The Modern LeadHer Way

[106] Rewriting Your Future: Introducing The 7 Stages of Sweet Success

• Emma Clayton • Season 4 • Episode 106

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If you’ve redefined success using the Success Roadmap, this is your next step. In this intro audio, Emma walks you through the real (and often messy) stages between dreaming bigger… and actually creating a life that feels like yours.

You’ll learn what to expect on the journey to your goals, why so many people get stuck, and what it really takes to move through resistance, sabotage, and self-doubt on the way to sweet success.

This isn’t a checklist.

It’s a practice.

And it starts here.

You’ll also hear about the bonus Belief Builder experience, and how to use the Equals Game to build the belief required to hold your vision.

Let’s begin.

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Speaker 1:

This is the Modern Leader Way the podcast for ambitious, driven career women who want to feel good on the way to the top. I'm Emma Clayton and I'll be sharing with you tangible advice to help you stop sacrificing your soul in the name of success and experience more balance, confidence and fulfilment both in and out of work. Hello and welcome back to the Modern Leader Way, where we are continuing the thread of the last few weeks where we've been very much focusing in on the success roadmap and your redefined version of success on your terms, what that looks like and talking about the identity shift that needs to take place in order to move you towards what it is that you're creating in your life in the future. And I've been cooking up a little something in the background. It's a short course that I'm calling rewrite your future, which is a beautiful lead-on to the success roadmap, and what I wanted to do is make available to you the kind of summary, the welcome, the overview of what the seven stages of success are all about, so that you can decide for yourself if you want to dive in and join us. For the rest of the course, it is priced at £97, but if you have the Success Roadmap, then you can get in for £27. So a little hint to there if you've not already downloaded your free Success Roadmap, go to emmaclaytonxocom or the link in the show notes and you can download that for free and you'll have the link in there to join us in rewrite your future. But for now, before you make any decision, tune in to what is the welcome, the introduction to this short course where we're going to be talking about dreaming bigger, believing faster and acting bolder as you create success on your terms. So get that cuppa and enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Rewrite your Future. This is a very natural follow on to the success roadmap. So if you haven't yet downloaded that and been through the process of looking at where your current reality of success came from, who influenced it and whether or not it's still something that's important to you, and looked at your values to determine what your new definition of success on your terms is moving forward, then head to your portal where you're listening to this and you can download the pdf and work your way through that. It shouldn't take you too long, but it really is worth putting in that groundwork to get you to this point, because it's only when you understand what your new definition of success is, that you can then start to work out what that looks like and how you get to create it. And that's what we're doing here over the next seven stages that we're going to cover is we're going to look at what happens when we start to move towards our vision, our big dream, our goals, and the reality is it's not always pretty, and that's because change is hard.

Speaker 1:

Changing your current reality isn't easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Everyone would be able to change their current financial situation, their body, their fitness levels, their weight. People will be able to change their jobs, do something they love, but they don't. They stay stuck, because change is actually difficult. It's simple, however, you just got to really understand the mechanics of it. So in this introduction, I'm just going to give you a high level overview of the seven stages of sweet success. Going to give you a high level overview of the seven stages of sweet success before we get into the nitty gritty.

Speaker 1:

So the seven stages of success were taught to me by my mentor at the time, jana Kingsford, back in 2021 when I did her belief ethics certification. Belief ethics is what I now call the equals game. It's a very simple tool that we can use to shift our beliefs from something that's quite limiting and holding us back to something that can actually propel us forward, and it's actually a very complementary tool that we get to use throughout this process, throughout rewriting your future. And so, to complement this course, I have gifted you another course, which I call Belief Builder, which is a 14 day quest. It doesn't have to take you that long, but it really does give you the fundamental kind of guidelines around using the equals game to help you on this journey of rewriting your story. So I definitely recommend you go check that out, especially when we get to stage two, which is all around around cultivating, building this real, rock solid belief in yourself as you move towards that vision of the future.

Speaker 1:

So I have full permission to share this, so I'm super excited to bring this to you because I think when you understand this, it explains so much, especially when we come up against our goals. Time and time again, we hit those energetic brick walls of resistance. Right, it feels like a physical brick wall, but actually it's just energetic, it's imaginary. Or when we constantly sabotage our success. We get a taste of that sweet success and then we sabotage our progress and we go backwards. This is going to explain so much. It really is a game changer. What are the seven stages? The seven stages of success? Stage one is setting the goal or the dream.

