A Conversation With Mindset Metacog Trainer, Mimika Cooney Pt 1

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

mind, business, people, thinking, life, mindset, burnout, realized, rat race, beliefs, brain, child, mika, paradigms, work, digital marketing agency, world, kid, reset, big

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Mimika Cooney is a leading faith based mindset Medicago trainer and high performance coach. She's known as the personal trainer for your mind, and she empowers ambitious Christian women to unstick their minds develop emotional resilience and unlock peak performance by teaching them how to rewire their brain. I am so excited for today's episode, where I have Mika on the show with us, so stick around.

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The following was recorded in front of a live studio audience at the studio 21 podcast cafe. This is the United Podcast Network.

00:39

Welcome to rat race reboot. I'm your host Laura Noel. And as a certified coach and former 27 year military leader each week, I provide bite sized mindset pivots that will help you reset your mind reawaken your spirit and regain your control. Welcome, welcome, everybody to another episode. I am so excited for today's guest, Mika Cooney. And I read her intro but I just wanted to read a couple of other things here because she is the creator of unstick your mind. It's a mindset mastery method. And it's a dynamic transformative training program that equips high performers with the tools they need to achieve their goals and breakthrough. She combines and I love this neuroscience, a faith based approach. And she helps people discover how to unlock the mindset of a champion so they can become the boss of their brain. I love that. That's what I'm all about here at rat race reboot. Welcome to the show, Mika.

01:47

Well, thanks for having me, this is gonna be so fun. We definitely as to brain mindset geeks are going to have a total fun face today.

01:55

I know I can tell already. Well, I would love for the audience to just hear about you hear a little bit more about your journey, how you got to be in this in this space where you're teaching people how to unlock their minds and really learn how to leverage the power of their minds and neuroscience and, and infusing it with a faith based approach. I love that.

02:18

Definitely. Well, I How much time do we have, right? A long suffering? Well, long story short is I'm originally from South Africa. I was born and raised there and emigrated to England in the early 2000s. My husband and I was childhood sweethearts. So we've been together since I was a teenager and our first bit, we've been married 26 years. And along the way, we've always been entrepreneurs, like I was an entrepreneur, when I was four, my dad had a business with my name on the plaque and I was clearly the boss. So you know being somebody else's employee was gonna work. So I always knew that one day I would be the boss. And I have had several different business models from website design to digital marketing agency is a professional photographer as well and worked in TV production. And along the way, as you know, kind of life happens. And as we grow, we have kids and family. We just things happen and we deal with things. But for me, the the biggest highlights or the biggest sort of perk, if you had to look at my life as a movie would be some major hot drama, because I tell you, all of us who I'm sure have got these stories to tell. But really what brings me here today after having been in business, and really, I was really, I'd say addicted to approval. One of my biggest problems from a child was that I was always, you know, achieving things and always trying to look for attention. You know, and a lot of us I say, Come with junk in our trunk, which is often comes back from childhood. And as a child, we have a view of the world that sometimes doesn't get corrected until we are adults. And what happens is eventually if we don't pay attention to the signs, we eventually we will burn and crash. And that's exactly what happened to me. So after running my business, my husband and I emigrated again. We moved from England to the USA in 2006. So two immigrations within five years and two kids and restarting our businesses was not ideal. But it was a perfect storm for what would eventually result in breakdown and burnout. And eventually the the straw that broke the camel's back was mid to late 2015, early 2016. I had a tri factor effect of a business launch that didn't go well. I had a child or teenage child in crisis mental health crisis where we had to really intervene. And then I lost my mother in law to cancer. And this really shook my world but you know, after going through all that stress and just keep I'm one of those like I'll just keep going till I drop my husband says I have two years, either full blast or full stop. And I'll admit, you know, I've since given up my membership to control freaks anonymous Things are so much better. But you know, when you're living in that community, and you're part of that member, you're always pulling out your card and having these, you know, these, these big, big energy, saps when you something doesn't go right and you just push yourself going, and you just go and go and go into all the walls, the wheels fall off the best. And they did in a big tap. And eventually what happened is I hit burnout, where I physically couldn't get out of bed hit emotional, physical, mental and spiritual breakdown. I had like a crisis of faith. My whole thing was my mother in law, and I were very close. And she was a strong woman of faith. And I was like, God, how could you let bad things happen to good people? And why is it that I feel like I'm in the middle of the worst storm ever. business failure, mounting debt, a child and you know, as as a parent, being coming from that sort of performance, high, high achieving, you want to fix things. And eventually, what happens in life, some things you can't fix, they just get broke. But all we can do is rebuild when they are eventually down to ruins. And sometimes that's a good thing. And I know people don't like why would I want to do that? Well, first of all, I would not advise you push until you hit burnout and break down, because it does take longer to rebuild. But there is a big, fat giant reset button. This is something we can do. And I love what you say as well, you know, I've said since the last few years, all of us had been through so much change. Most people don't go through in a lifetime. But hashtag the rat race has been canceled.

