Episode 102: How to stop feeling angry at work – with Dionne Williams of Get Set Go

Episode 102: How to stop feeling angry at work - with Dionne Williams of Get Set Go

Jeremy Cline 0:00
What effect do your emotions have on you? Whilst you're working, if you find yourself getting cross or angry or upset, what effect does that have on your work? Do you find it causes you to lose your concentration? Do you become unmotivated? But what if there was a way that you could manage your emotions? Well, that's what we talk about in this interview. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Chang Work Life.

Jeremy Cline 0:38
Hello, and welcome to Change Work Life, the podcast that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. A lot of my guests have talked about mindset, be it in the context of fear, imposter syndrome, identity and so on. What we haven't really talked about is the emotions that underlie our mindset, how it all fits in and how recognising an emotional response is something that can help you. Well, that's what we're going to be covering this week with Dionne Williams of Get Set Go. Dion is a business strategist and mindset specialist who helps people prevent fear and self-doubt being blocks to their success. Dionne, welcome to the show.

Dionne Williams 1:16
Hi, Jeremy, thank you so much for having me today.

Jeremy Cline 1:20
So, in your business, who is your ideal client?

Dionne Williams 1:25
Okay, I primarily work with coaches, consultants, service providers. My clients tend to be professionals, high-achievers, really experienced individuals who have a voice in their head which constantly convinces them that they can't do what they really want to do.

Jeremy Cline 1:52
And how do they know that you can help them?

Dionne Williams 1:55
So, I put out a lot of content on social media. And I speak to this issue. I speak to people from that place of what is really going on underneath the thoughts that we have about our potential and our dreams and on what we can actually go, what's going on underneath that, which is very rare. I don't see that a lot where people are talking about the truth of why they feel the way they feel.

Jeremy Cline 2:26
Well, I definitely want to dig into that. But first, I'm interested to know how you got into this because I got that your career was in banking originally, wasn't it? So, what led you from banking to doing what you do now?

Dionne Williams 2:37
There's a few things. My background in banking was the foundation. So, I've been in financial services since 2003, I started off at Experian, it was primarily FTSE 100s I was working with, consulting for. And then I joined NatWest in 2008, and start-ups, SMEs, so I looked after businesses which turned over under a million, anything from a million underneath. And in that realm, so this was when banks used to have people like myself in the banking hall. So, that was the good old days when you used to be able to walk in and get assistance from an actual person in the banking hall that dealt with businesses specifically. So, I was that person, I used to work at the High Street Kensington branch, and I would see people on a daily basis starting businesses. Over the years, it just intrigued me, I mean, statistically, 90% of businesses will fail within the first three years. Statistically, that was pre-COVID. And you see it, I mean, working in an organisation like that, you see the amount of businesses that were struggling financially to breakeven, nevermind make a profit. So, it just intrigued me as to why do some people succeed, and so many others don't, when in reality, there's not really much difference in terms of intellect or skill or ability. There's not much difference in their actual ability, their ways that they go about things, there's not really much difference at all, but some have this, they have something that the 90% don't have. And that is an inner, it's an internal belief system about their potential. And that's what made me, that's what led me to do what I do now, because I was also in the 90% room. So, I wanted to start my own business too. I really wanted to, I think it was at least six years of being in corporate, I was desperate to start my own thing. I knew I could do it. I knew I had the skills. I knew I had the experience. I mean, I'm looking after small businesses every day. I mean, I had everything I needed to start my own consulting business looking after start-ups, but I just didn't have it. I just didn't have the confidence. I was literally petrified of losing my monthly salary, didn't believe in myself enough to be able to make the money I needed to be able to live well. And it was being made redundant that forced me out. I had to be kicked out. I couldn't leave on my own accord even if that's what I really wanted to do. And I just wanted to understand myself really, this was an understanding myself journey, why did I have to be pushed? Why did I need to be pushed? Why couldn't I just do it of my own back, because that's what I really wanted to? And this led me to the realisation that most of us aren't, most of us don't have that self-belief. It wasn't instilled really, we never, it wasn't fairly shared out, you know, from early on. Most of us have an internal voice that is moving us away from what we actually do want.

Jeremy Cline 5:58
So, was it redundancy that sparked you into doing what you had always wanted to do? So, you kind of wanted to go down the coaching mindset route, and then, when you were made redundant, that was what made you go, 'Okay, now I've got an opportunity to do this.'

