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How to Confront People Without Feeling Pressure

Episode 69

I’ve received more feedback about my recent episode on how to discern your calling without feeling pressure than almost any other episode to-date. I’m so glad you’ve all reached out to me about this because it lets me know that, clearly, the subject of pressure is a hot-button one for you.

As a result, I’ve decided to cover the topic of pressure from a few more angles.

In this episode, I’m providing you with three questions to ask yourself that will help take the pressure off confrontational conversations.

Take a listen to the episode below!

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

A couple of weeks ago, I did an episode called How to Discern your Calling without Feeling Pressure?  That was episode #67 and I’ve received more feedback on that episode than I have many on any other one other than like maybe my first episode that we did here.

And because of that, it really helped me to see that this idea of feeling pressure is kind of hot button right now for the listener, for you.  So today and maybe in a couple of weeks, I’m going to try to talk about this idea of pressure in a couple of different other contexts and we’ll see where it goes.

But for today, we’re going to talk about how to confront other people without feeling pressure.  Have you ever felt like you just need to tell somebody that they really upset you?  Or you’re really struggling in this relationship and you know that this relationship is not going anywhere and you really need to confront this person or confront the situation if it’s going to move on.

Do you love that?  In a scale of 1 to 10 – I absolutely love confronting people with hard and difficult conversations what most people called difficult.  But they’re not difficult for me.  You’re a 10 if that’s the case or maybe you’re like “Absolutely not.  I will not do it.  I completely avoid them.  I run away from difficult conversations and from confronting people.”  Where are you?  Where do you fall?

Just be honest with yourself on that.  I think we all struggle with it to some degree because it’s hard.  It is threatening to put ourselves in that position where we’re really not sure what the other person’s is going to say.  We’re not sure what they’re going to think of us when we get done with this conversation, when we confront them.  And we’re not sure what’s going to happen.

I think that this unease come so much from that lack of control confronting other people.  Yeah, many of us want harmony.  We don’t like to have relationships feel out of whack.  Sometimes we get to that point when we have to and we have to do something about it.  And yet, we’re scared to do something or we’re hesitant because either we’ve had a bad experience in the past or maybe you confronted somebody before and it didn’t turn out well.  Maybe you confronted somebody and you know you end up hurting them more in that process.  Maybe you confronted somebody and they ended up hurting you more in that process.

Our experiences and our fears whether we’ve experienced those fears or not, you know, they might be imagined, those things can really mess with our minds.  And then we feel all kinds of pressure because we can tell it’s like being squeezed and we can tell that we’ve got to do something but we’re not sure exactly what.  If it means confronting somebody then what?  How do we handle this without feeling so much pressure?

I recently re-watched the movie called Saving Mr. Banks.  Have you ever seen this movie?  It is a Disney movie and it’s about how Walt Disney worked with, I think it’s P.L. Travers.  The woman who wrote the book about Mary Poppins, the series about Mary Poppins and how he tried to get her for 20 years.

He tried to get her to sell him the rights so that he could make the movie Mary Poppins.  Anyway, I haven’t done any additional research.  So this is in terms of the movie, his daughters apparently loves the book and he promised to make them this movie some time.  And she just refused; this woman just did not want Disney to touch Mary Poppins.  She told him in the movie, “They’re like family to me.”

So the only way that she even got into conversation with him, in the first place, was because I think she was hard-pressed for money and she agreed to, at least, listen to the script that they had been working on.  And as long as they would listen to all of her response and really pay attention to every little detail that she says need to be changed.  So nothing happens unless she approves it that kind of thing.

Well, you can imagine somebody that is so tied to their characters that they wouldn’t even consider the option as letting somebody like Walt Disney to make it into a movie for 20 years.  You know, she’s so _____ to this pretty tightly and yet Disney had this vision for this character, Mary Poppins, and how important it is for him to get this out into the world.

So what’s interesting, the whole movie is really fascinating, and as a moviegoer, you’re able to see the back story.  They do flashbacks and you can see the back story behind the books of Mary Poppins because it actually has to do with her real life.  However, nobody at the Disney Corporation had any idea that that was the case.  They didn’t realize that they thought that maybe it just came from her on mind.

So when she became so stubborn and would say things like there cannot be any color red in the film and Mr. Banks cannot have a mustache, “No, he does not have a mustache.”  And she just got so picky about everything.  They just felt like she was just being, you know, just…I don’t know, I’m trying to think of another world…you know, bitchy, but that’s essentially what she was doing.  She just was being so picky that she just could not let go of these things that she was clinging to, his ideas.  And they were just like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

So they get through.  They’re almost done with the movie.  They’re almost done with the process of getting her to agree to everything.  I apologize if this is totally messing this up for you, but if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s been up for a while.  So you could still see it and it would still mean something to you, I promise.  But anyway, she ends up giving up and going home and she says, “No, I’m not gonna do this.  For whatever reason, I won’t give you that part away.”  She says, “Nope, I’m not gonna approve this.”  And she takes back her rights and she says “I’m not gonna do it.”

OK!  So Walt Disney is in a position that we were talking about earlier that here we have the situation where we’ve been working together, we’re trying to come to consensus.  We’re trying to come to a conclusion.  We’re trying to get this thing to move forward, but this other person is being so difficult.  He couldn’t figure out why, “Why is she being so difficult?”

And everybody else was kind of like, “Well, she’s just difficult.”  And yet he was smart enough to catch a couple of clues at least in the movie I’m assuming.  I don’t know if this is actually what happened.  But in the movie, he was smart enough to catch a couple of clues to realize that this runs a lot deeper for her.  There’s a reason for why she’s holding on so tightly here.  And because of that he could tell that he was going to have to do some things.

He’s going to have to talk about this differently.  He’s going to address not the surface level answers that she was giving about not wanting red in the movie or not wanting the animation or whatever it might be.  But that really wasn’t the issue, even though she was kind of coming across _____, “No way, I’m not gonna let this.”  That was the point of conflict.  He saw that there was that there was something underneath of that that would take care of everything.

And this is what we have to do.  If we want to take pressure out of the confrontational conversations that we have to have in our lives, we need to be able to see beneath those surface level annoyances to understand where this is coming from.  “Where is this coming from?  What am I actually confronting?”

So I’m going to give you a few things here to take a way, to kind of start to apply, to take this pressure off of these confrontational conversations, OK?  They do not have to feel like a fight.  They might.  I’m not going to say it just won’t, but it doesn’t have to all the time.  It definitely doesn’t have to feel so personal to you.

So here are some things that I want you to just keep in your mind when you go to confront.  Number one, the question to ask yourself, is what it is that I’m actually confronting?  So Walt Disney knew that she left because something along the line she didn’t want to have animation in the film and didn’t realize that he was going to do that.  She felt like he deceived her.

So she left over this point of, gush, she can’t trust him and there’s going to be an animation and I don’t want that.  In all reality, it’s surfacy.  It’s a surface level complaint or annoyance or concern.  And yes, trust is a little deeper.  So that’s a little deeper but why does it matter so much to her?  Why does it matter so much to her?

And this is what you have to ask yourself, am I confronting the way that she’s talking about this?  Am I confronting the fact that she’s been so annoying to work with?  Am I confronting the fact that she’s wrong about animation and then we have to have the animation to make this work for Mary Poppins, the movie?  What am I confronting her?  Wait a second, there’s something deeper going on here.  What’s the deeper thing going on here and what Walt Disney knew was that “Oh my goodness, this is about her own experience as a child in her own father.”

So Mr. Banks was such an important piece to her that she didn’t want him let him down.  So Disney then could come in and he could say, “I’m not confronting.  I know that all this stuff is bothering you but this is about something much deeper, isn’t it?”  And then he goes into a conversation with her about the deeper things.
You need to begin by asking yourself, why does this matter so much to this other person?  Why are they responding in such an annoying way?  What happened before?  What are the beliefs that they’re holding on to?  What is the guilt that they feel, the shame that they feel, or the fear that they feel?  What is going on so much deeper that…what am I actually confronting here?

So when you go to talk to somebody about something like this, you might now know the answer.  You might not be Walt Disney and have a bunch of clues that you can go trace down to find out what the answer is, however, you can ask.  You can ask.  So if you start by saying something along the lines of this acknowledging the fact that there’s tension, “Look, I recognize that we’re really struggling with this particular thing with this conflict.”  Or “I noticed that you were upset about something or that you reacted to something that I said.”  That’s important and then you can say, “Why does it matter so much to you?”

Let me tell you something right now, they’re not going to give it to you right away.  They’re not going to be able to just dive right in with you to tell you what is going on, but they will.  If you continue to be curious, most of the time, people start to open up because they start to realize that you actually are asking them questions that are tapping something real inside of them.  If they’re not too afraid of going there, they will go there.

People wanted to be touched deeply.  They want to connect with other people deeply.  If you believe that then you come at this with “What is it that I’m confronting and is there something else going on here?  Is there something more important to adjust?  Is there a deeper issue to deal with?”  That is a very loving thing to do then it’s not just about you, it’s about the other person.

So number two with the second question; is this about my ego?  And maybe better yet is what of this is about my ego?  Because more than likely, you’re feeling threatened in some kind of way, that’s probably one of the reasons why you feel like you need to confront somebody because you feel threatened.  So what is threatened inside me?  What about this is about my ego?

And get honest with yourself before you go to that person.  Do you need to go internal work and think something through first?  Do you need to realize that, you know, maybe talk with a friend or something and say, “I’m realizing that there’s something deeper inside of me here that needs to be addressed before I go and confront something that might be deeper instead of somebody else.

So let’s go back to Saving Mr. Banks, Walt Disney, he was feeling frustrated and threatened by the fact that he invested time and money and energy into beginning to produce this movie.  So for him, he was feeling threatened by that that she could just come in and say, no.  That was hard for him and was frustrating for him as frustrating for the people who were working for him who’ve invested so much time and energy on it.

He had to kind of say, “But wait a second, I have to not have this be about me.  What is this about?”  So what am I really confronting in the other person?  What of this is about my own ego?  What do I need to deal with in order to be able to talk to that speak from a deeper place and then connect to a deeper place in that other person.  Because once you have a sense of your own stability, your own sense of centeredness that you realize that you don’t have to feel threatened anymore and now how can it be about the other person?  Is this going to benefit them as well?

The third question is how can this benefit this other person?  It’s not just about me; it has to be about them too.  If I’m going to be confronting something, then it needs to not just be about me finding my voice and _____ my voice and feeling triumphant in the moment.  Now, I’m not going to say that that’s never beneficial but I want to suggest that it also needs to be for the greater good.

So how can it be about helping the other person as well?  Sometimes, confronting another person about something that’s bad that they’ve done that can help because it’s not good to be a person who is doing bad things.  It’s not good for their heart and their soul.  And so to confront somebody and to put that in front of them is hard for them but it’s good for them  In that sense, it can be good for the other person if you’re needing help to kind tie those dots together.

Let’s go back again to this movie to this example because what Walt Disney realized was that this woman had felt like she had let her father down.  Her father had actually died.  He had not come out triumphant as Mr. Banks does in the movie.  And she wanted to help him.  She wanted to save him.  She wanted to save Mr. Banks that’s what she wanted for the movie.  The Mary Poppins in her real life, she didn’t save the _____.  She wanted her to, but she didn’t.  She said she was going to but she didn’t because her dad ended up dying.

So in a sense the book was for her, an opportunity to redeem the situation to rewrite the story of her life, to rewrite the story of her father.  What Walt Disney realized is this, he comes in it that level with her and he says “I want you to trust me because we are going to save Mr. Banks.  I understand that this so personal for you and that the most important thing is that he is saved in the end that there is redemption for this character and so because I understand that, you can trust me with him.  In the end, she gave him license to be able to do what they wanted to do with the movie.

So all the things that she has said before, you know, you can’t do this.  You have to do that.  I don’t know what the actual story is, but according to the movie, it just appears that she ended up just trusting him because he got it.  He understood what she most cared about.  And because he understood what she most cared about and he promised her, he was like “I am going to make sure, I’m going to do this justice.  We will save Mr. Banks.”  And because of that she was able to trust him.

This is the redemption of the whole story is that he indeed did find redemption in the movie.  And when she went to the premier of the show, she could see it that was her opportunity to see it with her own eyes, to see Mr. Banks be saved.  And for her, that was honoring to her father.  It was something she could do for him that she couldn’t do while he was alive.  That has so many implications for I’m sure many, many people who have watched it since then and have learned that lesson along with the character.

When Walt Disney came to her, he knew it couldn’t just be about; we got to make this film.  She’s got to let me have it.  I’m gonna railroad her.  I’ll just throw more money at her.”  He knew it wasn’t about money.  He knew it wasn’t about power in it that he was just going to force her to do it or something.  Instead, he went for what she really did want.  He looks for how it’s going to help that other person and he realized, she needs to be healed.  She needs healing.  She needs to feel forgiveness and the only way that that’s going to happen is if Mr. Banks is saved.

And the only way we can really make that happen is if we go with my vision because I know movies, you know.

So when you are going to confront somebody else, you can take the pressure off of it by those small interactions that are surface interactions.  There’s always something deeper going on.  And if you’re just fighting at that surface level, all you’re going to feel is pressure because you’re just going to want to get that thing to go through, “I just want you to stop doing this.  I just want you to do that.”

Well, even if you were able to get what you wanted.  For example in the movie, the animation, even if he came to her and he said, “Look, I just want you to agree to the animation.  I’m gonna show you why it’s important.”  And then list off a bunch of reasons.  Well, you can’t make penguins dance, you can’t train them dance.  So we have to use animation.  It’s the only option.  He could have gone and on and on and on with some rational argument about that but it would never have hit her where she needed to be touched.

It never would have touched that place in her heart.  Instead, we have to see that people need to be touched at that heart level when they are holding so tightly to something like that or when they are annoying us with something, “Oh it’s so annoying!”  What is going on inside of them that is bringing to them to the place where they feel like they have to do that?  These are the questions that we have to ask.  Like I said if you don’t have those clues, if you’re not sure then ask, stay curious.

You may not find out in one conversation.  It maybe something that you have to have conversation and conversation and conversation and the truth of the matter is is that not everybody will go there.  But I’ll tell you what, a lot of people will.  More often than not, people will go there with you if you sincerely care, if you’re willing to say, “Wait a second, what am I confronting?  Is this about my ego?  How do I do this by making sure that this is about them and not just about me?”

How can we connect to that deeper level because if you connected that deeper level then all of a sudden, everything at that surface level changes.  It’s like it becomes a non issue because you’ve connected at that deeper level.  This is how to confront people without feeling so much pressure.

Go ask these questions.  Be bold in your love and make that voice matter more!

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Mental Health Matters for Pastors and Those Who Care for Them with Espen Klausen, Ph.D.

Episode 68

Dr. Espen Klausen is a regular here on the Voice of Influence podcast and he’s back again this week. This time, Dr. Klausen is here to discuss mental health for pastors.

In this episode, we cover the role the church has played in Dr. Klausen’s from the time he was a child to now, the unrealistic expectations we placed on pastors to always have it all together, how our bodies are designed to handle stress, his tips for what pastors can do to help protect or improve their mental health, and more.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Espen Klausen Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

 

Today, I have with me Dr. Espen Klausen who is a regular here on the podcast.  I appreciate his psychological, spiritual point of view and the wisdom he has to share with you, the audience.  And so I continually invite him back whenever we have some particular questions that fall within his realm of expertise.

Andrea:   So today, Espen, you’re here to talk to us, specifically, about pastors and this has to do more with some of Espen’s own message and his own passion.

So, Espen, first of all welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Thank you so much, Andrea.  I’m happy to be back.

Andrea:  The thing that I wanted to ask you to start this off is what is this message that you have that pertains to pastors?  Where does it come from for you?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  I’ve started a project and starting to offer seminars to churches to help their ministry staff in particularly pastors better understand mental health and provide better self-care when it comes to mental health.  This mission comes of many experiences particularly in the last couple of years, but really throughout my whole life.  I’ve grown up with pastors my entire life.  I grew up in a little island in the end of Oslo Fjord.

Andrea:  In Norway?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  In Norway, yes.  The local little church that could sit 50 to 75 people, and a 150 on Christmas Eve, just don’t tell the _____.  It was right across the street from the house I grew up in.  My parents were highly involved in the church community, and pastors will often come over for coffee before church services would start.

