#641 Aggressive Mindfulness: Becoming Who You Choose to Be with Tracey Rowland

Have you ever caught yourself reacting automatically—only to realise later that your response didn’t reflect who you want to be?

In this powerful conversation, Rose Davidson is joined by Tracey Rowland, author of The Story of Stories and an expert in using aggressive mindfulness to shift out of fear narratives and into conscious, intentional living.

Tracey explains how hidden stories in our subconscious dictate how we show up at work and in life. Left unchallenged, these stories trap us in repetitive arguments, automated responses, and emotional spirals that leave us feeling frustrated and disconnected. But there is another way.

Through aggressive mindfulness, Tracey shows how you can pause in the moment, recognise when you’re reacting from fear, and consciously choose to realign with your authentic self. Instead of being submissive or aggressive, you can learn to embody strength, presence, and clarity—right when it matters most.

This episode will help you:

• Recognise when you’re stuck in a subconscious story
• Identify signs of automatic response patterns
• Shift your thoughts and feelings in real time
• Choose actions that align with your highest self

Tracey’s approach combines practical strategies with deep self-awareness, giving you the tools to make changes immediately, rather than waiting for “someday.”

Whether you’re a leader wanting to show up authentically at work, or someone striving to improve your relationships and personal growth, this episode offers real-world insights you can apply today.

✨ Join us to discover how aggressive mindfulness can transform the way you live, lead, and connect—with yourself and others. 

🔗 CONNECT WITH TRACEY

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-rowland-98017910/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Tracey_rowland_author

Website: https://www.traceyrowland.com

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Transcript

Intro | 00:00
Business insights on talking with the experts. Hosted by Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:10
Have you ever thought to use aggressive mindfulness to pull you out of the narrative, freeing you from repetitive arguments and help you to remain true to who you want to show up as yourself? As you at work. My next guest, Tracey Rowland, has a master's degree in business with honours from Massey University in Auckland. She is the author of the book, The Story of Stories, her first self-help research that analyses and describes real-life instances of thoughts and feelings driving subconscious behaviour. Tracey has success in creating authentic and lasting change through the identification of personal and unhelpful stories that cause fractious relationships and failure of personal growth and development. Tracey provides practical guidance for immediate results. Welcome Tracey, welcome to Talking With The Experts. It is such a pleasure to meet you. 

 Tracey | 01:08
Thank you, Rose. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 

 Rose | 01:11
Wonderful. And tell me a little bit about why you know, being who we want to be in every moment is so important to you. 

 Tracey | 01:21
We spend so much time talking about personal growth and we spend so much time listening to podcasts and all of that type of thing. And again, we don't change in our lives. We have the same conversations. We execute the same habits and patterns over and over again. And I found myself, I just wasn't changing. I remember saying to my husband, why have we had the same argument for 20 years? Why are we still on the same topic? And as much as I'd read all the books and done all the things and done all the meditations and all of that type of thing, I just could not land why I couldn't actually change my behaviour and my reactions to things in particular. 

 Rose | 02:03
Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, we were talking before we came on air about, you know, sitting with our feelings and all of these things. What does that actually mean and why is that term so broadly used now? 

 Tracey | 02:19
It is so broadly used and people don't actually understand what sitting with your feelings means, right? And if you're not part of the woke culture that's using that terminology, how would you have any idea what it means to actually sit with your feelings? 
 To die down so that you can rationalize your own behavior and your own thoughts. So it doesn't mean just sitting there, you know, letting yourself be angry. It's actually listening to what's happening with your anger, listening to the thoughts that are happening, because they're telling you very pointed messages about who you are, and why you've got that anger. 

 Rose | 03:08
It seems it that is an interesting concept but you know a lot of us when we're angry we don't give our brains time enough to Slow down and think about why we're angry. Plough through. How do we stop ourselves from, you know, not sitting with those feelings and analysing them in the moment? 