Dionne Williams 6:15
Jeremy, when I got told I was going to be made redundant, I don't think I've ever been happier in my life. It was the best news I've had. I was so happy because it was almost like a sign, like a sign from the universe, it's my time. It's like, you're not going to leave of your own accord, I'm going to give you a reason to leave, and I'm going to give you some money to even get the thing going. So, that was the spark for me, I knew that I was supposed to do this. But I still wasn't clear on exactly what I wanted to do. Because again, going back to this underlying worry and fear, and I talk a lot about this in my socials, we grow up, the parent and child relationship is an existence throughout every area of our life. So, we have, when we're young, we are told what to do by our parents. And then we go to school, and we are told what to do by our teachers. And then we go to college, same thing. And if we do the traditional route, it's the same thing. We are told what to do, we are given direction and instructions, and we just follow the leader. And then we go into the world of work, and it's the same thing. Organisation becomes a parent, and you are the child still, you wait to get paid once a month, and you do what you have to do. And we're very obedient. And that's just the way that the world runs. And then, I got the opportunity to do on my own. And that was not what I thought it was going to be like, because it was then that I realised, I don't have anyone to tell me what to do. I don't even know if I can make this decision on my own. What should I do? It's like all this freedom to choose was just too much for my brain. I didn't know what I was doing. I was, I tried, I've probably had about 10 different niches, I was all over the place, Jeremy. It was not the dream that I thought it was going to be. All the experience of working in business banking, it all left my brain, it was not necessarily horrible, it was a huge learning curve, it was a huge learning experience to realise that I actually can determine what I actually really want to do. I've never had that before. To be given an opportunity to choose was just so alien.

Jeremy Cline 8:34
I completely get what you say. And I love this idea of this parent-child relationship just permeating everywhere. And it's absolutely right. I mean, if you work for any kind of organisation, chances are that there's a boss, and I don't know how far up, how high up the chain you'd have to go where that's not the case. Maybe it's only once you get to the, you know, the shareholders or the business owners, but even then, you might be CEO and you're still one to report to shareholders and board members and that kind of thing. So, yeah, I absolutely get where you're coming from. I also understand what you mean about, I think is it called the tyranny of choice, where you're given all of these choices, and it paralyses you and you just don't know what to do with it. Can you talk a bit about that? So, how, when you're faced with all this choice, literally a blank canvas, how it can, yeah, just prevent you from doing anything?

Dionne Williams 9:30
Sure. It's funny, because I did a talk about this last night. And part of this has to do with our upper limit, the upper limit realm of what we are allowed. So, again, a lot of us, most of us, most adults are still operating from the child perspective of beingness in this world. We're always looking for somebody to tell us what to do, what's right, what's the right way. We're very obedient really, as a society, we love to be led and told what to do. So, then, when that choice, when that freedom of choice is given, then it's something that's not familiar for you. And this could be in business, it could be in relationships, it could be in any area, when freedom of choice is offered, the child in us kicks in, and wants to know whether we have permission, wants someone to validate the idea, wants somebody to affirm whether this is okay. And it's an internal thing. It's not something external. It's all happening inside of us. I've literally just come off a call to a lady who, we spoke a few years ago, at least two years ago now, haven't spoken to her in a long, long time. And we spoke because she's interested in joining one of my programmes, and I was thinking, you know, so what's your journey so far, because I remember when we spoke two years ago, you were going start your business, and you were about to embark on this journey. And you, you know, you were fed up with the nine to five, and you were going to do this, and she was like, 'Yeah, I'm still where I was, I haven't moved forward. I've invested thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands in courses and coaching and courses and coaching and all these different things, and I can't move forward. And she said, 'I listened to you talk', I did a video about this, 'So, I listened to your video about the upper limit, how much happiness am I allowed to have. I'm still waiting for permission from my parents, I'm still waiting for them to say that it's okay for me to do what I want to do. And there's a part of me that is still in that place. And because I don't have it, it's almost like, it's not okay for me to do what I want because no one's approved of it. No one's said it's a good idea.' And you'll find that in a lot of people, if somebody will come along and say, 'Actually, you shouldn't do that, it's not a great idea.' And it will completely derail their idea. They'll completely lose track of what they wanted to do, just because somebody else said, 'No, you shouldn't do that.' And that happened to me, many times, not confident enough to believe in my own ability to make something happen.