My first paid job was a church attendant at the church taking care of things for the service.  It included being the secretary at the church council and since then I’ve been in around pastors all the time.  Last year or two, I became an elder at our church and now has been a part of hiring ministry staff, consulting to ministry staff including pastors.

I also run a lot of mental health talks at some men’s conferences in all the church settings.  One thing that’s become clear in the last five years is it’s predictable.  Each time I do, one or more pastors will sneak in to the back row of my seminar and then right afterwards, or by email or phone later, will kind of sneak to get a few words one-on-one with me and they’re thirsty to better understand the mental health and also to better deal with the challenges that they’re facing.

And this has culminated into over the last couple of years; we’ve had a big rise in suicide among pastors.  One of them was in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is just half an hour away or 45 minutes away from our own church.  So it was a big loss to the community.  Mental health issues seemed a big problem among pastors.  They need help but they have a hard time finding it or asking for it because we have these unrealistic expectations of pastors.

We expect them to have it altogether.  We expect the stress should not be getting through them.  And very often, the pastors themselves often have this belief that everything emotional or mental is spiritual.  If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, which is the most important thing of all and is something I wish on everyone on this earth, yet just like coming to Christ, does not make you broken leg not broken.

Coming to Jesus Christ does not mean that past trauma or defects physically in your body and brain of stress and hearing about other people’s suffering all the time and having responsibilities that can easily take you 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90 hours a week, those things are still going to affect your body and still going to affect your mind whether you believe in Christ or not?

Andrea:  So true, so true.  You know, you have this little story on your brochure and website, do you mind sharing that little story with us?  Do you know what I’m talking about?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Yes, yes.  I was 6 years old or so you know how childhood memories go, it would take a couple of years.  But it was one of these Sundays I talked about where couple of pastors were having coffee in our kitchen before service.  Whatever reason, there was a line mask around and I put it on.  And I walked into the kitchen and I looked up at the pastors peering through those poorly placed peeping holes in the mask and I go “Roarrrrr!”  The pastor goes “Huhh huhh huhh, do you eat people?”  And I said “Yes, and I eat pastors too!”

Very cute but the real moral of the story afterwards apart from one of the pastors immediately rewriting his sermon and finding a way to put it in because every pastor needs a “On my way to church this morning” to include in their sermon.  Apart from that, the really important thing of that story is myself as much as most other people I believe right there.  I really said the crux of the problem right there “Do I eat people?”  “Yes, and pastors too.”

We often forget that pastors are people and pastors often forget this too.  We sometimes have this sense that somehow the Holy Spirit has inoculated ministry staff from suffering the effects of life that affects everyone else and they’re people too, and yes lions would eat the pastors too.  I’m not to talk with _____ about it but I think you can stretch that far.

Andrea:  I love that story because it’s such a telling example of what you’re saying that everybody, I think most people, do have that sort of the pastors on the pedestal kind of perception.  I remember having a conversation with a pastor myself and he was talking about how hard it is to have actual relationships with pretty much anybody but especially anybody in his congregation.

He was just kind of implementing how lonely it is and people just don’t really try to befriend them or that sort of thing, he and his wife.  And I said “Yeah, but everybody is intimidated by you.”  I mean, “They don’t think that you need it but they also feel like you are above them, so it’s pretty hard to want to do that.”  He was like “Really, they think that?”  I thought, “You don’t realize that they think that.”

We got something to talk about here because, yeah, I think it really is hard for parishioners from most people, the vast majority of people, to actually have good conversations with the pastor and feel like they’re not being judged or feel like they’re going to be scrutinized.  And maybe that’s how people perceived being having a conversation with a psychologist too, I don’t know.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Yeah, and really the problem is just as much than in the in the other direction because now the pastor is sitting there.  Even the person who invited the pastor over, the pastor is always sitting there “Am I there as a friend and I can relax and I can share my own internal struggles, or am I a pastor and a shepherd of one of my sheep?”

Actually, I made a point out of the following; I have friends that are pastors.  But in order to really develop those friendships, there have been times when I’ve invited them, “Hey, let’s have coffee.”  Or “Would you come over for games, I’ve invited a couple of guys too?”

I made it sometimes explicit in my text or an email and say “Hey, as a friend, I would like to hang out with more.”  And then the invite because, otherwise, pastors usually don’t know what it is.  Is this an excuse to get together to talk about something difficult?  Is it, “They’re inviting me because I’m a leader in the church and important to them but I’m still on this pedestal?”

But that said, we will now getting in to know their characters which is a big struggle, I think, for many pastors.  Our churches have been going through some changes over the years of who’s there or not and it felt bad for pastors with it following.  Pastors don’t have exits.  They don’t have a real exit strategy that would be palatable to most other people.

Most of us, if we have a job where it’s not going the right direction or we want to move in a different direction or we’re just so stressed, we need to find a less stress job.  For a pastor to do that, they are usually not just giving up their job.  They’re expected to promptly lead their church family.  They’re also would be expected to lead most of their friends because most of their friends are going in that church family.

A pastor stepping down from pastoral job to something less stressful is often seen as a failure, even though it shouldn’t.  Although many pastors do end up stepping down, because it is too stressful, but is this draconian expectation usually that when a pastor steps down from a church, he also leaves the community and go to a different _____.

Andrea:  Right, and it make sense why that would be the case.  I’m not sure what your take on at this but I can see why a church would say that a pastor would really need to stay away for a while because they’re naturally still looked at as the leader.  So if you try to bring on another leader in, it could easily, I don’t know, I could see that going bad.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Yeah.  There are good reasons for it.  It’s important to do something like that so that you don’t split the church where there’s unclear leadership.  So there are all good reasons for that which is actually even more so why it’s a problem for the pastor because it forces them into that situation.

A lot of pastors that I’ve talked with feel stuck or they’ve a hard time stepping down from certain things or stepping back from a friendship that’s not all that healthy.  They’re a part of the congregation and if they step back from that and that is other repercussions.

But even more importantly, like we talked about earlier, the relationships are often one-sided.  It’s hard for the pastor to find the same kind of ability to be open, admit mistakes, or talk about weaknesses.  But really, even more importantly, to be real and express, having emotions and doubts, stress and anxiety and bouts of sadness; all of which are not weaknesses.  All of which are not spiritual difficulties, all of which are what you would expect from any person who’s put to the amount of stress that the pastor is.

But again, we have this notion that all of those things, somehow, indicate spiritual weakness.  So they often don’t feel the safety that they can.  So a big reason for my seminars that I’m launching and starting to offer to churches to provide pastors with the education that, because it’s not just the pastors face this from others, the pastors tend to face this with themselves.

Andrea:  Right, almost even in a bigger way.  A lot of pressure we can put on ourselves.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Yes, and they feel guilty about feeling sad or they feel guilty about having anxiety because they often feel “Oh I’m not trusting the Lord enough,” or whatever phrasing they use not realizing that many of these things are per God’s design for us.  He created us with a nervous system that acts through things in certain ways.

So the whole other podcasts is the learning and biological and brain rewiring benefits of a bout of depression when it’s happening the way it should, the importance of anxiety of how we cannot take away stress without taking away the positive side of stress.  All of these are part of normal good mental health.

But when we don’t deal with them or we don’t cope with them or receive them as indicating a problem then really we’re really heading down a bad track.  Now, I should say, I’m not going to imply here that this is the same for biologically based mental health issues.  God has created us in amazing ways but in A full world, everything fails.

Depression in a normal way is supposed to serve a purpose.  But in a broken biological full world, people’s brain can kick into a depression and stay in a depression when it serves absolutely no good functional purpose at all.  Or can have an anxiety disorder where it’s “Hey, it’s our normal anxiety system that’s good; we’re supposed to have it.  It’s by God’s design.”  But if we live in a full world and you went haywire and someone has an anxiety disorder.

I’m not saying that all anxieties serve a good purpose, I’m saying when God originally designed us and before the full mess these things up, we all had good parts and we all have these when we’re supposed to and when they are good.  But when we then over spiritualized them, we see them as problem rather than God’s design.

Andrea:  I can personally relate.  I mean, I certainly been through a situation where I really was over spiritualizing.  I felt like I was such a bad like, “I should know this.  I should figure this out.”  And I’ve heard other people say this as well where they feel like they should be able to get over something.  But then it turns out that they really just need to get more sleep or whatever physical thing they need to take care of.  That’s a really important point.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  One of my personal favorite examples is both mental and, to some extent, physical challenges that we have is we go through the day.  They will cause physical reactions in our body.  And some of those physical reactions, really, only have one way to get better and that’s to do something physical.

Our stress is formed in our brain.  That’s the part of the brain that puts us into a stress mode.  It’s the part that let us go go go to get things done which often pastors are under because they have 12 hours that’s supposed to get done in six hours and they’re really tired but it gets them going and it does fantastic thing, this cortisol and that’s the stress hormone in our brain.

But the way it leaves the brain and the way it leaves our blood supply is to get burn up in our muscles.  And when we face stress through the day even if it they’re mental, our body is always ready for physical challenge even if the challenge we’re actually facing is emotional, mental, cognitive, social; our body still responds as if this is going to be a physical challenge.  So our muscles tensed up, our breathing changes, and yes that cortisol level gets higher and stays in our bloodstream.

But the only thing that’s going to reset our muscles to a relaxed state or is going to get rid of the cortisol is physical activity, yet almost never do I encounter a pastor who’s exercising enough.  And no amount of bible reading or trust in Christ is going to make your muscles relax when they’re tensed because of the challenges they’re gone through.

Believing in Christ and reading the bible and praying just not burn cortisol out of your bloodstream except in the situations, which I believe can happen, where God has ordained, this pastor is on a mission, he’s doing five seminars in three days, and is helping a lot of people.  And I do believe there are times God helps people through and can supernaturally intervene in that way.

But we don’t plan our life for supernatural intervention in that sense.  Pastors do have to learn how to deal with the reality of how God created our bodies to respond with stress, sadness, grief, or loss.  Never mind something that I often share which is the challenges of vicarious trauma, that is listening to other people’s pain, listening to other people’s suffering, and hearing the sins and struggles of others.  It does take a tool and it does require ways to deal with that.

Andrea:  So what kind of suggestions do you have for pastors, for people who are supporting them to create a system or put something in place that is going to help them move through life, I guess, in their role as a pastor with better mental health?  What kinds of things do you think the pastors should put in place?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  OK, here are a few suggestions.  If you want more; hey, there’s a six hour seminar I offer.

Andrea:  Exactly.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  But here are a few basics.  I believe any pastors should have 20 minutes of heart pumping, out of breath exercise every day.  If there’s someone that’s _____, it’s a basic recipe for handling stress.  It goes back to what I’ve talked earlier.  You don’t deal with that physical part; none of the other part is going to really help with it.  It has to be taken care of.

A 20 minutes a day will not do much to physical health that one just helps the mental health.  Physical health will require you to exercise beyond that but 20 minutes a day; I would recommend it for the stress.  When I go to high stress times, I apply it myself.

It is important for pastors to have at least one mentor, one check in person that is outside of their church.  They need to maintain some network or some people that they can go to so that they can dare to be weaker with that person or express what they may think is a weakness.  Someone that they can talk with that is not identified as one of their flock as a shepherd.  They need outside of that.  It could be a pastor at a different church.  It could be an old friend that’s also a believer from childhood.  And hey, it can be a therapist.

I would highly recommend that but very often I run into, again, many of the pastors that have sneaked in to talk to for a few minutes, I said “You know it could be really good for you to see a therapist.  It can be me or someone else.”  And he’s like “No, I couldn’t do that.”

Andrea:  Hmmm, I wonder why?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Again, because they often feel that if they see a therapist, either it means, they themselves had to admit things are difficult.  Or they’re afraid other people might find out and they’re going to think that they shouldn’t be in leadership and are not in a good place spiritually.  Because if you’re in a good place spiritually why would you need to see a therapist.

Andrea:  So you’re saying that somebody who is in a church or helping lead the church but may not be the pastor should not be suspicious of a pastor who is getting therapy or going to therapy?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Absolutely, should not because any pastors or someone in major ministry in a church they’ll be under enough stress and _____ to understand the mental health and deal with so much vicarious trauma from what they hear and counsel others with that they really probably should be a therapist.  A stand recommendation for therapist is to be in therapy, and I think most pastors in one capacity or another do serve us therapist in the form of pastoral council.

Andrea:  Another action could possibly be spiritual direction?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Spiritual direction is something that can be helpful with that.  Spiritual direction has its limitation when it comes to usually knowledge on mental health.  But it can help with processing with someone else to some extent that vicarious trauma, it is great for being able to have some humility and reexamine yourself, so spiritual direction or getting spiritual director is certainly very helpful tool in that regard.

Another recommendation I have for pastors too, it’s going to take a little bit more explanation.  Some of your listeners maybe familiar with the following concepts and others would not but that’s what’s called spiritual temperament.  We all have different spiritual temperaments.  You go online or you look of articles.  There are books and articles of spiritual temperaments.  But what it really boils down to is we each have different ways that we naturally connect with God in which we feel God’s presence or feel like we actually get into it with God.

There are a lot of different temperaments, but usually each church emphasizes one to maybe three of those different spiritual temperaments.  I’ll give examples for spiritual temperaments, intellectual.  It’s learning about God, studying the bible to learn more facts and more understanding, how does the trinity work, what are these doctrines, or what’s the nature of God on a very intellectual level.

For others, it’s enthusiasm.  It’s getting into the worship, feeling God’s presence or a collective spiritual temperament which often off with enthusiastic, which is being with other believers and worshiping God together.  For others, it’s ecstatic which is get rid of all sounds, get rid of all distractions, not study the bible except maybe take one verse and just read it, just spent with God in silence.

For others, it’s nationalist.  It’s going out being in nature; see a part of us called general revelation which is which part of general revelation is to see the evidence of God in his creation.  And I can go on and on and on about different spiritual temperaments.

But we usually connect better with God in which it’s very good for healing a lot of emotions and wounds when we can connect God on a good level, yet the church we’re in as ministry staff will not always cater to all of this.  In particular the pastors of the church is likely going to hold you into one of the spiritual temperaments that that church does but that might not fit your way of worshiping.

I’ll give you an example out of discovery of my own.  People that knew me or maybe I’ve referred to this in the podcast before, but a couple of years ago, I was struck by a patient.  And I went through a long period recovery from a concussion.  In that period of time, I could do almost nothing.

I could physically and mentally do anything, but just for the sake of my brain healing, I had to limit as much sound as possible.  I should stay in a dark room.  I should try not to think about stuff.  I should not read anything.  I should certainly not go on a screen, I just needed to do absolutely nothing.

And up until then, I’d always thought, I was an intellectual when it comes to my spiritual temperament is how I connected with God.  Except during that time of recovery when I was forced to slow down and then spent my time with God in quiet with absolutely nothing, I started connecting with God in a way that I’ve never been before.

And by now I’m realizing because I never really had the opportunity or never made myself do it when it comes to connecting with God.  Because I’m going to connect with God the best personally, not the way for everyone else but that’s my spiritual temperament, I have to clear everything else away.

That also means I’m not going to connect with God the most while I’m church unless we have a very specific service for that.  Now, how does this go back to pastors?  Well, if the pastor’s spiritual temperament does not match what the church does then they need to really carve out that time for themselves.  The pastors have a hard time doing that because it doesn’t fit into their schedule.

If a pastor’s spiritual temperament is intellectual, they’ll prepare for the sermon by studying the bible or reading up about it.  If they’re enthusiastic, they’ll usually engage themselves more in the worship team and leading of that.  But if their spiritual temperament doesn’t quite match how services are done, they really need to get focused on finding it themselves, in their own life.

Now, I’m jumping here but we were talking what things pastors can do.  Really, I recommend for any pastor pick up some good psychology books, seriously.  But avoid the pop psychology, not about the pop psychology.  Read more the foundational stuff that that’s not.  Pick up a book of cognitive behavioral therapy.  You’re not going to do cognitive behavioral therapy with yourself, but it’s probably going to teach you a lot about how our thoughts and feelings and behaviors work regardless of your condition.  Pick up books to learn about how anxiety works.  And in that sense, find one that’s not written from a biblical perspective.

I never read books on anxiety that kind of biblical but I read many books on anxiety.  When I read about depression that’s not pop psychology but good science on how our brain works and good therapy for depression and stuff.  It’s not kind of biblical.  Actually, a lot of these things, the way I like to describe it, many of these things only need a slight squeeze and they would drift with spiritual truth.

