Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 8 - Managing Your Mind - Interview With Sam Colclough

In this episode, Sam Colclough of As Good As Your Mind shares why you need to prioritise managing your mind. She talks about your mind as your biggest asset when making those changes in your business and life. Sam talks about her story, and her hypnosis, solution-focused therapy and how she’s helped 100s of women including myself show up as the best version of themselves.

Listen and enjoy!

 Key takeaways from this episode:

• Hypnosis replicates REM (Rapid Eye Movement), the part of the process of our sleep designed to move things around and compartmentalise and make sense of it, naturally reducing what's going on in the stress bucket.
  
  
• It's not until you have that conscious awareness around what your mind is doing to start to make the change.
  
  
• Solution-focused therapy is really about empowering the client and helping them understand that they always have the solutions within them, and they've always got the answer.
  
  
• You are limitless at your core. You are the only person that's stopping you from achieving all of your potential.
  
  
• If we stop ourselves from taking action, the primitive mind always wins because it continues to get that evidence that we're not getting what we want. However, there are ways you can manage this.

Episode Timeline:

00:00 Episode and Guest Intro

00:33 Intro

02:15 About Sam

03:19 What led Sam to where she is now and what she does

13:06 Stress reduction hypnosis audio

17:37 The science behind hypnosis

20:23 How your thoughts can work against you

23:43 Solution-focused coaching

26:11 Advice for those who want to change career or start a business

28:28 How to connect with Sam

28:52 Outro

About Sam:

Sam Colclough is the founder of As Good As Your Mind. By trade, she is a clinical psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and mindset coach. She specifically works with female entrepreneurs, service-based female entrepreneurs, coaches, change-makers of the world, and the women here to make a difference in their lives and other people's lives.

Connect and know more about Sam here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/as_good_as_your_mind/ 

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specialising in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential.  It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call.  I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth Gilbey here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/  

Transcription

INTRO: 

So in today's episode, I'm interviewing the lovely Sam Colclough from As Good As Your Mind. And we're going to be talking about why you need to prioritize calming your mind working on your mindset.  I believe prioritising your confidence and mindset is your biggest asset when it comes to making those changes in your business and life. Sam is going to talk about hypnosis solution-focused coaching. And she's also going to tell everybody about her story as well. This is a great episode. I hope you enjoy it.

RUTH: 

Hello, and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I created a glass ceiling with myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

BODY:

RUTH:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, I've got Sam Colclough with me from as good as your mind, who got the pleasure of interviewing today. Sam is my coach as well. She's been my coach for so it's definitely over a year. 15 months something.

Yeah, I think it's closer to two, nearly two years now. I think with the other stuff that we've done, yeah.

RUTH: 

Wow. So I'm going to let you introduce yourself, Sam, if that's okay if it's and let everybody know who you are, how you help people. 

SAM: 

Sure. Okay, so hello, and thank you very much for having me on your podcast. And to start with, my name is Sam, Sam Colclough, and I am the founder of As Good As Your Mind. And by trade. I'm a clinical psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and mindset coach. And I specifically work with female entrepreneurs, service-based female entrepreneurs, coaches, change-makers of the world, the women that are here to make a difference in their lives and other people's lives. And really, through working on the deep limitations of the mind working on the subconscious mind working on all of those blocks that we have, that we're sometimes aware of unaware of, and just helping women become limitless in all it all, they do really amazing.

And I'd like to do is actually start with what led you to where you are now, what led you to do what you're doing now and who you help.

Yeah, so it's a long story. So I'll try and keep it short, but I

RUTH: 

No, don't keep it short.

SAM: 

