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834. How to Stop Overthinking and Take Action with Dr. Pamela Garcy · Daily Influence

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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Be sure to follow, subscribe, and share Daily Influence with someone who could use a little extra positivity today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And make us part of your Daily routine, whether it's during your commute, on a walk, or an quiet momentous for you, because you're influenced matters.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Greg Colino.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today on Daily Influence, I'm joined by Dr. Pamela Garcia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Psychologist, life coach, author, and someone whose works centers on helping people get out of their own way and become more intentional about how they think.
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[SPEAKER_01]: choose and live.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her new book, The Present Coach, was recently released and now available on Amazon.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Pamela describes influence as something that happens in the granular moments of everyday life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that aligns perfectly with what we talk about on the show.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Influence isn't limited to big decisions or highly visible moments.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's also found in how we respond under pressure, how we talk to ourselves, the behaviors we repeat, and what those behaviors communicate to the people around us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we're going to explore the connection between self-influence,
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[SPEAKER_01]: and our influence on others.
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[SPEAKER_01]: How can we get out of our heads and more fully into our lives?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And practical ways to become more intentional about the influence we create every day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Pam, welcome to Daily Influence.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Greg.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for that nice introduction.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Pam, you've spent decades helping people understand themselves and changed the way they think and behave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'd like to go back before the psychologist, coach and author.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What experiences in your own life most shaped your understanding of how much influence our internal dialogue can have on the direction of our lives.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love that question because it really speaks to the power of our thoughts and directing our choices and our lives.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And definitely it's an interesting thing too because I don't think it was a one and done kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was an emergence of understanding.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that occurred over a long period of time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But if I go way back, I can remember observing as a kid, observing my peers, and how they would make choices based upon how they felt about themselves, or what they were telling themselves.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I had a very good friends when I was all the way back in elementary school, who, one day, she just sort of pulled away.
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[SPEAKER_02]: a group of kids who were using substances, we'll just say, and I was really concerned that I didn't understand what was going on.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember asking her about it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, just leaving alone, I want to be cool.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that idea of coolness, you know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And thinking you're only cool if you do XYZ and stuff like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember being really interested in how her thinking was affecting her choices.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How she saw herself there, even though I didn't necessarily have labels for her.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So then as time march on,
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that my own self-perception was that I was a good kid, I was a smart kid, and I was a nerdy kid, so in high school there was this biology teacher and he would open up his classroom to the kids for the kids who weren't in clicks, you know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, that's my group, you know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The kids who aren't in any kind of clip, the kids who are really kind of studying and stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I went into that classroom and I started to make friends there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I really just thought of myself that way and so that's how I was showing up in my life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when I went to college, I decided to go out of state and have a new experience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that was curious that happened.
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[SPEAKER_02]: is there was this girl who I became friendly with.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, I know this person who knew you when you were in high school.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, world's colliding, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, and this kid said, you were one of the coolest people that he ever met.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, what are you sure?
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's the same person, same high school, you know?
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was that word again, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: It shifted me a little bit, it's not that I thought of myself that way entirely, but it opened my mind a little, I was like, wait a minute, I don't actually know what other people think and maybe I don't even have any control over that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe when I don't focus on that, I'm better off, you know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it started to shift me and I started to see that relationship a little bit more and a little bit more and it's just evolved over time as I studied psychology and coaching and gotten a deeper understanding of it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That entire conversation is interesting because most people probably don't think of it as influence, but we're influencing ourselves constantly why there were conscious of it or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's called automatic thoughts in some psychology philosophies or automatic negative thoughts sometimes, but it's just like an ongoing stream of thinking that our brains are doing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we're not, we can't even predict what thought we're going to have next usually.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's the ability to slow our own process