Speaker 1:

Goals to me are very masculine, old paradigm. For me they're kind of corporate related. I don't love talking about goals. I talk about goals because I think they appeal to the masses and to my audience a little bit more than perhaps dreaming, and dreaming is something that we're not encouraged to do. It's often a negative connotation when we say someone's a dreamer and actually what we want to do is tap back into those desires and actually dream a bit more and get imaginative about our future, because the majority of the population aren't doing this and, as a result, they will lead a mediocre life and that might be okay for them. But the fact that you're here, I don't think that's okay for you, whether or not you realize that. Yet you are meant for more. You are meant to realize your dreams. I want you to realize your dreams in this one life that we get, and I'm gonna give you a question that you can start asking yourself day to day, moment by moment, because it is a. It's the same as anything else, and I know that's possibly boring to hear, but with any of this work it's a practice. So if you're not practiced at sitting there and daydreaming about what life could be like in an ideal situation in the future, then that's just a muscle you get to flex and work out, and that's what we're going to do here.

Speaker 1:

So stage one is setting the goal or the big dream. And the thing is, if you can start to see it, you can only see what's actually possible for you. So if you can start to dream a bit bigger and start to imagine a little bit more, what you see in the future through your visualization or your imagination is actually possible for you, so that then gets to be something that you focus on out there in the future. It may be a year later, it might maybe five years down the line, it might be 15 years down the line, it doesn't really matter, it just gives you that focal point, right. So setting the goal and the big dream is kind of paramount. That's what we're going to look at in stage one, all right. So we're going to go into all of these in way more detail each day Now.

Speaker 1:

Stage two is the belief building stage, and this is what most people don't do. Stage three is taking action. Most people will go oh, I want that, I'm going to start taking action, I'm going to start moving towards my goals. And let's just take weight loss for an example, because this is one that I'm sure most people can resonate with. So a lot of people will decide yeah, I'm going to go on a diet on Monday. Okay, so what do I need to do? I need to prepare the meals for the week. I need to go and do a shop, I need to write a list, I need to open my fitness pal, which I haven't done for ages. I need to book into the gym. Like they're gonna start taking action, right.

Speaker 1:

What they don't do is stage two, which is the belief building stage, and this is where most people get it wrong, because when you set a goal, what will happen is, if you don't look at your beliefs, you'll end up lowering the bar. So let's just say I want to lose 50 pounds. Most people will be subconsciously searching for the evidence. Have I lost 50 pounds before? Oh, I got quite close to that that time when I lost 30 pounds, but of course, I just blew, blew it all and gained all the weight again. So, um, maybe I should lower my expectation to 25 pound. So, all of a sudden, this big goal of losing 50 pounds, you're lowering that bar. You're lowering that dream to match your belief. So your beliefs down here, your goals up here, rather than building up your belief, you're lowering your bar. So what we do in stage two, once set the goal, is we're going to build our belief. So we're going to take the goal and we're going to start playing the Eagles game. Then we take action.

Speaker 1:

Taking action is also where your habits start to form. So what you want in the action taking phase is to establish, like, some new habits, and the way I like to do this is like really simple, small steps. So, rather than what I said, we're going to start prepping and planning our meals and like batch cooking, and we're going to go to the gym three times a week and we're going to walk five days a week and we're going to swim twice and we're going to do all the things right Drink green smoothies, drink more water, overwhelm ourselves. It would be actually start to take action. So start to plan what we want to do, but actually start to take action in baby steps. So we're actually forming new habits over the long term and then what you get with the action phase is your kind of new habits that are going to serve you when you hit resistance. Now resistance comes in as you're in full swing.

Speaker 1:

So, coming back to if anyone has tried to lose weight before you've taken the action, you haven't, probably haven't built belief because this hasn't been in your sphere of awareness up until now. But we're assuming we're building up our belief to match our goal, our big dream of having, like, weighing less or being a certain dress size or whatever. We're taking action, we're building out these habits. So we're drinking more water over time and we started to go for longer walks and we've started to go to the gym twice a week and we're building up to include a swim in there, and then every Saturday we're having a green smoothie with our breakfast and then, you know, we're kind of building it out softly and slowly, like that. We're getting like further down the line.

Speaker 1:

We've got our new habits and what's going to happen is resistance is going to hit and this is where it feels like treacle. It feels freaking hard work to keep going and you're having this battle in your mind that says, but I don't want to go to the gym or I don't want to eat healthy today, I just want to lay on the sofa, watch Netflix and eat popcorn and chocolate. You're literally going to start to meet that resistance and you're like I was doing so. Well, why am I not wanting to go to the gym? Why am I cancelling the gym the day before when I was so into it? Or why am I all of a sudden slacking and not wanting to do my um prepping or my planning or my batch cooking or something? So you're hitting resistance, and resistance is described as fear made manifest now. Fear made manifest now. Fear made manifest now.