Jeremy Cline 12:08
Let's talk about the emotional side of this. So, how do emotions link with mindset and thoughts? What's kind of the connection between them? How do they intertwine?

Dionne Williams 12:22
Okay, so I mean, I could talk about this all day, but it kind of frustrates me when I hear people talking about mindset, okay, we're going to work on our mindset. Everyone talks about mindset, they're still about mindset. And you know, mindset has it's place. I'm not gonna knock mindset altogether. But...

Jeremy Cline 12:38
Can you just set out what you think what you mean by mindset, just so we're making sure that everyone understands what you're talking about.

Dionne Williams 12:47
The traditional sense of mindset work is to work on your thoughts. You have these thoughts, some of them are negative, let's focus on the thoughts that are causing you to or preventing you from moving forward. And let's shift those thoughts. Let's change those thoughts into something more positive. That's what I recognise a lot of people consider is mindset. Affirmation work, repeating positive affirmations to yourself, journaling work, figuring out the thoughts that you're thinking that are creating the problem, identifying thoughts. That for me, is what I believe a lot of people genuinely believe is mindset work. So, if you can identify your thought process that's causing the problem, you can shift it and then everything is going to be amazing. What that doesn't take into account is that thoughts on their own have no power. Thoughts on their own are kind of like just clouds. And for anyone that's listening to this, think about, you could have a thought about something, and the thought might be very unpleasant. But if it's just a thought on its own, it won't rock your world. It won't derail your life. It might not be pleasant, but it won't derail you. However, you have that exact same thought and an emotion is attached to that thought, a whole other ballgame. That could take you out for days. You could experience so much emotional turbulence because there is an attachment now. I call the emotion is like a hook. Once there is a hook and that thought attaches to the hook, ae are in a whole nother realm. So, we've left reality and we've gone straight into our head. And we've creating stories now in our head. Everything is happening in our head. It's not happening in the world, it's not happening in real life, it's happening in our mind. And from that space in our mind, we talk ourselves out of everything that we really want to do, we convince ourselves of things that have never even taken place. We make stuff up and it feels so real because there is an emotion attached to that.

Jeremy Cline 15:01
What's the effect of the emotion here? Is it that something makes us feel bad and so, that causes an avoidance mechanism?

Dionne Williams 15:11
The thing about the emotion itself is we have repressed a huge part of ourselves. A lot of our true nature is below the surface. We keep it below the surface. Which works for some types of emotions in terms of our true nature, there's parts of ourselves that from a social perspective, probably is not a great idea that it comes out in the public arena at times, especially in a workplace. But there's also parts of ourselves that are really required, that weren't accepted, that we've deemed as terrible, but they're not really, they're not terrible at all, we need these parts of ourselves, because they're the parts of ourselves that are actually confident. They're the parts of ourselves that are actually able to admit, take those steps, achieve those goals, make things happen, have the great relationship, have all the money or whatever it is that we say that we want, but we've repressed those parts of ourselves. So, they want to come out, these feelings, they want to come up, but they can't come up, because we won't let them. We're forcing them down all the time, we're trying to get rid of them, we do all sorts of things to not feel the stuff. People drink, take drugs, you know, destroy their lives, because they don't want to feel this stuff. So, we have to have a thought instead. Because it's almost like the buddy would say, 'Okay, let's give her a thought that's going to trigger this feeling. Let's give her a thought, and that thought is going to trigger the feeling.' Once the thought kicks in, the feeling has power now. And once, I'm just going to use myself as an example, once my thought is connected to the feeling, I can turn that, I will make that feeling into something huge, but I won't assign it to the real reason, which is myself. I will assign it to something outside of me. And I will blame something outside of me for making me feel less. Because I don't recognise that the feeling is in me. And there is a reason why I feel it. And it's all to do with some past experience, horrible things have happened to us, we've had bad experiences, somebody was bullied at school or some other thing happened. And it created an emotional impact, it was very impactful. And that impact is translated into every other experience that happens down the line in adulthood. And because it happens so quickly in a split second, we don't recognise that, you know, the reason why I'm angry at my boyfriend is because he looked at me a certain ways because of how I was treated when I was three or whatever it is, because my brother did something horrible to me or something. We don't recognise the link, we just blame the person that's right in front of us. It's immediate, and it seems like that's the reason why I feel like that.