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes sense and you talk about both self-influence and influencing others.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From the perspective of a responsible influence, I believe we have to understand ourselves before we can fully appreciate the effect we're having on other people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What does healthy self-influence actually look like?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And how can someone recognize when their own thinking is helping them move forward versus quietly getting in their way?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're in a space where you are feeling a lot of negative emotion and you are noticing yourself going into blaming, complaining, whining, what we might nickname as victim mind, that's the time where maybe that influence is not so healthy in terms of our self-influence.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if we break that word down, you know, response ability.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's our ability to choose that response to the situation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So rather than putting that word that the sense of causality in an external force that's, you know, our circumstance outside of us, we wanna restore that and put it back inside ourselves and say, wait a minute, maybe there's a different way to respond that I can access.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Even if I only have 10% control, can I grab onto that 10% and shift the outcome that I'm getting?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Recognizing a pattern is one thing and changing it when we've been thinking or behaving that way for years can be much harder.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Many leaders and business owners are very good at solving external problems yet they can
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[SPEAKER_01]: fear of failure, people pleasing self-criticism, or needing certainty before taking action.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What have you learned from your own challenges, failures, or your work with clients about the stories we tell ourselves that most commonly keep capable people stop?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that there are lots of stories we can tell ourselves, I could probably film a book on just that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But it's the stories as you brought up, you know, I have to be perfect or I can't mess up or I have to have certainty.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or this isn't something I can never control.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm helpless and powerless here, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: These kind of ideas can really start to run the show
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[SPEAKER_02]: benefit if we take a breath, step back, and notice how our brain is narrating experience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It isn't about, like you said, having that fake positivity.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not about that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's about getting honest with ourselves and saying, what power do I have here?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And stepping into that, it's about
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[SPEAKER_01]: this alone doesn't create change, at some point inside has to turn into behavior.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's make this very practical.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Someone listening right now realizes, I'm overthinking this, I'm stuck in my head, and I'm not taking action.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Can you walk us through a simple framework?
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[SPEAKER_01]: They can use in that moment to move from thought to constructive action.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a great question.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to just say before I introduce that framework, that it's so normal to overthink stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a common experience that we have.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just what our brain does to try to protect us and help us do the best that we can do.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But obviously it can get us into loops that don't serve us or others.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I like really simple.
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[SPEAKER_02]: a little framework which I call now.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it's consistent with the present coach.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Idea, but the end stands for notice.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The O is for Orient and the W is for asking a what question.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll walk us through that briefly.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So notice, so notice what's happening.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Notice that you're overthinking in this case.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just notice, be the noticeer.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then orient, so orient to presence is what I most recommend.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Get yourself present, like, okay, let me take a breath.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Let me look around, I'm in a room, I'm safe, I'm okay.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is all right, I can handle this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's an orientation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then the W, asking a what question.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So one of what question is, that's very powerful.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What is a small step I can take right now?
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[SPEAKER_02]: What is that next small step?
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a little saying move a muscle change of thought.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes when we get into action, we get right out of the over-sinking.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If they practice that consistently, what progress actually look like or how could they measure whether it was working?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So progress is something that we wanna measure
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[SPEAKER_02]: that we can measure, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so whether it be how many successful meetings that I have today, and maybe we put a little tally mark if we consider something successful or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or how many positive interactions that I have today, depending on how you want to measure it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or how am I leaving my day?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Do I feel depleted?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or do I feel happy and invigorated and more alive today?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just taking a look at something measurable and actually writing it down.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to measure a word that's vague like success, define that word, please.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what does that mean?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean that people said yes to you or does that mean that you got your point out?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what does it mean for you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So though I haven't defined it before you measure it is the only request I have.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you can keep track, start tracking a variable that's important and notice how coming into a meeting, for example, or speaking to your team, or even just speaking to your family or a friend, notice how that changes and shifts for you when you feel more centered.
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[SPEAKER_01]: to bring it down to small behaviors because those seemingly insignificant choices become patterns and patterns eventually become a part of our influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One of the principles we talk about in responsible influence is that our influence isn't determined solely by our intentions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We also had to take responsibility for our impact.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For leaders, especially their stress, frustration, fear, or self-criticism can spill into a team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: without them ever intentionally choosing for that to happen, how can a leader become more aware of the emotional or behavioral signals they're sending to other people?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what are two or three daily habits they can adopt to make their influence more intentional rather than accidental?
