[R2B 107] Annie Stoker ~ How to Have Stress Free Success in Business & Life

by | Aug 10, 2015 | Business, Podcast Episode

R2B107: Annie Stoker ~ How to Have Stress Free Success in Business & Life

Today’s Guest

I’m so excited to introduce today’s guest, Annie Stoker. I first met Annie in Joanna Martin’s Shift Lifestyle program a couple of years ago, and then I saw her earlier this year at Joanna’s One Woman Conference. Annie is an inspiring coach who combines a number of different tools to her approach in helping people. She’s got a very unique outlook on life, business, and how stress is actually optional. I encourage you to tune in to this week’s episode.

About Annie Stoker

Annie Stoker is an author, transpersonal psychotherapist, trainer and coach. She supports anxious, depressed or stressed women to find peace of mind no matter what is happening in their lives. Annie uses a unique blend of eastern mindfulness techniques and cutting edge western psychological tools to help single women and couples to put the spark back into their eyes and hearts so that they can experience joy and love again. She is committed to showing women how they can experience a sense of freedom from their challenges and find a clear, open, bright way to live again.

Annie has a unique way of getting straight to the point with clients. She shows couples and singles how to shift from getting love to being love. She has distilled diverse perspectives into a simple but profound manual for the mind. She has authored books, coached influential figures, and been featured on TV, radio and in print.

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What You’ll Learn

  • Annie’s top tips on how to have a stress free business and life (yes, it is possible)
  • Why love, contribution, and play are the only reasons for doing anything
  • How to be happy and peaceful no matter what
  • Why it’s so important to questions what success is and what it means to you
  • What’s in your mind isn’t true, and why

Inspiring Women

Things We Discussed

Connect With Annie

 

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly:   Hello and welcome to the Ready2Bloom Podcast, episode 107. This is your host Holly Worton and I am here with today’s special guest Annie Stoker. Annie is an author, transpersonal psychotherapist, trainer and coach. She uses a unique blend of Eastern mindfulness techniques and cutting edge western psychological tools to help single women and couples put the spark back into their eyes and hearts so they can experience joy and love again. Welcome Annie!

Annie: Hi Holly, great to be here!

Holly:   I am so excited to talk with you today! So, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your business background; and your business journey; and how you got to where you are today?

Annie: Well, I have been working with people for about 25 years, and I have worked my way through lots of different alternative therapies and medicine, and sort of ended up working in the area of mindset; and success, and personal development. I really ended up working with people, a lot of the time in business, whether it was traders or property investors, and public speakers. So, I have worked with various different niches in businesses to help them get over their mindset challenges in business. So, it has been a varied route, but I love what I do.

Holly:   Excellent. And, so did you start out as a psychotherapist and then add on other things on top of that? Or, how did that work?

Annie: I mean, I originally started doing massage and physical therapies, 25 years ago. And then sort of studied naturopathy, and all the different types of alternative therapies, and just got more and more interested in the mind, and the psychological and emotional side of things. So, specialised in that.

Holly:   Excellent, so you have trained in a number of different things over the years. Would you like to talk to us a little bit how you have blended that together? Because you have got so many tools in your toolbox!

Annie: Yeah, well, look for me the Eastern model of psychology that you know we are just a mind and it is all very contained within the brain if you like, that’s not enough for me. And, the way I work is very much to include the wisdom of the East and you know all the spiritual aspects to it that have been around for thousands of years, but not in a spiritual way, if that makes sense. It is like I really want to bring the depths of spiritual practice into normality without it being kind of spiritualised in the way that it is a lot of the time. So, yeah, words like mindfulness now are becoming very popular, and I think that’s a great bridge between the East and the West, so I am really happy that that’s taking off.

Holly:   Yes, I think that people are coming to a whole new level of awareness.

Annie: Yeah, absolutely.