Speaker 1:

So this is where, if you imagine what's, if you're on a weight loss journey, what's the worst that can happen? What would failure look like? And I guess for me, failure would look like losing the weight and pinning it all back on again, and I have a lot of evidence to show that that is quite a hefty possibility. So for me, the biggest fear is, I guess, failure, like lose some weight or don't lose any weight at all and you've done all this, or and then gain it back on again, and some maybe, um, but what you're doing in the resistance phase, when you're coming up against this brick wall, when you're not actually taking action anymore, is you're manifesting that worst fear right now, in the moment. Once you can break through that resistance and we're going to talk about how you do that in stage four that's where the magic happens. But what carries you forward during the resistance phase is your kind of habits that you've created in the action taking phase.

Speaker 1:

Stage five is celebration, and this is where we are on our way to that sweet success. Right, we're on our way to our goals. So let's just say, with the weight loss example, we've lost 20 pounds of our 50, we decided to go for the 50, we've been taking action, we've been building belief, we've hit resistance, but actually we've moved through that resistance because we've just stuck with our meal planning and our drinking more water like as a minimum and going out for walks. So we've consistently taken action on that through resistance, which is what gets us through the resistance, even if we're not doing everything we hoped to take action on and we can start to celebrate. We've hit a milestone, so we can celebrate 20 pounds.

Speaker 1:

How do we do that? Well, we find different ways, other ways of doing it than eating food right. So that might be to treat yourself to a massage or something like that, or treat yourself to a shop because you can now fit in the next dress size down. So we're celebrating, but we celebrate to really acknowledge our progress and those small steps along the way, and we celebrate in the name of gratitude. So when we celebrate, we're doing it to say, oh my god, I'm so grateful for myself, for taking this action up until now. I'm so grateful that I, my body, is getting healthier and happier and I'm on my way to my dreams. Like we just we have to celebrate, but we don do. A lot of people don't do this. They skip this step. So we're going to talk in detail about how you get to celebrate and what happens is we celebrate and then we go oh shit, I'm reaching new heights here, I'm getting closer to my goal.

Speaker 1:

This is uncomfortable and, if you like, imagine the analogy of going climbing a mountain. If your 50 pounds is at the top and you've reached 20 pounds down here, you're already a lot higher up the mountain. When you look back down at that version of you that was 20 pounds heavier, you're like, oh, this is uncomfortable. Up here I need to acclimatize. Now you need to acclimatize to having less oxygen. Further up the mountain it feels uncomfortable and what we do in sabotage is we take a few step backs down to the mountain to you know, to where it was comfortable before.

Speaker 1:

And what we need to do in sabotage and it's like pretty unconventional, I guess, is the word to use it we need to recognise those flu symptoms for what they are not the flu, but sabotage. It's a sabotage flu. We need to see the tiredness as sabotage. We need to see, perhaps, the depression or the anxiety as a form of sabotage. And we're going to work out what your personal brand of resistance and sabotage looks like. So you're gonna you're gonna totally call yourself out on this, because you're gonna look back at what evidence you have about your stages and you're gonna go oh, I see what I do in resistance for me. I hide out, I go into my shell. I don't want to be, I don't want to be sociable, I don't want to be seen, I don't certainly don't want to be online, so I hide out. My brand of sabotage is generally to turn to food, and anxiety comes in for me. So anxiety and food are the things that I sabotage with um. So you're going to get to know what your brand of resistance and sabotage are and we're going to learn how to acclimatize during like the need to acclimatize during sabotage and not be taken down a step or two down that mountain back to where you were.

Speaker 1:

And only then can you really start to feel into that feeling of sweet success which is stage seven. And and when you get to that stage it's more of a feeling right, when we're celebrating, it's kind of forced. We kind of need to force this celebration. We need to consider how are you going to celebrate? Well, I haven't really thought about celebrating. It's why I have, if you work with me privately, one-to-one. The first thing we do every call is we say what are we celebrating this week since we last met? What are we celebrating? Because we want to. We want to recognize everything. You have to be grateful for everything. You want to just pat yourself on the back for as big or as small as it might be. So it's a bit more forced at celebration stage, but when you get to success stage, you feel it, and a really good example of this was when I left corporate actually so a big dream of mine was to be a boss of my own. That was a big dream. I didn't know how it's gonna happen. I got faced with redundancy and saw an opportunity, and the celebration for me was probably the three leaving dues I had, and they were all paid for by the company. We all had a great time. That was the fourth celebration I'm leaving. I've been here 20 years. I'm taking redundancy, I've got. I'm seeing it as an opportunity. This is great.