06:35

We no longer have to play by this unspoken rule of what's expected, like high levels, especially women. And those are a lot of the clients I deal with are women who are in high performing jobs, or there's been big expectations. I mean, all of us in the last two years, especially as moms have had to deal with juggling homeschooling, we're still working, running a business, keeping the family together, cleaning like crazy, like I was a total germaphobe. You know, kind of like freaking out those stress levels. were through the roof. And unfortunately, what happens when we push ourselves beyond repair is that things do fall apart. And we have to look and say, Okay, it's time for a pause. We cannot keep going at that pace, this whole world's view of hustle and grind just doesn't work anymore. It's just not possible. We are not machines, we are not made to push until we have nothing left. Because what the alternative is, you know, broken down marriages destroyed families, physical burnout. It's just, it doesn't end well. So I'm really passionate. So after that whole process, I took like a year and a half, I closed my business down, I literally needed to give myself time to heal physically, emotionally, mentally. I mean, I'd never experienced physical grief, where you actually your body aches, like you feel like you've actually been through something like you've been in a war zone. And I just had to go, even my mom would phoned me and I'd be like, okay, so I could talk to you, I'd have to like, email her or text her. I couldn't even get the words out. And I realized, I just need to take my foot off the gas, give myself time to breathe, and rest and deal with one thing at a time. This whole multitasking thing is a myth. Our brains cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. I mean, I say this, I always love to say that women can have it all, but not at the same time. We have to pick our battles and decide what is worth fighting for today. And it's okay just to do one thing and do it well. But for us, you know, Speedy Gonzalez who like to zoom down the highway at 100 miles an hour with a foot on the gas pedal. There's only one way that ends and not very well, either a traffic ticket. Thank you, Chris. So you know, I'd love to take this opportunity just to, you know, give people the encouragement that if you are on the road and you feel like you're you can feel your engine burning, read the signs that the slowdown signs, sometimes, you know, we can avoid the worst case scenario by just taking the time to think and to ask ourselves, is this where I want to be going? Am I on the right highway? Is this taking me to the right place? And I think now is the best time and then ever to take the moment to really think about that. So long story short, after that process, I had a digital marketing agency where I was doing a lot of marketing for businesses and entrepreneurs, authors and speakers and helping them with their branding as a service based business and I realized I just didn't want to do it anymore. I just couldn't. That whole pace was just not what I wanted. Sure. So I really, that's where I fell into coaching. I got coached, I got help, I realized I needed to change the way that I think about things. Otherwise, I'm just regurgitating old news. And after that, I really discovered this transformative way of when you help people to be able to reset their mind. Get all rid of old the old junk in the trunk. Get to a new way as a lifestyle, a way of thinking it's not a fad diet that we just do and go in and leave and go back to our old ways. I realized for this to be effective, it has to stick it has to become a lifestyle. So I really threw myself into coaching and certification and studying. And right now I'm finishing my brain health coach certification with Avon University, and I've dived into everything. I like how the brain works. Yeah, who assigns hormones? I'm like, I'm just geeking out on this stuff.

