In this episode of Inside the Wave, host Perry Wirth sits down with Mark England, a communication and mindset coach, as well as the founder and owner of Enlifted Coaching. Perry recounts how he first discovered Mark in 2017 through a podcast, which led him to take Mark’s course, Procabulary. They discuss Mark’s journey from wrestling in high school and dabbling in jiu-jitsu to his transition into coaching after a career-ending knee injury in Thailand. Mark shares insights into the development of Enlifted Coaching and how it was born out of turning personal setbacks into opportunities for growth. Tune in to learn more about conflict language, architect language, and the transformative power of mindset coaching.

About Mark England

What You’ll Learn

• The Power of Language: How the words we use shape our mindset and influence our daily experiences.
• Breath and Performance: The critical role of breathing in managing stress, improving focus, and enhancing performance.
• Overcoming Injuries: Mark’s personal stories of overcoming major injuries through mindset and language.
• Practical Mindset Tips: Techniques such as the soft talk challenge to eliminate indecision and boost confidence.
• Victim Mentality: Understanding and overcoming the victim mentality through conscious language choices.
• Mindset Definition: A simple, practical definition of mindset and its application in everyday life.

Transcript

Perry Wirth:
Awesome. Well, welcome to the next episode of inside the wave with your host Perry Wirth. And today I’m joined by one of my coaches and one of my mentors, uh, not a jiu-jitsu coach, but a, uh, communication and mindset coach, Mark England. Welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Mark England: Perry Wirth, thank you for having me on and thanks everybody for listening.

Perry Wirth: Yeah, so I was actually just looking this up. I met you back in 2017, February of 2017, I met you, but you didn’t meet me. I actually, I heard you talking on a podcast. It was Barbell Business or Barbell Shrugged back when I was doing CrossFit. And I was at a point in time where I realized that in order to grow my business, I needed to grow myself. And you were talking about some very interesting things on this podcast. You were talking about conflict language and architect language, and I liked what I heard. So I ended up purchasing a course back then called the Procabulary. But now, years and years later, you are now the founder, owner, coach of Enlifted Coaching. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about what Enlifted is.

Mark England: Enlifted was an accident in one sense. It was turning lemons into lemonade. And I know this is going to terrify some of your audiences. a four stripe white belt. I love it. That stopped. Stopped training. I stopped. I got my last. I took the I was a wrestler in high school. And got into jiu-jitsu in ninety six and did a little bit with the gi, but then took it off and I was like, I’m just I’m I’m no gi MMA guy. But a handful of fights and all that stuff. And then the whole thing stopped on a dime. with a knee injury over in Thailand and the whole dream of becoming a professional fighter stopped immediately. So my Jiu Jitsu training got stopped and I’ve probably rolled 20 times since then. OK, my jiu-jitsu, it does it should be in a museum. So once upon a time, Mark England and Mike Bledsoe. And that once upon a time was in March 2018. He was he he he has a blue belt. He doesn’t. This is, you know, OK. And we’re we’re in we’re in Arizona and we’re driving through Phoenix. And I forget who says what, but somebody, it was him or me goes, Hey, let’s, let’s go, let’s go check out 10th planet. Oh yeah. So me, Mr. Relic of the jiu-jitsu world goes into a 10th planet school and we take a, we take a couple of classes and stay around and enroll. Um, and I, I’m rolling with one of their guys and they, you know, they’re famous for smoking a bunch of weed and coming up with new weird stuff. And I got put in something. I still don’t know what the hell it was. I thought I could get out. And so I’m fighting this thing. And all of a sudden, my arm gets ripped out of socket at the elbow. And you know that noise? It’s like the Jurassic Park noise. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like there’s only one thing that makes that kind of noise in a jiu-jitsu school. And it’s that’s called tearing. Yeah. Important shit getting half the half the gym looks over because it was loud.

Perry Wirth: And you know, it’s good when everyone hears it. You know, it’s good when everyone hears it, man.