Once you come to understand these things, the applicability and how it fits in with biblical truth and God’s plan then all there _____.  But it’s important for pastors that they understand how anxiety works, how stress works, how sadness works and so many other conditions that just part of the way God has created us.

Andrea:  Wow, there’s obviously so much here.  I’m really fascinated by the spiritual temperaments.  And like you said, there are probably a couple of more podcasts in here somewhere.  But I really appreciate you sharing with us some of these insights about how pastors can really give more attention to their mental health and to taking care of themselves.  And I think those of us who are supporting pastors or wanting to support them, we have a little bit better idea how to do that.

And Espen, when it comes to doing your workshop and working with any pastors, how can people get a hold of you for that?

Dr. Espen Klausen:  I would direct people to my website.  It’s very creatively named.  I spent a lot of time figuring out how to name my website.  It’s www.espenklausen.com which just happens to be my name.

Andrea:  Yes, and we’ll certainly have that in the show notes.  So if anybody is interested in hiring you to come and do a workshop for pastors or speaking at a conference or something like that and that’s where you can find you then.

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Yeah and the contact information will be there.  There are flyers up there for the specific _____.  But I also there have _____ of other kinds of trainings and seminars that I can provide at the intersection of mental health and spiritual matters and how it applies to how we understand how our mind works.

Andrea:  Awesome!  Thank you so much.  I’m glad that you’re doing that Espen.  It made me really happy to see this new offering that you have and I know that you’re going to help a lot of people.  So thank you!

Dr. Espen Klausen:  Thank you so much and thank you for having me.

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How to Discern Your Calling Without Feeling Pressure with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 67

Have you ever looked at someone you admire and felt pressured to be like them, do things the way they do, or feel what they feel?

Where does this pressure come from? Yourself?

How much do you judge yourself based on what you admire about that person?

I want to help you stop the judgments and instead focus on what it is about that person that you resonate with. What is that person awakening in you?

In this episode, I’m going to provide some insights that will help you do this; including why I personally believe that comparing ourselves to others isn’t always a bad thing.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, we’re going to be talking about Pressure, the pressure to feel like you ought to be or do something in particular that somebody else is or does or says that you should do.

I want you to imagine someone in your mind who you really admire.  You admire them for the way that they are, for who they are, or for something that they do.  I have a feeling that there’s somebody in your life that you really admire.  So just take a minute and think about them and I’ve got a question for you.

And I’ve got a question for you, first of all, what do you admire about them?  What is it that comes to mind?  You love the way that they do this.  You wish that you could do that.  You see something in their life that looks so attractive that you really wish that it could be something that you had to.

On a scale of 1to 10, how much do you judge yourself based on what you admire in this other person?  So when these things come to mind, these things that you really like about them, how much do you judge yourself based on that?

So one would be “Oh, I really don’t judge myself at all.  I’m not saying that I’m worse or better than them, I just really admire this about them.”  And then on the other side would be a 10 where you completely determine your own value based on how much you are able to do or not do the things that you admire about that person.  So my guess is that you’re somewhere in the middle, most of us are.  Hopefully you’re not too high up at the top like a 10.

But let’s just be honest with ourselves for a minute here.  How much time do you spend comparing yourself and then judging yourself based on other people in your life?  Or maybe not in your life but maybe on a podcast or in a book or online, some place, or somebody that you admire?  How much time do you spend on that?

Now, here’s the thing.  I’ve talked about some of these things that we’re going to talk about today before.  But today, I really would like to focus on taking the pressure off.  There’s so much pressure on each of us that we put on ourselves most of the time, but sometimes it comes from other people and we accept that pressure to be or do something like someone else.  And it can feel like we’re less than other people because we know that we’re not good at this particular thing.

So let’s take an example, because I realize that you may be thinking to yourself “Well, I don’t think that way,” but the truth is maybe you do.  And maybe you don’t need to listen to this episode or maybe you don’t and you should listen to this episode so that you can help others.

But think about that because we each have these people in our lives that we admire.  And I think that’s OK, because there’s a difference between admiring somebody even comparing ourselves with them.  I don’t think comparison is really the enemy because comparison can help us differentiate.  Comparison can help us to understand how we are uniquely different and how they are uniquely different and how we can work together in our differences.

So comparison in and of itself I don’t think is the problem.  What becomes a problem is when we judge ourselves or we judge other people based on that comparison.  So we start to feel bad about ourselves or we start to feel high and mighty about ourselves because we have compared ourselves to someone else.  So that’s something to really think about because comparison isn’t the enemy, judgment is.

OK, so the next piece of this is that you can admire somebody and that can turn into that self condemnation or a race to beat that person or to try to become that person or become elements of that person.  Maybe they have a really clean house and you don’t have a clean house.  And so you feel like crap all the time and you keep trying to pick your house up and you never quite get it like this other person does.

I would definitely be that person who does not clean her house very well.  I try, I try, but it’s not very often super clean or super put together.  So it would be easy for me to look at somebody’s house who is super clean or super put together.

I think, even for me, this is one thing that I noticed about myself is that I admire, really admire people whose houses are so, I think put together would be the way to put it, where they have an intentional reason for all these little things that are in their house and things have a place and they don’t have a lot of clutter and things like this.  I really admire that.  It’s something that I would like to get better off for myself.

But here’s what can happen in situations like this, we could look at that person that we admire and say “Oh man, I don’t even wanna be around that person,” or “I don’t wanna be in their house because it reminds me of how bad I am at that.”  Does that sound familiar to you at all?  Are you trying to avoid somebody because you admire them so much and it’s just feels like this is in your face all the time that you’re not what you wish you could be?  If that’s the case, I’m really sad to hear that because I don’t think it has to be like that.

I think that we can admire somebody and allow it to just be that like “Wow, I just have such an appreciation for you and what you’re able to do.  I have appreciation for this well put-together house,” without putting a lot of pressure on yourself to ever become that.  Maybe you can be inspired by it, maybe you can say “Hi, I wonder if you have any tips for me,” without feeling the pressure to become what they are, to get your house to the point at their houses.

And when I’m talking about pressure, I’m really talking about, I think you know that feeling that “Huh, I just feel like I’m supposed to be like that.  I’m not, so I feel bad about myself and so I don’t want to think about it.  I don’ wanna be around them.  I need to try harder.”  That’s pressure, and I don’t think that’s necessary.

So another way to look at this is to see people that you admire and realize that maybe they actually have tapped into something, they’re good at something that you actually do want to be good at.  I mean, not just want to.  I’m not saying you should be good at it.  I’m saying like you feel awakened when you see them do their thing.  You feel like something inside of you has just awakened, is inspired, is motivated and is saying “Huh I do want to be like that.”

So I could tell you that from my personal experience besides the house thing that through the years when I was growing up and in my young adult life, whenever I would watch a speaker onstage, I would think to myself or an author, I would think to myself “Man, I really wish I could be like that.”  I really admire them and if I did really admire somebody, I’d be feeling like “Oh gosh, why isn’t it not me up there?”  That sort of thing and that could easily turn into pressure.

It could easily turn into “Well, I need to do what they’re doing,” or I feel like such a failure because they’re younger than me and they have more success in this area.  That could easily turn into a pressure.  And that’s something that I think that we really need to turn off.

We need to take that pressure off of ourselves and say “No, I don’t need to judge myself based on my comparison with that person just because they’re younger than me, or just because they have more followers than me or they seem to have a bigger impact than I do for whatever reason.

Instead of judging yourself based on that, could you allow yourself to be awakened to what might be a calling for you?  So for me when I would see these speakers and authors and things, I would think “Oh gosh!  Oh, I really do want that!”  It was like I felt called to it.  Like I felt I really truly wanted it, not so much that I felt like I should be that or that I should have what they have but then I wanted it.

I think that when we talk about comparison as being a bad thing, the danger of that is that we start to turn off all of our abilities to think critically about how we are different and what we should be.  So instead of being honest about the fact that we have a desire, we try to turn it off because we start to feel bad.  We feel this pressure and we start to feel bad and so we turn off the comparison and we kind of know more ourselves to that comparison because we know what it has done to us in the past.

Maybe you have felt a lot of pressure.  I don’t want to feel that pressure, so I’m just going to avoid it or I’m going to _____ it.  I’m going to say, “I don’t care.”  Kids do this all the time, don’t they?  “I don’t care,” or when we’re self-critical, we try to beat people to the punch and say, “I’m an idiot.”  I’ve said that to myself before.  I try to beat people to the punch because I don’t want somebody else say that about me because I feel like I should be something different.

So we do these things that distract us from what’s truly in our hearts what might be an actual calling, a desire to actually move towards something.  So if you’re somebody, who, like me, sees people who are writing books and out there speaking or maybe an entrepreneur or maybe they are just somebody who seems like they have it together for this or that and you feel awakened to a desire inside of you.  That is different than feeling pressured to become what somebody else says.

So instead of turning it off, avoiding it off, or avoiding that person, get down to asking yourself, “What is it that I’m feeling awaken to?  What excites me about this, about where they are and what they’re doing?  What doesn’t?”  This is where you get to compare yourself.  This is where you get to do that comparison.  You’re not saying that they are better or worse than you are.  No, no, we’re not judging here.  What you’re doing is you’re doing some discerning about your own calling.

I went to this talk and this person got up there and he spoke and he just awakened something inside of me.  And for a split second, I felt bad about where I’m at right now but then I remembered that, “No, this isn’t about feeling pressured, this is about finding what I desire, finding out what I really feel called to.”

So let’s ask myself these questions, “Self, what do I feel called to then?  What is so exciting to me about what I’m seeing?  What was awakened inside of me, a desire for what?  What piece of this or what pieces of these just really energized me?  And perhaps what doesn’t?  What something about this that I’m not excited about?”

And that’s OK.  It’s OK to admit that as well, “You know what, I don’t really like that they did this because I would do it differently.”  That doesn’t mean that you’re judging them.  That means that you’re trying to figure out what your voice is, you’re trying to figure out what you are called to and then allow them to be who they are.

So a few months ago, I spoke at a conference in Las Vegas and I just had a few minutes onstage but it was so _____.  I had such a blast because I love the stage.  If you read UNFROZEN, my book, you know I love the stage.  I felt guilty about it for a long time like I shouldn’t love it.  And then I realized over the years I kind of come to terms with the fact that it’s OK for me to love being onstage.

So when I got up there in front of a 150 people or so, I just got up there and owned it.  I felt like I was owning the stage and afterwards the conference organizers had everybody do a little survey.  And so on the survey, they asked different questions like from a scale of 1 to 5, how engaging was this presenter?  From scale of 1 to 5, how much did you learn and that sort of thing.  And I got to take home all of these surveys.

So I went through and on my way home, I calculated all the responses.  And really they calculations were really high.  I actually got some really good responses between 4 and 5 for everything.  But there were a few individual responses, and one in particular, he was so critical.  One person, you could tell who did not like me.  And they didn’t feel like they learned anything because I talked about the same thing that they do.  OK, fair enough.  They did not like the way I was dressed.  We’re talking like they’re giving me a 1 or whatever.

They felt like I was acting onstage which nobody else did but they did.  You know things like these, and I was just like “Oh my goodness, this person is like really, really critical.”  And this is what I think that we do when we are comparing and judging at the same time.  I think that we look at somebody else and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that.”  And so we mark them down in our minds and that instead of saying, “This was effective,” or “This wasn’t effective for me,” or “This wasn’t effective for me but I think it would be effective to these other people.”

So if you’re in that position where you’re looking at somebody and you’re saying, “I really admire them but I really don’t like this and I really do like that.”  Well, you don’t have to put judgment on it.  You can say, “This is really effective for me.  This would be really effective for the audience I want to reach.  This would be really effective but this other thing maybe I didn’t like it and I wouldn’t do it, but maybe it would reach somebody else.”

My tendency is to always be looking for what’s effective and what’s not.  And when I watch other speakers, I’m thinking to myself “Is this perfectly put together, but is this effective?  Is it getting people where they want to go?  What about myself, is what I’m doing effective or not.”  So here’s where I’m coming back to this.  I’m coming back to comparison isn’t bad.  Comparison saying whether or not you are like somebody else and how and whatever, that’s OK as long as you’re not adding judgment to it.

But you can ask yourself what awakens desire in me and what doesn’t.  So you can let that person be that person.  You’re not saying that they should be different by doing this process of comparing and figuring out, discerning what you want to be.  You’re not saying that they should change.  You’re not judging them nor are you judging yourself.  What you’re doing is your discerning your calling and you’re saying, “Well, maybe they are called to do just what they’re doing and that’s totally fine.”  Or maybe they could up in a notch, maybe there’s some way that you can help or that somebody else can help, that’s fine.  That’s totally fine.

What I’m saying is you don’t have to feel bad about comparing yourself to other people, because if someone that you admire awakens something inside of you, something that they do or something that they say and it awakens something inside of you and you’re like “Wow, I really want that!”  This is where you’re following your heart to find you’re calling.  This is doing a little bit deeper in our work to be able to figure out what you’re really called to.

But if you look at somebody and you say, “Wow, they’re doing these amazing things, but I can admire that and not want it or not judge myself based on them on what they’re doing.”  That’s a really healthy place to be.

So when you are listening to this podcast, when you’re listening to Voice of Influence and you hear me talk about things like vision and mission and voice and understanding what your message is and things like this, this may or may not be for you.  Because there are some people in the world, who, maybe like me, long to have a certain message and a certain impact.  We long to find our calling and we’re having a hard time doing it.

When I was having a hard time doing it, I needed to get clear on all the chaos on my head.  I needed to get clear on what I most care about so that I could know how to focus my energy.  Does every single person in the world need to do that?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I think what’s important probably more than anything _____ is to know what you really care about, what standard you’re going to measure everything by.

So here’s the thing.  This is where I was thinking about this earlier, I need clarity around my message and offering.  But somebody like my husband, he needs to partner with somebody who has a message and an offering that he can relate to, that he can support, that he can get behind.

So while he may not feel like he needs a certain message or a certain offering, as long as he can feel supportive of what I’m doing, as long as he can feel like he relates to it, he agrees with it, it’s not just his values; all that sort of things then he can get behind it and help me in whatever way that we decide to move forward.  But we’re focusing in on my particular message and offering for Voice of Influence.

So there are some people in the world who really do feel like they have something they need to say in particular and they want focus, they want to know all these things.  And then there are other people who care.  They have a voice and they use their voice but they do it in a way that is supportive and get behind what other people do.

Last week, I had on the podcast Susie Hageman.  And Susie is one of these people who really cares about human trafficking and this is something that she chose to focused on because it’s a message she can get behind.  And she is not the one that’s starting this nonprofits and writing about it per se, maybe she will someday, I don’t know.  But it’s not necessarily like she is out on the front with the message, but she got behind this message, because she thought like she could and she felt like it resonated with what her values are.

That is exactly what I think we all need.  We all need to know what were our values are so that we know what we want to get behind, whether we want to get behind it or we want to come out with this message or whatever.  This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I say, you don’t have to be what you admire.  You can admire someone else, their gifts, their offering, their message, all that sort of thing without feeling the pressure to have one of your own, to be that particular thing that they’re talking about.

So if listening to this podcast ever makes you feel pressure, I sure hope it doesn’t.  But if it does, it’s totally OK to turn it off, because you should surround yourself with things that awaken your passion, your desire, your calling; and help you discern your calling instead of making you feel like “Oh my goodness, if I hear again about you know having a message or this or that and it just keeps bringing me down.”

I completely understand if you didn’t want to do that but I will also challenge you not to take that into the rest of your life.  Don’t take that avoidance or tendency to compare and judge.  Don’t let that come with you.  Leave the judgment.  Put it aside, whatever voices in your head from the past that are telling you should or shouldn’t be this or that, put it aside because you are so important the way that you are, how you have been created, how you had been built.  The experiences that you’ve had have really drawn out things about you that are so important.

These are critical, critical in the world and don’t ever forget that.  Please know that whenever I talk about having a message, whenever I talk about using your voice of influence, I’m not excluding anyone.  And at the same time, I’m not saying that you have to be just like anybody.  You really don’t need to be.

I think that the most important thing of this is that we really need, we desperately need to be free, free from this judgment.  So do what makes you come alive.  And yes, when it comes to passion, I talk about passion in terms of something you’re willing to pour yourself out for.

