to block you from doing what you want to do and creating the kind of life you want to live?
So that’s basically the tool and the concept. And I’ll say one more thing, which is this. I personally make a lot of choices that don’t necessarily go with the grain of what the culture is doing, right? It’s not that my choices are controversial, necessarily, although they could be to some people. It’s more that I just think they’re maybe unique or different than what is typical. They’re non-conforming, right?
Like in a world where a lot of people have a nine to five job, which I’ve also had, I have a business. In a world where a lot of people work 40 hours a week, I absolutely do not work 40 hours a week. I don’t even know how much I probably do work, but like maybe I would say 20 to 30 hours a week, right?
In a world where a lot of people own their house, Alex owns the house we live in, but I don’t own the house. I don’t own any real estate, even though I’m almost 40 years old and I have enough means to be able to do so, probably. I mean, I’ve never tried but I think I probably could, right? I no longer own a car, right? Alex owns the car in our household, and we have like a set of agreements about the car.
Alex and I, particularly as a couple, the way we do things in our relationship is very different than how a lot of people do things. And I wanted to touch on this because anytime that you want to be making different choices than what is kind of culturally shown or culturally accepted, an official internal policy is going to be even more useful.
Now, for me, for whatever reason, for a long time in my life I think I’ve felt more comfortable than a lot of other people making unconventional choices. Oh, that’s the word I’ve been looking for this whole time, is unconventional. And I make a lot of conventional choices too, don’t get me wrong.
But I think for a long time in my life people would be like, oh, you have to do this. And I’d be like, why? I don’t want to do that, I’m just not going to, right? And so I think, I don’t know, maybe at a young age I read a book where a character made unconventional choices and so I decided I’m allowed to. Maybe it’s because I went to public school later than other people, I was homeschooled for a few years. And I feel like some of my childhood was a little bit feral, which had its own difficulties.
Let me tell you what, when you start public school or any school, right, at second grade and you’ve never been in a classroom before and you don’t know the rules and you don’t know the things you’re supposed to just know to do, that can be very fucking uncomfortable. So there have been drawbacks also.
But I’ve had this ability, this mindset, this like, well, what if there’s a way to do it, and if it’s not conventional, that’s okay. Maybe it could still work. I’ve had this for a long time, and I think it’s worked out really well for me in helping me design a life that really, really delights me versus living a life that kind of matches what I’m “supposed” to do.
But even if you don’t have that already, you can develop that capacity. And I think official internal policies are one of the best ways to do it because it’s deciding on purpose what you want your rules to be. Not that policies are rules, because they’re not. They’re kind of more like guiding visions or something.
But it’s deciding on purpose what policies you want to live your life by, because a lot of us are living our life by whatever unspoken policies we’ve absorbed from our culture, from our parents, from TV, from movies. And a lot of times, those unspoken policies have nothing to do with the kind of lives we want to live and the kind of careers we want to build and the kind of relationships we want to enjoy.
So I would invite you to pick an area in your life where maybe it’s like feeling a little funky, it’s not going 100% the way you want it to or you’re feeling really sensitive to the opinions of others. You’re feeling like you’re having a hard time getting out from under those societal expectations, and write down what the societal expectations or current policies are and then write down what you want the policies to be.
And then whenever your brain takes you back to the one, just remind yourself like, oh, no, we’ve had a policy update. We’re doing this now. And see what changes when you do that.
All right, that’s what I have to teach you today about official internal policies. And I also want to say I have room for a few one on one clients, and I have room for some additional people to join the fall cohort of SAF. And if you join either of those coaching programs, we can talk about your official internal policies and we can set those up to be really powerful for you and help you create and enjoy your satisfying life and career.
And I would love to do that work with you and the first step is just to hop on a consult call with me and we can talk about what’s going on in your life and career, what’s working, what’s not working. And we can see, like I was talking about earlier, if coaching with me and my programs is a good fit to help you get more of what you want.
All right, that’s all I have for you. Have a great week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I took a bike ride this morning, it felt so nice. I’m so excited to be back into taking bike rides as an adult. I definitely rode bikes as a kid, kind of like most people did, at least where I grew up. And it’s so fun to get back into it. In the spring I was just like, oh, I think I need to buy a bike. Sacramento is very flat, which makes it really nice for biking. And it’s super fun.