Mark England: Guy, let’s go. I look at my arm. I look at him. I look at my arm and I go immediately to my, my calendar of all things. Cause I’d done enough work on my story at that point in time and was able to keep my breathing low and slow to where I didn’t turn this thing into the worst thing that ever happened to me. Also known as making a mountain out of a molehill, which is what I did with that initial injury in Thailand. I turned that into the most damning thing that ever happened to me. I used it as the final piece of damning evidence. So I moved over to Thailand. I ended up living over there for 10 years, everybody. Six months, I was going to go for a year, polish up my Thai boxing skills, come back and go pro. This was in 2002. good old-fashioned knee injury, the thing stops, and I used that, I made that mean it was the final piece of damning evidence in a case that I was secretly making against myself, that I was not good enough, I was doomed to fail, and there was something wrong with me. So I have that experience of taking an injury and turning it into the worst thing ever, and blaming everybody, including the universe and my genetics and my lineage, like, come on, man. And so this happens, and I immediately go to my calendar. And I think, okay, yeah, that kettlebell certification on it, that’s not going to happen, because I’ve done something. I can run Paleo effects, because we had a booth at this upcoming conference about three weeks later. I was like, yeah, I can go do that. I can do it with one arm, and Pascale’s going to be there, and she’ll help me set it up, and that’s okay. And then I look to Mike Blood, so I’m like, hey, dude, we’ve got to get in the car, because I’m on the insurance, this thing is, yeah, so let’s go. And I walk out the door talking about some girl I think’s cute. And it was, and I mean, I ended up having a Tommy John. Oh man. Um, yeah. I don’t know if y’all know what that is, but it’s, they go with like, and so anyway, um, I call my business partner. I’m like, Hey man, um, just got my arm ripped out of socket. And he goes, yeah. Okay, cool. Come on. I’m going to get it checked out. And I did. And they’re like, it’s, this is legit. You done done it, bro. And he’s like, yeah, cool, come over to Thailand, because we didn’t have insurance at the time. He’s like, come over to Thailand, and you can get it fixed, and we’ll turn it into a work trip. Wow. And I go, great. And so I’m still, I’m long-winding what is in Libya. How did it start? Because it was an accident. And so I go over there, get my arm fixed. We had so much fun. It was the best my body had ever healed from any kind of injury or anything. Because I was relaxed. I was relaxed, and my breath was loose, and I was smiling and having fun. I mean, I literally walked into the hospital by myself, woke up eight hours later, walked out by myself, and went and had some beers with Adam. It was easy. Anyway, and so we’re over there, and we’re like, okay, so we set a number of gross sales for us to reshoot the core language upgrade, and we hit that number. And I’m like, dude, Mike Bledsoe and I, we’ve been doing these workshops in CrossFit gyms, and I go in there and I do the language stuff, and then he puts them through a workout, and people haven’t really, they’re having profound experiences, as in the chatter’s down in their head, they’re able to stay focused, their workouts are smoother, they’re way more present, and I go, you know, let’s, instead of shooting core language upgrade, vocabulary, let’s make a course for the fitness industry. And he goes, okay. And so we messaged Mike Bledsoe, hey, you want to be a part of this? Yes, I do. So we do it. And we launch it in 2019 at Paleo Effects in May. And unbeknownst to us, that was the beginning of the certifications, the coaching certifications, which we are now five years old. We’ve been running those things for five years. We’ve graduated 400 students, 10 at a time, nine weeks, small batch. I deliver all of the trainings, all of our level ones, twos, and threes, specialty courses, because I can go into detail about that later if you want, why we run it that way. We don’t scale anything. And yeah, and that’s how we got connected personally through Keith, Keith and Brandon.

Perry Wirth: So, so in lifted, in lifted trains, essentially coaches how to coach, but you focus on language and, and mindset coaching. I think mindset coaching, it’s one of those terms that just gets thrown around. How do you like to define what mindset is or how a mindset coach helps?

Mark England: Yeah, for sure. Um, so I invite everybody to go to Google and. put in the definition of mindset. Ask the Google machine what the definition of mindset is. And most people would think that something that is talked about so much, especially in fitness and personal development, sports performance, all those things, there would be a standardized definition. There is not. There are 17 definitions on the first page of Google alone. And most of those things are super long, very philosophical, Um, overly complicated and, um, yeah, good luck implementing it when, when, you know, life throws you a curve ball, because those things come. Here at Enlifted, in my personal and professional opinion, we have the very best definition of mindset in the game by an order of magnitude. The Enlifted definition of mindset is the story that we tell ourself. That’s what your mindset is, everybody. It’s the story you tell yourself to yourself. about yourself on the daily, what you can do, what you can’t do, what is possible, what isn’t possible, what you do deserve and what you don’t deserve. And that story that you’re telling yourself on the daily is built of two main things. The two main building blocks of our mindset are words and breath, breathing. And we operate at that rubber meets the road level.

Perry Wirth: Wow. So let’s use, let’s use your story as a, as an example of mindset. You’ve had two major injuries doing martial arts. I’m sure a lot of my audience can relate to injuries through fitness, through training, through martial arts. I’ve had some major ones myself, and one of them was a career ender for you. It seems, but the other one seemed to just be a, a You just got over it so quickly, right? It’s like it never happened. How does mindset apply to a situation like that?

Mark England: I told myself, so adhering to that definition, I told myself, because, because we are going to tell ourself a story about things. Oh, every time we are meaning making machines, we’re going to make, can I cuss on here?

Perry Wirth: I absolutely go for it.

Mark England: Okay, nice. We’re going to make shit mean shit. We’re going to make stuff mean stuff. We’re going to make things mean things. And so there’s the event, there’s what happens, and then there’s the meaning that we assign to what happens. What does this mean? What does it mean about me? Which is the greatest of all time coaching question. What does this mean about you? Okay? And the first one, and oddly enough, you know, I can say if I want to keep the story short and sweet, that was a career ending knee injury. More accurately, it was a career ending story. Teddy Atlas says a fighter lives and dies in their own mind. And I and this thing was a slow burn. I didn’t know it at the time because I didn’t know shit about mindset. I didn’t know anything about the story that I was telling myself other than I was So, pre-workouts, they’ve got nothing on the victim mentality. So the victim mentality, that’s the real pre-workout for the fitness industry. I fueled my fight career, my fight training, with an underdog, not good enough story, victim mentality, Part of me was scared. Some fights broke out when I was in elementary school. I remember like it was yesterday, Nathaniel Green and Danny Potter in the fourth grade, and a fight broke out. They got in a fight, and I turned around and ran. And I didn’t like that. Man. And like something else happened, and I backed down in elementary school, too. And I had this story in the back of my mind that I was a scaredy cat. I was a scaredy pants. And I was going to go show everybody that I wasn’t scared, because I’m going to be this big tough guy. And so, and here’s the thing, everybody. If you are telling yourself a story of, you know, you’re not good enough, and I’m going to prove them all wrong, and you’re living in comparison hell, and you got a bunch of people to blame, and you’re going to prove them all wrong, and then on and on and on like that, those stories trap your, not only do they light your head on fire on the inside, They trap your breath in your chest. It’s called sympathetic nervous system response, or amygdala hijack. And when people’s breath is trapped in their chest, which most people’s breath is trapped in their chest, you’re going to get hurt.