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[SPEAKER_02]: such a great question because we certainly can have the intention to have a certain impact.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like this morning, I thought I was being really funny and told a joke to my husband and he did not find a funny, so that's a good example of not having the impact that I was intending.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But certainly as leaders, we can have that same experience with our team sometimes,
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I would offer that you first start by slowing down.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, on show up to your meeting, even if you can show up a little early, even a minute early.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So that you have a minute to just practice the pause and take a nice slow deep breath in and out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I mean by practicing the pause.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So we wanna slow down first of all.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then we want to pay attention to two types of feedback.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So the feedback that we want to pay attention to is our internal feedback, our feelings, our emotions, how we're experiencing the moment and realize that we can always slow that down.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Take another breath.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we also want to pay attention to the external feedback, which is what's going on in the room.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Read the room, as they say.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But take a moment, you know, look at the facial expressions are people nodding, are they smiling?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are they centered?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are they wanting to talk and contribute?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are they closed?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are they angry?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are they somehow withdrawing from the conversation?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it becoming a heated conversation where the voices are escalating, getting faster and louder and trying to be heard?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is that a space where you might want to slow the whole conversation down and and stop it for a moment and let everybody get the breath right down their thoughts and try again.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So we have what we want to learn to respond to the feedback and part of that is to recognize that the feedback is there to help us adjust is there to help us course correct that includes our emotions they're just signals that we can respond to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and a so true and that kind of awareness often comes with experience, which makes me curious about what you understand today that you may not have understood earlier in your life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you could sit down with your younger self at the beginning of your career, what would you tell her about self trust getting out of her own way or the responsibility that comes with influencing other people?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, all areas where we can
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[SPEAKER_02]: improve when we're first starting out for sure.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, on the self-trusting, I actually would tell her not to worry too much if she's not feeling that yet, because it does come with experience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we need to actually test stuff out so that we can learn from our experiences.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Getting out of her own way, I would say that
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[SPEAKER_02]: She can stand, she could stand to be less, less self-critical and just keep taking action and responding to feedback, thinking about what she wants from that one conversation, one conversation at a time, and then in terms of the responsibility of leading other people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Recognizing that people are going through their own things and not everything is about her.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just to try to be as compassionate and understanding as she can be for other people and try to hear them, listen to what they're saying, really get into what it is they're wanting so that she could be most helpful, focusing in on, focusing in on being of service,
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[SPEAKER_02]: trying to manage their impression of her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's great and amazing for someone listening who may be struggling with that same lesson today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What would you encourage them to start doing differently now rather than waiting ears to figure it out?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I do think that that's a great question too because it accelerates the learning, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: If I choose to take this advice.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I would say that actually one of the most powerful choices that I made that I benefited from was first of all, having a mentor and second of all, having a coach.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Those two things really, really helped me in terms of accelerating my learning.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's something about a weekly or bi-multi-needing if you will that where you sit and you have designated space to review what's going on in your life to review a circumstance that puzzles you or that you're still growing around with another person who might have already gone there thinking, you know, that person might,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome guidance that can help and very often I found that the coaching's circumstance gave me a lot of guidance, a lot of help and really help me just to come out things from a completely different perspective that is much more positive.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's great advice that I want to close by taking this all the way back to your observation of about daily influence that influences built through the granular things that we do every day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If someone listening wants to become more positive and responsible influence, but feels like they need to do something significant to make a difference, what would you tell them?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I would say to consider that
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[SPEAKER_02]: idea that they have that they need to do something significant and to consider it's opposite.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What if actually what you need to do today is something that your mind labels insignificant?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, maybe it's that small act of expressing appreciation, maybe it's taking the breath
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[SPEAKER_02]: It could be something so small that makes a bigger impact than you realize.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Pam, thank you so much for joining me today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One of the ideas I hope everyone takes in this conversation is that influence doesn't begin when someone gives us a leadership title, ask for advice, or starts paying attention to us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It happens first in the way we talked ourselves, the choices we make, the behaviors we repeat, and how those choices ripple outward to the people around us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do so?
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[SPEAKER_02]: They can email me, actually, Dr. Garcia at gmail.com.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll put that information in the show notes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll also link to your book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Pam, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your stories and advice.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so grateful for you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Greg.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm grateful for you and the work you're doing in the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's very important.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, and to our listeners, influences already happening.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So as you go through the rest of your day, don't worry about doing something enormous.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, identify one thing you can do more intentionally today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One thought you can challenge, one conversation, you can approach differently, one person you can encourage, or one action you've been avoiding, that you can finally take.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because those small choices aren't insignificant.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Daily Influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Help us spread the positivity by subscribing and sharing with those around you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, small actions create big impact.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Keep showing up, leading and growing one data time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep having a positive, responsible influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bye-bye.