Speaker 1:

Sabotage was kind of like. I didn't recognize what was happening at the time, but that sabotage was kind of like oh, I was sitting at my desk with my new laptop on the Monday after. It's like what do I do now? Like I've got to create my own opportunities. I've got to go out and put myself out there and this is all. This is like not what it's cut out to be, and so it's kind of like finding ways to cope with that new adjustment, like this was something I needed to acclimatise to and I needed to change. I couldn't operate in the same nine to five way that I had done for 20 years prior.

Speaker 1:

Right, but when I felt the success of it, oh my God, it knocked me sideways and it was one day when I was driving down the road to go to the gym. I was going to go to my favourite yoga class and this Whitney Houston song came on Give Me One Moment in Time Singing along. And then I heard the words as I was driving along and it hit me give me one moment in time where I'm more than I thought I could be. And I thought I'm here. I'm here, I'm more than I thought I could be, and I just bawled, bawled my eyes out, and it's like that was the moment of sweet success for me. I was now my own boss, I was now broken away from my corporate career and like there was a whole new, whole new world opening up for me and I could start some new dreams. I felt it. I felt it on a visceral level and like the cry was beautiful tears. And that song is so special to me now because I remember that feeling, remember when we anchor in those feelings.

Speaker 1:

So they are the seven stages of success setting your goal or your dream, starting to dream bigger, building that belief up to meet your dream. Not lowering your bar of your dream to meet your current belief. Taking the action, meeting the resistance face on understanding what's happening when you're in the resistance, celebrating, forcing that celebration, so that when you get to sabotage, you know well, you almost know that sabotage is coming next and then, when you can ride out your sabotage, you can hit sweet success. They are the seven stages, they are what we're walking through in more detail. But before we get there, I would love for you, if you haven't already been through the success roadmap, to go there and what you can now do is refer to day one of Belief Builder, which is going to really help facilitate that equals game where you're going to look at success equals. Be open to go through the process and see what comes out the other end and I tell you my definition of success was very mainstream.

Speaker 1:

I recognize now success equals money and status money in the bank, savings shares, money and property money. Money money enough money to spend and have the things that I want and status. So, um, director level role. I was pushing for a director level role for five years. Before that I was pushing for a director level role for five years. Before that I was pushing for a vice president role for five years. So that status is what I was pushing for. It's almost power, but power over. In a hierarchy, power is power over, so success would have equaled power over. So see what comes up for you in success equals.

Speaker 1:

This is a really interesting one, because if we're gonna look at the seven stages of success, we need to define success on your terms. This is part of this course and this is part of the most powerful work I've done is redefining success on my terms, and success to me now equals happiness and freedom. Oh my god, success equals freedom. That day when I was driving to that yoga class and I felt that I was more than I thought I could be, I think the last line is I will be, I will be free. Another one I felt so freaking free and that, to me, felt like sweet success, freedom. So success looks very different to me happiness, freedom, health, um, experiences, adventure, fun.

Speaker 1:

Success has nothing to do, or maybe it has something to do with money, like you need money to go on adventures and stuff like that. But it's not my driving factor now. It's not how I define success. So I would love for you to redefine success. So, once you've done your positive flips, see if you can actually go.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I think this is how I want to define success for me on my terms, because I tell you what money and power or money and status wasn't my definition. It was what I was brought up to believe. I was what I was conditioned to believe success meant and that's not just from my parents, although they very much wanted me to go out and get a job for life security, financial security, job for life that was success. When you've got a mortgage paid off, when you've got a job that pays you good money and you get to travel the world and stuff like that with it even better, then you're successful. Right, that was their definition. It wasn't mine. You get to choose what it means to you.

Speaker 1:

So don't skip this homework. Do this work. That is your welcome to rewrite your story. I am so excited to get into more detail of the seven stages of sweet success to help you move through resistance and sabotage on your way to your goals and your big dreams. And yeah, I will see you in the next audio. So if that takes your fancy and you want to join us in rewrite your future, make sure to get your success roadmap and from there you will get access to join us for 27 pounds. I can't wait to see on the inside you, thank you.

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Emma Clayton

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