Perry Wirth: I mean, you’re talking to the jiu-jitsu crowd here, right? We’re always talking about, hey, breathe, breathe. That’s the first thing I tell any white belt when they come into the gym. Hey, you know no techniques. You don’t know what that other person is doing to you. The first thing you can do in any situation is those belly breaths. So that’s the same thing. You’re talking about that same thing for injuries and for communication and that’s where it starts.

Mark England: Yes. Yes. Thousand percent. If someone can win the breathing game, I use this word very, very rarely. They can, you can master anything you want to. given your interest in it, and reps. So you put those two things together, the pull and repetition. And this goes to education, too. So yes, I’ve been doing this one thing, coaching and teaching about words and stories for 17 years now. And before that, I was a teacher. I have a degree in education. And when kids, we’ve all seen this, When stuff happens at home, kids, their grades usually tank at school.

Perry Wirth: Absolutely.

Mark England: And here’s why. They’re coming to school with that stress in their system, and their breath is trapped in their chest, and they’re off in, they’re distracted, and when someone’s breath is trapped in their chest, I mean, this is the mechanics of, well, us, life, our listening skills go way down. our listening skills go way down. And and so listening is a major part of learning. And so if someone gets their breath low and slow, they’ll get better at jiu-jitsu faster, because their body won’t have that extra tension in it. And they’ll be able to listen to black belts like you coach them.

Perry Wirth: It’s hard to it’s hard to use that brain if you don’t have any oxygen going to it.

Mark England: Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a that’s a that’s a that’s a Correct. Correct. And so as far as the to circle back to, you know, me telling myself two different stories, it’s it’s very easy to take things personal when our breath is trapped in our chest or chronically. It’s very easy to find someone to blame when our breath is trapped. It’s very easy to jump to conclusions. It’s very easy to get fixated on something when our breath is trapped in our chest. And I was I was I was a chronic victim I had a raging victim mentality all throughout my fight career, and then I, you know, break myself. I did that to me. And so my interpretation of it, I’m, and I’m repeating myself, I made that injury mean that I was what I feared most, a born loser. And then the other one was just something that happened. It was no big deal. It was no big deal, and the body will do amazing things. It can recover from all kinds of stuff. Borderline miracles when it is in a down-regulated state. Because guess what? If you’re breathing well, then you can sleep. And if you can’t sleep, then you can’t heal.

Perry Wirth: Yeah. I mean, wow. So, I mean, we get a lot of, a lot of bumps and bruises along the road in martial arts. You kind of, you sign up for it knowing that it’s a combat sport. Things can happen at some point in time, something likely will happen doing it. And especially being at that level of competitor that you were, did you, did you ever think you were unbreakable or do you still know that, hey, injuries happen?

Mark England: Oddly enough, I never got hurt wrestling, but I was chronically banged up in the fight game. My father was a collegiate football player. They won some rings and things like that. I remember growing up, he used to tell me all the time, he’s like, if you can’t play hurt, you can’t play. And, and he was right. And, um, yeah, I remember my first fight. I went in, this was in 99. Uh, I was training. I got, I had the fight scheduled. It was one 10 minute round, dude. MMA one, one. I look back, I look back on that. I’m like, dude, that’s evil.

Perry Wirth: That’s a marathon.

Mark England: Yeah, and it went the distance plus overtime. I thought I was going to die. Yeah. And so I’m training and I get a jack. I’ve heard something and I’m like, I pull out and then I’m just sitting there on the couch like a wild beast. And two weeks out, I’m not training two weeks out. I’m like, I have to get in that ring. I don’t care what happens. I have to get in there. So I call my my my trainer and I’m like, rebook it. Find me somebody. I don’t care who I just have to get in there. And I really don’t even care if I win. Just got it. I just got to get it. I just I have to and so I went into that fight under trained with an injury and Yeah, the dude was this short stocky tie fighter It was his first fight too, but he had like eight or nine tie fights and it was one ten minute round We went the distance and when they called overtime Dude, I was, it was like the worst news I ever heard in my entire life.

Perry Wirth: You don’t want to keep going and going and going.

Mark England: Dude, I was seeing, I saw two of them. Like I was trying to look straight at him when I answered the bell and there was one over here and one over there and they had to drag me out of the ring. I mean, we finished, it went the distance. They dragged me out in the parking lot and I just barfed all over myself for half an hour. I thought I’d like blown a gasket.

