📍 Hey friends. Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and we are well into the new year Now. This is the point where the excitement of goal setting has either turned into momentum or into self-criticism. This is usually when people start asking things like, what's wrong with me?

Instead of asking, what am I telling myself every single day, and this week I caught myself in the middle of that kind of moment I was leading. I was building one of my five companies. I was creating this very podcast episode and several others, and honestly carrying so much, and I realized that my inner dialogue was doing more damage than the workload itself.

So I paused and I thought about it for a minute. Where do I want my mind to be at? Where do I want to be thinking? What do I want to be telling myself? What is the life that I actually want to be living? And so all of a sudden I was actually sitting in the passenger seat of my husband's car and I said, I'm on a winning streak.

Not because everything feels easy and not because there aren't actually hard days, but because what we repeatedly tell ourselves becomes the filter through which we experience our life, our leadership, and our future. And today I wanna talk about that connection, how we think.

How we lead and how changing the story we tell ourselves can actually change the energy we bring into every room that we walk into. Let's start with something neuroscience makes very clear. Your brain strengthens what it repeats, not what you want once, not what you say January 1st.

Not what you rehearse internally day after day, but literally what you repeat. Harvard Medical School talks about this through the lens of neuroplasticity, and if you have been following me for a long time or you just started following me, I talk about it all the time. The brain is constantly wiring and rewiring itself based on repeated thoughts and behaviors.

Over time, those thoughts stop feeling like opinions and they start feeling like facts. So when someone constantly thinks I'm behind, or I haven't done enough, or I'm not there yet, the brain actually looks for evidence to support that story. When someone thinks, I always mess this up,

I always have to do this because it never works out in my favor. Their brain actually reinforces hesitation and self-doubt. So if you've ever met someone, and I'm sure you're probably thinking of who that person is right now, if you've ever met someone who's like, oh my gosh, every time I go to a restaurant they always get my food wrong, or every time I try to work out, I always quit.

Their brain is actively going in that mode or trying to reinforce what they just told themselves over and over and over most people are living under mantras that they never intentionally chose, and so people are like, oh, I love that mantra. I love that mantra, or, I love that saying, or I say that all the time, but they didn't actually choose what works for them.

Instead, they choose things like, I can't catch up. This is just how hard it is for me. I'm always the one struggling. It must be nice what you're doing or how lucky you are. Those are not truths though. Those are just practice thoughts. Like I said, I was in my husband's passenger seat of his truck and I said, I'm on a winning streak.

And my husband was like, yes, let's go. And so I started saying to myself, I'm on a winning streak now that is like. Not a hundred percent true in every single thing I'm doing. Like there are times that I'm not on a winning streak, but I don't care about those times. I don't care about who I'm not getting along with.

I don't care about what's not working out for me. I don't care about bad news that I got. I don't care about a stressful email that I got. I am repeating to myself, I am on a winning streak. It's something subtle, but it's powerful. And I'm shifting in the moments that I am repeating those things. My nervous system is softening.

I am becoming more patient. I'm stopping the whole leading from urgency thing, and I'm leading from trust. Now this matters more than you could ever realize because you're now changing the neuro pathway. You're now changing the old path you were on, and you're forming a new one. So let's talk about how this actually shows up in leadership.

Leadership is not just a strategy. I believe it is a state. The way you think directly impacts how you lead others. When your inner dialogue is harsh, leadership becomes this reactive moment for you. When your inner dialogue is steady, leadership becomes grounded. Stanford's behavior design research shows that internal language directly impacts decision making under pressure.

Leaders who speak to themselves with clarity and regulation make better decisions and create safer environments for others. So I want you to ask yourself this. Honestly, if your team could hear how you speak to yourself on the hardest days, would they feel safe? Would they feel supported? Would they feel confident in following your lead?

I've seen this play out across every business that I own. When I shift internally, our communication improves problems feel solvable. Instead of this like overwhelming tension and stress, my leadership becomes more consistent. And not because the circumstances changed, but because I actually decided to change.