Jeremy Cline 17:52
Okay. So, to summarise two points, I think, thoughts without emotion don't have any power, it's the emotion that gives the thoughts the power. And also, when we feel emotion, we might tie it to an external event, there might be something that happens which makes us feel sad, or makes us feel angry or whatever. But it's not of itself the external event that's causing the emotion. It's something internal to us, which is being triggered by that external event. But it's really internally where the emotion is happening, if I summarised that correctly.

Dionne Williams 18:38
100%, everything is about how we feel. Our whole life is dictated by how we feel. We are controlled by how we feel, not what we think, but how we feel. Because it's only when we feel something do we think anything. We have thoughts all the time, it doesn't make any difference to our lives, but we use thoughts as guidance. Thoughts aren't very reliable. I say thoughts are like, when experts talk about mindset work, they talk as though our mind is like a dog, like we can tain this thing, like we can tell it to sit, and it's going to be obedient. Which just couldn't be any further from the truth. Our mind is more like a cat. You tell a cat to sit, if it wants to sit, it will sit, but if it doesn't want to sit, it's not going to and nothing you can do about that. And that's what our mind is like, you don't really have control over what this thing does, it's not reliable as a source of guidance, as to it's not going to take you to the promised land. Because the promised land you're trying to get to, your thought process is not going to help you get there. If your feelings, if your internal world is full of turbulence, your mind cannot be clear. We have to remove the turbulence or at least a good portion of it, to clear the mind up. We have to have a change of heart in order to clear the mind up. That's where the work is. The work is changing your heart. The work is changing how you feel. When you change how you feel, your mind changes all by itself.

Jeremy Cline 20:09
That leads quite nicely on to what I was going to ask next, which is once we've recognised that emotions are internal, what do we do with that information? How does knowing that help us?

Dionne Williams 20:24
Ooh, it's beautiful, Jeremy, because it gives us back control. It puts us back in the driver's seat. Because nobody else knows how we feel, that's the fact. We assume, we like to think, people should, they should know how I feel, I've had clients that say, why don't they know how I feel? Because there's no way somebody could know how you feel, they're not inside your body to feel your feeling. They're in their own body, feeling their own feeling, they know how they feel. So, once you can own your own feelings, because let's face it, as long as we are assigning blame to somebody else or an outside force, they're not our feelings are they, we're going to say, 'Okay, I'm only feeling this way because of what he did and what she did, and they never recognised me, or they never gave me this promotion that I should have got.' We're going to blame. As long as we're blaming, we don't own it. But once we can say, 'Okay, it's me, it's my emotion, something that I need to do something about', we have power now. Because I can deal with my own emotion, I can dissolve that thing. I can recognise it for what it actually is. I've given this feeling a meaning. Feelings on their own, feelings have no meaning. They are neutral bodily sensations, they mean nothing at all. Until we assign it a meaning. We decide the meaning. So, once I can recognise that I've got this emotion inside of me, and I've made it mean something, usually something really terrifying, which is why I don't want to look at it, once I can detach that meaning, so I can neutralise it, and I can experience it for what it is rather than the story I've told myself about what it actually means, I'm free of this feeling, because I'm no longer resisting it. I'm no longer fighting it. I'm no longer trying to get rid of it. No longer trying to pretend like I don't feel this thing.

Jeremy Cline 22:22
So, what's the result of all this, once you've had this realisation, what does it enable, how does it help us?

Dionne Williams 22:30
You elevate, it elevates you to a place of empowerment. That is true empowerment, because now, I'm not still blaming my ex for the years of trauma that he put me through. I can see that I had something to do with that, I played a part in that, and now, I am empowered to A, not have that experience again, but B, realise how powerful I am and how much I did create that situation. What I did to create these particular situations, or now that I realised that this stuck feeling of guilt that I had, that I've been carrying around with me like a bag, or a fear of shame that I've had, because of what somebody did to me at school, or those feelings of resentment that I've had because of what somebody did to me, once I've let go of that stuff, I'm free to go and go for what I actually do want. Because the only reason people aren't going for what they really want is because deep down inside, they don't feel they deserve it. They don't feel like they worthy, they're not really worthy of it, they're not sure, they still feel like something bad's going to happen to me if I do this, because what if so and so said something. People are afraid of criticism, they're afraid of humiliation, they're afraid of being shamed, they're afraid of change, they're afraid of all sorts of different things. But these come from place of feeling like there's something wrong with them in the first place.