Holly:   Yeah. So, you talked a little bit about mindset at the beginning, now, I think that’s one of those words that is also getting more and more kind of part of the mainstream conversation and language. How would you define mindset and how would you… [laughing] yeah, how would you define mindset, because I think a lot of people aren’t quite sure what that means? It definitely sounds like something… people want a positive mindset, or mindset for success, but how would you define that?

Annie: I could say one word very simply, which is an attitude, that’s a bit simplistic, obviously, but for me it’s a combination of an attitude plus awareness. And if you think about the fact that the majority of the mind is actually unconscious and subconscious; it is…we are actually run by a lot of stuff that most of us aren’t aware of. So, I think mindset is having the awareness of what’s going on under the surface a little bit to see what your programming is, and you know to explore that so that you have a little bit more choice and awareness. And so that you can be more positive and have a positive so-called mindset so that you can a) be happier along the way and hopefully create a happier life for yourself and your family.

Holly:   Excellent. So, how do you work with people then, to help them create this mindset, do you, do people come to you for coaching? Or, how do they come to you and how do you blend this unique set of tolls that you have got into your unique way of helping people?

Annie: Yeah, people come for coaching; I also do training, so, I train workshops and teach people, whether it is couples or singles, or business people; just how to apply being happy no matter what’s going on in your life. Because, most people focus on, you know, improving your business and improving your relationships, and I am kind of doing kind of the opposite. In that I am helping people to get freer and happier even if the relationship doesn’t change, or the business doesn’t change, that’s kind of icing on the cake. So, it is how to be happy and peaceful now, then get your life working as well. But, rather than the other way around; most people are trying to fix their business, so that they can get happy. Or fix their relationship so they can get happy. So, I work the other way around.

Holly:   Excellent. So, that kind of led me to go off tangent, but I think this is really, really, important what you have said, because I think a lot of women who are building a new business often struggle to get clients, they struggle with the marketing if they don’t have previous marketing experience, they struggle with the business, if they don’t have previous business experience. And it can be really, really stressful; so, how would you recommend that people can be happy and peaceful with their business, no matter what’s going on, no matter what challenges that they have?

Annie: Well, if you look at what stress is, the first thing is that it is generally wanting something to be different; so, the very first way to get a whole lot happier in your life is just to actually let go of wanting things to be different and accepting them just as they are. I mean there is no point arguing with what’s going on right now, we can fix it in you know five minutes’ time, but right now is just how it is. So, the very first step is always acceptance; and just getting to, you know, just stop jumping up and down and stop wishing something was just different from how it is, and just coming to that calm place. That’s the first step and then understanding how maybe you put yourself under pressure, you have expectations that you are not matching or meeting, and the actual structure of the stress. It might be that you want things to be perfect, you want to have a certain amount of money right now; people have different ways that they create stress for themselves. It might be wanting everyone to like them, or wanting to have a bit more success than they have. And then just learning how to change that mindset if you like, learning how to approach things differently, so that you are looking at what you have rather than what you don’t have.

Holly:   Mm hmm yeah. And I think that can be a huge struggle for people in business, because I think women often compare themselves to other people, and even if they have only been in business for a couple of months, or a couple of years; they are comparing themselves to women who have been in business for, you know, five, six, seven, eight or more years.

Annie: Totally.

Holly:   So, the comparison game can be really, really, difficult.

Annie: Yeah, I think comparison is something to actually delete out of your mental vocabulary, if you like. It never helps. Comparison is one of those things that I encourage people to just not do, not engage in. Yes, and self-judgement is another one. And getting discouraged is another one. It is like if you don’t do those things you are instantly going to be an awful lot happier and feeling more successful.

Holly:   So that’s kind of a huge mindset shift; because we are so used to comparing ourselves to others; to judging ourselves; judging other people; being judged; and then, of course, getting discouraged as a result of all this. So, how do you recommend that people shift that mindset?