10:27

with you on that, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah,

10:33

so that's pretty much I lived it. Yeah, I've read through it. And I'd realize how important having someone who can help you see the signs, rebuild after breakdown, but also how to reform it and make better choices for our life using our mind. And also, the faith element was very important. Like, I've been a strong woman of Christian faith since I was a kid and really realizing, you know, who did God made me to be? Like, why am I trying to impress the Joneses? Like they don't actually care, right? Is this really what makes my heart sing is this what I'm, I'm called to do, and that I'm equipped to do. So that's really where I find I have a really great resonance with people and women who feel like they want to get more in alignment with who God made them to be. Just didn't take the critic pretense, no more masks, no more hiding and trying to be something you're not. And when that resets, I call it resetting to your factory setting. Yeah, it is amazing how much more enjoyable, and how much more fun life can be. So that's what brings me here today.

11:31

Ah, your journey. It's so similar to mine to a lot of people I've worked with, I'm sure a lot of people you work with who gravitate toward you. And the factory reset, like, our spiritual beingness is perfection. And when we align with it, we are we're standing in our purpose. When we're not when we're going against that. It's more exhausting, even though whether or not we're physically doing something physically in the rat race, it doesn't matter because mentally, emotionally, the cognitive load on our mind, it's heavy. And it adds to that feeling of I know, when I went through my aha moment and got into this mindset, pivot and mindset work. I was at my wit's end, you know, just like you things were just falling apart inside, I just felt like I was dying. And I knew that something needed to change. And I just like you sought the help of a coach. And it was like, the blinders have been lifted. I was standing in my purpose. I'm working. Probably, I mean, I'm in a college program now. But workwise, my income is much higher than it was previously when I started this journey. But I'm probably working a fraction of the time, because I'm thinking just, as you say, thinking, and we're going to get more into what exactly does that mean, and our conversation I can feel is already good to go for a little while, we might break this up into a couple of segments. So more to come on that. And you know, at the end, we'll give you some steps, all of our listeners out there toward what are some of the things specifically that you did that really helped you stand in your truth, align with your purpose, connect your deepen your connection with God, all of those things that, that leave us feeling fulfilled, and energized. And in flow, I just love that. But there are a few things here that I kind of took notes on that I wanted to unpack a little bit. And we're talking about resetting our mind rewiring the way we think. And our listeners out there understand that how we think is a direct reflection of what's going on in our subconscious mind. Our beliefs are paradigms, which were passed down from generation to generation. So I thought it was really interesting. One of the first things I written down was how you started your first business when you were four. And that your you know, you watched your dad in business. So that was a part of your, your paradigm. And probably I'm guessing, was he a hard worker?

14:17

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Right? And my mother was like, You guys all so like, that'd be like, well, that's your fault. Thank you very much.

14:30

Well, the good news is, is you know, weak, a lot of those paradigms that we've grown up with a lot of those beliefs that have been instilled in us from how we view the world when we're growing up. And when we're tiny little babies. We can actually change those paradigms so as you you know, progressed in your work and in your life and things happened and circumstances happen and you felt like you were just, you know it was either on full blast or stop. You can change that you can say, wait a minute, is this what I want? Like you said that Aha, is this? Am I living my best life? And if not, you can change that. But I would suspect it wasn't just in doing the things that you were doing, there's probably a lot of beliefs that you needed to new beliefs that you needed to adopt, can you share with us? So the audience knows that if you can do it, if I can do it, they can do it, too. So how did you start getting clear on what some of those beliefs were that you knew? Were holding you back from stepping into this ideal life?