Jeremy Cline 24:02
So, is this about building up your own self-confidence? Is this about, if you recognise the feelings and recognise them not to be true or factual or whatever, not having a material impact on the real world, that it is just sort of how you're constructing things, so is the goal then that it gives you confidence to set aside those fears and not let them hold you back from doing whatever it is that you want to do?

Dionne Williams 24:37
That is the exactly the aim. Once you realise and once you know, and it's not just, and that's the thing, the thing about mindset is it's, for me, it's very surface level, because I can know I should be positive. But if I don't feel that inside of me, then I'm just pretending. I can know something and most people know a lot of things, but they don't live like what they know. A lot of people are talking the talk, but they don't live that experience. It's not enough for me to know that I'm an all-powerful person, I am limitless, you know, a lot of inspirational people around talk the talk, I'm limitless, I can do anything, I can achieve anything. And we can talk all this talk of feeling empowered, if I don't feel that inside, it's pretence. It's not real. I need to feel that experience for myself. And that's what I do for clients, this is about feeling this inside, it's not just knowing it on a logical level, it sounds great. But feeling that experience that you truly are limitless, and that the story that you're telling yourself is just the voice in your head that we all have, that makes mental movies about things, it's just like having your own movie station in your head, it can make all sorts of things. And that is just the distraction that will remove you from what you actually want. That's its purpose, it's the distractor, it will take you away, and we all know that, you know, our comfort zone is created and what keeps us in a familiar state, it's all about keeping us the same. As long as we listen to that voice in our head and its accompanying emotion, we remain in that realm of that comfort zone, going out of the comfort zone, and we'll always bring up this conflict, it will always do that, regardless of what the goal is. So, am I willing to face that?

Jeremy Cline 26:33
So, negative emotions aren't going to go away. I mean, there's always going to be fear, self-doubt, that sort of thing. So, what do you do then to stop them from stopping you?

Dionne Williams 26:50
And that's what I would, Jeremy, that's the thing, negative emotions don't have to, negative emotions are only negative because we decided that they mean something.

Jeremy Cline 27:02
Okay, so all right. It's weird to say it's almost inevitable, but I suspect you're going to challenge me on that, but let's go down that route anyway. It's kind of, you know, there's going to be something that makes me angry, you know, something on the news, you know, something terrible what I perceive as a miscarriage of justice, or you know, whatever it might be, there's going to be something which just makes me angry, or there's going to be something which makes me feel, I'll call it fear, I mean, it could be anxiety, it could be nervousness, you know, maybe I'm about to have a conversation with a boss or something. And it's, you know, there's a churning feeling, the butterflies in the stomach, I'm nervous about how it's going to go. I mean, isn't it always the case that the feelings are always going to be there in those circumstances? Or are you talking about getting to a place where you don't have that kind of emotional response to whatever the external stimulus is?

Dionne Williams 28:07
Okay, so we have to remember that the emotional responses, it's a central nervous system response. That's the fact of the matter, our central nervous system is responding, it's taken all of these impactful experiences that we've had and it ingrained them now within the body. So, even though we are at work or we are in situations, and we think, 'Okay, it's because I'm talking to my boss, and I've got to say something that I don't want to say', the actual fact of the matter is that your central nervous system is doing its own thing in the background, because the story of your mind has created something. So, you're thinking something, you believe something might happen now, you believe that, if I say this thing to my boss, potentially, he might think less of me or whatever the story might be. It's the story that's making you feel that way, not the actual fact you're talking to your boss. And it's having that distinguished knowing that once you do this kind of work that I'm talking about, is that you start to live in actual reality, rather than in the voice within the voice. When we are in a situation where we feel really, really uncomfortable, and of course, it's going to come up because we listen to the voice in our head, so the voice in our head says, 'Ooh, you know, if you go on public speak, what if you fall over and everyone laughs at you?' What if you walk on stage and everyone sees that your jeans aren't, you know, the right fit?' Or whatever it is our mind says to us. That is what creates that feeling. It's not about going on stage, it's not about doing the public speaking. It's about the story that we've told ourselves. The story says, 'Oh, my God, something bad might happen. They're going to laugh at me. Oh, my God.' It's that that creates that reaction.