Annie: Well, it is a lot about your definition of yourself as being a certain type of person, so if you have kind of like an idea of success being a certain level of attainment; it might have a material status, it might have a dollar sign or a pound sign attached to it; it might have you know a certain level of income; or experiences that you are able to have. It is like, is that actually true? Is that what success actually is? Are you sure? And we really suffer when we have these set definitions of what we think success is that maybe we are not living up to right now, and then that causes us to compare, and get discouraged, and feel negative about things. So, it is really about seeing that that definition isn’t real; there is no universal definition of success; you know, in many countries it might just be keeping your children alive or getting enough food on the table. It is always totally subjective. And to see that your own definition of success, if it is causing you suffering and pain, it’s pointless. You want to change it. So that would be a pretty important thing to do.

Holly:   That’s great; and I think that’s a really good point because it is such a fine line between having that clear vision; working on the vision; having the goals; taking action towards the goals; but not beating ourselves up for not having achieved that yet.

Annie: I like to say that the only two real reasons for doing anything are either love, or contribution, or play/self-expression. Everything else, if you look at it, most people’s reasons for doing things or drives for doing things if you like is actually fear-based. ‘I want to be successful because I don’t want to feel inadequate’; ‘I want to be as good as the neighbours, so that I don’t feel less than’; I want to feel like people love me, because I don’t want to feel lonely’. You know, all those ego drives which we are mostly unconscious of, when you let those things go, and you are just coming from a place of: what do I want to contribute to the world; what do I want to express in the world? It is a whole lot simpler and the idea of success doesn’t really turn up.

Holly:   I absolutely love that! I think that’s a very different way of looking at things.

Annie: Well, it’s a, it’s about seeing through all of those labels that you were saying, those judgements and getting to the core of things.

Holly:   It is, because deep down, I think most of us want to make the world a better place, we want to help people, we want to contribute, but somehow, we tend to get side-tracked on the goals, the vision, the comparison, all of that stuff. So, I think that really does take it down to: why did we start this business in the first place? Because we want to contribute something to the world, we want to help people, and we want to share our gifts whatever they may be.

Annie: Yeah, and when that works, we hope that we get the financial reward of that, which will allow us to have the type of lifestyle that we want, which is all about play. It is all about self-expression and having the time off that you want. It is so ridiculous to work that hard and be so stressed in the hope of having the future lifestyle that you want. It is like completely back to front to me.

Holly:   It is. And it is funny, because so many entrepreneurs follow that lifestyle plan that so many employees have, which is that you work really, really, hard until you are in your 60s and then you retire, and then of course life is going to be fantastic, even though maybe your health is failing and you are not young enough to enjoy the time off. But it’s like we become entrepreneurs because we don’t want to follow that scheme, but then we kind of lock ourselves into the same kind of thing of work, work, work, work, and then some day it will pay off.

Annie: Well, a lot of business owners end up working an awful lot harder than employees anyway. [Holly: Um Hmmm].   So yeah, it is certainly not a black and white solution.

Holly:   Yes! So, you have talked a little bit about play, what does play mean to you and how do you bring play into your business?

Annie: For me, it might sound strange, but my business is no different from the rest of my life. There is no delineation of: ‘now I am at work’, and ‘now I am not’. I do this stuff all the time anyway. Whether it is in my personal life, or with friends, or in my spare time I will go and study this stuff; or you know, hang out with people who do this stuff. In that way, if that makes sense, there is no kind of business and then play. It is play for me. And it is love for me. And very much contribution. In terms of not doing that then hey I am happy to have as much fun as anyone else. [Both: laughing]. Travelling, or going to music festivals, or you know riding horses, or whatever. I love travelling and seeing different things, so yeah, that’s the kind of I guess what people call leisure side of things for me. There is not that real ‘this is work’ and ‘this isn’t work’ at all.

Holly:   Mm so do you feel like you bring a great sense of playfulness to your business, and to your work with clients?

Annie: I think, yeah. I don’t really think of my, the way that I approach things as playful, but I guess that what I am really doing, is encouraging people to be a whole lot lighter about stuff, so you could call that playful. Let’s not take this whole thing so seriously, it is game, it is an option, it is all optional. You can play any game you want to play, you don’t have to be doing this, you know? So, yeah, that’s a bit of lightness.