15:38

Yeah, I mean, all of us are raised in a certain environment, right? Of course, there's nurture nature, and I believe both play and apart. But you know, paradigms are kind of the way we think about things and our brain is developed. And a lot of those value based thinking and things that we learned from our parents are usually entrenched in us by the age of seven. But what is what is amazing to me is that I've made I meet a lot of adults who still have what I call stuck thinking from maybe something they learned when they were five, or seven. And here's the thing, what the the biggest change came for me, when I started thinking about what I was thinking about. For the longest time, I never thought I had agency over my thoughts. I thought, just thoughts just happening, oh, well, I thought a bad thing. And I must be a terrible person, right. But I'd realized there's actually choice, we have the option and the choice to choose to renew our mind and to think new things. And just like you would go to the gym, like if you decided you want to lose, you know, 10 pounds and you want to gain muscle, you know, you can't just have these huge, gigantic leaps and say, I'm going to do this in a week, right, you have to be realistic about how long something's going to take you. So if it took you a hot minute to get into a mess, it's safe to say it's gonna take you more than a few hot minutes to get out. So if we think about how we were raised, and our parents were teaching us things around the dinner table, or had certain attitudes towards things, everything, from beliefs, to religion, to,

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you know, value system to habits, these are all things that are mirrored and modeled as kids. But a lot of adults never question that they always think, well, that's how the world is because you only know what you know, you don't know what you don't know. It's like if you ever, as a kid had a sleep over somebody else's house, and all of a sudden you see how they do breakfast, or what they do for their bedtime routine at this family, they don't shower at night, they shower in the morning, but my mom would have a hot hot fit if I didn't go if I went to bed without showering. So it's like, your brain goes, oh, there's a different way of living, there's a different way of thinking. So once I realized that, there was important to define the difference between truth and lies. What you've discovered, or what you learned in your life up until now is your truth, but might not necessarily be the truth, or the full truth. And I think in life and in the world, we could avoid a lot of arguments and a lot of wars, frankly, if we weren't able to see from the other side, if we will be able to tell like, who it who is that? Who am I? And really what do I believe and maybe what mom and dad taught me, isn't serving me anymore. Maybe this isn't, you know, because dad had an issue with, with rejection when he was a kid. So he was always trying to get attention. And I thought that's just the way we live. But once I'd realized there's a route to everything. I as a good gardener, I had to get to work and start uprooting roots, that were not serving me. So I always like to think of it like your beliefs are kind of your the trunk of a tree, the roots of what you were taught where a kid is deep below the soil, and we don't often see we often question but as we grow in life, we grow branches, which are, you know, become experiences. And then we have the fruit, which is things that we start to see in behaviors. So when somebody is angry, that's a fruit of anger, right? We never really question why they're angry. So we start to go down the branch and be like, Huh, why do I feel like when I get in the car, I get major road rage, and I automatic automatically just switches flipping me or flips the switch in me that all of a sudden, this is just how I act behind the wheel. And oftentimes, we don't think about where we learned that behavior. We just accept that behavior, or their thought process as truth. But for a lot of us, we've never questioned that. So my whole viewpoint was Hang on a second. Am I believing what I'm believing? Is this actually truth? Like, why did my parents think that way? Like, I just thought that's how we did things, right? Like running a business was you just work you were a workaholic. And if you weren't working, you know, you weren't being good, personal like, I mean, I remember my dad is a child. When I was a child, he could never relax. And I just thought, well, if you relax and you set my couch, you were being lazy. So I always felt like I had to do do do something. Yeah. And I realized as an adult that wasn't serving me. And when you realize that you start to question and say, this is the behavior I'm displaying. This is the fruit Do I like the fruit? Does it taste good to me? If not, you don't have to keep growing that fruit. But it takes a little actually intentional work, to start to really dig into those roots and to say, You know what, I don't want this tree novel. It's not serving me. It's not where I want to be. And the good news is, you don't have to be a victim of your circumstances. You get to choose, that's one thing God does not interfere with this world is free will. I mean, I always think, Okay, God won't just come down and smart, all these people that are just causing us issues, like they would just solve a whole lot of problems. And it's like, sorry, honey, but this freewill, they have to choose it. So just like anything in life, everything is a choice. And for all of us living in first world countries, like I was raised in South Africa, so I was very much aware of poverty, and those who are living below the poverty line, and a lot of those unfortunate fortunate situations where people don't have a choice, or they don't think they have a choice. But believe me, I've met people who've come from the worst of the worst situations that the poorest of the poor, who've had the worst backgrounds, or maybe suffered terrible abuses as children, made the choice, I'm some time along the life that this, I'm not going to take this anymore, I'm going to choose a different path. So the good news is, no matter where you are, in life, you're never too old. You're never too young, you haven't missed the window. Today is always a good time to press the reset button and decide, you know, what, enough is enough. I'm going to change my trajectory. I want my tomorrow to be better than today. So that's the good news.