Perry Wirth: Man, that is wild. So one thing I, I love a lot about the unlifted method and versus other programs that I’ve seen programs that I’ve been to is how practical the approaches, how well you make it usable and less conceptual more. We can do something about it. You know, just like how you’re talking about breathing. If you just even start with breathing, you’re at a large advantage over the standard population. Now, do you have any practical tips for overcoming plateaus? So one thing that we see a lot, a lot in martial arts is, you know, people feel just like they’re not making progress. And I believe, I’m a strong believer that It’s because they end up comparing themselves to other people versus looking at their own victories and successes that they’ve been making. But what do you see in, you know, those elite level athletes, those very high level successful players on how they overcome plateaus in progress and recognizing progress?

Mark England: That’s a, that’s a, that’s a very good question. And, um, I don’t know. I don’t know how they do that. What I can assume, because they’re at the top, is that they found a way. I bought the first UFC in November in 1993, I just watched 300, I’m current in that sport. You can’t ask me a damn thing about anything else, I don’t know, I don’t care, and I will never care. I will never care who wins the World Series, I promise you that. And I will watch MMA till my dying breath, because that’s how much I love the sport and how much it gave to me, and just how fucking cool it is. And so when you listen to, when I listen to champions talk about their mindset, they really don’t go into much detail about it. So I don’t know, I don’t know, they say things like, oh yeah, I’ve been working on my mindset, I’ve been working with a sports psychologist, and very rarely do they go into the specifics of what they’re doing. Maybe they might say hypnotherapy or something like that, but I don’t know enough of the mechanics of what they’re doing to be able to say something about it. And what I can say for people that plateau is that the number one remedy for that, and this is someone that you can, Perry, someone you can talk to about this. It’s called four-stepping the process, or excuse me, four-stepping the progress. So the day, and it’s a very simple exercise. It’s A to B. So the day you walked in the jiu-jitsu school, that’s A, and then today is B, or the last time you rolled. and give it a title, like a title to a movie, and write out that story conversationally, everybody. I don’t make the rules. Bullet points and half sentences don’t cut it. It needs to be written out conversationally as if you were telling the story, full sentences, and erring on the side of more detail than less. People do not write that down. And then from there, you four-step it. So you write it out, read it, read it slow. What happens, everybody? Step three, read it slow. What happens, everybody? you slow down your rate of speech, the breath begins to loosen up, and then step four is where you read that same story slow and take a nice, in between each sentence. And what that’s going to do, it’s gonna majorly, that’s an understatement, influence in a positive way your reticular activating system. So think of your reticular activating system as the lens that you see yourself and the world It’s like a pair of binoculars and binoculars has a paddles on top. And if you know about the words as in what, how to, how to use words in certain ways, what words to use more of and why, what words to use less of and why, and then how to pick up a pen and write out stories, then you can bring things into focus. You can bring things out of focus. And in that particular exercise, it will show you the progress that you made. And people have black belts, dude, third degree black belts in diminishing themselves, diminishing, diminishing and minimizing their successes, the wins, the times they got it right, all that stuff. I mean, this is this is taking a compliment on all the steroids.

Perry Wirth: And it’s not like there’s a difference between that and being modest.

Mark England: Oh, yeah.

Perry Wirth: Right. For sure. Like, I feel like a lot of people end up thinking that You don’t recognize wins because it’s not being modest. And as you become higher rank in jiu-jitsu, you want to be modest about your accomplishments. So people almost like disown them.

Mark England: Take out the almost. Yeah, they do. They do. And they’re there. Um, so here’s the thing, everybody, when it comes to, okay, how am I going to say this? Everybody’s got an ego. Okay. And you should have an ego. You know why you should? Because you do. And there is a certain quality of attention and recognition that only we can give ourself. We’re ground zero, okay, for the first person that needs to tell us that we’re good enough, okay? Because if we’re not telling ourselves we’re good enough, how are we going to accept that from anybody else? And even if they, so, so, so let me get this straight. I want, I want respect from, from all of y’all people in here, but I don’t respect myself. I want something from you that I can’t give to myself. Okay. Or can’t or won’t. What is that? That’s weird. That’s what that is. That’s weird. And then it’s, it’s actually the complete opposite. If we look at it from the words, too. So be selfless. Less than self. Why would I want to be less than me? Why would I want to diminish me? When did we start thinking that’s a good thing? Oh, that person is self-centered. No, I want to be self-centered. I want to be centered in myself. I want to be the main player, the main character in my own story. I want to be the hero in my own story. and I want my breath to be unlocked, and breathing low and slow, that I am centered. Being a centered person is a good thing. And then when you take care of you in the way, on a mindset level, that only you can, then we start, it starts unraveling all these weird codependencies. You know, we don’t wanna take a compliment, but we’re, you know, craving them. Or it’s like, We’re craving attention, but at the same time we have a fear of being seen. So it’s like this weird limbo that, no, no, no. Don’t go for modesty, everybody. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe in it. Go for self-centeredness. Become centered in your own story. Unlock your breath. Pay attention to the words that you use. Take a fucking compliment when somebody gives you one. It’s like, imagine somebody comes up to you with a gift. and they give it to you, and you look at it, and you just throw it in the trash, right in front of their face. It’s the same thing. You’re making a lot of progress in class. You’re really consistent. I’m pretending I’m you talking to one of your students. And they go, oh, well, it’s no, it’s nothing. What?

