Ep 1: Shatter Your Glass Walls

Wait, what? Don’t you mean glass ceilings? Nope! In this episode, we unpack what a Glass Wall is, how they affect our lives and what they’re actually made of.

Spoiler alert: Glass Walls are those barriers we unintentionally put up in our own way. The good and the bad of it is we actually have the power to shatter them (instead of run into them).

Interested in trying a unique exercise we use over at UnSabotage? Hop on over to UnSabotage.com/tryit to claim yours now. I promise, it’ll be an eye-opening, clarity-forming use of your time.

Here’s today’s transcript:

Hey, Gorgeous! Ginny Townsend here, and I am so thankful that you’re on here watching with me. If we haven’t met before, like I said, my name is Ginny Townsend, and I am the founder of UnSabotage. It’s a beautiful and unique community of women that gather with the sole intention of figuring out what’s been holding us back, and then, how can we step into the life that we love.

And now, I’ve been really excited about this video because I want to share one of the word pictures that has really changed my life. And, if you’re new, if you don’t know me, and you continue to get to know me, you’ll find that I love analogies, that I love word pictures, and so this is the one that I think is the most poignant, and I wanted to start out my Facebook Live series with. It’s the idea of “Glass Walls.” We all have them, and I’m sure when you hear me say that, you’re like, “Well, Ginny, don’t you mean ‘glass ceilings’?” And actually, I don’t. Now, what’s the difference?

Glass ceilings, they’re externally imposed. They reflect more of the culture at a macro level than really any one individual. Oftentimes they require campaigns, awareness, key figures, and sometimes even legislation to change. Whereas Glass Walls, they are all internal. We have the ability and the control, once we know what they are, to shatter them. Another reason why I love this analogy of Glass Walls is, you can running, charging ahead, and then all of the sudden, WHAM, out of nowhere you feel like you hit a wall that you didn’t know was there. You didn’t see it coming, right, ’cause it’s glass. You can see right through it. You can see where you want to be, but something is holding you back. And so, I am here today because I love the idea of knowledge is power, awareness is power, but then knowing and understanding what the key components are to these glass walls will change your life.

So, there are just two building blocks in these Glass Walls. Just two of them. And the first one is limiting thoughts. There are limiting thoughts. And then the second one is our old habits. Now, what do I mean by these? With limiting thoughts, I came across a report published by the Cleveland Clinic a few months ago that I thought put great numbers to what I had been experiencing. In the report they said, the average person thinks 60,000 thoughts a day. I think that’s about a thought a second of our waking hours. That’s a lot of thoughts. And then, what actually almost knocked me out of my chair was, when I kept reading, and it said, 95% of our thoughts that we think today we thought yesterday. And then, if that’s not astonishing enough, they went on to say, 80% of those thoughts are negative.

So, 95% of our thoughts that we think every day are in automation. Automation. And I call these thoughts that we think, this 95% of our thoughts that we think every day, I call them soundtracks. And why I do that is, they’re loud enough, they influence us, right? They influence our decisions, but they’re not loud enough that we actually stop and question their validity. So, what’s an example of a limiting thought? That could be like, “Oh, no, I’m not good enough for that,” or “Failure is terrifying. I shouldn’t even try.” You’re like, “Don’t get out there. Failure is way too big and scary. Don’t even try.” Or, the “I’m not good enough” thought, which is devastating. So, those are limiting thoughts.

And then, the other building block of Glass Walls are our old habits. What’s interesting about old habits is, when they were formed, they could have served your highest good. They could have been extremely powerful to your life, and take you forward. An example that I like to use because I noticed it in my own life is, in a previous role, as soon as I would wake up in the morning, I would check my email to see, okay, what kind of day am I walking into? To mentally prepare, to get the team started on whatever needed to be done, but then when I moved on from that role, I continued that habit.

But then in my new role, my mornings were my creative master time. I needed those mornings to be focused and working on writing and creating content, and I’m working on a course, and I’ll be telling you more about that course later on. But that old habit, I didn’t realize that it was continuing, obviously, ’cause it was a habit. I never questioned it. So when I would sit down to write, I’d be kind of scattered because I had just checked my email, and my thoughts were everywhere but where they needed to be. So that is an example of a habit that could have served you so well, but then now, you’ve outgrown, or it’s just holding you back.

What I love, again, about the two building blocks of Glass Walls is that they’re both internal, and we have the ability to, once we know what they are, to shatter them, to remove them, to redefine them, so they actually help propel you forward to where you want to be. Your goals, your relationship, your career, whatever it may be. So, along those lines, it’s like, “Okay, so I know now, Glass Walls.”

I bet you’re thinking of, maybe, certain times where you feel like you hit Glass Walls, right? What do I do about it? What’s next? And, honestly, really, the best way that I have found to get rid of these Glass Walls, to shatter them, is to get our thoughts, just they are, no judgment, out of our brain and onto paper where we can see our thoughts and then actually do something about it. So, I have created a gift for you, and if you go over to unsabotage.com/tryit, it’s a freebie that you can download, and I’ve created a couple of different videos for you to be able to get the most out of the experience, and it’s called UnClutter, and it’s just getting thoughts that are at the top of your mind out of your mind onto paper so you can start to see, hey, what are my limiting beliefs? What are these recurring words that I keep saying? And then, what are, maybe, some old habits that are around and no longer serving me well?

So, I hope that you go over to unsabotage.com/tryit. I’m really excited to see what comes up when you go through this exercise. I think it’s very empowering, it’s very uplifting, and it’s refreshing. That’s the feedback that I constantly get about this exercise, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg about what’s possible. So, thank you so much for joining me today on the Shattering Your Glass Walls Facebook Live. Did you like what I had to say? If so, share it. I would be so honored if you would send it to your friends and help them see that they can move forward with just a little bit of awareness and exercise on their part. I hope you have an amazing day. Thanks again for joining, and I’ll see you next Tuesday at 11 a.m. Pacific. Bye, Gorgeous!