 Tracey | 03:33
It's a perfect, that is the perfect question. And when we're not used to listening to our thoughts, we don't know that we've actually transitioned into automatic behaviour. 
 So When I write my book, The Story of Stories, it's called that because I tell the stories that we plant in our own heads and we run time and time again. I came home from work one day and my family were all sitting in the lounge, all on their phones, and the kitchen was a state kitchen. I've been working all day. I was flat out. 
 You know what this is like, right? Red rag. I'm flinging the cupboards open. I've kicked the dishwasher door closed. I was raging. And I stopped off upstairs and tears came into my eyes. I thought, surely this cannot be over having to do the dishwasher. But the resounding... 
 Thought in my head was, nobody loves me. Nobody loves me enough to clean up the kitchen because I've had a hard day at work. It has nothing to do with what my family were thinking, right? That is, they weren't sitting there thinking, you know, we don't love mum. We just want her to be a servant, right? 
 So I call it my Cinderella story. And that is the first time that I found that our thoughts are so disconnected, right? From who we are in the world. And it led me into this behavior. I don't want to be a person that kicks the dishwasher door closed. I don't want to be passive, aggressively slamming cupboards. And once I understood that the thought process drove that sudden behavior, it really brought home some of the things that Bruce Lipton had been talking about all of these years about automatic behavior. And it is very difficult to stop that behavior on the fly when you're not used to stopping that behavior, because it's like shouting at a tape player. The subconscious program is already running. It's already off to the races and you've got, unless you practice, it's very difficult to stop that from playing out. 

 Rose | 05:41
Absolutely. I mean, I know Before my husband went into aged care, into full-time aged care, you know, sometimes the littlest things would bother me and... And I'd get upset with him. Because of past behaviours, I guess, and because now he had no control over, you know, he didn't think about stuff. And so I was still living in those old patterns and not thinking that his brain chemicals just weren't working. And so, you know, it was hard for me to sit with my feelings in that particular moment. Because I was wanting him to be an adult and not a child. And so it was hard for me. 

 Tracey | 06:26
I think for you, Rose, probably, and not to be a psychologist or psychiatrist, because that's not what I do at all. But what I've seen with that, and women in particular, I have what we call argument lists, right? You get home from an event, something has occurred at the event, and you're in an argument with your partner. And suddenly you have this massive list of everything that they've done wrong. And your mother wasn't nice to me last Christmas and four years ago when we went to blah. And you've got this entire list. The reason you have that list, it's actually the same story. 
 Right? The same underlying theme is the minefield that your husband stepped onto that mine, right? And it blew, and that's why you can recall all. And they always say things to you like, well, do you keep a diary of all the things I've done wrong over the years, right? That's exactly why it's because it's the same story. You've stepped on the story mine and blown all of those wide open at once. 

 Rose | 07:23
Absolutely. Now I get that. And in the workplace, it can be quite a challenge to not be annoyed with a workmate or a team member or whatever. How do we actually recognise those subconscious stories and get over that? 

 Tracey | 07:41
The workplace is a really interesting conversation to have right now because cancel culture is rife. Threads called Tizient and he hunts down people who have acted badly in the street and they track them back to their lives and their social media and their employers right the whole guise is to really that they want this person not to behave this way but it's it really is like a witch hunt and so for businesses if you've got people out there in the world that are not active in Right. Not looking after their own personal behavior that has a massive impact on your business. And if you've got people in meetings that are rolling their eyes of what you've said as a manager or rolling their eyes at each other or being competitive with each other. Then in subconscious programming, they're not listening to the process and the steps. People will repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It's critically important now for businesses, you know, that personal growth stuff that we do ourselves. Businesses isn't just about sending your staff to a customer service course anymore, right? It's not how you put on a nice voice and then things to say to deactivate and, you know, a customer that's escalating, you know, you have to be able to ensure that you've got your best people at the front of your business. And if they're unable to manage subconscious behavior and their own narrative, their personal emotional responsibility, that's your business that's on the line. Especially in pencil culture like we have now. 

 Rose | 09:18
Yeah, that's interesting. I think you're right. But how do we make sure that we have the right people on the front lines, you know, and in the right positions? 
 I mean, I know there's psychology tests and, you know, through the interview process and the onboarding process and all of it, but sometimes... 

 Tracey | 09:38
You're never going to see it. 

 Rose | 09:39
No, sometimes you can't say, there's a situation where it comes out and they're not meaning to be rude to a customer or a client. It just comes out because of the other person's behavior so how do we recognize these signs that we're on an automated response. 

 Tracey | 10:00
When we ourselves are on automated responses, you know that you're doing these things because you start talking in a way that's in contravention to who you want to be. Right. 
 So when you start that. Passive aggressive behaviors. If you see that your staff are eye rolling, right, you're looking around a table of people, they're rolling their eyes, or they're turning away from each other when they're talking, right, you look at those just those normal body language, you can see whether you've got underlying behavior that's occurring. And. 
 Professional Development Now. Should not just be about making sure that you understand the new software as a service or the new AI that's coming out, but that you understand how personal emotional responsibility works for your staff. And that's the type of coaching, that's the type of leadership coaching and leadership development so that you're able to see that. And you can elicit really good conversations with your staff, but even finding out what's going on at home for them. I'm not going to change who they are unless they're actually becoming highly aware of their thoughts and then any feelings that are building in their bodies. 