Perry Wirth: Yeah, thank you.

Mark England: Thank you, sensei. And own it. And here’s a black belt move when it comes to taking a compliment. Say thank you, and then don’t say a damn thing for three seconds.

Perry Wirth: Seriously, take a breath in between it, absorb it better. And this probably I shouldn’t say probably this leads to another one of your favorite topics I’ve heard you talk about, but imposter syndrome, right? You just earned that new belt, you got that new rank. And like, I don’t deserve it. I don’t want it. Take it take it away. Man. So not only are you not you’re You’re not recognizing the progress, but when you do get recognized for the progress, you throw away the progress. You throw away that compliment.

Mark England: Yep. And, and majorly, um, retard your development and I’m, oh God, I’m using retard by definition, folks. The definition of retard is to impede the development of you slow it down. When you think that you don’t deserve to be a blue belt, even though you’re a blue belt, that’s basically like you’re essentially saying, hey, my sensei doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 100 percent. Why did you get little old me? This guy, this guy, he’s got a black belt. He knows what he’s talking about. But he gave me a blue belt because he has no idea that I’m not as good as he thinks I am. No, you are as good as your sensei thinks you are. And it’s the it’s the reverse. Again, Teddy Atlas, he said a champion becomes 30 percent better overnight when they win the belt. because it influences their identity. It influences their identity. And yeah, and so when someone keeps minimizing their progress in their mind, even though they got this belt, that belt, whatever thing, you’re slowing down the development of your skill set.

Perry Wirth: I feel like this is very similar to Your person in the UFC that wins the title, and then they are just on a roll on fire. You know, they were good to get the title, but the day after they get the title, they are unstoppable. Yeah. Yeah. Because they had that identity shift and they’re truly owning that. They are the champion now. One of my favorite things from, I think it was in Lifted Level 2 with you, was the corner man speech. Right? And how we have the little devil on one shoulder telling us a story, and then we have the corner man on your other shoulder telling you a different story. And they’re battling at each other. And one is very positive. and giving affirmations and using architect language, positive language in its corner man speech to you. And the other side is the other one, like the opposite of it, all the conflict. And that was one of the coolest things, right? A lot of us, some of us athletes, We motivate ourselves with, I want to say disgusting language.

Mark England: Yeah. We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t say, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t say what we say to ourselves secretly in our mind to a stray dog. Would you want your kids talking to themselves like that? No one has ever, and I’ve asked that question a lot because guess what? Mindset, that’s what we talk about, which is the story that we tell ourself, externally and internally. No one has ever said, I would want my kids saying the same thing to themselves that I do to me behind closed doors in the recesses of my own mind. No one’s ever said that. No one’s ever said that. Yeah, and we help people. We help people with that. Okay, so when people say, I need to work on my mindset, how?

Perry Wirth: Where does step one start?

Mark England: Step one. It depends on the person and here’s some very reliable things to do. Slow down your rate of speech by 5%. Cause you can do that right now and you’re going to feel the difference. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to give you way more. It’s not just 5% more mental real estate. It’s going to give you way more space to observe how you’re using your words. That’s one. Um, and then two,

Perry Wirth: I was just gonna mention.

Mark England: Soft talk. Perry, will you read these words out for everybody?

Perry Wirth: Oh my gosh, they’re a bit blurry for me. Probably, perhaps, feels like, guess, maybe, could, might, possibly, sort of, kind of, potentially, hopefully, try, one day, should, almost like. Ooh, which I added almost like before.

Mark England: Send me your address. I got you. When we wrap, I’ll mail you one. Or I’ll bring it up there. That right there, everybody, so only start paying attention to those words. I’m going to do it again. I’m going to read them again. These words right here. So there, there is something called conflict language, and there are four pillars, negations, projections, dramatics, and soft talk. We’re only going to talk about soft talk and think of it as the, like the, the, the legs of a table. Okay. And those four language patterns are responsible for over 90% of the habitual thought processes that the victim mentality has to have in order to be scripted, in order to be created and maintained. And I’ll go over the soft talk here again in a second. This is a very good place to recite, again, the definition of the victim mentality. So most people have never heard the definition of the victim mentality. I invite you all to pick up a pen and write it down, because if you do, you’ll have 20% more retention statistically. And then you also put yourself in a very unique club of people that have actually written down the definition of the victim mentality. So here it is. I’m going to do it twice. I’m going to do it slow, and then I’m going to do it fast with some polish. The victim mentality. is an acquired personality trait where a person tends to regard himself or herself as the victim of the negative actions of others even in the absence of clear evidence. The victim mentality depends on a habitual thought process and attributions. Here it is again a little faster with some context. The victim mentality is an acquired personality trait where a person tends, it’s a tendency folks, sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down, a person tends to regard himself or herself as the victim of the negative actions of others even in the absence of clear evidence. The second sentence, right between the eyes, right where it belongs, the victim mentality depends on a habitual thought process and attributions. That second sentence, the victim mentality depends, circle that word everybody, on a habitual, underline that word everybody, thought process and attributions. So the victim, it depends, so it has to have a habitual, which accurately implies duration and addiction. Everybody knows somebody who’s addicted to their victim mentality. What’s it like hanging around them? And a thought process, what’s a thought process? Glad y’all asked. It’s how you put your words together. It’s how you use your words. We use words every day, internally and externally. And then attributions. Attribution is a characteristic. And the main characteristic that Heard and Lifted, we pay attention to other than the words is the breath. And so to answer that question in more detail now that we’ve got some very important talking points on the table, how does someone work on their mindset? You need to get down to the word level. You need to get down to what words are you using, and then, so there’s the words, and then how are you using them? A lot of that comes down to your rate of speech. Okay? The faster the story goes, everybody, the harder it is to change. Why? Because the faster the story goes, the higher and tighter the breath gets trapped in someone’s chest. And when someone’s breath is trapped in their chest, they get fixated on things. Again, it’s amygdala hijack. Their listening ability goes down. They lose access to their creative faculties, peripheral training, peripheral vision, and their training. That’s why, I mean, I’ve done this in a couple of jiu-jitsu comps a million, trillion years ago. When I first started out, I’d just, I’d flock up. I’d freeze up. I wouldn’t know what to do because my breath, I would, because of the story, I was telling myself in my head, mindset, trap my breath in my chest Excess rigidity in the body. And then I had no access to my train. Forget everything. I had no access to what I’ve learned.