So it’s not always pretty, it’s not always happy go lucky, but it doesn’t have to be about looking at your fault all the time.  It can be about what makes you come alive.  It can be about what you want to live into, a vision for yourself and your life and your message and your calling that you want to live into that vision.  That’s a whole lot different then and expectation that puts pressure on you.

So have vision, not expectation.  Take the pressure off and go just use your voice.  It will matter more!

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How to Become a Citizen Leader for a Cause with Susie Hageman

Episode 66

Susie Hageman is a local friend of mine and I’m very excited to have her on the show with me because she is doing very important work, at a local level, on a global crisis.

Susie has a clinical doctorate in Physical Therapy and works primarily with patients in an outpatient orthopedic setting, spends her time with her sons, and volunteers in her community with a passionate voice in her efforts to address the issue of human trafficking in her community and state.

In this episode, Susie and I discuss how learning human trafficking existed in her community and state changed her life, why human trafficking became Susie’s cause instead of other societal issues, the place Susie’s found for herself in the fight against human trafficking, her advice for speaking to your children about human trafficking, and more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Susie Hageman Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me my friend, Susie Hageman, who is a local friend.  And I’m excited to have her with me because she is somebody who is really doing some important work on a local level over a global topic.  We’ll explain that here in a minute, but let me just introduce you to Susie Hageman.

Susie has a clinical doctor in physical therapy and works primarily with patients in an outpatient orthopedic setting before choosing to stay home with her son, and now she is working a little more again.  She continues to volunteers in her community with a passionate voice in her efforts to address the issue of human trafficking in her community and her state.

Andrea:  Susie, thank you so much for being here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Susie Hageman:  Hello!  Thank you for having me Andrea.  I appreciate this.

Andrea:  Alright, so you’re a physical therapist, a mom, and a Christian, somebody who just really has a passion in your heart for a topic that you really have pursued in a very wholehearted way.  But also, you’ve got all these other things going on as well.  I’m curious.  Those of us who are trying to figure out what our purpose is, our mission, or our message, is there something that is driving you like a message or a mission that is driving you as kind of a citizen leader?

Susie Hageman:  You know, I think it just kind of came in bits and pieces initially.  When I first learned about human trafficking, it disturbed me and I just thought, “How can I apply this to my life?  How can I be making different choices in what I purchase and be making an impact that way?”  It just grew from there.

When I learned that trafficking exists in my state and it exists in my community that broke my heart and I just began questioning again, “What can I be doing as an individual to address this?”  I think this topic of human trafficking in particular because _____ obviously other areas in our society where our hearts can be broken also.

But human trafficking, I think, spoke to me personally just because I tend to be kind of an independent girl that just kind of like to move to the beat of her own drum a little bit and I’ve just really appreciate independence.  I think that’s what drove me to choose physical therapy as a career.

Andrea:  Explain that.  What is physical therapy has to do with independence?

Susie Hageman:  I really enjoy restoring people back to as much as independence as much as they can.  I enjoy helping them find a way to make adaptations or restore whatever physical restrictions they may have so they can get back to living life the way they want to and that’s what is the feeling for me in my career.

I think when I learned about human trafficking, it just really bothered me to think that someone might not have a say in how they live their life.  That’s the part that independence, that freedom is the part that just really kind of spoke to me as individual and kind of drew me in and why I’m passionate about it.

So I kind of see as kind of a common thread that runs through the different areas of my life.  So yeah that’s I think why human trafficking in particular stood out to me as far as where I get involved in my community.

Andrea:  It’s really interesting.  I like that connection that you mean there between restoring people to their independence physically and like with their physical body but then also in this human trafficking arena.

We know that this is a big issue on a global level.  It’s hard to even kind of fathom I think for most of us and some of us maybe more familiar with the issues around human trafficking while others may not.  But I know that your focus has been more of that state and city level, so can you tell us why that in particular, why did you decide to focus more locally?

Susie Hageman:  So when you look at the issue of human trafficking, it is very complex.  It can be overwhelming and so I just kind of began to look at what I could do with an individual.  When I saw the statistics of other states that every month, 900 individuals are sold for sex in the state of Nebraska and out of those 900 individuals 70% to 75% show indicators of being trafficked.   And that Grand Island, my community is the highest per capita in the state for individuals sold for sex.  Those are statistics for the human trafficking initiative.

When I looked at those numbers, they obviously creeped me and I realized that the problem here where I live, and if this is where I live and where I work and move; this is where I could be making an impact.  I’m not a service provider.  I’m not in the law enforcement so I don’t want to be doing job if I’m not qualified for.  So I just began to look at “OK, this is the problem, where can I fit on the team and make a difference?”

When I asked that question, I started to see that there was need for funding for programs to help support survivors and victims of human trafficking I thought “Well, I had experience in putting together events.  I have this group of friends that are willing to help me.”  So that’s kind of a direction I went

Part 2

We started the STOP fund and there’s a need to stop trafficking on the planes.  And our intention is to build up this fund so that we can provide financial support to service organizations that directly assist trafficking victims that needs such as medical care, counseling, shelter, transportation to shelters, basic need, and helping them transition back to independent living.

So that’s kind of where we saw where we could fit in to the team and be a useful contributing member.  So, yeah, that’s kind of where I found my place in the fight against trafficking.

Andrea:  You know, I know that there are some different service organizations that you’re helping fund with the STOP fund, can you explain why you chose to do to create this fund rather than just supporting every single one of this in other way?  Is there a reason why you chose to fund versus supporting one particular organization?

Susie Hageman:  Well, when you look at the trauma that trafficking victims go through, they need more than just shelter.  They need counseling.  They need medical care.  There’s a lot of different pieces of the puzzle to put together and that involves teamwork from a lot of different organizations.

So yeah, we could have done fundraising from one organization but then we wouldn’t have been meeting the need in all the other areas.  So we started the fund to be kind of just a general place for financial resources for all the organizations so that we can kind of help put in pieces to all the other areas of needs for the trauma survivors.  So that’s why we started the fund because we saw there was more than one organization that was going to need help.

Honestly, when we look at our nonprofit, they’re service providers but they also have to do a lot of the fundraising themselves and that takes up time.  They’re doing an important work.  I want to release some of the energy that they’re having to put into fundraising just to support their programs and relieve them of that so they can be doing the important work that they’re trained to do.  So that’s why we did with the fund rather than fundraise for a specific organization.

Andrea:  What kind of reception the STOP fund received from both service organizations and the community?

Susie Hageman:  It’s been beautiful to see the community embraced it and come alongside and support it.  Our first banquet was very successful.  We’ve been able to give out two grants so far and the service organizations do appreciate the support that we’re giving them and they do appreciate just being recognized for the amazing work that they’re doing.

They tend to be very humble people.  They don’t take a trumpet and announce all the amazing things that they’re doing.  So just for someone to recognize the amazing work that they’re doing that is honestly really hard and heartbreaking.  Just for someone to recognize that and give them a pat in the back and say, “We see you, we’re wanting to help you,” is I think really encouraging to them.  So they appreciate it.

I did not anticipate how encouraging it would be to law enforcements.  I just have a lot of respect for law enforcements and I just learned to just appreciate them even more after starting this fund, just their hearts for justice.  They’ve been very appreciative of the STOP fund as well.

I didn’t really take the time to realize that their job is to catch the perpetrator.  It’s not their job to help the victim.  They’re helping the victim by catching the perpetrator.  They don’t have the resources to then help the victims.  That’s somebody else’s job and the resources is there _____.

So for them to know that there’s funding available to help transport someone to a shelter or there’s funding available for a shelter those kinds of things have been really encouraging to them.  They’ve been really supportive of the fund also for those reasons just because they have a heart for justice.  They want victims to be taken care of and _____ heart for that has been really beautiful as well.

We’ve been very well received and it’s just encouraging to see the community come around it.  We knew that the community wanted to fight trafficking too.  They just needed a way to do so.  To see it fly out so beautifully has just been an amazing experience.

When they got a call when the first grant went out, I kind of just wished to all the people that had donated to the STOP fund could have been there for that moment because it was a powerful moment.  I wish they all could have been there for that because they’re all part of it.

Andrea:  That’s really cool!  I mean, you’re giving people the opportunity to help where they might not otherwise known how to help and it just feels overwhelming.

Susie Hageman:  Yes, yes!  This gives us all chance to be able to do something.

Andrea:  So Susie when you’re thinking about people gaining the independence and restoring people to their independence, why is it such a burden for you?

Susie Hageman:  You know, I have this quote “God is my favorite artist and you’re His masterpiece.”  And I think that we are all made for a purpose and it’s beautiful.  What makes human trafficking so heartbreaking is because people aren’t allowed to live the life they want to.  They’re being controlled or coerced by someone else.  That’s not their whole story and even that part of their story can be woven into a beautiful tapestry.

I just think that when we live out our own purpose, when we live out our own passion, there’s a deeper sense of joy and satisfaction rather than just going through life trying to as comfortable as possible.  That might be okay but it doesn’t give you a deep sense of satisfaction and joy.  When you’re living out what you’re made to do and you’re kind of using your gifts and your talents and your experiences to make an impact, it’s kind of meaningful, joyful, and satisfying.

I think for me, anyway, being a part of the story of others and being a part of a team or being in a community of others and I think it’s important for everyone even introverts.  I would say I’m an outgoing introvert myself, being a part of that community and bringing that out in others is also deeply satisfying and then seeing them live out that joy and satisfaction, brings you joy and satisfaction as well.  Does that make sense?

Andrea:  Sure!  Oh yeah, I totally agree.

Susie Hageman:  I think we are meant to live in a community and I think we are meant to live out who you’re made to be and when that happens, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful experience.  So I would encourage people to, it may not be human trafficking, but quite honestly if you’re mentoring youth in your community, you’re helping prevents human trafficking.

I mean, it’s such a complex topic that there’s multiple ways to go about addressing it.  But if you’re living out what drives you, if you’re living out where your gifts and talents are and when you are fulfilling your purpose, it’s a beautiful thing.  I guess I would encourage people to do that and to not be afraid to step out there and try new things.  Don’t be afraid to fall.  It’s OK to say I don’t know everything.  You know, I don’t think any of us expect other people to know everything.

Throughout this experience, I haven’t known everything about how to set up a fund along the way, but I’ve been willing to say, “I don’t know about this but I’m gonna try this.  Will you help me along the way?”  And people have been very gracious about it.  So I think fear of not knowing how to do it perfectly shouldn’t pull anyone back because you can always learn along the way.

Andrea:  Hmm love that.  OK, so you’re also a wife and a mother of some small kids.  Really, how do you bring them in what you’re doing with the STOP fund?  What kind of conversations do you guys have at home with your kids, with your husband?  How does this work with your family?

Susie Hageman:  Well, so the STOP fund, Travis, my husband is a part of it too.  He’s a physician, so his job, obviously, requires a lot of his time, where I could develop more of my time too to actually work with the fund and he’s very much a part of it too.  It’s something that’s on both of our hearts.  We are a team of this.  So it’s kind of a partnership, I would say.  It’s not really my thing or his thing.  We do it together.

And with the boys, it’s hard because of their ages, they’re 5 and 8, I mean to go into specific details about it.  They know that human trafficking is making someone else work a job that they don’t necessarily want to work.  We kind of just go into a more level that’s appropriate for their age and they know that that’s not nice.

So they know that mommy and daddy are trying to bring awareness that it didn’t happen anymore and to help those people out of that life so that they can live the life that they want to live.  They know that’s important and they know what’s important.

We, as a family, do things for other people in our community and we take time to be appreciative of the things that we have.  They know that that’s important to be involved in a community, being thankful for what we have and to share what we have.  So I guess, they know about it through that way.  Does that make sense?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Susie Hageman:  And it’s not just the STOP fund, it’s more just teaching them to be good citizens and good community leaders in general.  So the STOP fund comes under that but it’s bigger than just the STOP fund I guess is what we’re trying to teach our kids.

Andrea:  Yeah.  It sounds like you’re teaching them core values of your family.

Susie Hageman:  Yeah, but they’re proud of it.  I don’t know how much the completely grasp it but they’re still young.  But they’re supportive of it and they see it’s a team between Travis and I too.  So I think that makes a big difference too when both parents are onboard and supportive of something, the kids are more likely to come onboard too and that’s unified family decisions.  Does that make sense?

Andrea:  Oh yeah.  I think that’s something that can get kind of confusing knowing how to talk to your kids about a topic like this that’s so mature and so intense but yet, you’re so involved with it.  I think there’ve been times when I’ve tried to talk to my own daughter about it and my son.  It’s kind of confusing but I think it’s confusing to know what to say to them I guess.

But I think it make sense that you would focus on the fact that these people are being forced to work jobs that they don’t want to work and that’s not right and you’re trying to do something about it.  I think that makes a lot of sense and I think it helps other parents to think about how we can address this with our kids too.  So I appreciate you sharing that.

Susie Hageman:  Yeah and I think with human trafficking in general, I think there’s a lot of parents or most the parents of teens or preteens that asked me questions about how to bring up with their kids.  I think to look at it from a bigger picture than just talking to them about trafficking.  But like for smaller children talking to them about _____ what’s appropriate context versus inappropriate context that kind of thing.

And with older kids, talking about healthy relationship, having healthy relationships modeled at home so that they know when they start dating if what’s healthy and appropriate way to be treated and to treat others and what’s inappropriate.  Because oftentimes trafficking isn’t the headline grabbing, you know, child kidnapped at a big store type of setting.

It’s a traffic who grooms the child is their friend or their boyfriend or girlfriend at first and then starts saying “Well, I’ve bought you these nice things, how are you going to help me pay for them?  We can have this nice life if you help me pay for it.  How about you do this to help me pay for it?”  That’s kind of how as far as sex trafficking, that’s kind of how it starts.

So teaching kids healthy relationships and that kind of thing teaching them to be wise on the internet.  Those are ways for parents to educate their kids and kind of start the conversation in a way that keep them safe from human trafficking versus “Just be careful so you don’t get kidnapped.”  You know what I mean?

Andrea:  Right.  Oh yeah.

Susie Hageman:  That doesn’t really keep them safe you know talking to them about healthy relationships, what makes a good friend and what makes a bad friend, and how to be a good friend.  You know those kinds of things are topics that are going to keep them safer overall.

Andrea:  Those were really great things for us to keep in mind for anybody that has kids in their life, whether you’re a teacher or you’re a parent or aunt or an uncle or whoever to make sure that we’re modeling those healthy relationships like you’re talking about, Susie.  And then being able to really explain to make sure that they know not to…I don’t know, to make sure that they know what it looks like when somebody is grooming them.

I think that that is something that adults need to understand because it’s easy for adults even to be drawn into inappropriate responses in relationships because we’re being groomed or shamed or we don’t know what those healthy relationships are.  So we don’t know how to model that for our kids.  I think that can often be the case.

So I think that what you’re sharing here is so important to these parents and those educational institutions and churches, anybody that deals with kids for them to understand like we need to be communicating these things, I think.

Susie Hageman:  For me personally, I am trying to learn not to react but to listen and keep conversation open and engaged so that when the boys get to those ages where they don’t think I’m cool anymore and hopefully I can still have conversations with them.  I mean, I’m not an expert but that’s the part that _____ just keeping those lines of communication open and then having a support system around you because they aren’t always going to listen to their parents but maybe they’ll listen to a family friend or the aunt or the uncle.

You know, I laughed because I picked up a friend’s daughter for her from her practice and she’s going to spend that evening at our house.  And so of course the first thing you do is feed the kid.  So we were in the fast food drive through and we started having a conversation about the perils of alcohol, “Oh maybe you won’t listen to your mom.”

Although she’s a very good girl and she’s not going to be doing that, but at the same time, and knowing that she’s going to be getting that age or she’s going to be facing those kinds of questions amongst her peers.  So I started into this whole _____ about the perils of alcohol while waiting the drive through lines.  And so I thought, “She might not listen to her mom but she might listen to me.”  _____ kids are probably going to be running away from crazy Susie, but yeah it takes the whole support system, you know.

Andrea:  Absolutely!  I really appreciate it when other parents or other adult figures have wise conversation with my kids like that. I really appreciate that.

Susie Hageman:  We have to invest in each other and in each other’s kid, you know.  It’s takes everybody pitching in.