21:28

Yeah, you know, and I think that's important for people to hear. And just like you, I had the opportunity to, to go to Kenya. And I was touring around different villages in the Maasai Mara region. And we were building schools. And in that region, there was the first ever High School for Girls. And then a college and this mindset, material that I teach and coach has actually been implemented in their college. And so when I went to the villages, I was wondering, well, what am I going to see here? Am I going to have to manage my emotions? What I saw was love. I just saw just love and caring and just welcoming us with open arms, where I had to manage my emotions was in the college, when I went there, and they were talking about you have your conscious and your subconscious mind. And I will not be you know, I am not a victim, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, and I'm going to, you know, lead the way and show girls that it can be done. So it doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what your background was, what your your credentials were your mistakes or challenges, it does not matter. And that's what I want to drive home right now. And I think this is actually a good spot for us to kind of close this section out. And then come back for part two to that dive a little bit deeper. In you know, what, how have you helped some people? What can other people do now to to help them you know, get clear on where they need to make mindset pivots, where, where maybe they are falling into a default pattern and not exercising, they're their full choice because they have choice to think anything they want. So what we're going to do right now is end our episode, the way we end every episode. And I want all of our listeners here today, to bring to mind a sticky situation that you might be dealing with where maybe you feel stuck, maybe you feel like the circumstances are dictating your actions, and you have no choice and you have no power. I'm here to tell you, you are empowered, and you do have power. And we're going to dive and tap into that in our Section two of this interview. But right now, I just want you to take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale fully and completely. Take another deep inhale and exhale. And I just want you to consider what Mika and I were just talking about how there's so much power in your mind. It's locked up in your mind each and every one of us. We all have God given talents and abilities. But sometimes life can happen. And that causes us to forget the gifts we have. And it all starts with becoming aware of what you're thinking and then questioning. Do I want to believe this anymore? It might feel real, but is it true. So right now, bring to mind something in your life a situation where you feel like it's a sticking point for you. And let it play out in your mind the way that it is playing out

25:28

now, I want you to transform that image into the version you would like to see play out and take it in through your five senses. If this situation could unfold exactly the way you want,

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what would that look like? How would you show up? Who are you with? As ideas or sparks of inspiration float to the top of your mind, just write them down

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that is your intuition guiding you in the right direction. And we typically when we're stuck in the rat race, don't create that space. Let alone listen to that voice. That might be God. It might be your intuition. But listen. Welcome back everybody. Today is Part One. I'm talking to Mika Cooney and she is a faith based coach who deals with neuroscience helps people get unstuck from old patterns of thinking that are holding them back. Our conversation has been phenomenal time has just flown by. So we're going to come back for part two. So you're gonna want to join us for next week's episode. But until then, remember, everything is created twice, first in your mind, and then in physical form. If you'd like today's episode, join us. Subscribe, follow us on whatever platform you listen to your podcast on at rat race reboot.com And we'll see you next week.

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The views and opinions expressed by the hosts guests or callers of this program do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the studio 21 podcast cafe, the United Podcast Network its partners or affiliates.