It wasn't something that you know, I felt born to do, per se I have a very, very different life before I got into doing what I do. As account management and working with data and lead generation companies and all of that kind of stuff, you know. But from a young age, I became a carer for my mum. So from the age of 11, I became a carer for my mum, who suffered from manic bipolar depression, schizophrenia, and a few other mental health issues. And so from a young age, I was kind of, you know, really exposed to stuff that I suppose that you know, you know, 11-year-olds aren't usually exposed to, so I watched my mum suffer from this mental illness, but for many, many years watching her kind of, you know, self-sabotage yourself, overdose, you know, sometimes for cries for help, but you know, sometimes it was really serious. And at the age, I think I left home when I was about 16, 17. But, you know, throughout all of that, that I saw, I became really anxious, I had bouts of depression. And I was really obsessional with certain stuff. And I kind of learned to live with it. Because at that age, I didn't really think that it wasn't the right way to be because I'd always been that way. And, and as I grew up, and you know, met a man and fell in love and all of those kinds of things at the age of 26, I fell pregnant. And at this point, kind of man had a lot more support from, you know, medication and also the infrastructure that was there to support her and then at five months pregnant. You know, she was super excited, I was super excited, everyone was in a good place. And I got a call to say that she had passed away. And she had gone into hospital for some routines, some stuff that had been going on with her stomach. And basically, long story short, is all of the abuse that it should, you know, done to her body over the years had finally caught up with her. So she's gone into hospital, and to kind of have a procedure. And then yeah, you know, at five months pregnant, I got a call to say that she suddenly passed away, which, you know, no one was expecting. And that came, you know, that was a complete blow to me, you know, and quite ironic because she'd spent a lot of her life whilst I was growing up not wanting to be here. And then a time where she really wanted to kind of stick around was the time that she was, you know, kind of taken away. And of course, you know, at that age pregnant with your first child, having lost your mum, among other kinds of personal issues that I was going through at the time, I found myself just hitting complete bottom, you know, suffering from severe anxiety, again, pulling over to the side of the road when I was on my way to work having panic attacks because I just didn't know how to process and deal with what was going on. And I kind of had that Stark realization that it got so bad that I had that epiphany, that moment where I was like, Oh, my God, if I don't change something here, I'm going to go down the same route, as my mum did. And I don't want to be in that situation, bring in a new baby into the world, and, you know, bringing up my child. With those kinds of issues, so I looked at, you know, fixing it, essentially, and looked into alternative therapies because medication for me was like a complete no, no, after watching my mum for all of those years.  So I looked at CBT, NLP, and counselling, all of those kinds of things, and then came across solution-focused hypnotherapy at the time. And I was particularly interested in that therapy because the way it was described was, you didn't have to go into your past. You didn't have to go into painful situations that had got you to where you were. It was more solution-focused on who you wanted to become, you know, what you wanted out of life, and kind of really helping you rewire your identity, and you know, your mind to align with that. And I went for my first session, and I can remember the first hypnosis session I had. It was just simply incredible like it takes you off in a completely different place. And that I mean, there's this misconception about hypnosis anyway, that, you know, you're out of control, and you're never out of control. But I just remembered the euphoria that you feel when you go into deep hypnosis. And I literally had, like, I don't know, I think it was like six or seven sessions with this lady. And I remember just feeling entirely different, like how I viewed the world, my perspective, my mood, how I dealt with things in a way that I just wouldn't have been able to deal with, you know, previous to that. And that was kind of the first glimmer of Wow, like, that's how powerful the mind is. You can go through all of that. You can experience all of that. And you can work with someone for literally like, less than six hours, and you feel completely different, you are completely different. And so after that experience, I was just like, you know, I went onto maternity leave, and all of that kind of stuff. And I can remember then having Louis, and I had hypnobirthing as well, which is a completely different story but wasn't. And I remember holding, I'm thinking, there's so much more to life than what I'd been doing previously, I wasn't happy in my jobs. You know, I always took jobs for the sake of taking jobs. And you know, with this little man in my arms, like I wanted to create a life that afforded me to be able to spend time with him, but also, you know, make a significant impact on other people's lives. Because the biggest thing for me that kept coming up is all my word. If this was accessible to the likes of my mom at the time that she needed it and it was more mainstream and all of that kind of stuff. Would she have been in the position that she was in for such a long time? And I truly believe the answer to that is no.

So I was just like that. So I'm sold. I'm going to look at studying and qualifying, and literally, he was four months old. And at that stage, I enrolled, and I studied whilst I was on maternity leave and then qualified the following year after, and then I did I think what any person in that position does and that self-practice, start typing, doing all of those kinds of things. And I did that for about six. I don't remember that was six months or just over six months, I think. And then my partner and I had the conversation, and we were like, I can't imagine if we took this online, what would that look like. And you know, you're not confined to, you know, just your local area, you can reach far and wide. So I did, I took the business online, and then really organically, I started to find that women that were also running their own businesses online. So coaches and entrepreneurs and consultants and all of that kind of stuff, they were starting to gravitate towards me and what I was doing, and then I started working with a few coaches. And then I was like, wow, this is a whole different world, we're now in a position where we've got women that have been through not necessarily the same thing as me but have had their own trials and tribulations have had their own anguish and experiences that have led them to this point. They want to do amazing things in the world. They want to create change. They want to, you know, create change in other people's lives. But they're stopping themselves. They're stopping themselves from a kind of really, truly stepping out because of fear because of insecurities, because of their own limitations. And then that's what got me into specifically what I do now, which is helping female service-based entrepreneurs who are on this world, on this planet through their own pains, that want to create a better life for themselves and for others, and helping them move out of their own way. So they can do what they were, you know, put here to do, essentially,