I love the way it feels breezy even if it’s not breezy because you’re biking quickly through space. Very enjoyable. And also it can be inspirational. So if there’s something you used to do as a kid that you haven’t done as an adult, but you’d like to get back into, maybe give that a try. Or you could go rent something if you don’t want to make an investment like buying a bicycle.
Another one I think about is like rollerblades. So if you went to rollerblade or roller skate, you could go to a roller rink. You don’t have to buy the new equipment, you can just try it out and see if it’s something that still feels really yummy to you and if you maybe want to incorporate it into your life moving forward.
So this week we’re talking about a new coaching concept I’m calling official internal policies. And this concept came up in conversation with one of my amazing one on one clients.
So this client in particular, we were talking about we have ideas and beliefs of our own inside our own head. But then when we encounter other people who have different opinions, sometimes it can be hard to hold onto our own opinions and to not upload those other people’s opinions and start thinking them.
For instance, if I were thinking like, I love my business, it’s so successful. It’s doing really well. And then I encountered someone else who maybe had criticisms of my business or maybe they’re like, oh, it seems like it’s fine, but it’s not for me. Or if they were like, oh, you think that’s successful?
And sometimes this happens really in life, like someone actually says those things to you and sometimes we actually do this thing where we just imagine the other person is saying it to us. So it could be anything, right?
It could be maybe you want to get into freelance writing, and you write your first article. And you’re feeling really good about it and your writing is really strong. And then either someone else actually is like, oh, it’s okay or it’s not that great. Or maybe you just in your head you imagine like, oh no, what if the editor doesn’t like it? That sort of thing. So that’s the thing that can happen to a lot of us.
And I like to kind of use the metaphor of infectious disease for this. So it’s like you have your ecosystem and your thing is working. And it’s all going as you want it to, right? Like healthfully, I guess, would be the metaphor. And then we introduce a germ or a bug, right, a bacteria or a virus that comes in and can kind of change the whole ecosystem or cause an infection, right?
And so what we’re talking about here really with beliefs is thought patterns. And so it’s sort of like a thought infection, right? It’s like we feel good about something that we are doing or something that we’ve made or something we’re working on, until someone else comes along and either actually offers us the idea that it’s not so great, or we kind of imagine that they would offer us that idea.
And I think this happens to people all the time, right? And especially when we feel vulnerable. Like if we’re making something creative, right? If we’re doing art, if we’re doing creative writing, but also something else that could feel vulnerable, like we want to start a new business, or we’re worried what people will think about the business or we’re worried what people will think about us as a business owner versus whatever else we’ve always done that they know us as.
Or actually when I was first kind of beginning to question my sexuality and to think like, oh, I think I’m not straight. Actually, I think maybe I’m queer there was a part of me that thought that was really fun and interesting and exciting. And then I was also worried about what other people would think, right? So that was one where people weren’t even necessarily saying anything to me.
But I have the internet so I could see some of the things that people sometimes say about later in life queer women or feminine queer women. And I could see those and so I was kind of at risk of uploading those to my brain. I was at risk of having a little thought infection from other people’s opinions which may have been said to me out loud, but in that case rarely were, or which I could see on the internet. Those did exist and so my brain was like, oh, these could apply to you.
And then also, sometimes we don’t even see the evidence on the internet, but we’re just like, oh, it would really suck and hurt my feelings if someone thought this. So then we kind of become obsessed with like, maybe someone is thinking that right now. So that can be a really painful experience and it can block us from doing lots of things.
It can block us from working on our creative writing. It can block us from sharing our creative writing with the world. It can block us from wanting to develop a new skill in our day job. And then if we even develop that skill, it can block us from wanting to share that skill. So this can be really disruptive on a lot of layers, right?
So how do we deal with it? What do we do? So this is what I was coaching my client on. My client has done a really amazing thing, she’s created something really wonderful. And now she’s at the part of the process where she’s sharing that with other people. And some other people are going to like it and say nice things, but she’s trying to actually get an outcome, right, where someone would need to say like, yes, I want that. And so far no one has said, yes, I want that in this one context. And some people have said, “No thank you, I don’t want that,” right?