 Rose | 11:17
Self-awareness is really important, isn't it? And if you aren't self-aware, then sometimes I think that you can't make the changes that are necessary. 

 Tracey | 11:29
Correct. And if you are one that's still blaming other people, if you still think it's someone else's fault, if your employees are blaming each other, or they're always an excuse for why something hasn't occurred, they've got underlying stories there that they're not actually managing, they're not actually getting through. Hearing your thoughts matters because that drives the chemicals cobbled together then. After the thoughts occur to create the feelings in the body. And so once that feelings there, if you feel like no one cares about no one's listening to your work, you've already switched off because you're already in that. There's no point talking because no one cares what I'm going to say anyway. 
 Right? You're not getting the best out of your people. It's a time to it's time now to change how we are. How we're assisting people to grow, the types of development we send them on. Emotional culture deck is one of the things that I know some other businesses use here, and that's a really good start. 
 You know, starting to have those conversations in the business about how people feel at work. 

 Rose | 12:33
Yeah, and I think, you know, as good leaders, It's important that you ask your staff from time to time or your team members from time to time how they're feeling, whether they're having troubles at home. 
 I mean, not getting too personal, of course, but you've noticed that their behaviour at work is a little bit off and they're not their usual selves. Most often it's something that's happened at home or, you know, they may have had a near accident on the way to work or something like that. And so it's important that you get onto the floor and, you know, Not... Make lifelong buddies out of your teammates or staff members but you know have interest in them outside of work. And things that could be happening to them. I think they're the things that leaders, or make a good leader, but leaders that are leading today, they're more managing than leading, I think. 

 Tracey | 13:33
Correct. You know, knowing how to optimize a team, it's a different world now, right? 
 So we've got all of those experts telling us the different superfoods and different vitamins and minerals and things like that to optimize your health, right? Cell optimization is so important. There's a million podcasts about, you know, metabolism and all of that type of thing. But mental health is... Critically important. Mental health comes down to a person's ability to be able to rationalize thoughts that are going on in their heads and not allow them. To become programs. As parents, we're allowing those programs to embed in our children from a really young age. We tell them old beliefs from years gone by that we've grown up believing ourselves and we embed those again. If you don't work hard, you don't get all of those things that we embed. Those belief systems, they build those stories. And our countries in particular, both Australia and New Zealand are both very multicultural. We've got people from all sorts of cultures with all sorts of belief systems that can be a hindrance in the workplace. 
 So working with those people and their belief systems and allowing them, you know, allowing them to be who they are at work is so important. 

 Rose | 14:53
Absolutely. No, I 100% agree with that, I think. And we can all learn from each other. 
 You know, different cultures have different belief systems and the way they do things. Sometimes, you know, we may not agree with, but There can be benefit to looking and accepting that other people behave differently depending on what culture they are. 
 I mean, I know when I used to. The Australian Customs Service before they became Border Force. 
 You know, one of our trainings was, culture and we had to especially Aboriginal culture, which was really important, that we had to make sure that we were treating them in a way that they understood, not the way that we understood. And so that happens when we deal with all other cultures that we have to, deal with them the way that they understand being dealt with rather than our preconceived ideas of them or the way the white culture you know believes things should be done. 

 Tracey | 15:57
Correct. The way that, you know, emotional responsibility comes about, though, is building on that awareness of each other and then understanding in ourselves that. The belief systems that each of us have been brought up with and dismantling some of those, unpacking some of those stories. And they're simple things. An art teacher told you that you weren't good at art. Your mother told you that you couldn't grow your hair long because it was too fine, right? You just get these little tiny things and they create this person over time. Dr. Joe Dispenza is one of the great meditation gurus, right? He talks a lot about You know, your personality is just emerging from all of these actions. And you think that that's who you are. You think that can't be any different. That's how I am. I'm 50 something years old now. That's how I am. This is all there is. That's not true. It's not true. You can dismantle those things. You can allow them to float past you, but you need to become aware of what you're thinking. But sometimes you don't even hear the thoughts first. You're in the horrible behavior. You're slamming the dishwasher door before you even know the thought that's in your head. Right. No one loves me is not the thought when you walk into the house to a messy kitchen. Right. There's a mess, blah. And the body chemicals are all raised. Right. And you're into the action, you haven't had the opportunity. It's when you sit down During that, if you can allow the chemicals to go down, listen to what it is that you are thinking, then you will hear the real gems, the real thoughts. And most of them won't be true. There's lots of psychologists then can help through, you know, neuro-linguistic programming and that type of thing that they've been talking about for years. But there's some really easier ways of getting rid of those behaviors by just actually doing nothing. When you feel that way. Allowing that to wash past. There's other good things out in the market now about... Getting trapped energy out of the body. 
 So some of those big feelings cause really trapped trauma inside the body. So breath work is one of those things that's becoming really popular to help with moving that energy on. 
 Some people do it by accident. They're runners. Right. They're the ones that go to nightclubs and dance all night long. 
 You know, some of those friends that just, they just use all that energy the whole time. That is actually, that moves energy through the body and gives you a really good opportunity to help move some of that energy. Stuck energy out of your system. 