RUTH: 

Yeah, amazing. I've got so many questions. But I just wanted to kind of add to that and what my experience has been like working with you. Because when I met you when we first started having coaching sessions, and you sent over, you said, Here are the hypnosis audios, I had no idea. I was like, Okay, I'll do it. I trust them. I don't know what I'll do it. And now I listened to it, you know, every single night. But for me, it's been a huge transformation for me because when I first started working with you, I defined myself as quite an anxious person. I used to say, I am anxious, I am emotional. And I remember saying to you, you know, because as probably many people listening know, I went through everybody's been through some sort of trauma, but I had come out the other side of having breast cancer. And I had a pack of, you know, those kinds of work, you know, sort of Valium type things, and I said to you, they're there when I feel anxious. I haven't gone for them since working with you. That's amazing. I haven't gone back. You said okay, fine, fair enough that they're there. But let's see, you know, see, yeah, and I just started, you know, addressing things with through our coaching sessions. But also, the hypnosis was just mind-blowing to me because I really notice it, but I don't listen to it as part of my routine. Yeah, I listened to stress reduction, which is one of your hypnosis audios every single night? Can you explain to everybody who's listening how it works? Why does it calm your mind? Why is it having such a profound effect on me and the people that you work with?

SAM: 

Yes, it's hard to explain because without having officials, my trustees at a whiteboard, just to kind of create that, that second level of learning, but simply, you know, we've got one brain. Still, essentially two minds, we've got the conscious logical mind that the mind that we know is asked that, you know, the mind that we're using now to have this interaction and attached to this as a vast intellectual resource. And that enables us to think positively, be very solution-focused, come up with an idea and take action on that idea, really, with no limitation at all. That's like our core being, and then attached to that, we've got the original primitive part of the brain that you know was there in life. And that part of the brain was designed and had really one job only, and that was designed to keep us safe. And as we've evolved as humans, obviously, we've had these, you know, additions added to our brain. And the unique thing about hypnosis is with the primitive mind, we've got something that I like to call the stress bucket and every experience that you've ever gone through, you know, from such a young age, and you know, everything you've seen everything you've heard everything that you've witnessed, and starts to create our thinking patterns, and we can naturally, you know, take isolated situations, and start to negatively forecast our future based on these isolated situations. And then every time we think negatively, every time we ruminate about the past, based on what's happened or at any time, we negatively forecast based on what's happened, every single one of those thoughts goes into what I like to call the stress bucket. And of course, we all have our capacity on what we can hold with our stress bucket and if it overflows, and we've got no means or ways of kind of, you know, reducing that we're led to operating from the original primitive part of, of the mind. Yeah. And we start to feel this part of the brain operates from the primitive parameters of anxiety, depression, anger, and sometimes a combination of all three. And what hypnosis does is it's a replication of REM, which is rapid eye movement. So we go into REM when we go to sleep. And basically, that part of the process of our sleep is designed to move things around and compartmentalize and make sense of it. So it's naturally reducing what's going on in that stress bucket. But if we've got too much going on, on that stress bucket, and our REM can't do its job, and then we wake up the next morning, and it just basically overflows again, with all of that negative thinking. 

RUTH: 

Is that when you wake up at like three or four in the morning like being is that like, that's when the stress bucket is kind of No, yeah, overflowing.

SAM: 

Yeah, exactly. And our REM is restricted to 20%. So you know, when we reach that quota, we'll wake up in the night wide awake, sometimes miserable, can't get back to sleep again, or it can be just as light as a toss and turn, and you know, a bit of a fidget. It's it varies. And the beautiful thing about hypnosis, specifically solution-focused hypnosis, is that it's a replication of REM. It allows you to go into that deep state, that deep daydreaming state where your brain can start to compartmentalize it can start to go right, okay, well, that belongs there. And you know, reran the events of the day and life in either a clear or metaphorical way of dreaming. So often, when clients come to me, they're operating from the primitive part of the brain that, you know, they're thinking negatively, they might be suffering from anxiety, they might be suffering from depression, they might not know that they might not label it as that they just know that something needs to change. And when we introduced hypnosis, as well as solution-focused, you know, coaching and therapy, it's speeding up that process of reducing what's going on in the stress pockets, you can start to regain control and operate from the conscious logical part of the brain where, you know, you are solution-focused and think positively and, you know, can take action in the right way.

