Anne McKeown is a speaker, Facilitator and highly regarded Master Coach who empowers women to step up, speak up and show up with confidence in business and life so they can enjoy more success every day.
She is a proud owner of 2Mpower.co and has created a step-by-step proven ‘Process for Success’ that empowers women to take full control of their life and business by shifting the psychological barriers that hold them back.
She incorporates NLP techniques when coaching or facilitating individuals and teams because she knows it’s not enough to tell people what to do - it’s essential to show them HOW to do it.
Anne's favourite quote from Deepak Chopra
"When you have your natural born gifts and you use them for the benefit of others, that's true success."
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Vit Muller: [00:00:14] Hello, everybody. Vit here from Success Inspired Podcast . My guest today is a speaker facilitator and highly regarded master coach who empowers women to step up, speak up and show up with confidence in business and life so they can enjoy more success every day. She's a proud owner of 2mpower.co and has created a step-by-step proven process for success that empowers women to take full control of their life and business by shifting the psychological barriers that hold them back, she can incorporates NLP techniques.
[00:00:51] We'll talk about that in a second. And. She incorporates these techniques when she's coaching or facilitating individuals and teams, because she knows that it's not enough to tell people what to do. It's essential to show them how to do it. Please. Welcome to the show. Anne McKeown.
Anne McKeown: [00:01:14] Hi. Hi Vit, thank you for the invite. It's great to be here.
Vit Muller: [00:01:18] Thank you, Anne. Thank you. Great to have you on the show today. I've sort of introduced you a little bit, but what's something that not many people might not know about. You.
Anne McKeown: [00:01:27] Oh I worked with Leopards in India. To do some volunteer work working in a girl's school.
[00:01:34] And one of the trips that we did with the kids in the school was to go to a leopard village. Yeah. And not many people know that I did. That was about 20 years ago, but it was a very life-changing experience actually.
Vit Muller: [00:01:49] Oh, wow. How long were you doing that for?
Anne McKeown: [00:01:51] I was in India for six months altogether. And I, I traveled for some of that time and worked at the school for some of the time.
Vit Muller: [00:01:59] That's awesome.
What compelled Anne to become a life coach and seeking positive outcomes with power of Neuro-linguistic programming
[00:02:00] That's awesome now Anne what compelled you to become a life coach?
Anne McKeown: [00:02:05] Well, I never actually set out to become a life coach. Actually. It's one of those things that evolved. I started my career as a coach with sales teams, working with BP oil in the UK. And what I learned through that was every time that.
[00:02:21]I was training teams. The same people would be successful. And I thought, what is it that makes them always successful? And other people always struggle. And I realized it came down to really their mind set and their beliefs. If they believed they could sell it and they could be successful, then nine times out of 10, they would take actions that would lead to that.
[00:02:40] And then the outcome would be positive. Those that didn't have that confidence or didn't have that belief and then have the right mind set. Tended to fail. And so in the 1990s, I decided to go and study NLP. And because I've been around for a long time and through the two thousands, I did positive psychology.
[00:03:02] So it's just always something human nature, the way we think, the way we behave has just been something that's intrigued me.
Vit Muller: [00:03:09] I absolutely agree. I think it's when we align, when we are positive, when we are positive minded, everything kind of aligns the right direction. When we feel down, when we feel negative, everything just feels like nothing's working out.
[00:03:23] So there is, there is that energy there's it's has a, it's very effective now for, for the ones that are listening that might not know much about what NLP is, can you break that down a little bit?
Anne McKeown: [00:03:34] Yeah, sure. So it stands for neural linguistic programming The Neural is our thinking. The linguistic is the language that we use and whether that's owed when self-talk or how we talk to other people and the programming is there behavior that comes as a result of that thinking and language, and then their behavior creates our outcomes.
Vit Muller: [00:03:56] Okay. So it's not just for example, what I spoke with Jason, and one of the episodes back, we talk about an NLP and how it's practical to sales. If it's done ethically, but it's also what you say. It's also what we say to ourselves that has the influence on our, we talk about positivity and positive mindset.
[00:04:14] So the NLP is the language that we tell ourselves as well as the language that we use when we communicate. And is that just words? Is it actual language or is it also a body language when it comes to it?
Anne McKeown: [00:04:24] Yeah, look, body language comes into it when it involves other people. So we can. Read what's going on in their mind.
[00:04:32] Like someone can walk into the office and they, their shoulders are slumped and they bang down their coffee and they sit down and you can just tell they're in a mood without them saying a word. And they can also then read what's going on in our mind, so people can pick up if you're confident or nervous or.
[00:04:49] Without you saying anything people really can read what's going on in your mind, but where did I find it? The most powerful is what we say to ourselves because when we are struggling, our self-talk tends to be, I can't manage this. I'm not doing well with this. I'm not good at this. This is hopeless. And, and we feed that to the brain. And the more that we're telling that the more we create a pathway in the brain that repeats that and equisite back at us. And it's really difficult then to pull ourselves out of that. And it's why positive affirmations are very popular and, and some people will say oh that doesn't work it's just words, but actually in creating the pathways, neuroscience has taught us that it does matter, even if you don't believe it, constantly telling the mind eh, you might be saying, "I can't do that yet", that's much more positive than saying "I can't do it" because it leaves room for growth.