Andrea:  What we’re talking about here I think is really interesting because one of the other thoughts that I’ve had on this topic is that when we have a more authoritarian kind of parenting or leadership style, we’re kind of really training people to not have a voice, to not use their voice, and to not either believe that they do have one or that they should have one.

So I’m afraid of situations like that.  I fear for kids who grew up in authoritarian households or in a context with a, you know, whether it’d be a church or a school with a really heavy handed don’t-question authority kind of situation because I do think that maybe even, especially girls they want to please.  So they learn to not question.  They learn not listen to that inner voice inside when they get into that other situation where there might somebody grooming them for something terrible, it’s harder for them to be able to speak up.

Susie Hageman:  Yeah, the shame keeps them from speaking up to the people that care that would help them out of that situation.  Yeah, and I will admit that I am the parent that will speak up and state my opinion mostly out of fear in my heart because I want my kids make the right choice.  I’m really trying to back off from doing that and I keep my mouth shut and let them talk through their scenario before I insert my opinion or wait _____.

So that I do keep those lines of communication open because if it is just black and white and I’d be wrong then it shuts down that communication and it shames them then I might be putting them at a higher risk _____.

Andrea:  Yeah that inner voice too.  It makes them think that “Oh gosh, I dunno what I’m talking about.”  And then they start to believe that they don’t know what they’re talking about.  They shouldn’t trust what they’re feeling and that sort of thing.  I think that it’s so true we have still have to insert our opinion or we still have to calm down with “No, you can’t do this and here’s why,” but to guide them through the…

Susie Hageman:  But that should be the initial response.

Andrea:  Yeah, I really appreciate the way you said that because if there’s something really important about guiding them through that process of thinking it through.  This is teaching them how to have that inner voice in the future which is incredibly important and valuable in so many different levels.

Gosh, I love the topic.  I love this conversation went in that direction, and I love what you’re doing.  I love that you stood up and said “You know, I’ve got to do something.  What am I gonna do?”  Instead of “I wish I could do something.  I don’t know what to do,” you just kind of figured it out.  “What kind I do?  Where do we fit in this equation of helping this problem of human trafficking?”

I’m really thankful for people like you who step in to those roles and do this kind of behind the scenes but very important work of helping to fund these other nonprofits and things like that.  Or whatever kinds of efforts that you’re wanting to make in life, you know whatever kind of things you’re wanting to support to be able to just step up and say, “OK, how can I help,” instead of saying “I don’t know how to help,” and then just giving up.

So thank you for everything that you’ve been doing in that regard.

Susie Hageman:  Thank you for giving me an opportunity to here in your podcast and I really appreciate it.

Andrea:  What would be something that you would like the listeners to really take away from this conversation today?

Susie Hageman:  That there’s a reason that they are here and it may be related to human trafficking.  It maybe something completely unrelated with human trafficking, but they are here for a reason.  They’re made for a purpose.  And if there’s something that’s keeping them up awake at night, if there’s something a nagging thing that just won’t go away that just really keeps coming back to them, I just want to encourage them to pursue that and just keep pursuing it and keep approaching it and working on it until they find what’s in store for them there.  Because I think that we all have amazing things that we can do and everybody has gifts to share.

It is beautifully satisfying and joyful to find where you fits and how you can help.  So I would encourage your learners to just keep pursuing that nagging thing that keeping them awake at night because they may find that joy in that.

Andrea:  It’s great.  Thank you so much for your time today, Susie!

Susie Hageman:  Thank you, Andrea.  I appreciate you!

Posted on

What to Say to People Who Are Angry with You with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 65

As a voice of influence, I’m sure you’ve experienced your fair share of negative people or trolls. They often seem angry for no reason, don’t respond to logic, and only hoping to bring others down.

In this episode, I’m offering an explanation for a reason as to why they seem so irrationally angry and a few ways that you can respond to this situation that will be beneficial to both of you.

Take a listen to the episode below!

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

 

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

 

Think of a time that somebody was really rude to you, mean, or whatever.  You’re in the moment and somebody is just cutting you down, or perhaps it’s happened online.  A lot of times, people call them trolls.  Perhaps they’re attacking your business or they’re attacking your world view or that sort of thing.

What is your response? How do you handle negativity? What do you do with those kinds of issues that come up?  That’s a question that somebody else’s asked me a few times.  So I wanted to address this on the podcast because I have a very specific point of view on this.

When somebody is really upset and they take it out on you and you just feel like they are being irrational or unreasonable or just ______ mean, maybe they don’t even realize that you’re a human being.

If you’re a business owner or you’re in a position of leadership, which I’m guessing you are of some kind, you’re in some kind of position of leadership, a lot of times people look at leaders as though they are not human.  Almost like a person who is in leadership or who has power of some kind is to be feared, is to be thwarted.  It’s just like they’re the enemy not the helper, not the influencer that you want to be.

You want to be seen as an influencer who’s making a difference and gently _____ helping people to think through your problems so they can come to good solutions, you know, things like this.  But a lot of times, when you’re in a position of leadership, that’s not how you view it. A lot of times people are intimidated by you or just generally feel like it’s not fair that you have what you have.

That’s just really frustrating especially when you worked really hard for it.  When you know the blood, sweat, and tears has gone into the point of you getting to where you are today.  And that’s really hard to deal with somebody who comes to you an acts like that.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I want to just yell right back or get into a debate.  A lot of times this can happen on Twitter or Facebook, you know, people are commenting about something or another and they just start into this Facebook shouting at or this Twitter shouting at.  It’s understandable, I get it.  But at the same time, it’s not particularly effective.

I think it’s really important that we think about what’s effective and what’s not.  I think it’s also really important to realize that there’s so much more going on in people when they are having that kind of reaction to you.

So from this counseling, this ministry background that I have, I’m going to bring that to the table here, this discussion about what to do with the trolls.

So online, it’s interesting but if you engage online in conversation with somebody who is spiteful or who is trying to kind of get at you and they’re upset and they want you upset. To interact on that platform is not a wise option.

There are times when we can invite them into a conversation or talk on the phone especially if it has to do with a business or somebody being really upset with illegitimate concern that maybe they’re not handling it the right way but you really do want to know what you can do to make things better, then I would really encourage you to conversation as soon as you can.

So when you’re online and somebody is attacking you, you do want to address that you can either just totally ignore it and not pay attention and not feed that, or you can address it and you can say, you know, I really do want to address this, I’m going to take it to conversation as quickly as possible.

So what that that means getting on the phone with somebody or getting into instant messenger whatever it might mean but bring that to conversation where it’s one-on-one and taking it out of the public view is so important.  Because a lot of times a lot get lost in translation and I’m sure you probably experience that yourself.

So take it to the conversation as soon as possible.  If this happens in person, if you’re in a group that sort of thing, pull that person aside, bring it out of the public view and bring it into a conversation as soon as possible.

Now, what do we do with it when that happens?  When we do have somebody in conversation with us, what can we do next?

I want to tell you a little story and this happened, gosh, it’s been almost 10 years ago now, but not quite, maybe eight years ago and my daughter was 3 years old.  I remember she was just a cute little thing like everybody would just say, “Oh my goodness, she’s so cute.  She’s so articulate.”  You know all these things, she’s just the cutest little thing, cutest little button, but she has a little temper of her own.

So this one particular day, I asked my daughter to go brush her teeth.  And literally that is all I asked.  I told her it was time to get ready for bath and brush her teeth.  She looked at me and she got so upset, like she started yelling and you could see the escalation in her energy and in her voice.

This had happened before so I had previously been studying and trying to figure out what in the world, why a simple request or command evoked such a response from here?  This is just out of control, I just didn’t like that.

I was a teacher.  I was a mom; I knew how to handle this.  I thought that I just couldn’t get it under control where I wasn’t also escalating.  Or it was just getting to the point where she would get in big trouble after a simple command and that just seems silly.

In this moment, she was really escalating.  And it came to a point when I thought to myself, “Now is the time to try out what you’ve just been studying, what you know about yourself, what you know, Andrea. This is it.  This is the time.”  So here she is kind of starting to throw this fit.

And instead of getting angry at her and putting my foot down and telling her to get her tail to the bathroom and brush those teeth otherwise this, this, or that; I knelt down on the floor and I opened my arms and invited her in.  It was the craziest thing but my daughter saw me do that and as I did that she came to me gently with tears in her eyes and then she started crying in my arms.

I didn’t know what she was upset about and I’m not sure I’d still know why she was so sad.  But I do know that that moment in time solidified this belief that I have that sad is under angry.

So whenever you see somebody who is angry and they’re coming at you, if you want to address that anger and escalate the situation, you can.  But most likely that’s exactly what will happen the situation when we escalate. However, if you start to address the sadness that’s underneath the anger and get curious about it, “What is going on that this person is so angry?  They’re so sad.”

So when you see somebody yelling or just really complaining with all their hearts, you can look at them and say to yourself, this is sadness.  I see all this anger and that’s what I see, I see sadness.  So why are they sad?  So that’s where you’re going to start.

If you really believe that sad is under angry, I invite you to try it out and just experiment it a few times because you’re going to be shocked.  If you believe that sad is under angry then what you do is instead of letting that conversation escalate, you get down on your knees and open your arms and invite them in.

Now, how do you do this with somebody who’s not a 3-year-old daughter?  Well, you stay curious.  So instead of getting defensive and letting yourself feel attacked, instead of feeling like you have to hit back or prove them wrong, what you do is you realize that that’s one level of the conversation.  And you’re going to take it to totally different level, deeper level.

So that means that you’re going to let that stuff go.  Everything that they just said on the top, you’re going to let that go.  You’re not going to address that right now.  Maybe you will when you come back to it but not right now.  So you let that go and then you get really curious and you say, “Tell me more about that. I wanna understand.  Explain to me what’s going on.”  Or “This reaction I can tell that this is really, really hard for you.”

When you just say something like that, this is something that allows the other person to open up because when they hear that they really care and that you recognize what they’re experiencing, they’re very likely to open up to you if you’re sincere.

So you to start to hear more and you stay curious, you stay there and you keep asking those questions or giving those responses like “Look, wow, I didn’t realize that was so hard for you.”  Or “I didn’t realize that this was going on.”  And give them those opportunities to just keep talking until they got it out.

Once, they have it out then you have the opportunity to respond with grace.  So you then can say “Wow!  OK so what I’m hearing is that you really would like this but this is what happened and so you’re upset,” or “Whatever it might be, it’s really hard to help you through that conversation right here in this moment.”

But in general, the rule is to stay curious and remember that sad is under angry.  So look for the sadness and address the sadness and get clear on that because it’s not because you’re trying to manipulate somebody, it’s not because you’re just trying what you want, but this is a chance for you as an influencer to really show love and leadership.

You do that by not responding in kind.  You do that by realizing that you have a vision that sees beyond the surface level anger that’s out of control, and that you’re willing to go there and to take the time to be without somebody as they are expressing their frustration.  And then you come back with your response, then you come back with some logic.

But if you don’t address that hurt first, they’re not going to hear any of your logic.  It’s just doesn’t matter.  No reasoning makes sense to somebody that is upset.  It doesn’t matter because they’re brain is in that place where it’s in that fight or flight or it’s in that positioning so that limbic system has really taken over and it’s saying “I have to figure this out. I have to express this or I have to deal this in this way.”  That is not the rational brains.  You have to calm that down first.  You have to help them to calm that down and that’s something that not a lot of people realized they need to do.

So as a voice of influence, realize that sad is under angry.  Whenever you’re dealing with the trolls per se, whenever you’re dealing with those folks who are maybe irrationally upset, they’re rude, you’re dealing with this just kind of out of the ordinary sad kind of situation with this, remember that sad is under angry.

Remember this image of a mom leaning down and getting on her knees and opening up her arms because that’s exactly what you can do in a conversation with I don’t care who it is. Every single person has the same brain. We all need to be able to calm down before we can truly address the issues at hand.

So as you move forward, remember that sad is under angry.  Treat others with compassion, treat the trolls with compassion and you’re going to be astounded at the kind of impact that you can have.

So get down on your knees, open those arms, and make your voice matter more!

 

 

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How Small Shifts Lead to Big Transformation with Claudio Toyama

Episode 64

Claudio Toyama is committed to raising the awareness of people around the world, so they live full and fulfilled lives at work and home. He is an international bestselling author, an award-winning speaker, and the CEO of Toyama and Company; an international leadership consultancy specializing in small shifts that produce big results. Claudio has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents. He is also a Forbes contributor and is a featured guest on NBC and FOX; where he shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.

In this episode, Claudio and I discuss the main message he’s putting out into the world, why his message is so important, why he chooses to help people at the core of who they really are in addition to helping with their mindset or teaching a skill, why he believes most leadership programs fail, how to balance who are with small changes that can improve your impact on those around you, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Claudio Toyama Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me Claudio Toyama who is a committed to raising awareness of people around the world so that they live full and fulfilled lives at work and at home.  He’s an international best-selling author and award-winning speaker and the CEO of Toyoma & Co., an international leadership consultancy specializing in the small shifts that produce big results.

He has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents.  He is a Forbes contributor, a sought after international speaker and a featured guest on TV, including NBC and FOX, where Claudio shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.  He lives with his daughter outside Washington, DC (USA).

Andrea:  Claudio, I’m so happy to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Claudio Toyama:  Thank you so much for this invitation, Andrea.  Thank you very much.  I’m glad to be here.

Andrea:  And your bio didn’t mention it but you also have a book that you published, can you tell us a little bit?  The name of that book, The Samurai Samba and Vinci Way:  How to Improve Your Executive Presence, Increase Trust and Lead Your Team at a World-Class Level.  I really enjoyed reading this book and I’m excited to share and have you share more about it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, yes excellent!  So yeah, this book was published last year and it’s going to be a year now in October first.  It was a great thing because in the first 24 hours.  It got sold in 12 countries and now there has been 16 countries that people picked up a copy of and it’s been an amazing journey, getting a lot of positive feedback and people were saying that the message that I have is very needed message right now.

Andrea:  Alright, tell us a little bit about this message of yours.  I mean, what would you say is the core of your message that you’re trying to get out there as a message driven yourself?

Claudio Toyama:  My main message is combining the three persona, you know the persona of the Samurai, the persona of the Samba, and the persona of the Vinci.  Basically with the samurai, what I’m talking about is knowing who you are, the core.  So focusing on your core and knowing truly who you are and going for mastery at everything that you do.

In this world, we see people getting lost.  Before social media, it was the advertisement on TV.  The advertisement said, “Oh if you don’t buy this car, you’re gonna be miserable but if you buy this car, you’ll gonna be loved and everything.  If you lose weight, you’ll gonna be loved, if you don’t, you’re not.  If you’re too skinny then you’re not loved.”  So it’s always an external validation.

And my message with the Samurai is know who you truly are.  Once you have that strong core, it doesn’t matter if you’re being bombarded with different messages and even sometimes they say, “Oh no, you should lose a lot of weight,” and then sometimes they say “No, you should put on weight.”  And I was like “Oh which one do I follow?”  But if you know who you are, the core, and you’re good with yourself then it doesn’t matter what’s going on around you and it doesn’t matter because you’re going to be very very centered.

And then the Samba is the fluidity, the flexibility.  It is about going with the flow.  That one for me was much more about the adapting to different cultures and then I started seeing that that message applies everywhere.  If you go to a different place, if you go and talk to different friends, you can also be malleable and adaptable.

But why am I talking about the samurai and the samba together because if you are too rigid, you know because the samurai can have that rigidity to them.  If you’re too rigid, you’re not going to go with the flow.  But if you’re too flowy and too adaptable, you’re also going to lose yourself and you don’t know who you are any longer.

And then there’s the third element which is the Vinci, which is actually amalgamating everything that you are.  If you remember the renaissance period in Italy where they had in Florence and different parts of Italy, you have that renaissance person like Leonardo da Vinci, you know that’s where the king comes from.  He was very good at anatomy.  He was very good at painting.  He was very good at all sorts of different things and it was not just one thing.  So he was bringing his whole self to everything that he was doing and that’s why he was so successful.  That’s what I’m bringing back again is this renaissance person.  So I’m bringing it altogether.

So if you combine the Samurai, Samba, and Vinci, you have knowing who you are, the core; being very flexible and being adaptive to different cultures and different environments and at the same time amalgamating everything that you are and thinking about the future and bring the future to yourself.  So that’s the message in a not so much of a nutshell.  It’s a little bit bigger than a nutshell.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.  No, that’s alright.  It’s a big message.  It’s a worthy of some discussions.  OK, so why this message?  Where did this come from for you and how it’s personal to you?