 Rose | 18:44
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, not so much exercise as in exercise, but just moving the body around and dancing for no reason, you know, brings up those really good feel hormones and, you know, makes you feel great anyway. 
 So yeah. Gets rid of some of those negative thoughts and dialogues that we, you know, we say to ourselves. 

 Tracey | 19:07
Yeah. So I think, you know, ensuring that now when you're looking forward in your businesses, looking at the type of people that you want to have and making sure that those people are emotionally fit, right? That's not something that you can, that's not something that you can do personally, right? Not everybody will sit down and counsel their people, but there's really good, you know, there's really good opportunity to encourage personal growth. A lot of people do it by, you know, by doing it by themselves. And I think that's a really good opportunity to do it by doing it themselves. 
 So leaders that are doing that work themselves, when they're leading really big teams, you can tell the ones that do the personal work. You can hear it. You can hear it in the way that they talk. You can hear it in the way that they rationalize. You can hear it in the way that they take time in a meeting to consider things, right? They don't fly off the handle. They don't have emotional outbursts. And they're the people you can see have started to really consider, you know, their emotional profile and their mental health. 

 Rose | 20:07
Yes, absolutely. And mental health, as you stated before, is so important, I think, It hasn't been taken into account as often as it should be because, you know, people have baggage that they've brought along with them for whatever reason. And, you know, and people do have down days and, needs to be taken into account when you're in the workplace I think you know there's often a reason that someone is not behaving as they would normally. 

 Tracey | 20:39
- Absolutely. Look, I wanna change the world, Rose. I wanna get out there and help each individual person. 
 You know, if I could go around to each person's house and sit there and listen to their stories and listen to their behavior and listen to their, the things that they tell themselves and help them to start to disarm some of those things, to take away some of those landmines. My life is so completely different. 
 You know, it's very rare that my husband could step on a mine now. Don't get me wrong. There's still mines there, right? But they don't come with a 25 point list of everything that he's done over a 20 year period anymore. 
 You know, there may be a few topical things, but then, you know, it's peeling the onion. Right. And understanding that, you know, not all triggers go at once, but it is a time for emotional responsibility. Cancel culture is rife. And No one wants to be outed for bad behavior. No one wakes up in the morning hoping that they're going to be ill behaved or unhappy, even just being in an unhappiness spiral, even having shower arguments with yourself. 
 You know, you think, she said this to me. I could have said that and blah. You go over it in your head. That doesn't need to occur. Right. Once you break that process, those thoughts just don't present themselves to you anymore. It's not something that you vigilantly have to stand on every single day for your whole life. Once you break some of those processes and break some of those thought processes, those thoughts just never occur to you again. New thoughts come. 
 Thoughts that are creative, thoughts that are propelling you forward rather than ones that are, you know, a downward spiral. 

 Rose | 22:27
Absolutely. If you want to find out more about Tracey or work with Tracey, you can find her on LinkedIn, on Instagram and at TraceyRoland.com. And did you have something you wanted to promote today, Tracey? 

 Tracey | 22:41
It's very difficult. I'm out and I'm doing a lot of things at the moment. My book, The Story of Stories is on Amazon and helping you to unpack this for yourself. If you want to get in touch with me via any of those media that you have spoken about. I like to do corporate corporate days i have a really good half day workshop for people personal and in person so i'm running some workshops and i'd like to start some more retreats for actual couples you know not everybody's going to a plant-based yoga retreat you know we need to have some retreats where you come out with something more than just really good relaxation although i highly advocate those at the same time so if there's something you think that I can help you or your company with then definitely reach out to me in the social media space Thank you, Rose. 

 Rose | 23:33
Absolutely, Tracey. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me on Talking With The Experts. 

 Outro | 23:41
You've been listening to Talking With The Experts, hosted by Rose Davidson. Make sure you have a look at our back catalogue over at talkingwiththeexperts.com. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on any episode. We look forward to your company next time.