Vit Muller: [00:05:45] Yes. Absolutely. I know there's other words that, that happen in conversation as well. When you know, you're trying to, for example, praise say somebody in your team and your business you want to praise them for, for something that they've done well, but then you say the word, "but" at the end and that kind of cancells everything that you said in front of it, right.
[00:06:08] So much better is to say is the word "and" so you praise them. And even, even if you do want to sandwich in, some negative feedback, use the word 'and' instead of 'but' .
Anne McKeown: [00:06:17] Absolutely.
Example of negative self talk to watch out for
Vit Muller: [00:06:18] Is there any other, any other like examples of, of going back to that, self-talk like specific examples of those words that people might be telling themselves that they need to watch out for?
Anne McKeown: [00:06:29] Oh, look, I've got a whole list and things like I don't have time then instead, if you could see, how can I make time for this? I'm not able to do that instead of it. Cause we know I can't do that instead. If you say I'm learning. What it does is it just keeps more positivity rather than going into that negative spiral of feed and doubt.
[00:06:55] And I, and another thing is that the brain doesn't understand negatives. So when you're talking to a child, for example, and you say don't run what the brain hears is run, and then you have to think of run to then think of don't run. And so it's like Negative comes afterwards. So instead if you see one positive command like walk, but then, then immediately the brain says, Oh yeah, walk, cause every time we say something, it creates a picture in the mind and then we react to that picture.
[00:07:27] So if you say "Don't talk" we think of talk, then we have to unthink it to be. Don't talk. But if you see, be quiet immediately, we get this picture of silence.
Vit Muller: [00:07:39] Right. And there's also brings an interesting topic about how NLP influences us from early on in our, in our childhood and how that forms our beliefs and how that, how, how they could form what we believe is possible later in life.
[00:07:55] Right? Because when, we're little kids. Our brain is just like a sponge, right? We are, there's no limits to our creativity, right? Creativity. But if we are constantly being taught these negative words as we are being raised, that that can also have a negative influence later on. Right?
Anne McKeown: [00:08:14] It's huge. And a lot of the work that I do is undoing that negative.
[00:08:19] It's helping people to say. You know, need to let go of those old beliefs, that old way of thinking that old language, because it's no longer serving you. You're not a seven year old child anymore, you know, it's time to grow up and, and, and cut loose cords, let go of that stuff that's not serving you and retrain the brain with these new ways of thinking and these, this new language and this new behavior.
[00:08:46] It, it, it's, it's huge. And, and most parents and teachers and people around us tell us things. They think that often they're doing it right. You know, like, Oh, if you do that, you'll never be successful because that's their fear for us. Yeah. And then I think the thing it from a place of love, but actually they're putting their fear on us.
[00:09:06]One of the things I find really funny and I did it with my own children is when the very young we say to them, come on, you can walk, stand up on your own two feet, hold onto the furniture, walk to mommy, and we want them to talk. So we see come on shout load and ask for dinner or ask for this or that.
[00:09:25] And then we send them to school and we tell them to sit down and shut up and they have to do that for 12 years.
Vit Muller: [00:09:31] So you cancel everything
Anne McKeown: [00:09:33] Yeah. And then they come out being put in this box and then they lose that identity. And that's when the problems start.
Vit Muller: [00:09:42] Yeah. I hope that maybe one day or no things change the whole way everything has been set up the educational system because you know that you already have countries. Like, I think it's Sweden or some of the Norwegian counties, they're a bit more experimental with how they approach education, they're a lot more flexible and sort of giving the power to the kids and let them to be more creative and come up with solutions. I quite like that.
Recommendation on how best to start with NLP and starting with self awareness first.
[00:10:06] Now, if somebody is looking for, to get to know a bit more about NLP and how they can incorporate that either to be a better parent or to be, you know, to be more Successful and, and, you know, maybe the, somebody that's been going through some tough time and they've been quite negative and you know right now, they're listening to this and they're looking at, okay.
[00:10:25] I'd really liked the idea of getting myself more positive and, and be able to do have better self-talk and be more mindful of how I say things. What, where could they go for bit more education about NLP?
Anne McKeown: [00:10:39] Well, look, there's tons of stuff on, on Mr. Google. And so, so you can look up anything there's the, in Sydney, there is Tad James's company there's but what I would see is there are lots of different modalities that the most important thing is not to cling to one thing, but to say "where I'm at now feels unsatisfactory and I want to change." And so it's about self-awareness first. So what is it about myself that same or trap I keep falling into that doesn't allow me to move on because we actually sabotage ourselves. One of the biggest thing that I do with the women I work with is just say to them, get out of your own way.
[00:11:26] W w what, what you're trying to do is so doable. I can see it and I can see their blind spots, but we can't see our own blind spots. That's why there are blind spots. We need someone else to reflect them back to us and to say. Well, the re you know, it appears to me and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way that you're doing this as resulting in that, and nine times out of 10, they go, Oh yeah, you're right.
[00:11:53] I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. I mean, my own situation, for example, was I became quite a martyr. And even though I've got a great life, I was a bit more moaney and blamed my husband for everything, which was great because it just meant that I didn't have to face the reality of what I had created in my own head.
Vit Muller: [00:12:12] Also you're from Glasgow, right?
Anne McKeown: [00:12:14] Yes, yes, yes. But I know live in Sydney and I've got nothing to complain about really.
[00:12:22] Although I still find, lots to complain about because we're wired for the negative...