And this is the bridge between thinking and leading. I want to also redefine what winning actually means.  Winning doesn't always look like a big announcement or a viral moment. Most of the time it looks like alignment. It looks like peace. It looks like consistency. I'm in a season where things are aligning in very meaningful ways, and in the next couple of months, I am actually gonna be on the front page of two different magazines and.

As I share that I'm not doing so because I want to brag to you, but I want to make a point to you. These are moments that are built long before they're actually visible to other people. I have been talking about these magazine editors for the last several months about accomplishments that I've made, and we're scheduling out these releases.

These pillar moments of my life are built in quiet mornings where I'm choosing discipline over doubt. In the seasons where I keep showing up even when no one is clapping for me right now, in moments where I decide to change how I speak to myself, you see winning streaks are built internally first, and when your internal language shifts, your energy shifts and people feel it, teams respond to it, opportunities align with it.

And I wanna make this whole thought process that I'm talking about really practical because leadership is lived. It's not just understood. First, I want you choosing a mantra that feels believable on really hard days. Not something that's like performative, something grounding for you. I am on a winning streak that works for me because it allows room for growth without denying my own reality.

Second, I want you to pay attention to when your inner dialogue tightens. That's often your signal to pause, not push. Third, I want you to lead yourself the way you would lead someone you care about.

With clarity, with patience, with accountability, not with shame. And fourth, I want you to remember that steady progress is still progress. The brain responds better to consistency than intensity. This is something that I often teach through the free training that I offer on a multitude of my websites. So you can actually access free training from me, from sarah beth herman.com.

You can also see that free training through dentistry support.com/freetraining, and all of the free training on that site is geared towards dental practices. But we provide free education, free leadership systems, communication and growth for dental teams and business owners. Because leadership is not about knowing everything.

It's about learning how to think clearly under pressure.  Those trainings exist because we believe better leaders build better businesses. And I don't gatekeep. If you're new around here, you'll learn that. I literally tell it all because I'm not worried about someone stealing a business idea or a thought process.

I have. The best kind of knowledge is actually shared knowledge, and so if you are not on that same train, you'll learn to be eventually, because I really, really love for us to just all share whatever we have. It's not about me being the supreme expert and now I need to sell you a course on it. It's not about that at all.

I want you here. I want you showing up for your team and creating more of that generational leadership. I talk about. All right, so this is the time in the podcast where I bring up something called our, that's good moment. I always want everyone to be able to leave an episode with information, resources and a little bit of a to-do list that you can take with you in your week.

So that's what our, that's good Moment is all about what was the really great parts that I want you taking with you. So here you go. This is what I want you to walk away with today. Your brain believes what you repeat. Leadership begins with internal language. Winning does not require perfection. Energy shifts before outcomes do and choosing a mantra is choosing direction.

If nothing else, remind yourself this week I am on a winning streak. Say it until your nervous system starts to relax. Say it until your leadership feels steadier. Say it until you believe it, because that's what I believe is really good. You can't just wake up one day and all of a sudden everything is perfect.

You have to consciously decide, I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna be strong, I'm gonna be confident. These things are not innately within us. We have to actually make those conscious choices to be stronger, to be happier, to be ready for what the world has in store for us.

Thank you for spending time with me today. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs a reminder that they are not behind. This episode today is sponsored by Dentistry Support. At Dentistry Support. We help dental practices grow with clarity through real human support. Leadership training and free educational resources designed to help teams just like yours lead better and operate stronger.

You can explore our free trainings and learn more at dentistry support.com/freetraining. I'm Sarah Beth Herman. And this is No Silver Spoons. Until next time, keep leading with intention and remind yourself as often as possible you are on a winning streak.

 Please check the show notes for all references and links to information shared in this podcast. Thank you so  📍 much for tuning in today, and I'll see you on the next episode.