Claudio Toyama:  As you mentioned, I have lived in many countries, so five countries so far.  I’m now living close to DC and I was one that got lost.  I was very flexible, so flexible that I wanted to become the stereotype of each one of the country that I lived in.

So I grew up in Brazil but when I went to live in Japan, I wanted to become the stereotype of the Japanese person.  And then I went to Italy and started to become the stereotype of the Italian and I went to the UK and becoming the stereotype and I was like “Who am I?  I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

There’s always change, there’s that pendulum.  So if you’re too flexible then you’re going to go all the way to the other side of the pendulum and become very rigid.  So I became very rigid and like “OK, my ideas are mine,” and like you know “Oh, this is who I am, take it or leave it.”  And I was like “It doesn’t work either.”

Andrea:  Right.

Claudio Toyama:  Also, because when you have that kind of mentality, a lot of it is because you’re getting triggered because of your past and it’s not really who you are.  You need to excavate who you really are and find yourself back again.  We know that from coaching and we know your true self needs to be excavated from all of these layers that were imposed in society, you know societal expectations and all of that.

So I went in this quest to find out who I was truly and then I was always bringing beauty into life, which is also another part of Vinci.  It’s amalgamating yourself and bringing your whole self to the equation but also it is about bringing beauty to everything that you bring to life.

That was one thing that when I moved to the US coming from European lifestyle where it’s much more about the joy of life and being in the moment.  You know these kinds of things about _____ coffee that doesn’t exist in many parts of Europe.  Coffee is meant to be a conduit for enjoying the presence of another human being with you and having the conversation.

That’s why it is so important to me because I was living that.  I became that samba.  That was too much of a samba then I became too much of a samurai and then I didn’t know how to amalgamate everything into the Vinci side of it.  So that’s where I came from kind of my personal life.

And when I was thinking about what are the characteristics of leaders in the world that are the most successful leaders, they have elements of these three.  So it’s not one or the other or another one.

Andrea:  Yeah.  When you start to talk about this with leaders, are they open to growing in this way?  Because one of the things that you pointed out in your book is that subject matter experts tend to want to go deeper in their expertise where, quite frankly, they’re just more comfortable and they had success instead of learning something new.  How do I apply this or how do I convince others or lead a team or whatever other kinds of things involved with leadership, how do people respond to this idea of going deeper and excavating their true selves and things like these?

Claudio Toyama:  Mixed reactions.  So I have people that are ready to embrace it and ready go to through this journey because it’s a journey.  It is not something that’s one and done session and “OK, you’re gonna be transformed.”  No, it’s a journey.  When you start opening that up, it is a journey that sometimes it takes years to, not necessarily working with me but sometimes this journey once you open that can of worms, it’s going to take some years for you to really find yourself and especially if I work with a number of _____ executives and they have been doing that for their whole lives.

They’re now on their 50s or they’re in their late 40s or even on their 60s, can you imagine trying to change and trying to find themselves back again at that age?  They’re very used to that, so very mixed reactions.  But if they’re ready to go on this journey, it is amazing what they see and all the patterns that they see in their lives “Oh this is why this kept happening!  Oh this is why I kept having this reaction to these things and it had nothing to do with the people that I was talking to.”

So they start seeing the pattern in their lives and then that journey becomes so interesting.  So yes, mixed reactions but if they’re willing to go through that, it’s an amazing journey.  There are bumps on the road but it’s an amazing journey.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I know how hard it can be to be the one, sometimes to even help somebody open up that can of worms.  Not that you’re wanting to put them in a where they’re uncomfortable but at the same time when people aren’t comfortable and experiencing pain, sometimes that’s when they are able to best grow and they’re most open to learning something new.  But that’s kind of hard.

I know you’ve been doing it for a very long time but when you come up against that resistance and you know that somebody is about ready to experience something difficult or remember something difficult, how do you help them or being with them and guiding them through that part of the journey, that difficult bump on the road?

Claudio Toyama:  I think it depends on who was the person engaging my services, was it that person or was it their boss because they felt that there was something missing in them.  So these are two completely different types of clients or people that I work with.  If it is that later and if it is their bosses that wanted this person to change, sometimes you cannot go that deep, sometimes they are not willing to go that deep.

They say, “Well, you know, I’ve done this my whole life.  I’ve done it this way, I’m not gonna change now.  There’s nothing in it for me right now.”  Even though there is because then it’s not just about their work, it’s about their whole self.

A lot of times, I see a pattern how they’re behaving with their children and how they’re behaving with their employees.  And it’s the same problems and they cannot see it and I go “OK, if you shift just one degree here,” you know the small shifts.  “It’s just one degree, it’s gonna be so much easier for you.”  But they’re like “Nope, this is how I’m doing and this is how it’s gonna be done.”

So it depends, yeah.  If they are the ones engaging with me then I can actually open more and I can actually talk to them and say “This is one of those moments that I said.  It was going to be a little bit difficult or it’s going to be a little bit challenging and let’s go through it.”  And the other side of me that a lot of people don’t know which is the spiritual side, so I work with a lot of energies.

A lot of times I can scan the person and see if there are some blockages on their energies and I can actually help them to release those energies.  I work on the cerebral _____ on the mind but I also work on those energy levels that a lot of times people are not even aware of but that is also influencing them.  There are certain blockages there that they are not even aware of but they are contributing to them not moving forward.  So that’s another layer that I work on as well with my clients.

Andrea:  So many, so many layers that could be addressed.  You take everything really deep.  You’re a deep person and you bring people into this conversation in your book in a real deep way and you’re inviting them to this deep transformation.  Why do you go so deep?  Is it always been something that you have done?

Have you just always kind of been really that reflective person or you know there’s other people who choose to focus on skills or to learn something new.  You just kind of knew in your mind or mindset, but you’re kind of working at it in a deeper level at that core of somebody’s being, really.  So tell me about why you do that and how that kind of started for you?

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah.  I was always this very introspective guy and I think it was a mixed of learning that and also being like that.  So I grew up in this family where we had different languages being spoken, you know it’s a different parties.  My father was Japanese.  He grew up in Japan.  My mom, you know, half Italian, half Austrian.  My daughter is blonde and people look at me and is like “You look Asian and you have this blonde daughter, how did that happen?”  You know because my mom is blonde and my ex-wife is blonde.

From an early age, I was always very introspective and always wanting to know more, because of that that mix of different cultures that we had, I was always very curious to go very deep into things.  It’s fascinating because I was always the one noticing, let’s say, the person in the corner at school, the person who’s not being paid attention to.  I was always the one going to that person and saying, “Are you OK?  Are you fine?”

So I was always that person that wanted to know more about people and wanting to get to know people.  I don’t know how to answer that question, but yes, it is innate in me.  So I’ve always have that.

Andrea:  You mentioned in your book too that there’s a lot of reasons why just focusing on leadership programs that kind of focus on those leadership skills that there’s a high failure rate in actually making the changes that they want to see happen in a person.  And the fact that there’s not a deeper connection to the material seems to be a really important piece of that.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes and it’s interesting because when you said you go very deep, thank you for acknowledging that.  And also what I like to do whenever I’m working with clients or whenever I’m having conversation is how can this person have a quick win and at the same time be on that journey, on that long journey, because I know as human beings, we love quick wins as well.

In the Japanese tradition, it can take you 30-40 years for you to be able to _____ at the ceremony because you’re going to go for mastery.  If you remember Karate Kid, you know like _____.  I was like “OK, it’s gonna take you years to perfect something.”  But for me, it’s “OK, so how can we have quick wins end go for the deep stuff as well?”

But your question about and the initial development and all that, what I always like to do is focus on who are you being when you’re doing anything.  I don’t know if you got to that part of when I was delivering an advanced negotiation skills workshop for high powered lawyers at a new World Trade Center in New York and these guys came from different parts of the world and they were all there.  Some of them have been negotiating for over 20 years these multimillion dollar contracts and I was there to deliver it in three days, three-day event negotiation skills workshop.

Andrea:  And you’re laughing because?

Claudio Toyama:  I’m laughing because I’m like “Oh my God, these guys are gonna eat me alive here, all these sharks.”  I’m going to be _____ at the end of the first half hour, let alone three days.  So I was like “OK, what kind I do?”  So what we did was to focus on who are they being when they’re negotiating and pointing out different things that they were not even aware of because they have so unconscious behaviors that they were not aware of.

So even though they had all the techniques really mastered, they were very very different when they were negotiating.  That’s why I talked about small shifts that create big results, when we did those small shifts and how they were being perceived, oh gosh that was an amazing shift, really amazing.

I just got some feedback recently from this guy that the small shifts was just putting his head down by half an inch when talking to people.  And I said, “Do you notice that it looks like you’re talking down to people?”  He was like “Huh thank you for that feedback, Claudio.  I have this _____ and in order to see you clearly and it _____.”

So it felt like he was really snobbish and just like looking down on you.  Once you start looking squared eye to the other person, people started commenting on him and everything.  It was just a half an inch of a shift, really a physical shift.  That gaze was a physical shift and how are you being perceived, who are you being when you’re doing anything.

Andrea:  Yes, yes!  I really appreciate the thoughtful way that you bring balance.  Though you are talking about deep transformational kinds of things, on one level there’s the small shifts that you’re talking about and you also brought in the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  And this is something that I was recently talking with a client about as well but when you are a subject matter expert, you’re really at the top level of the Maslow’s hierarchy.  But then if you’re not addressing those deeper human means then it can easily topple over, so do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, it’s interesting that you say that.  I would make a very similar comparison which is we are beginners.  So coming from being the expert in a subject matter and when dealing with people, we are beginners all over again.  That’s why it is so difficult for a lot of subject matter expert or for anyone for that matter to actually focus on the people side of the equation because in that realm, they don’t know anything or they know very little about it.  So they are beginners.  We are beginners in that.

To be able to say, oh I’m a beginner, for someone that gets paid to have the answers.  Can you imagine if you’re an expert in a field and you’re getting paid to know the answers and not to ask questions or to be like “Oh I don’t know anything about this, can you explain it to me.”  They have been trained to always have the answers.  So being a beginner say it again who’s like “Oh this is scary.  I don’t know if I can make it.”

Andrea:  Yeah!

Claudio Toyama:  You know, there was this guy you know, VP in an IT company.  He was the vice president of the company and was still coding with his hands.  He was still being involved in not just managing the people, he had a 100 people under him and he was still kind wasting time coding because that was what he was comfortable with.  You see that very, very often in a lot of conferences because that’s their comfort zone and just like “Oh I’m not gonna go there, people, huh scary stuff.”

As you learn your profession, as you learn to become an expert at your profession, let’s say a biochemist or whatever it is, you got to learn how to deal with people.  It’s all learned and that’s one thing that people don’t realize that it’s all learned.  You can learn about that.

Andrea:  So when you brought up the person, you mentioned to him in your book as well I think that was coding by hand as a vice president, is there any point in time that you ever recommend to somebody just don’t think the promotion?  You know, because they’re really enjoying who they are and what they’re doing or maybe you don’t recommend anything?  Do you ever think to yourself, you know, “I don’t think that they’re gonna enjoy moving on into a new position where there’s gonna be so much more required of them.”  You know, basically making them start over again with people when they really are so good with the subject matter.  What’s your take on that?

Claudio Toyama:  I ask a lot of questions on that.  You know, I have worked for some companies that now they have two different tracks.  One track is the track of managing people and dealing with people.  So they have that track of OK, so you’re going to become a manager, you’re going to become a director.  You’re going to become a vice president.  And the other track is you’re going to be an expert even more of an expert and you’re going to be a thought leader for the company and that’s the track they’re going to.

So if they have those two tracks, I ask “OK, so which one would you like to choose if you’re offered a promotion?”  And then I ask “Why is that?”  If it is out of fear of managing people then I ask if they’re willing to learn how to manage people.  If it’s out of passion about what they do that’s a different story.  Because if it’s passion then they can just go and they’re given deeper into what they’re doing.

And the other thing is for companies that don’t have those two tracks, so they have to take the promotion, otherwise, they will be you know.  Then I ask them, “Ok let’s say that you don’t want to take the promotion, what would happen in your life?  Are you gonna be ostracized?  Are you gonna be fired after a couple of years?  What is gonna happen to you?  Is the company accepting of your decision not to move onwards?”

Sometimes you see the person is not going to go anywhere because they didn’t get the promotion.  Sometimes there’s no option of not getting the promotion.  If you don’t get it then you’re going to be booted out.  So what are the consequences of not doing that?  And again, I ask the same question you know, “Are you not wanting to do it because of fear or because of any other things?”

So I ask a lot of questions to really understand where that is coming from because sometimes it’s just that they don’t know how to start knowing how to deal with people.  If that’s the case, they say “OK, we have a path and I can help you with that, or it’s not me there are other leadership coaches and leadership development people that can work with you.”  But I always ask a lot of questions to see where they are, where they’re coming from, what is really getting in the way and all of those things.  They’re so important you know.

Andrea:  It sounds like, as long as somebody is open and interested, that they can grow.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, it is.  If they are open, there’s so much to be done.  If they’re open there so much and that’s why when I go into different assessments to know what are their styles and to actually understand a little bit more, what can we focus on.  Again, you know the small shifts and the quick wins, what are some of the small shifts so that they can see the changes and then they get inspired to continue on the journey.

Like this guy that I was working with, an Indian guy who has been living here in the US for almost 30 years now or even over years and working with his team.  And because he would get so passionate about his subject matter, he would be like talking loud and everything and then people would get really scared and he didn’t know.

So one of the shifts was, I said “OK this is happening you know.  This is the perception of people around you.  They get really scared because you start talking really loud.”  He was like “Oh, because I’m passionate.”  I’m like “OK, but that’s not coming through.  It’s coming through that you’re either too angry or whatever it is, but there’s too much emotion.  So can you dial down a little bit more?”

He started doing that in different meetings and the feedback was immediate.  The people were like “Oh my God, you have changed!  Wow, this is really great!”  He was still being really passionate but dialing down the volume and just one small shift that was just like a big, big change.  So he was willing to go through the other changes that were needed also but he saw some positive feedback.  So that was really great.

Andrea:  I have to ask, you know, the next question then.

Claudio Toyama:  OK!

Andrea:  I love everything that you’re talking about and I think about this stuff too.  So it’s just always fun to get into a conversation with somebody else that just thought about this as much as you have.  OK, so let’s say this gentleman is too loud.  He’s very emotional when he speaks, but in what sense, and how do you know and how do you balance that with “well, this is who I am” kind of a comment or not just a comment but owning who I am and I am a passionate person?

So if somebody says “I’m a passionate person,” how do I be me but turn the volume down and when is that OK and when it’s not?  Tells us, what are your thoughts?

Claudio Toyama:  I thought a lot of about that as well because I get a lot of people that people talk really loud and they say “Because this is me take it or leave it.”  Again, going back to the samurai, “OK, so are you being adaptable?  How are you being perceived by others?  Is that the kind of perception that you want about yourself or not?”  Sometimes you want to have a big impact but you’re rubbing people off in a wrong way and the message is not going across because you’re a little too much of something.

Then also the other thing is, in this case with the guy was cultural and I also look at that but I also look at their background, what is the background of the person because sometimes they are being loud because they didn’t have a voice when they were little.  Remember that I talked about the pendulum?

Andrea:  Uh-huh.

Claudio Toyama:  They are that at that phase where they now feel that they have to be loud because that’s who I am.  If you go back to their history is because maybe they were the third child or whatever, the middle child that never got to listen to and now they feel “Oh I now have to be over the top loud because people then will hear me.”  And I was like, “Are they really hearing you or they just turning you off?”

So I ask those questions of “OK, what is the impact that you want to have and where is that coming from?”  Where is that desire of, “Oh this is who I am?”  Remember when I was talking about the different layers of societal layers, “Is that coming from you really or is that coming societal expectation or different things in your past that made you be this way?”

Andrea:  Hmmm that you’re reacting then.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I see that all the time.  I see that all the time and sometimes with some women as well.  Like that they have been in a very difficult marriage where the guy was just taking over and he was in command in everything.  When they get out of that marriage, they get really loud and bold but it’s not who they are.  They’re just over the other side of the pendulum and they will come back to a near ground.  I’m not saying that loud voice is a reflection of something that happened in the past but a lot of it can be.