Jeremy Cline 29:52
Okay, so I kind of understand what you're saying about, you know, you're not worried about the conversation with your boss, you're worried about a fear that something you say is going to have a negative effect, or you're not worried about going on stage per se, as what might happen when you're on a stage, that you won't perform or you'll trip up and make a fool of yourself or something like that. But what about the example I gave of just seeing something in the news, and that triggering some kind of emotion? I mean, isn't that always going to be there? You know, you see something and it triggers the feeling of anger, maybe it's injustice, or whatever it is.

Dionne Williams 30:31
It's really, I find this fascinating because for most people, because they don't understand themselves, that is automatic, and I was in that place, so, I get it. Yes. As long as I don't understand myself, I'm going to be triggered by things outside of me. As long as I believe that those things mean something about me, about the world, about what is happening, because that creates my story, bear in mind that that trigger, the fact that the majority of people have that trigger is what marketing agencies are using to get people to do exactly what they want them to do. We are led by our fears, we are led by our triggers. People make a lot of money of keeping people in a place where they are led by how they're triggered and how they feel, people study this behaviour. It's understood that, yeah, if we show them this information, it's going to trigger a fear response, and then they're all going to do this. That's understood. So, but it's not true that, if I see something externally, that I have to be triggered by it. Only if I buy into a story of what it might mean about the future, what could happen, what would happen, what does it mean about me, what does it mean about my safety in this world. Our mind will make up something about that. What does it mean about the state of the world if this is happening, and I'm seeing it? It's not a given. Also, if I'm triggered, and I'm angry, the truth is, I have anger in me. It takes an external, it takes something external to trigger the anger in me, because I can't feel that anger on my own. A lot of people cannot and will not feel their own feeling. So, an external source is required in order for that feeling to come up. Until we deal with our feelings, an external source is required to trigger us, to force us to feel this experience. The body has a way of making us feel something if we are unwilling to feel it ourselves. If we are unwilling to feel a feeling, we will find ourselves in circumstances where that feeling is triggered. A lot of people don't like it, they feel guilty about being angry. A lot of people feel ashamed of feeling jealous, for example. So, it's not a feeling that they will allow themselves to experience on their own, but guarantee that those types of people will find themselves in situations where they're triggered by something that makes them feel those feelings. Because you cannot escape yourself. You will see yourself everywhere.

Jeremy Cline 31:37
So, where are we trying to get to? I mean, we're presumably not trying to get to a position where we never feel an emotional response. So, what is the aim of what we've been talking about, what is the goal?

Dionne Williams 33:36
The aim is to be able to feel without blaming it on anything other than what it actually is, which is a bodily sensation that is wanting to come out, I need to experience this feeling, and it's okay, I'm safe to do so. There is nothing wrong with me, the world isn't going to collapse. No one's gonna hurt me because I'm feeling this way. It's something that has been buried inside of me and it needs to come up. When I allow that feeling to come up and when I'm okay with this feeling, the world is okay. If you won't allow yourself to feel something, it's not okay. And it's never going to be okay. And you'll find yourself in situations where you are around people and they will trigger that feeling in you, and it will remain an annoyance. But once you are okay feeling that way, because you know it's got nothing to do with you, it doesn't mean anything bad about you, you're okay with it, it's not a reflection of the type of person you are, once you're okay to feel that feeling on your own, it's almost as though those situations that triggered you, they no longer trigger you. You're no longer afraid of up levelling your life, you're no longer afraid of wanting to quit your nine to five, you're not afraid of wanting to start the business, you're not afraid of needing to get on the phone to people that you previously would have been avoiding, you're not afraid of that, because you realise that those uncomfortable feelings that arise, they're your own. They are not somebody else's. They are not reflective of what type of person you are. They are neutral.