Holly:   And you can play or you can suffer, because I think a lot of people chose the suffering route.

Annie: That’s right, exactly.

Holly:   Yeah, I think that’s a great take on things. Because, as we’ve said we can take our businesses so seriously, and it becomes this terrible matter of life and death; and I am struggling to build this business, and you know perhaps we can all benefit from lightening things up a little bit?

Annie: Yeah, lighten up, because you just don’t know what’s coming and we have this great kind of myth and illusion that we have got endless swathes of time to do the stuff that we want to do; and we never know that, and I think it is so important to have this reality in, you know, in our major perspective and make sure that we are living the way that we want to live now. And I am not saying that you can have your external life perfect, of course you can’t always, but you can certainly get a whole lot freer and happier and lighter on the inside. And then, if you get your business goals great, and if you don’t it’s still great. It’s okay!

Holly:   It’s not a problem!

Annie: That’s right, do something different then, you know.

Holly:   Exactly. I think that’s the benefit of being self-employed, is that you can constantly evolve your business and reinvent yourself, and reinvent your business and rebrand. And you change it up whenever you want, it is not like you are stuck in a job with a job with a huge corporation or entity, and you have got to do what they are telling you to do. You have got endless flexibility.

Annie: Exactly, and that’s why a lot of people want to get into their own business of course. They have flexibility and it’s about the lifestyle and it is maybe being at home with family. And then, it gets all stress-y and crazy and people are miserable and it is not working, and oh my goodness! [Holly: laughing] We are supposed to be doing this because we want the freedom and I think a lot of people just lose sight of the fact that they kind of have that in a lot of ways.

Holly:   Yeah, definitely; even just the fact of being able to work from home, or something, for many people it is just such a massive luxury that…

Annie: Exactly.

Holly:   So, do you have any more tips for stress-free success. I know we have talked about acceptance and that focus on love and contribution and play. Is there anything else that comes to mind that perhaps we could be taking a look at to help shift our mindset towards a stress-free business?

Annie: Well, I did also talk about the definition of success, letting go of that as well, I think that is a really important thing. And, really, what’s in your mind isn’t true, let me put it that way. Just because you have a thought saying: ‘ugh I have got to make more money’, or ‘I am not as good as the neighbours’ or whatever it is. It is not the truth. It is just a voice in your head. So, the capacity to just observe these thoughts and watch them and let them kind of swim past if you like, is so important because otherwise, yes, as we were saying, we end of taking them very seriously. But then we create a whole lot of stress and drama around things and that doesn’t help us feel good; doesn’t help us create good results; and doesn’t help anyone that we happen to be around. It is like: you don’t want to end up inflicting ourselves on other people, because we are all stressed and uptight, just because of what is going on between our ears. So, to have some, kind of, I guess, mindfulness training or some kind of mind mastery process that you have, mind mechanics anything that helps you understand your mind, and not just the individual thoughts, but in the big picture that your mind is just a machine; its job is to churn out thoughts. Those thoughts don’t relate to the reality, they relate to your interpretation of reality. And then, to develop a different relationship with your mind so that you are not taking it so seriously, and therefore not taking life so seriously.

Holly:   Mm excellent advice. So, we have talked a little bit about mindfulness, how would you define that for people who have perhaps heard the word but aren’t quite sure what that means?