Andrea:  Sure or a soft voice, yeah.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, exactly.  Or soft voice like “Yes, I cannot do this.  I cannot do that,” or you know, “Who are you really.  Is it because you cannot or is it really who you are?”

Andrea:  I don’t know.  I’ve been able to handle it myself by saying you can be real without bearing all.  So it can be authentic without being completely a 100% transparent, whether that’d be the message that you’re speaking or the way that you’re presenting it.  I think you can be real without necessarily having to be the fullest version or tell the fullest version of your story.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I agree totally.  And for me for instance the spiritual side, a lot of times and very recently as I started talking about in professional environment because I was also feeling that “Oh my God, I’m gonna talk about being spiritual.  They’ll gonna say that I’m gonna be doing Kumbayah every single meeting.”  And it’s like “Oh we don’t want that guy in here.”

No, but the spirituality informs me and also these thing about depths because I always see, like it’s not only in this lifetime, it is also in this lifetime.  So that’s the spirituality in me as well.  What are some of the universal truth that applies to every single situation so that’s where it informs me, but I’m not going to be like bring an incense to your office you know.

Andrea:  I know exactly what you’re talking about.  OK, so I feel like we could keep talking for a long time and there are still some questions that I would love to ask about your book but I think time is kind of up.  So Claudio, what point would you like the listeners to take from this interview, just talk to them right now?  What do you want to say to them?

Claudio Toyama:  Well, I think is what I would say is life is short.  So find yourself and be yourself.  That’s the journey that I have been on and it has been an amazing journey with a lot of bumps on the road but it has been an amazing journey of finding myself and knowing who I truly am and everything.  So what I would say is yes, find voice.  Yeah, that would be the message.

Andrea:  How can the listeners find and connect with you or find your book, where would you want to point them?

Claudio Toyama:  So yes, you can connect with me, if you’re on Twitter, it’s ClaudioGT or claudiotoyama on Instagram.  If you send me a message or even on Facebook, Claudio Toyama and my website is toyamaco.com, toyama&co.  You can reach out and that would be great to hear from you.  My email address is claudio@toyamaco.com.  I look forward to hearing from your fellows.

Andrea:  I will put all those links in the show notes to make sure that people can find you on voiceofinfluence.net.  So that’s where that will be.

Claudio, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing in the world with your voice in helping others to find theirs.  I really appreciate it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, thank you.  Thank you so much, Andrea!

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Uncovering Money Blocks with Eleni Anastos

Episode 63

Eleni Anastos is the CEO of Business Insights Now and she specializes in uncovering money blocks to help business owners and individuals grow and learn in ways they never thought possible in life and business. She believes making connections and cultivating relationships is what matters most; including in your relationship with money.

In this episode, you’ll learn why Eleni believes that how you do money is how you do everything, how having a scarcity mindset about money can negatively impact your finances, the importance of realizing you’re enough, the different money personality types and how to discover your money personality, how to know when it’s the right time to invest in yourself, common limiting beliefs around money and how to reframe them, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

 

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me, Eleni Anastos.  She is the CEO of Business Insights Now and specializes in uncovering money blocks.  That’s right, we’re talking about money today to help business owners and individuals grow and learn in ways that they never thought possible in life and business.

Now, aren’t you intrigued?  She believes making connections and cultivating relationships is what matters most, including your relationship with money.   Eleni has found that how you do money is how you do everything, and uncovering money blocks significantly impacts all areas of life, both personal and professional.

 

Andrea:  Eleni, I’m so happy that you’re here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Eleni Anastos:  Thank you so much, Andrea.  It’s an absolute honor and pleasure to be with you today.

Andrea:  Alright!  So what would you say then is the core of your message?

Eleni Anastos:  That money absolutely affects all of us and whether you’re an entrepreneur, you work in corporate, or you’re thinking about starting your own business; money impacts you.  It’s a part of our every day existence.  You know, you have bills to pay, you’re thinking about buying something, you’re saving for a house, yet money is often the one area that most people never want to talk about.  And I always question, if you had a better relationship with money, how would your life then be different?

Andrea:  Hmmm that’s interesting because I think that a lot of people who are kind of more message-driven were people that are thinking about the way we want to change the world and that sort of thing, money is not exactly something that we want to have to deal with.  We wish we didn’t have to deal with it and yet, I can say what you’re saying.  At some point, this is part of the problem or part of the issue.

So I’m excited to hear more about this.  Why this message?  Where did this start for you?

Eleni Anastos:  Well, I started to realize that I felt a little disconnected in thinking about money as a relationship or having a relationship with money.   I mean, if you want a rich and rewarding relationship with your spouse, with your kids, with a business partner, or with friends don’t you have to pay attention to them?  So how you can expect to have a rich and rewarding relationship with money if you don’t pay proper attention to it?

Andrea:  OK, I’m really curious, why this message for your voice?  I know that you’re a teacher a long time ago, right?

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah.  I was a teacher for many many moons.  For me, especially, you know, I was realizing that I was little uncomfortable talking about money and I had a very like close tight-knit relationship with money, almost too tight to the point where I had a scarcity mindset thinking “Oh there’s never gonna be enough to go around.”  That can have the opposite of that like when I was teaching, I was constantly over delivering.

I was giving way above and beyond; you know what I was being compensated for.  And I imagined that for people listening, they can relate to that to a degree.  I was uncomfortable talking about money.  I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m gonna have to deal with money for the rest of my life.”

And then several years ago when I wanted to start with my own business, I knew I had to get a grip on this.  I had to right the ship because if I was so uncomfortable talking about money, how could I asks for a sale?  How could I confidently state my fees?  There had to be a better way.

Then I also realized too because I was kind of stuck in that little scarcity mindset that I ended up giving things away in that sense, undervaluing myself.  I ended up just feeling miserable about it and I thought, “I can’t be the only person struggling with this.”

Andrea:  What’s the difference between wanting to give and do things for other people having sort of a generosity mindset versus having a scarcity mindset?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.  Well, one of my mentors often said, “Do not confuse your business with your charity.”  And I’m extremely charitable and I love being able to help people when I can.  But on the flipside though when I was undervaluing myself and undercharging for my services, you know, the irony is I didn’t have the money then to help the people I wanted to help or to do for others.  So it’s a double edged sword.

So once I started placing proper value on myself and in my services then I was able to have the income to do the things to help others to donate when I wanted to.

Andrea:  Yeah.  We’ve talked about this on a podcast a couple of other times with some other guests about the idea of not realizing that you need to have a cash project in order to fund the heart projects.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.  Yes, absolutely!  It always goes back to me to really realize, you know, I mentioned scarcity and as you did as well and I believe it was Brene Brown that said, “The opposite of scarcity is enough.”  You know, we have to start with I’m enough.  We still need to grow and learn new skills, new behaviors; but if you don’t start with “I’m enough” that’s the only way to make and begin to grow and move away from the scarcity mindset.

When I was stuck in that scarcity mindset, thinking I just wasn’t enough and practically giving away my services, it was like I ended up chasing a quick fix or I just wanted a bandage to stop the bleed.  You can’t build anything sustainable for the long haul in that headspace.

Andrea:  OK, so when you say “enough” and maybe when Brene Brown says it, but what is it that we’re trying to be enough for?

Eleni Anastos:  To realize that you have everything within you that you need.  We all need help getting somewhere.  We all need a bridge to get from where we are to where we want to be.  But it’s realizing that you’re still whole regardless of where you’re starting from.

I just thought of a client that I’ve had who, he was brilliant.  He’s extremely talented and creative but he was so afraid of talking about money.  He had such a scarcity mindset and it wasn’t until we start working together that he realized that he adapts all these beliefs from watching his parents struggle with money.  He heard things growing up, there’s never going to be enough to go around.  Money is the bad guy.  Money is evil.  It’s just something we have to deal with.

So of course when he was venturing out on his own in his own business that was all weighing on him.  Literally, the first thing he said to me when I met him was “I’m sick and tired of having to lower my fees just to get a client.”  So he was already fed up and frustrated but he didn’t really realize the depth of what was going on, how lowering his fees kept him playing small.  And he wasn’t going to ever be able to make the impact he wanted in the world to keep himself playing small.

Andrea:  You know the fact that you can be enough but also want to grow at the same time; it reminds me of something that a professor of mine said a long time ago in a seminary.  He talked about they’re being two stories a lot of times and we have to be comfortable with both stories.

There’s the story that essentially were enough or what I like to say on my end of things that “your voice matters” and it absolutely does and that’s just the way it is.  It’s just, innately, it matters but at the same time you can make it matter more.  You can grow in whatever that you’re going to grow and both stories are true.

To be able to hold those both at the same time is kind of tricky but it’s seems like it’s really important especially here when we’re talking about money and being able to say that what you’re offering or what you have is enough, while at the same time it’s OK to want to grow and want more.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, exactly!  And again, I believe that it impacts every area of your life.  When you can start to own your worth versus being so uncomfortable, because I’ve been here.  I was so uncomfortable even talking about money, that again, imagine if you’re in your business for yourself that you could hesitate to ask for the sale or you might even apologize for your fees, or put way too much in your packages or program in what you’re being compensated for.

I had someone reached out to me that has a corporate job and he said, “Well, how did it impact me if I’m not setting my own wage?”  I said, “Do you ever find yourself over delivering above and beyond what you’re being compensated for?”

So regardless for where you’re at in life, if you’re so uncomfortable even talking about money and owning your worth, it’s going to impact you.  Then I will also question, “What other areas in your life are you not standing up for yourself or you’re uncomfortable even talking about?

Andrea:  And money illuminates some of that?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.

Andrea:  You’d an attitude about money or whatever?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because when I see people being able to learn to have strategies or knowing how to value themselves and deep in their relationship with money, because we’re all hardwired to deal with money.  We all have a money personality, if you will.  And like any personality, we all have gifts and we all have challenges and there’s definitely no one that’s better than another at attracting abundance into your world, it really is about the awareness.

So you can champion your gifts or consciously navigate around your own challenges.

Andrea:  OK, money personalities.  Now, I’ve seen plenty of people become just so much more comfortable with themselves by understanding their personalities for this or their voice for that.  And based on assessment and then realizing like you just said that there’s just strengths and challenges with any of these personalities that they’re not right or wrong or whatever.  Tell us more about these money personalities because that’s something that’s really interesting and I know you had me take an assessment to help me find mine.

So can you tell us about this assessment a little bit or how you talk about personalities?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, absolutely.  The assessment is a series of questions.  Well, the good news is, you can’t study for it and you simply can’t get any answer wrong.  It really is designed to get who you are.  So for example my top money personality is called an accumulator and I’m an inner banker and I have this very tight close-knit relationship with money and _____ that could be like match-made in heaven, you know, great!

But there’s always the challenge, the shadow side and those of us that are strong accumulators can be so tightly controlled with money that it may mean we hesitate to invest in ourselves or we block ourselves from growing.

I know many years ago when I decided that I was going to start my own coaching business, I felt the calling.  I believe I have the skills set and I knew I wanted to serve people.  But as a strong accumulator to invest five figures in something that wasn’t a car or a house or my college education that was scary.

I remember walking up with my credit card in hand and I couldn’t even break stride and I just turned right around going, “Oh there’s no way, I’m putting this much on my credit card.”  And I did some deep breathing.  I was talking to myself and I said “No, I know I mean to serve people in a bigger and better way.”  I walked up the second time.  I love the person touched the credit card but I don’t even think _____ a life could have drifted out of my hand.  I walked away a second time and I’m like “OK, Eleni what are you saying?”

And I talked to myself through it and I realized, if I didn’t invest in myself then I also wasn’t going to be able to reach the people that I wanted to help and serve.  So I walked up the third time.  I was able to release the credit card.  I admit, I think I kind of like throw up a little in my mouth but _____, so it was a success.  But now that I know how I am wired as an accumulator, I very consciously know when to invest and it’s not a matter of me throwing up in my mouth or getting so much anxiety that I can’t do it.

Andrea:  OK, so I want to know a little bit more about…you don’t have to tell me exactly what it was you’re investing in but in general it was investing in yourself in your business and being able to sell more?  What made that investment so attractive, enough that you would actually go so much against what was inside of you?  I don’t know if that’s quite the right way to put it, but what was it?

Eleni Anastos:  I completely appreciate that.  Well, you mentioned teaching and education and I know I was born a teacher.  I know that I was born to impact people in a positive way.  But at that point in my life it was time for a shift to do it in a different venue, in a different manner.  And coaching really resonated with me, doing personal coaching, working with people one-on-one and doing group programs.  An educator, it was very important to me to get certifications, to get a proper background, if you will.  Even though, I already know I had the skill set, kind of going back to the “I’m enough.”

I knew that I have a skill set for it, the raw material, if you will.  But I also wanted to have the proper certification and training to make myself the best I could be to reach the people I was suppose to reach.  Whenever I thought, “Well, if I don’t invest in myself, because as accumulators, we just love saving for the sake of saving.

We love seeing our bank accounts go higher, so the thought of putting money out there, again five figures that’s not a car or a house, it was very scary.  It was very intimidating for me but I was looking to the future.  I got myself to the point where I was making a decision from where I want it to be.  So I knew if I didn’t invest in myself, I wasn’t going to get to where I wanted to be.

Andrea:  OK, so for those of us who are interested in investing in ourselves, how do we know when it’s a good investment or not.  Do you have any advice for that sort of question or scenario?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because I have spoken with a lot of people that sometimes look at for example, “Oh I can’t take on that debt.”  Debt has just a negative connotation from many people and I understand that, but it’s really looking at the difference.  Because to me if you can be grateful for what it is, for example most home owners here in the US, you’re able to purchase a home.  Not many people own the outright and they have taken on technically debt for that as an investment but it’s to make their life better in some way.

So if you can sit down and look at, where do I want to be personally and professionally?  Is this going to help me get there versus am I spending an investing money just to fill a void, like feeling lonely or empty or back to the opposite of I’m not good enough.  That really is worth looking at because I worked with a lot of people that have taken on debt in their mindset is completely different, not always the same.

Some people have a lot of shame and guilt around taking on debt, but they could possibly, you know when they were younger, who knows what they heard growing up or what they witnessed growing up, because we all have a money story we grew up with.  And maybe they saw, you know, “You should never take on debt.  You should only buy what you can pay off within the end of the month or something.”  I’m not saying those are bad things, not at all.  But it’s an individual decision to invest when you know that it’s going to elevate your life.

Andrea:  I mean it’s like college.  It’s like investing in college as well.  And I know there’s plenty of people saying don’t take on debt to go college too, it’s just fine.  But when you’re investing in yourself for your business or for essentially for financial gain in the future, that’s a little different than I guess like what you said to try to fill a void or that sort of thing.

I know some people do life coaching or they do coaching around health and wellness, I think that sometimes it’s harder if it’s not directly tied to money, the investment or reward isn’t directly tied to money, it’s harder for people to invest in something that doesn’t seem to look like it has the potential to pay them back or at least _____.  So what should be considered when we’re looking at investing in something like a health program or other sorts of things that aren’t necessarily directly tied to a business?

Eleni Anastos:  My first thought immediately goes to what’s the cost of not doing this?  Like you just mentioned a health program, you know, if you want to seek out your guidance and counsel for yourself.  If something is happening in your life, you’re unhealthy, you know you need some support accountability, whatever it is, to enhance yourself basically which everything is connected.  You know one area of your life is out of alignment; eventually it’s going to affect all the other ones.

So when you look at yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially; the idea is to have it all in alignment.  So for me and when I work with others, regardless if it’s not directly you’re saying “Oh investing in this is not going to turn around and put money in my bank.  But if you’re investing in something that is going to enhance your physical health, enhance your emotional health that’s going to make you better at everything else you do, right?

So the end result is yes, you will be attracting more abundance into your world and I think the bottom line is still impacted.  I have a client right now, he’s absolutely brilliant, super high IQ, wonderful man, great integrity; but he was so professionally-driven and so business-driven.  You know, 24/7 that’s all he focused on that his physical health is greatly suffering.  And until he put the proper focus on that, I mean because the other areas stopped growing, professionally he kind of hit the wall because his physical health is taken a toll.

So, you know, it’s all connected.  Eventually, it might not be an instantaneous thing so I think that’s why it’s easy to ignore.