So this is actually so interesting because sometimes when people say no thank you, they say a bunch of nice things, but then they say, no thank you. And then we’re like, oh, they hate us and think we’re terrible. Versus maybe they like it, but they passed on it for some other reasons we don’t really know. What we know is that they passed on it or we know whatever feedback they gave us about why people have said no.
So, anyways, this is where it comes back to official internal policies, because what we were talking about is how to be less susceptible to those thoughts of other people. Whether it’s literal thoughts other people are having and telling you out of their face hole or whether it’s imagined thoughts, like the thoughts we’re afraid someone has. Or whether it’s thoughts we’ve seen some people have on the internet, like as the example with my queer sexuality journey.
So, basically, what an official internal policy is, is you getting clear in writing what your official stance on the thing is, right? And what I like about this is it’s kind of like taking a page out of a kind of more corporate playbook, right? It’s like when you work in a corporate company or you work in a business, even if it’s not corporate, maybe it’s a smaller business. They have a brand, and they have official statements, and they have official positions on things.
And often as people we don’t develop our official positions, we’re just kind of like, well, I think this, or I think that. And there’s nothing wrong with the I think this, or I think that. But sometimes if we know that we’re going to be susceptible to the thoughts of others, it can be really powerful to have an official internal statement that you can go back to and review and remind yourself of when your brain is trying to become infected with that other person’s thoughts or when your brain is trying to upload an imaginary point of view that it’s afraid other people will have.
Okay, so what’s an example of this? So in my business I do sales, right? Like I sell coaching, right? I deliver the coaching also, that’s the part I really like, is getting to coach people and getting to talk about coaching ideas. But since I’m the only person in my business, I also do the sales, right? I do the marketing, I do the sales.
And so my thought about sales that I want to have, my official internal policy is that sales is just me having a conversation with another human being to see if it’s a good fit for us to work together and to see if it’s a good fit, like if the tools that I have and teach can help this person get what they want, right? That feels really yummy to me. That feels really aligned. It feels really good. It doesn’t feel like, oh, I’m a sales person who’s just selling to sell, right?
It feels like I’m just a human being having loving connected conversations with potential clients, and with existing clients, right? Because sometimes I sell things to people who are already my clients. But a lot of people could have other thoughts about sales. And if you get on the internet, a lot of people do have other thoughts about sales. And even if you didn’t get on the internet, my brain is so creative so it can imagine all kinds of negative thoughts that people could have about sales.
So if I want to have a good experience of sales, it’s really beneficial for me to create my official internal policy. And then second of all, to stay in touch with it instead of getting distracted by and attached to any thought that someone else offers or any thought that the internet might offer or any thought that my brain is afraid someone might have of me or afraid someone might have about sales, right?
So, for an example, somebody else could tell me, oh, I hate sales, it’s so hard. So they’re offering me that policy. And then part of what I can do is say, I don’t think I want that policy, it doesn’t match my official internal policy. So I’m going to say thanks, no thanks. I’m not going to adopt that policy. I’m not going to become infected with that thought pattern, right?
Or I could be on the internet and people on the internet could be like, oh, sales is so sleazy, it’s so manipulative. I don’t want to upload that thought either. I don’t want that to be my point of view because sales is something I do and it’s something I’m going to need to continue to do if I want the business to stay in business.
Also, I don’t want to be manipulative. And I don’t think that I have to be manipulative in order to do sales and to be good at it, right? Because, to me, being good at it is being kind to myself, being kind to the other person, seeing if I think it’s a good fit, sharing what I know coaching can do. And then trusting that if they’re supposed to be my client, this is a little woo woo, but I am a little woo woo on the inside y’all.
So I’m like, oh, if they’re going to be my client, it’s going to work out. And if they don’t hire me, then that’s not what needs to happen and that’s okay, too. To me, that’s not manipulative. That’s a lot of just showing up and communicating honestly and authentically. And also trusting the other person’s knowledge and expertise.
If they think they want to hire me, great, and then we’re going to work together. And if they think they don’t, that’s also great. I don’t need them to hire me for me to feel good or okay about myself or to feel like the sales call was successful. Because to me, successful doesn’t mean they become my client, successful means we have a wonderful conversation and we figure out how they can move forward, whether it’s with me or not, right?