Annie: Yeah, look, it is a really weird term. It sounds like you get to be really full of mind; but actually you get to be mind-less in a way; it is kind of less mind. It is the capacity to really watch your thoughts, to observe your thoughts, to not get caught up in them and to have a present moment awareness that doesn’t involve living in the past or the future all the time, which is kind of where most people live most of the time. So, it is to be very aware in the present, and the present is genuinely very simply, it is just something in front of you, you are somewhere you are standing, sitting, lying, looking at something, listening to something, it is generally not too problematic for most people. And when we can be focussed on the actual present moment, rather than thinking about: ‘aggh I have got 20,000 things to do in the future, and how am I going to do them?’ and create stress in that way, you can just present with like a very short space of time, which is now, then you can relax a whole lot. So, it is helping people to get present, to relax to be open, and not to then live in the future which creates anxiety, or live in the past which tends to create depression. That’s pretty, a simple way to get a whole lot happier straight away.

Holly:   Yes, definitely! Now, you say that you have a very unique way of getting straight to the point with your clients. Does mindfulness play a part in that, or how, what’s your technique there?

Annie: Yeah certainly. I guess what I do is the antithesis of counselling, not that there is anything wrong with counselling, a lot of people need counselling, they need to talk about stuff, but I am not interested in the story of things. I am interested in how people are creating that story to be a problem for them. So, how do you create suffering out of what’s happened? It is not the event, it is not the people involved, it is not the situation, it is like, what are you making it mean, and how can you let that go so that you no longer have anxiety or stress around what’s happened. Because you can’t change what’s happened.

Holly:   Of course.

Annie: There is nothing that you can do about that. We have to then work with ourselves to get to a peaceful place about it.

Holly:   I think that is a fascinating perspective because the same type of incident can happen to many different people and each individual will create a completely different story as to what that means, and what that means for their life and how that’s affected them, and how that will affect their decisions. And it is all about the story that we create.

Annie: Yep. We are all 100% responsible for our interpretation of what has happened and if you don’t know that you are stuck kind of being a victim to whatever happened to you, which is not a helpful place, is not empowered, you are not able to change it from that position of feeling helpless and stuck and you probably feel very anxious that it might even happen again. So, getting back in the driver’s seat not only of your life, but of your mind, and learning how to take charge of the interpretations that we create to… I am not saying just be positive, I am saying actually understand that you can change your relationship with your mind as a whole.

Holly:   Mm and I think that is something that so many people don’t realise or just aren’t aware of, I mean we have complete responsibility over what is going on in our minds. It is not like this wild animal that just kind of runs off on its own and does things, we can work with it to work in our favour.

Annie: Exactly, exactly, and then you know it is very easy to get people to shift that focus to go: ‘oh, I’m, doing this’.

Holly:   [laughing] ‘I can control it, I can train it?’ [joking]

Annie: ‘Wow! Show me where the buttons and the levers are and maybe do something different’. [joking]

So, it is a massive shift, it is very simple but it is a massive shift in people’s willingness to just, you know, just face up to what they are doing and just learn some tools to do things differently. But I… to me, it is kind of like unless you know that you are always subject to what life does to you and you are trying to manipulate life the whole time to get it the way you want it, and then it is not, and then you are upset. It is like, there is a whole different way to be, which is actually to let go of all that stuff and relax into it.

Holly:   Yes, that makes everything flow more easily.

Annie: And, of course, the secret is then you tend to get much better results, because you are not uptight and stress-y and pushing and fighting about things. That’s not a reason to do it, but you tend to get more manifesting or showing up a lot easier from that place too.

Holly:   Yeah definitely, because you are not so desperate.

Annie: Yeah of course, and it is not fear-based either.

Holly:   I think a lot of it comes back to, as you have said, everything that is not love, play and contribution is fear-based.

Annie: Yeah, totally. And it is the subtle fear that we probably don’t know. You know, people know that they are afraid of spiders, snakes or something. You know ‘Aghh I’m scared’ and people know that they are afraid of getting on stage and public speaking, for example, because they feel the anxiety. But, I think a lot of people don’t know, the more subtle fears, and avoidances, and protection mechanisms that they have in their life, why they are driven to be a certain way. And when you, you know, you can very easily get aware of that stuff, and when you do you have got completely different choices about not listening to the fears and doing something different instead, which comes eventually back to love and contribution. And PLAY!