Perry Wirth: You’ve, you’ve seen that it used to. So I was the worst, the worst high school wrestler ever when it came to competition in the practice room, I was great practice room. I could hang with our state qualifiers. I was, I was great, man. I will go out and compete in wrestling deer in the headlights. I’m lucky I won a couple matches all through high school. I’m very fortunate I stayed with it because it ended up taking me to do jiu-jitsu, but I didn’t learn how to compete until jiu-jitsu when I was fully relaxed before a match. I wasn’t trying to get all psyched up. My coach was throwing farts, cracking jokes right before my first match in jiu-jitsu. I went out and I did amazing and I was like, Where has this been the last five years of wrestling competition?

Mark England: Hey, man, if someone just had to tell me to breathe, dude, that’s it’s if you win the breathing game, everybody, you win the whole game. So. Ninety nine, it’s even more. Than that, but a vast, vast majority of my time Professionally speaking is dedicated to the certs very rarely. Do I take on a personal or a private client and It’s it’s and if I do it’s only for one thing Presentation skills helping them build a workshop build build workshops and then deliver it and The first thing we talk about once the thing is built and it’s time to start practicing, rehearsing, is slowing down their rate of speech to unlock their breath. And so they are relaxed and breathing well when they’re giving their speech. And this goes, everybody, it goes across the board. It’s across the board. Go out on a date and hold your breath. and see how the conversation flows, okay? Give, you know, if you’re into sales, give a sales pitch and hold your breath. See how that goes. You could have the best thing out there, and it’s a perfect fit for your prospective client. But if your breath is trapped in your chest, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it, you’re going to sound like an amateur. And they’re going to pick up on it. How about jiu-jitsu? Have you ever seen somebody train, train, train, train, train, but just never get the breath component?

Perry Wirth: It is, it’s one of the most challenging things for me to teach someone, not teach, but to get someone to do it from being a coach. You know, I could teach people jiu-jitsu techniques and steps and scenarios all day, but they can only unlock the breath for themselves. I can’t breathe for them. At least I’m not willing to do mouth to mouth to them in the middle of a match. But the amount of parallels that you’re talking about with, that I can draw to jiu-jitsu here, you know, slow it down. Sometimes we end up going so fast occasionally that we don’t even realize what’s going on anymore. I use the analogy that you can’t be going, you can’t pretend you’re driving on a freeway, going twice the speed limit, because you’re going to miss all your exits. You’re going to miss all the opportunities for success because you’re so focused on just that going fast, going fast, going fast. You just need to take that breath. So let’s get back to that, uh, that soft talk challenge.

Mark England: Oh yeah. Yeah. These, these, these guys do it again. Okay. Everybody. So if you have your pen and your paper from, uh, uh, writing down the definition of victim mentality, I’m going to rattle these off again. And I invite you to write them down, capital letters, five times larger than you normally write. What that’s going to do is your reticular activating system is going to go, hey, why are we writing these words down five times? And it’s going to go, it doesn’t matter. Just pay attention to them. So you’re going to be doing something. It’s going to get your attention. You’re actually going to get your attention about these words. And then you’re going to start hearing them. And everything starts with awareness. I guarantee you all these words are in your language and they’re causing problems way more than most people would think by an order of magnitude. And they are driving indecision and anxiety and the inability to take yourself seriously and sincerely. And if someone has enough soft talk, in their language for a prolonged period of time, you’re going to turn yourself into a joke in your own mind. And that’s really scary. And so if you start plucking these words out, so soft talk is the gateway drug to the rest of your language. Why? Because they’re the easiest words to pay attention to. There’s usually very little, in comparison, emotional attachment to them in people’s language. You can just pluck them out and there’s not much It’s not like going from, you know, my dad should respect me more to I should respect me more. People are going to have a more of emotional attachment to that than, you know, maybe I should be more consistent coming to practice. Just pluck out the maybe and own it. Okay. And yeah. And so when you start taking these words out and it’ll take you six months, take about six months, everybody to cut your soft talk usage in half. And if you do that, you will double your confidence. Imagine yourself with double the confidence.