RUTH: 

I've just written something down. Because when you were talking about this because I talk about it quite a lot. And I think a lot of people look at me as if it's Woo. And this is why I was really keen to do this with you. Because it isn't woo, is it? It's better if you explain what the science is behind it?

SAM: 

Again, I mean, it's neuroscience. There's no woo involved at all. And even when we look at the woo, stuff, like manifestation, and all of that, when you break it down, you understand that there's the neuroscience behind that as well. It's like, Okay, well, if I only think on, you know, think about this, and then I take actions because I'm thinking about this, then I can manifest that which I want. There's always a science behind it, as well as you know, the greatest stuff. But I mean, fundamentally, what we're doing that the neuroscience behind it is basically the chemicals that we produce, you know, as humans and one of the chemicals that we talk about so often because it's the most popular is serotonin, it's the feel-good chemical, it's the, you know, the chemical that allows us to, you know, operate from the conscious logical part of the brain where we've got control over things. And actually, when we are negatively forecasting the future, you know, we don't produce as much serotonin because we've got an overload of adrenalin and cortisol stress hormones, that that kind of stops that constant flow of serotonin. Equally, when we're operating from that place of ruminating about the past and depression, we don't produce any serotonin at all, which is why doctors prescribe SSRIs because that's a replication of serotonin. And so kind of the science behind what I do is, you know, reducing that stress bucket, getting clients to take positive action in the right way that starts to get them to produce the right chemicals again, so they feel brave, that they feel like they're coping that they feel, you know, that they can take over the world, which naturally gets them into the right part of the brain where they start doing more of the same. And then that becomes that self-perpetuating cycle of, you know, doing the right things more often than not.

RUTH: 

Yeah.

SAM: 

So, woo, I am also woo.

RUTH: 

Yeah, me too. I love it all. I love it. Oh. It's interesting, because now for me, I don't feel like my thoughts define me anymore. If I have a thought, I'm like, What is that and I'll detach from it, and I'll analyze it, whereas it doesn't consume me anymore. Or I don't walk around labelling myself as I'm just an emotional person or I'm an anxious person. So it's been, you know, a massive transformation for me. Take, for instance, I've just come out of doing a launch, and I've launched quite a few times. And you've helped me through those launches, that I actually enjoyed the last launch. And my husband was saying to me, who are you? I just feel like I've learned, really learn how to calm my mind because of the work that I've done with you. And now, I just need to tell everybody about this. So this is why I really wanted to get you on here today.

SAM: 

Yeah, and that's a really good point about the thoughts, then. And, you know, that's exactly what we've been discussing around, you know, certain experiences, then go on to form a certain way of thinking, that then leads you to more worry. And, you know, anxiety, again, people might not relate to it as anxiety, but that's what's going on in mind. And you may have had a bad experience with launching previously. And because you had that one bad experience, or it didn't go the way that you anticipated, or something happened, that naturally forms an inappropriate and negative template, which then your brain kicks in to go, Oh, see, you know, launches aren't good for you, you need to stay away from launches. And that way of thinking, something so simple, can then define your way to put you off doing things when we get to a place of empowerment, and we can start to detach our identity and our thinking through what is actually happening. And we can kind of start to rewire our mind, you know, the finished article, is you. Finish this article is going from a place of launches, and not enjoying them, and then being overwhelming and stressful. And all of those kinds of things, too.

RUTH: 

Oh, my God, I absolutely loved it. Who am I, you know, that just shows how powerful you know, it can be when you align your mind that you know what it is that you want 100%

and it's almost now that when those thoughts creep back, I can have a bit of a game with it. Right? Oh, what's going on? Man, let me just message Sam. But it's more intriguing now than consuming. I feel like I've got, you know, a handle on it. Yes, we're all a work in progress our way, and we get these thoughts, and they come up. But I remember it was actually interesting because I started to go down the old path. And I went, hang on a minute when I was leading up to me watching the perfectionism and over-analyzing everything, and I thought to stop. Yeah, hang on a minute. Yeah, show up. You really believe in what you're doing. And your offer now gets it to eat. Just have some fun with it and see what happens. Let's see what happens. Let's enjoy it. And let's connect with some people and see if they want to work with me. That's what it felt a bit more like this time.