Holly:   Yes! [laughing] Play with your business, play with your life” [Laughing]. So Annie, how do you work with people? I know that you are a part of Dr Joanna Martin’s programme and you are her head coach behind that. Could you tell us a little bit about your one-to-one work with people, and also the different kind of programmes that you work with?

Annie: Yeah sure; I have had the great fortune to work with Joanna Martin over a number of years now, I have worked with her in my previous business as well, and now I have been collaborating with her on One of Many, which is business for women, and it’s we have created the One Woman conference and we have created a series of events for women, doing a 12-month programme. So, I am running the coaching department for that, and I do the group circles that we have; and individual coaching as well and sort of oversee that process, as well as contributing to the event. So, I just love that and it is an incredible gift to see women transform as they go through the programme; so, that’s extraordinary. And then of course I have my own clients and do trainings as well myself; individually and with business people, or just with women generally really, couples too. So, I am shuffling between those two hats at the moment, but I am loving working with Jo, it is just such good…

Holly:   Excellent, excellent. So, how can other women in business benefit with working with you? Should they check out your website? What are the options?

Annie: Yeah, the options are: if people are interested in, I guess, happiness for no reason, let’s put it that way [Holly: laughing] rather than all the other stuff, everyone else seems to be helping people get brighter, shinier lives. I am not about that, but I’m about ‘let’s get happy now, and then if you still want a brighter, shinier, life, let’s do that’. Now is kind of important, let’s not put off happiness until some other time. So, those are the people that I work with. So, yeah, sure people can go to the website and contact me and the easiest website is: http://anniestoker.com/.

Holly:   Okay! That was my next question! [Holly: laughing] and you have also, you have authored books, and you have been featured on TV and in print. Could you tell us a little bit about the books that you’ve written?

Annie: I have done a couple of joint venture books ad co-authored books. One of them is called ‘Ms Millionaire’ that was a time when I was dealing with xx and I was speaking a lot on mindset, which was teaching women how to build a property portfolio and make sure that they deal with their blocks and fears along the way. So, that was fun, that was a joint venture for a couple of years, which was fabulous. And I also, as part of that I wrote a book called: Property is a Girl’s Best Friend. So, that was fun too. And then my own book is called: The Personal Development Handbook. Which is really…no frills, back to basics, it is just you know saying it how it is, just guide to all the stuff that’s out there, I just try to make it incredibly simple and straightforward, and straight between the eyes for everyone just to realise that, yeah, you can do it, and it can be simple, and not that hard.

Holly:   Excellent. Great, great we will add links to those in the show notes. And Annie, do you have any women business mentors? Are there any women in business who inspire you?

Annie: Look I have to say Joanna Martin of course, I work with her. And as I said I have known her for nearly seven years, and she is just incredible, she is a combination of raw talent and hard work, and putting it into practice everything that she teaches, so you know, like the joint ventures, and the way that she has got One of Many off the ground in England now from a standing start, is just incredible, so I totally take my hat off to her, she is amazing.

Holly:   Yeah, definitely. And for those listening se was episode 19 so if you would like to take a look at Joanna Martin, she is also here [laughing]. So, Annie in addition to your website, which you have said is: http://anniestoker.com/ are you on social media? Can people find you there?

Annie: Yeah sure: Facebook or https://www.facebook.com/anniestokeraustralia; I have got a couple of pages there. And just Annie Stoker anything really these days could be me… [Both: laughing]

Holly:   That’s the good thing about having a unique name! There aren’t thousands of you…

Annie: Not too many, a couple here and there, but mainly it’s me…

Holly:   Good, good, good! Well, thank you so much for joining us today, you had fantastic advice and I really think that, you know, we can all benefit from changing our mindset and focussing on love, play and contribution, rather than fear-based things, which are you know, so easy to get sucked into that trap.

Annie: Yeah totally; it has been an absolute pleasure Holly! Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Holly:   You are welcome. And thank you for listening and remember to visit hollyworton.com/107 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.

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