Perry Wirth: You’ll double others. People confidence in you too. Correct. Thousand percent. So we had this up on the wall in our gym for several weeks after we did a lifted style workshop at our gym. And it was very cool to see the people coming in, looking at the poster that had no clue what they were about. And they’re like, what is this? This is intriguing. And some people even came in and said, why, why is all this negativity up on the wall? I just left it there. I just left it there and let’s pay attention.

Mark England: And, um, did people, what happened for, okay. I’m formulating my question. Well, what happened for the people? that incorporated this practice into their mindset, the story that they tell themselves. I’m sure some did.

Perry Wirth: Confidence. Instant increase in confidence because of that instant increase in ownership as well.

Mark England: Yeah. It’s honestly, everybody, it’s spooky. It’s spooky what this one seemingly simple, and it is, thing can do for your story.

Perry Wirth: We all want, we all want more clarity. Yeah. And this is like a fog having these words.

Mark England: Yeah. And, and, you know, when people say my life is out of control, what they’re actually saying is that my story is out of control. And if you want to feel more in control of your life, then be more in control of your story. And if you want to be more in control of your story, you’re going to need to pay more attention to it. Okay. And well, what’s it built of? What is it made of? What, what are the building? What are the Lego blocks of this story that I’m telling myself every day? It’s your words. And most people in the mindset space, they have not gotten down to the word level of the conversation yet. Okay? And here at Enlifted, we are changing that. Okay?

Perry Wirth: The building blocks.

Mark England: Exactly. We’re spearheading that. And so if you’re not getting down to the word level when someone is working on their mindset, They’re going to be up here in these big picture, um, motivation. I got to get motivated. Um, and that’s what most mindset coach thinks. Most, most people that coach mindset, uh, in some form or fashion, that’s what they think it is. They think it’s, it’s motivation, having all the right answers for your client. Okay. That’s not it. Trust me, having all the right answers, motivating them and setting some goals. And it’s, there’s way more to the, There’s way more to transformational wordsmithing than that. Show me a coach that thinks that they have all the right answers for their client’s life, and I’ll show you an amateur. It’s a smarty-pants coach. That’s what we call it in lifted smarty-pants coaching. I know what you need to do with your life. I’ve got all the right answers for you, and I’m going to inspire you, and I’m going to help hold you accountable. That’s got burnout written all over it. Yeah, so here’s the thing, everybody. You didn’t need a PhD to learn to use words, and you don’t need a PhD to learn to use them better. Nobody’s going to help you. No one’s going to change your words for you, okay? And so if you want to feel more in control of your life, practice controlling your words more, okay? Rate of speech, big deal. How are you breathing when sounds are coming out of your face? And then what words are you? What words? Because that’s that is what’s happening. We’re making sounds at each other. And the quality of your sounds dictates the quality of your life. Look it up. It’s called. Not not. I’ll remember it in a second. Some some Nikola Tesla shit, whatever. Here we go. Write these write these words down five times larger than you normally write. Cymatics, that’s what it’s called. Look up cymatics. Probably, perhaps, feels like, guess, maybe, could, might, possibly, sort of, kind of, potentially. Hopefully, I’ll make it to practice tonight. Try, one day, should, almost like. It’s almost like I’m self-sabotaging myself. And what you do is you start taking those words out and you will get way clearer on what you are doing and what you’re not doing. And then you can make changes. Okay? It’s really hard to make changes when you say things like, you know, I guess I probably should spend more time with my wife. Or something along those lines. You know, I think I’m drinking too much coffee. Take out the think and you’ll know if you are or not based on the feedback you get from delivering a solid sentence to yourself. I should spend more time with my wife. Take out the should, put in could. I could spend more time with my wife. Take out the could, put in can. I can spend more time with my wife. Stick a because on the end of it. I can spend more time with my wife because we love each other. Okay, now put a time stamp in there. I can spend more time with my wife next weekend because we love each other. Where are we going? Well, she likes going to the lake house. I got an Airbnb. I’ll go ahead and book that now. You send her a text. We’re going to the lake house next week. Just go ahead and write the weekend off. That’s what we’re doing. And she goes, thank God. And you just did that in 60 seconds because you knew how to catch words in their infancy, which is the words that you have in your head. Okay. If those words aren’t written down, you don’t even have a draft to hand in. So another thing that you can do to work on your mindset is to pick up a pen and get the words on paper. For instance, if someone has a, um, decision to make. That usually comes down to questions and options. They have questions that have yet to be answered and what are their options. If someone has three questions in their head, they swirl. It’ll feel like 300 questions. Same thing with options. If someone has four options that they could do, it’ll feel like 44. And you get the questions written down. It’s actually called Kindlin’s Law. This is Kindlin’s Law. When a question is written down well, it’s half answered. So you can pick up a pen and write. I dare you all to do this. I dare you all to pick up a pen and write down the five biggest questions you have about your life. And wait. And I’m not just saying wait for 10 minutes. I’m saying you’ll be walking along next week and something’s gonna smack you right in the face.