Jeremy Cline 35:13
Okay, so you give yourself permission to have the feelings, but what about expressing them? I mean, presumably, there are circumstances where you might feel something, but it would be unwise to express them. So, say you're having a conversation with a work colleague, and they have said something which has triggered an emotional response to you. But it wouldn't necessarily be a particularly good career move to express that particular anger. So, what are you doing then? Are you just kind of recognising that the anger is in you, but discounting it or taking a deep breath or kind of acknowledging that it's there, but it's not relevant to the situation that you're in? What are you trying to do there?

Dionne Williams 35:56
I mean, I can say I'm at a stage where I don't have that issue, because I'm not triggered by anything. I don't get triggered by anything. Nothing triggers me. And if it does, I'm almost in a place of, I'm excited that I've been triggered, because now I know where I need to work, I haven't done work. I haven't dealt with something. That's what a trigger means to me. A trigger me to me I haven't dealt with something. This person has the ability, because remember, if this person can make me angry, they have some power over me. They have power over me. What did they say that made me feel like this? What did they do that made me feel like this? The fact of the matter, it's a reminder of a situation where I felt powerless, that feeling that I'm feeling of anger isn't, and it's not that the person hasn't been disrespectful, or they haven't said something that they shouldn't have said, it's not that at all. So, it's not about discounting. But why do I feel this? Why do I feel triggered? Why can I not just articulate that? I don't like what they said. Why do I have to feel an emotional response to this? Why is it that I'm emotionally involved in this situation? This person I work with, they're not my boyfriend or girlfriend, you know? Why am I so bothered by this situation? Why has it done, why they affected me in this way? That's not, it doesn't need to be that way. That person shouldn't have that power over them. People say horrible things and disrespectful things all the time. But why do we allow it to penetrate our internal? Why does it do that? Nobody asks these questions. But why does it do that? What did this person say that hurt me so much? It reminds me of something. I've been brought back to a time where I was in a situation where I was powerless, I was hurt, I was humiliated, I was shamed, I was disrespected. That time when it was so horrible and I couldn't do anything about it. And fast forward 20 years, and I'm still there. I've spoken to clients who in their 40s and 50s and 60s will talk about their school life as though it happened yesterday. They're still there, they still see life, they see others, they see friendships in the way that they did when they were in the school playground. Because it was so impactful for them, everything is that. Because once we have the lens, oh, people are horrible, they treat people horrible, we keep that lens and we see everybody like that. And we find it hard to trust. And we assume, we make all these assumptions that when that person looked at me this way, or when they said that thing, it must mean that they wanted to hurt me or something. We do that though, we make that assumption. That's our story. That's our creation. We don't know what the other person was intending to do.

Jeremy Cline 38:50
Where do you start on the work for this? Apart from, obviously, your website and coming to speak to you, but if you're someone and you recognise that you do get triggered by things, and you're interested in this idea of getting to a place where you don't, what's the first step?

Dionne Williams 39:09
If I think about where I was when I recognised that, I had a lot of internal work to do. Because I was in a place where I was still very much in, I call it the child realm. So, I still believed that other people had what it takes in how I lived my life. I still believed that other people had power over me, and I was very strongly in that place of feeling like other people weren't A, B, C, D, E, they were acknowledging me, they weren't appreciating me, they weren't this that and the other. And when I was in that place, the person that, I went on holiday to Mexico, and I met lady there, and when she was leaving, she's from Scotland, but she lives in Canada, really weird how we just connected, we connected for the whole holiday, she gave me a book. She signed the book. I never read the book. I don't know how this lady knew this, but it's almost like she could see right through me, she read right through, because I thought I was, you know, happy and all the rest of it, but she clearly could see there was another thing going on inside. So, she gave me this book. When I got back to the UK, maybe two weeks later, I opened the book and I started reading, and it's almost like it blew my mind, because it's like this lady, she knew, she could see right through me, it's just what I needed to read. It was a book called The Power of Now... It was the New Earth actually by Eckhart Tolle. That was my initial first step. Because that was the book that made me realise that it's got nothing to do with other people.

Jeremy Cline 40:41
So, it was the New Earth by, who is the author?

Dionne Williams 40:44
Eckhart, E-C-K-H-A-R-T, Tolle, T-O-L-L-E. That was in 2009. Eckhart Tolle was my first step. Because before that, I don't think I would have, I wouldn't have been able to recognise it, I wouldn't have gotten this. Reading that book made me realise that I'd been doing this to myself. I realised that my voice in my head was just not, it wasn't conducive to the direction I was trying to go in.