SAM: 

And that's the thing. You know, it's not until you have that conscious awareness around what your mind is doing that you can start to make the change. And you know, we have to remember that our way of being our thinking has so habitual that it's our truth. It's, you know, it is who we are. We've always been this way. We don't know anything different. So we don't really always call it out. And you know, when we start to do this work, and we start to become consciously aware and play around with the thoughts that we're having, get curious and inquisitive as to why we might be feeling or thinking those things. We can start to kind of dissipate the charge that those things have over us and create a completely different reality is, you know, as you have.

RUTH: 

yeah, amazing. I've got a couple more questions for you. Can you explain to everybody what solution-focused coaching is? I know you do it works. Do you do it alongside hypnosis? Could you just explain to them what it is how it works?

SAM: 

Yes, this is the solution focus therapy is really about empowering the client and helping them to understand that they always have the solutions within them, and they've always got the answer. You know, even if they don't feel like it, even if they're at the pits of despair. We all have our own solutions as to what actions what steps we need to take in order to, you know, get ourselves out of a rut, get ourselves to the next level, all of those kinds of things and the work that I do kind of just facilitate that. And rather than my kind of, you know, mentoring or anything like that, the questions that I ask and how I ask them is really to facilitate them, empowering themselves to understand that they've got everything that they need within. When it comes to the therapy and combining the hypnosis, it also understands that the work that I do doesn't need us to uncover the root cause. It doesn't need us to go back to painful situations. It doesn't need us to, you know, understand the intricacies of our parents' relationship in order to have that catalyst for change because what's happened has happened. It's formed here. Yeah, it's, you know, it's already created those neural pathways. And that's not needed in order to make that change. It's not needed to become a different person. So, solution focus therapy is like what it says on the tin. Really, it's just. It's solution-focused. We're not delving back into the past. And you've got all of the answers within you. And I facilitated that.

RUTH: 

I think, yeah, again, that was what was really surprising and different for me what I'd experienced before when I worked with you that it was about stepping into what I wanted to be, you know, what I wanted for myself rather than going because, you know, otherwise, it just felt like pressing a bruise, doesn't it? It just feels like a real release for me that I don't have to go back. I don't have to like, go over anything over and over, I can say no, what do I want it to look like instead? So that's been really powerful for me. So what's your best advice to someone who's listening? Who's thinking about it? You know, most of my audience are either thinking about maybe they're thinking about a career change, or starting a business, what's your best advice for them?

SAM: 

Oh, my word. My first piece of advice is like you are limitless at your core, and you don't even realize it like you have so much potential at your fingertips available to you. And fundamentally, if you know you want to go after something, and you're not going after it, you are the only person that's stopping you from achieving all of that. And so I think it's a combination of like, okay, getting clear on what it is that you want. If it's a career change if it's setting up your own business, whatever it is, getting clear on those goals and understanding with clarity of what it is that you want. Then, being curious about the narrative that comes up as soon as you start thinking about those things. Because that narrative that says, Well, I can't do this, I'm too old, I'm too young. I haven't got enough experience, how would I do this, you know, they're not going to see me as that person. You know, you're familiar with the narrative as my as I'm sure the listeners are, as well. So get really familiar with that. Because that narrative is going to be the very thing that stops you from going after what it is that you want. And as soon as you can start to get curious and inquisitive, and as you said, kind of almost see it holistically and separate yourself from your thoughts. And you can start to see that they are just a set of thoughts that up until now. And you know, you were believing and start to ask yourself, Well, why might those reasons not be true? Like why you know, start to build up the factual evidence that's in opposition to those limitations. And then it's just taking action, like taking action is the biggest thing, because if we stop ourselves from taking action, the primitive mind always wins because it continues to get that evidence that we're not getting what we want. So as soon as we start to take action, we can prove to our mind that Oh, right. Okay, I can go after this. And if I take action, this is what happens. And so kind of really building that muscle as well.

Yeah. So it can change. We've got the power to change the story and change the narrative. 

RUTH: 

Yeah. Absolutely. Love that. That was amazing. Sam, so lovely to have you today. Thank you so much. I'm going to put some links to you in the show notes. How can people find out more about you and connect with you?

Yeah, so the best way is probably my Instagram account as good as your mind. Because in that you've got me showing up, you've got the content, but also got links lists. So if you know someone wants to download free hypnosis, and you know, want a little bit more information about how the mind works, they can kind of get it all from the Instagram account as good as your mind.

RUTH: 

Amazing. Thank you so much, Sam.

SAM:

Thank you, it was a pleasure.

OUTRO:

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.