Perry Wirth: That’s gonna be my journal tonight. I like it. That’s good. That’s good. Well, Mark, so I like to end these with some, uh, some rapid fire questions and we’ll do rapid fire at the marketing pace. How’s that sound? Awesome. Uh, number one, top book recommendation.

Mark England: The Dow of health, sex, and longevity by Daniel Reed.

Perry Wirth: Hmm. Uh, your favorite learning source. Where do you like to get your education from?

Mark England: My words, me. I’m my favorite learning source.

Perry Wirth: Favorite quote or mantra?

Mark England: If you laugh at the devil, he will run away.

Perry Wirth: One piece of advice for people looking to try something new?

Mark England: Pay attention to the most fun people that you know.

Perry Wirth: One piece of advice to people that have been in the game for a while looking to level up?

Mark England: Give yourself the credit you deserve man.

Perry Wirth: Awesome. Those are those are the five Have you have you been asked those before never oh, I’m sure you got favorite book at least Those are concise What book do I I’ve never have never had someone asked what’s my favorite book

Mark England: What’s your number one book recommendation? Those are two different things. Those are two different questions.

Perry Wirth: Yeah. What’s your, what’s your favorite book then?

Mark England: Um, it would be the dial of hell. So my favorite book, um, one of Stuart Wilde’s, it would be Miracles. It would be Miracles by Stuart Wilde, one of his Taos Quintet books. It’s just a tiny little book.

Perry Wirth: And we have to check out both of those. All right, so let me try to recap some takeaways here. Let’s do it. Power of breath. Huge. The power of acknowledging your words you’re using as building blocks to your mindset. The power of writing things down. What else? We had the soft talk challenge.

Mark England: Yep.

Perry Wirth: What else do we hit?

Mark England: What is, what is mindset? That is a, that’s a game changer. Having a, having a simple, practical, practical, the root word of practical is practice. Practical, simple, clear, working definition of mindset, which frames the whole thing. Perfectly. Immediately. It’s the story you tell yourself. And if you’re working with other people on mindset, you’re working with the story that they’re telling themselves. And that story is made up of words. That’s very important. The definition of the victim mentality, also very important. If someone wants to have a well-rounded conversation about mindset, that definition needs to be in there because it gives the thing a a name. They’re like, oh, there’s a name for this thing and other people doing it, too. I’m not the only one that lights my head on fire right before I get out of bed and then, you know, live my life like that. And that’s also why most people get into the conversation of mindset, because they’ve got a thing to fix. They’ve got a problem to fix. They want to get better. They want to level up somehow. And so that’s and when you start scratching the surface, You get into victim-centric stories, and if you understand the words, you’re going to get down to what words are forcing someone to create the villains and the stress and the bitterness. Man, if I hadn’t come across this work, if someone is bitter for a prolonged period of time, it shows up on their face. There’s no way to not have that show up on your face. George Orwell said it, everybody gets the face that they deserve. Okay. And, um, it’s also a different kind of face when, you know, somebody’s present and breathing well, and they’ve been smiling a lot and, you know, everybody’s better looking when we smile. So, you know, And I go on rants and tangents for a living. Do you know how many problems that people can solve in their own life from just breathing better and smiling more? You can solve half of your problems, half of your life problems, and that’s an understatement, by breathing better and smiling more. The people around you are going to feel better. Because people’s breath, it’s called entrainment, especially if you’re parents and kids. We inherit our parents’ breathing patterns. People around you are going to feel better, and they’re going to smile more. Do it for them. If you don’t think you deserve to have a good life, that’s a mindset issue, do it for the people around you. But guess what? Better plan is to do it for both. Do it for yourself and do it for them. And you can only actually, you know what, I just lied, because you can only truly do it for them. If you do it for yourself first, it’s the real, it’s the real inside job.

Perry Wirth: Everybody. Very cool. Well, where can people find you, Mark? How can they get involved with Mark England and lifted? I know you’ve got your, uh, I think podcast season two is out running hot.

Mark England: Number three, three. Kimberly is a beast with it. She’s so good. Um, Yeah, so we have a podcast, Get Enlifted, it’s all about coaching with words and breath. And I’m one of the co-hosts, or I’m the co-host, she’s the host, Kimberly Kesting, the great Kimberly Kesting. We have a website for our certifications, www.enlifted.me, E-N-L-I-F-T-E-D.me, and then Instagram, at Enlifted Coaches. And yeah, whoever follows us, I send, IG hellos twice a month to say, Hey, thanks for the follow. How’d you get here? So if you follow, so you’ll hear it, you’ll get a voicemail from me and saying howdy.

Perry Wirth: And I’m just going to throw this out there. If you’re not looking at becoming an unlifted coach, but you would like an unlifted coach, there are several of them in Southeastern Wisconsin in the, uh, utopia martial arts area that I can hook you up with, including myself. And it is a very cool community.

Mark England: Work, work, work, work, work with Perry, everybody.

Perry Wirth: All right, Mark, I appreciate you a ton. If you guys are listening this podcast, give us five stars. If you think we deserved it, which I know you do. And catch us on the next episode. Thanks again, Mark.