Jeremy Cline 41:17
So, that's the New Earth. And I think you mentioned a second book, The Power of Now?

Dionne Williams 41:21
Okay, so you've got another book called The Power of Now. It's quite a, it's a bit of a difficult read, I find, that was just my experience of it. I found it a little bit of a difficult read. But he's got another book called Practising The Power of Now, which is a shortened version. And it's almost like my bible, it's like my bible. I've bought hundreds of copies of this book, and I've given it to anyone, all and sundry have copies of this book, amazing book. It changes your perception of how you see yourself.

Jeremy Cline 41:51
Cool. Well, I'll certainly put links to those in the show notes. I feel like we have really only scratched the surface on something that we could dive into for hours. But this has been a real eye-opener and absolutely fascinating for me, certainly. I've got to ask, if people want to find you and discuss this with you in more detail, where can they find you?

Dionne Williams 42:12
Sure. So, I will say, if anyone wants to have this conversation, or they want to learn more about my work, if they want to deal with their upper limit problem of achieving more, but not feeling that it's possible for them, email me, it's probably the best thing to do, is to email me. My email address is, so that's dionne@getsetgo.london. And I am on social media, so I'm not really an Instagram person, so I'm trying, but my efforts, it's not really my realm, but I am on Instagram, getsetgo.london2, also on Facebook, I've got a number of groups, I've got a number of groups for varying different goals that people are trying to go through. I have a group called Clarity to Launch, I'm just launching a new programme in this, that's for coaches, consultants, service providers who want to effectively hit the five-figure realm, so five-figure months. So, if you're somebody who wants to have some knowledge, ideas and skills, wants to learn how to create a way of hitting those five-figure months, without stressing yourself out and burning out, I've got a programme for you. And it includes the work on elevating that part of yourself that knows that it can, because I think that's an element that's missed out of a lot of coaching workers. I was on a call with a lady earlier on, like I was saying, she spent thousands and thousands and thousands on coaching and courses, but she doesn't have the inner strength, courage, confidence, whatever you want to call it to actually implement those actions. And I always say like, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, whoever, Jeff Bezos could come with a strategy for you and say, 'Here you go, follow this, follow these steps, and you will make millions of pounds.' But the majority of people won't take those steps. Because internally, their upper limit won't allow them to have what they really want. Everybody wants to be a millionaire, everybody wants to be rich, everybody wants to live in the Bahamas, or whatever it is that they say. But their goals are just, it's more hopes and wishes than actually believing that they can do it.

Jeremy Cline 44:26
Awesome stuff. Well, thank you for introducing me to this subject, as I say, absolutely fascinating conversation, lots to think about. Dionne, thank you so much for joining me.

Dionne Williams 44:37
My pleasure, Jeremy. Thank you for having me.

Jeremy Cline 44:41
Okay, hope you enjoyed the interview with Dionne Williams of Get Set Go. Dionne is another one of those people that I've had on the show who is just so full of positive energy that they're an absolute pleasure to talk to, and I probably could have talked to her for so much longer. You probably heard from the interview that I did struggle a bit with some of the concepts that she was talking about, especially this idea that you can essentially not allow yourself to get angry about things. I've kind of always assumed that there are going to be things that make me angry or upset. But then, the trick is not allowing that emotion to derail you or prevent you from doing whatever it is that you're trying to do at the time. What Dionne was saying was that you get to a stage where you don't even get annoyed or angry or upset by whatever it is that would usually trigger that sort of emotion. As a first step, I'm certainly going to be conscious of whenever I do feel upset, taking a step back and thinking about what it is that it's caused that reaction. And if it is a person, something that someone has said, go back to what Dionne was saying about not allowing that person to have any power. So, there's certainly look to dig into there and some very interesting ideas. As usual, full show notes with a transcript, summary and links at changeworklife.com/102, that's changeworklife.com/102. And this is another episode which definitely bears sharing with others, because let's face it, we all have emotions, we all get angry or upset about things. So, pass this on, and I think you might be helping someone else to think about what's going on and maybe manage those emotions and prevent them from having an adverse effect. You can do that on Facebook, Twitter and on Pinterest by clicking the buttons, which you'll find on the show notes page for this episode, which once again, is at changeworklife.com/102. As always, there's another great interview coming next week, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.