So we talked about already thoughts other people might say out of their face, thoughts the internet might say, and then human brains have this magical capacity to come up with what would hurt our feelings the most or what would be the most terrible thing, just in our imagination, right?
So in my imagination, my imagination could come up with another negative thought about sales. And then it’s my job to notice my imagination doing that and to say, thanks, no thanks.
Now, sometimes the internet, other people or imagination might bring up something you do want to consider. You might want to be like, oh, is there some useful content here? Do I want to address this? Is there something I need to learn more about?
For instance if someone was like, oh, there’s this sales technique and it’s problematic for these reasons. And let’s say someone says that and I use that sales technique, then I might be like, oh, let me look at that and let me see if I agree that that’s problematic. Let me do some research. Let me find out what they’re talking about.
So it’s not that we never take information from other people. The official internal policy is more a way to keep yourself on track if you happen to be highly influenceable. And a lot of humans are highly influenceable because we’re social mammals and we like to know what other people are doing and kind of fit in or belong.
And we don’t like to stick out and none of us want to be an outcast, right? Because there was a time in the history of our species when if you didn’t fit in and belong, you were probably going to die because humans weren’t capable of caring for themselves individually at that time.
We could get into a whole thing about community care versus self-care and if humans are actually able to care for ourselves individually now. But we’re going to leave that conversation for a different time because I want to stay focused, at least a little bit. You know I love a tangent, but I want to stay focused on this idea of official internal policies, what they are and how they can be useful to you, right?
Okay, so basically, you have your official internal policy. You’re going to design that on purpose. It’s not just going to be whatever bullshit your brain says to you all day long because your brain, if your brain is anything like my brain and my clients brains and everyone’s brains I know, it says a bunch of bullshit.
And probably a lot of that is stuff it just learned from socialization, like from the whole culture, or things in your house growing up, or things it inferred from TV and movies. It’s probably not what you want your actual official policy to be.
So official policies need to be created by design. What do I want to think about this? What do I want to bring myself back to when my brain finds a new idea that it might want to get distracted by or when my brain encounters a thought germ that it maybe is going to get an infection from?
And when you think about how to design your official internal policies, I think a lot of it’s like, what are your values? Who do you want to be? And then what policies are going to help you create what you want to create, right?
So do you need a policy about courage and resilience because you want to be taking courageous action over and over again, knowing that a lot of it won’t work out because that’s what’s required to go after the goal that you’re working on, right?
Like I have a business and having a business often does require, at least in my opinion, it requires taking action over and over again. And a lot of that action is not doing what you want it to do. And then you can choose to think that’s really brave, and that feels to me really yummy.
Or you could choose to think a different thing about it, which might feel less yummy. So if I want to do it and I want to keep doing it, then to me I need a yummy, supportive thought about it. So I would design a yummy, supportive official internal policy about that thing.
So you can sort of design these for any area of your life, but what my client did was she designed them for areas where she felt extremely sensitive to the opinions of others, and especially where that sensitivity to the opinions of others is going to create obstacles, right?
Like if you want to build a business but you are extremely sensitive to the opinions of others about building a business, then that might be a place where you doubly want an official internal policy because you need a policy to kind of protect your thoughts from other people’s thoughts.
And then especially if you know you have people in your life who are critical of starting a business or who are critical of your ability to start something, that would be a reason that you might want to create a policy so that you have something to come back to when you encounter those other thoughts.
And the reason I really want you to write the policy down is so you can revisit it. When we’re really sensitive to or easily influenced by people’s thoughts, when we encounter those people’s thoughts it can be hard to even remember what our thoughts are because we can kind of get on the bandwagon with the other thoughts so quickly or become infected with the other thoughts so quickly.
It’s like, if you want to go into the infection metaphor, it’s like a new thought comes in and then it proliferates, is that the right word? It creates a bunch more of itself and then you’re like drowning in the new thought, right?
So when you have that official internal policy, you have something you can come back to, not just in your head, but literally I want it to be a document on your phone, a paper on your desk, a bookmark in your book. Like write it down and stick it in there, literally, so that you have something where you can remind yourself.
It’s almost like a life raft to pull yourself out of the sea of everyone else’s thoughts and to get yourself back on track with who are you deciding to be? What kind of life are you deciding to live? What kind of things are you deciding to support?
How are you setting yourself up for success versus just getting bogged down with everyone else’s thoughts and allowing all those other thoughts and opinions to block you from doing what you want to do and creating the kind of life you want to live?
So that’s basically the tool and the concept. And I’ll say one more thing, which is this. I personally make a lot of choices that don’t necessarily go with the grain of what the culture is doing, right? It’s not that my choices are controversial, necessarily, although they could be to some people. It’s more that I just think they’re maybe unique or different than what is typical. They’re non-conforming, right?
Like in a world where a lot of people have a nine to five job, which I’ve also had, I have a business. In a world where a lot of people work 40 hours a week, I absolutely do not work 40 hours a week. I don’t even know how much I probably do work, but like maybe I would say 20 to 30 hours a week, right?
In a world where a lot of people own their house, Alex owns the house we live in, but I don’t own the house. I don’t own any real estate, even though I’m almost 40 years old and I have enough means to be able to do so, probably. I mean, I’ve never tried but I think I probably could, right? I no longer own a car, right? Alex owns the car in our household, and we have like a set of agreements about the car.
Alex and I, particularly as a couple, the way we do things in our relationship is very different than how a lot of people do things. And I wanted to touch on this because anytime that you want to be making different choices than what is kind of culturally shown or culturally accepted, an official internal policy is going to be even more useful.
Now, for me, for whatever reason, for a long time in my life I think I’ve felt more comfortable than a lot of other people making unconventional choices. Oh, that’s the word I’ve been looking for this whole time, is unconventional. And I make a lot of conventional choices too, don’t get me wrong.
But I think for a long time in my life people would be like, oh, you have to do this. And I’d be like, why? I don’t want to do that, I’m just not going to, right? And so I think, I don’t know, maybe at a young age I read a book where a character made unconventional choices and so I decided I’m allowed to. Maybe it’s because I went to public school later than other people, I was homeschooled for a few years. And I feel like some of my childhood was a little bit feral, which had its own difficulties.
Let me tell you what, when you start public school or any school, right, at second grade and you’ve never been in a classroom before and you don’t know the rules and you don’t know the things you’re supposed to just know to do, that can be very fucking uncomfortable. So there have been drawbacks also.
But I’ve had this ability, this mindset, this like, well, what if there’s a way to do it, and if it’s not conventional, that’s okay. Maybe it could still work. I’ve had this for a long time, and I think it’s worked out really well for me in helping me design a life that really, really delights me versus living a life that kind of matches what I’m “supposed” to do.
But even if you don’t have that already, you can develop that capacity. And I think official internal policies are one of the best ways to do it because it’s deciding on purpose what you want your rules to be. Not that policies are rules, because they’re not. They’re kind of more like guiding visions or something.
But it’s deciding on purpose what policies you want to live your life by, because a lot of us are living our life by whatever unspoken policies we’ve absorbed from our culture, from our parents, from TV, from movies. And a lot of times, those unspoken policies have nothing to do with the kind of lives we want to live and the kind of careers we want to build and the kind of relationships we want to enjoy.
So I would invite you to pick an area in your life where maybe it’s like feeling a little funky, it’s not going 100% the way you want it to or you’re feeling really sensitive to the opinions of others. You’re feeling like you’re having a hard time getting out from under those societal expectations, and write down what the societal expectations or current policies are and then write down what you want the policies to be.
And then whenever your brain takes you back to the one, just remind yourself like, oh, no, we’ve had a policy update. We’re doing this now. And see what changes when you do that.
All right, that’s what I have to teach you today about official internal policies. And I also want to say I have room for a few one on one clients, and I have room for some additional people to join the fall cohort of SAF. And if you join either of those coaching programs, we can talk about your official internal policies and we can set those up to be really powerful for you and help you create and enjoy your satisfying life and career.
And I would love to do that work with you and the first step is just to hop on a consult call with me and we can talk about what’s going on in your life and career, what’s working, what’s not working. And we can see, like I was talking about earlier, if coaching with me and my programs is a good fit to help you get more of what you want.
All right, that’s all I have for you. Have a great week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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