Andrea:  Yes, yes, it doesn’t feel it’s urgent.  Like my husband, he’s a physical therapist and he likes to say that investing in something like that, investing in membership to the Y or a gym of some kind or personal trainer is way less expensive than a heart attack.

Eleni Anastos:  Exactly!

Andrea:  Both financially and emotionally.

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah.  I mean, what’s the cost of not investing in that whether, again, it’s a trainer or some kind of health program.

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so going back to the personalities, what are some of the different quadrants or I don’t know how it fits all into a scheme of, but what are some of the different kinds of personalities that are out there when it comes to money and why does that matter?

Eleni Anastos:  It matters individually, and especially it matters if you’re in any significant relationship; whether it’s marriage, business, or close friendship, having the awareness.  For example, you could be business partners or a married couple and you know that there’s some stress and friction between the two of you regarding money.  That’s fairly common.  But you don’t really know what’s at the roots of all of it and what’s causing it so that awareness makes the difference.

I mentioned that I’m the Accumulator that Inner Banker that has a really tight close-knit relationship with money.  The opposite of an Accumulator would be a connector.

Andrea:  Me!

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah, so that’s the inner relationship creator and they just illuminate faith and optimism which is beautiful.  And connectors generally don’t pay a lot of attention to money because that faith and optimism kind of gives them the freedom that the money is always going to be there.

Imagine if you put a connector and an accumulator together without the awareness, like a quick example if I go shopping as an accumulator, I look to the best deal always.  I want the most banks for my buck.  If I’m going to purchase and article or clothing, I will go to the clearance rack first.  I could very least look at price tags before I try anything on.

I went shopping with a friend of mine who’s a true connector.  She never looks at price tags.  She doesn’t even know the stores have clearance racks, which is just fine, and she made purchases.  Now, as an accumulator when I make purchases, I’m watching every item being wrung up.  I’m paying attention to every number.  I’m double checking their receipts before I sign.

My friend, the connector, just handed over her credit card, did not double check any numbers, didn’t listen to what they said.  And again, it’s not that I’m right and she was wrong, not at all.  But I was like clutching my chest wondering where the defibrillator was.

So imagine if you have an accumulator and a connector in business together or any close-knit relationship and you didn’t have the awareness, you could make each other crazy.

Andrea:  Sure!

Eleni Anastos:  And again, it’s not one that’s right and the other one was wrong.  It’s just having the awareness so you can synthesize each other’s gifts and consciously navigate those challenges.

Andrea:  That makes a lot of sense.  Yeah, I think my husband and I…I’m not sure if he’s an accumulator but that’s _____ for him.  I think over the years, it’s been easy for me to sort of just let him deal with the money because he pays very close attention and then I don’t have to because I really don’t want to.  But at the same time, I’ve recognized that as I started wanting to get the message out and I want to get in to this as well.

As I wanted to get the message out, I started to realize that money was playing a role.  I didn’t wanted to but it did and it was playing a role and I was continuing to spend more and more to get the message out without thinking about it and thinking about how it was impacting that.  And then it got to the point where I was asked to speak somewhere.  People don’t realize how much time and effort you spend on a speech.

And I was asked to speak somewhere and I thought “Oh gosh, if I ask for this much, will they give me a little bit less than that?”  I was just trying to figure out.  My husband said to me, “How much time are you gonna spend on that?”  And I thought, “Oh probably about a week’s worth of time.”  And I would have a babysitter for my kids because it was summer time and they were home and they were actually little then.

He helped me see realistically how much money we were going to be investing, and me, giving a speech for somebody else.  And then it became a very eye-opening about “Oh my goodness, this is expensive for us.”  It’s too much for me to ask from my family if I don’t ask the appropriate amount for speaking for an hour.

So when that happens, it was just this really big eye-opener for me and I needed to own the fact that the time that I’m spending and the effort that I’m offering is not all just for free.  It can’t be.

Eleni Anastos:  That story, I so appreciate you sharing that.

Andrea:  And what’s funny actually, let me just throw in the very tail end of that story.  Then the people asked me “What would you charge if you didn’t even know me?”  And I said a number and they said “OK” and I did it and I did it for that amount and that was just like boom, like this huge eye-opener.

Eleni Anastos:  Yay, that’s amazing!  I love it.  It’s beautiful.  How did you feel?  I’m curious when you just said that amount?

Andrea:  Well, I put it in a proposal and explained.  I didn’t explain why.  I didn’t justify the figure, I just kind of really explained why it would be a good fit and I felt a little overwhelmed about doing it but at the same time, I felt good about it.  And then actually when I gave the talk, it was just for a few people.  It was for a dozen of people, educators actually.  They handed me a check and they felt good.  I received the check and I felt good and I thought “This is a good thing.  There’s nothing wrong with this, me receiving this money.  It’s a lot of money but I invested a lot and it’s OK.  So, overall, it was just this really great learning experience for me.

Eleni Anastos:  That’s beautiful because you’re truly owning your own worth and placing a proper value on your skills, on your expertise, and what you brought to them as an individual.  That’s great, especially you know you get to decide “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”  You get to decide what your time is worth.

Now, there may be sometimes, especially where speaking is concerned or actually in anything else.  You may make a decision to do something that upfront you’re not highly compensated for but you have the potential to gain influence and gain clients from that scenario.  That’s all good too but the point is making a conscious decision not again thinking “Oh I’ve got to low ball this, I’ve got to play small” just to get in the door then we know you’re never really getting in anywhere.

Andrea:  OK, so what is your take on when somebody has a message whether they have a job with a company or there’s somebody who is an entrepreneur or at least think that they’re a writer.  If you have a message inside, why should they care about money?  How should we approach it as somebody with a message?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because I have heard countless people say, it’s not about the money.  Money doesn’t matter.  I think we all have heard that somewhere or we verbalized it ourselves.  But I want to go back to the reality that money is a part of your every day existence regardless of where you live or what your current life is, money is going to be a part of your every day existence.

So I think it speaks to the mindset of “I should just do this.  I should just be giving.  I should just be sharing,” almost as if that person doesn’t have a right to be compensated for sharing their gifts with the world.  I think that could be a very dangerous mindset, a very slippery slope how we’re talking to ourselves.

Andrea:  And you mentioned before this idea of playing it small.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes!

Andrea:  And that is definitely something that I can relate too.  I mean, I went through a period of like “Oh my goodness, if I don’t start charging money, I’m just going to stay here.  I’m kind of stuck in this little pool when I feel like I belong in a bigger pool.”  And so yeah, playing it small seems like a big part of it too.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes and how you speak to yourself, is it a low-value statement, is it a high-value statement?  For example, if you say that “Oh no one’s gonna pay me for what I offer,” obviously that’s very disempowering.  It’s a low-value statement.  But I always want people to ask instead of going right to the negative, “no one’s ever going to pay me for my skill,” you know, what if they could?  What if you could get the money that you want?  What if your clients will pay you for your skill, for your expertise?

Napoleon Hill’s iconic book was Think and Grow Rich.  You can’t say, _____ and grow rich, instead Think and Grow Rich.  It may sound simplistic in nature but it really is really a concerted conscious effort on how we’re talking to ourselves and to place a value on ourselves.  Because those of us that are very mission driven and want people to live their best lives, is there anything more that we want for people to be wildly successful however they choose to define that.

Andrea:  You know, I guess I’m just sharing all kinds of my personal experience here but I think that’s another piece of what was hard for me when I was starting out.  What’s been frustrating to me probably on my life is that I don’t want to go in inch deep and a mile wide.  I’d much prefer to go an inch wide and 60,000 miles deep.

What I was realizing every time was that I could only literally, I could only go so deep because they were only invested so deep and they weren’t ready to go further until they were ready to put money behind it.  And I was like “I just have to be like this.”  I don’t necessarily want to be that you need to spend more money to have more transformation.  But at the same time, it’s kind of like that sometimes because people aren’t ready to totally throw their whole selves in until they put their money in.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, and it’s backing that up and looking at it again, this is an investment.  I don’t want to spend that money, but that’s a different mindset from investing in yourself and then what you’re demonstrating for other people is not just like I had a client.  She was absolutely lovely, creative, and a beautiful soul but so tightly around with money, so scared to even talk about money.  She could barely state her fees to clients and practically apologize for them.

In fact a couple of times, she asked for permission like “Is that OK?”  She’d state her fees, “Is that OK?”  So that completely was undervaluing herself and she was giving them all the power.  I want people to be in the driver seat for themselves.  When she realized through our work together that “Oh, you know, it was from mom that constantly said, you just get whatever you can get.  Get whatever you can get, it’s OK.  Some money is better than no money.  Bread is better than no bread.”

I mean, no disrespect to her mom because I’m sure she meant with the best possible intentions that you what you can do to earn a living.  I think that’s a great advice on many levels.  For my client, being that creative soulful entrepreneur, she realized that she was not going to be able to impact and influence people if she just keeps trying to “Oh let me just get somebody in the door, whatever it is.  I’ll low ball it.  I’ll just give this away.”  Again, going back to the _____ and playing small.

When she was able to shift her mindset and she kind of adapted this new paradigm that money really is not evil.  That’s one of the things that I find amazing all the limiting beliefs that are still out there, “You know money is evil.  There’s never enough to go around.”  In reality, money is just is, it’s neutral like anything in our world; we apply the meaning into it.  It’s just energy, you know, an exchange of one service for another.

I think when people can wrap their heads around that money is really is the energy and exchanging one service for another that put some back in the driver seat where they feel they have control of money and therefore more control in their life.  That’s what I want to see for people to not feel like money is controlling their life.  How many decisions have we made based on money or lack of money?  That gives money the power.  I do want people to take their power back.

Andrea:  OK, this is great.  What would you leave us with?  You know this person who, they care about other people and they’re not sure what they want their relationship with money to be but they know it’s not quite at the place where it probably or should be in order for them to be free from, I guess like you’re saying the power of money over them instead of them having power.  What advice would you give that message-driven leader?  What do you want to leave with them today?

Eleni Anastos:  I’d like them to think about what they want most for the people they want to serve.  It’s almost always you want them to feel empowered and you want them to feel capable of doing anything they want to do regardless of what you’re teaching them or showing them in your mission.  And the best way to do that is to do it for yourself to be that role model, to demonstrate, “This is what’s possible.  This is what it’s look like.  This is how you can live when you’re on your own worth.”  “If we don’t start with us, how can we demonstrate to others that we want to serve what’s possible?”

Andrea:  Oh so true!  Alright, well thank you so much, Eleni, for being here today.  How can people get a hold of you and even take that assessment that you’re sharing with me.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, thank you for asking.  The website is businessinsightsnow.com and the assessment on there is called, Crack Your Money Code.  So Business Insights Now and Crack Your Money Code.  It will take you maybe 10 minutes to take and again it’s painless.  You can’t study, you can’t get anything wrong and I am happy to engage and discuss results with folks that want to take it.  So you can reach out to me through the website with any questions.

Andrea:  Awesome!  OK, we will link to that in the show notes and I just thank you again for being here today and for helping the world to get used to this idea of money and being comfortable with it in the way that we interact with it and our relationship with money, Eleni.  Have a great day!

Eleni Anastos:  Thank you so much, Andrea!

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Living Boldly with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 62

This week I have a very special episode to bring you. Today is actually my 40th birthday and, as I started to approach this birthday, I began reflecting on my life. What is that I really want for my life and my family? What are the things I’ve been doing that aren’t serving me? How have I been holding myself back? Take a listen to this quick episode to hear the powerful realizations I’ve come to.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

So today, the day that I released this episode, it’s my 40th birthday. I don’t know, I’m not sure why I think about that. I’m not too worried about that I guess, but at the same time, it does make me think a little bit.

Today, I wanted to share with your some of my thoughts. I have a question for you. Do you ever wonder what your life is really about? I’m not talking about your overall beliefs, about the meaning of life really, rather I’m talking about how you actually live, what you actually say and how you actually do what you do…how are you spending your life.

A while back, I watched a movie that really kind of rocked me to the core and it got me feeling what I already been thinking about my life and what my life was about. This movie is called Still Alice, and the main character is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, which it hit really close to home.

As I watched this movie, I really kind of grieve with her as this brilliant 50-year-old Alice consider her future and forgot about her family, she grew anxious. She lost her ability to interact with other people. Honestly, I thought about myself and I wondered “How much time do I really have left?” None of us really know, but this really put in the perspective.

If I’m about 40 years old and this Alice in her mid 50s, yeah 50 year old, she’s just 10 years away from me, “What if I only have that much time left?” How would I spend my life, what would I want my life to be about?” And I can tell you what was easier to figure out. It was easier to figure out what I don’t want to be about, because I know based on just life and my own experiences and the way that I’ve come to view myself in the world.

I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself. I don’t want to hide or hold back just for fear that I might not succeed or that someone might actually not like me or think negatively about me or be annoyed with me. I don’t want to hold back out of that kind of fear and protect myself in that way just to keep myself from feeling hurt. What if I have something to offer? What if it really could impact people?

Of course this is something that I’ve talked about a lot. But I think in the end, we all need to kind of do the math a little bit and realize that all of those times that people don’t appreciate what we have to offer, don’t accept our offering, maybe you count them as negative ones, if you want.

But those times when the people do, I mean those are very small. They’re just passing blips on the radar. But when somebody does actually receive what you have to offer, how much bigger of a number is that? There’s so much more positive that comes with someone receiving your offering and you making a difference in their lives than all those little negative rejections essentially.

So I don’t want my life to be spent protecting myself from these tiny little negative blips on the radar. I want to go out seeking those out knowing that if I’m seeking those out that eventually I’m going to find somebody who actually does want what I have to offer. Do you ever think of it like that? Or do you see all of those rejections or those I guess negative moments in your life, or those people that tell you no. Do you give them more credit than they do? Do you give them more weight to them than they really have?

It’s nothing against those people that might say no or that might say not now or might not be interested. It’s not about that, it’s about OK, move on. So who does need what you have? Let’s find them and then think about how much more exponential impact you have with that one person who’d actually is open to receive what you have. Oh man, it’s worth the rejections!

So I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself, I know that. So I’m going to go for it. I’ve been going for it. I’m going to keep going for it and even when I get down, which happens, I just know that I have to step out and do something bold and brave and then I have to do it again. I might fail and I might not be everybody’s favorite person but I plan to learn and grow from it all and I don’t want to protect myself and I don’t want to just live protecting myself; I do want to love boldly.

Something else I don’t want is I don’t want to spend my life overwhelmed. It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed, doesn’t it? Honestly, this is not something I do well. I probably tend to feel overwhelmed. I packed my mind and my schedule. I try to not super pack it, but I do like it fairly full but then if I allow myself to get too tied to the outcome, I can easily get overwhelmed.

I don’t like the idea of shuffling stuff around my house and it’s interesting because we’ve lived in the house that we’re living in right now, we’ve lived in it for almost five years now, which is way longer than I lived in anyone’s house besides the one I grew up in since I was 18 years old.

So every couple of years, really, I had the opportunity in my adult life to go through everything. Almost twice, because you know, you go through it once when you’re packing and you think you’re getting rid a lot of stuff when you move. And then you realize “Oh my goodness, I need to get rid of so much more stuff.”

But I know that I don’t want to spend my life just shuffling stuff around my house because I haven’t had a _____ to go through everything every couple of years here at this house. I still have to be super intentional about going through things and I think it’s not just the things, is it? It’s the relationships. It’s the activities, which ones are kind of; I don’t know, be lasting and make a lasting impact.

I’m not sure that I always know the answer to that. I think sometimes we have to try things out and just see how it fits with our new schedule. And with two kids, one who’s going to 6th grade who is just starting youth group and just starting band and just starting all kinds of fun activities, I realized that it’s going to take a lot of reassessing as we go to kind of think through it. I guess that has to be OK!

So as I’m looking at the next few years and I’m thinking about not wanting to be overwhelmed, I know that I want to simplify as much as I can and not takes a lot of effort and intentionality. I’m going to cut back on stuff and activities that turn into detours or stumbling blocks between us and what we really feel like as our family purpose.

Like I said it’s going to be constant balancing act and I know it has been a constant balancing act, but there will be less to balance. Because I need to think clearly, overwhelmed makes it really hard to think clearly and that’s something that it gets really important.

The last thing that I know that I do not want, I did not want to spend my life running away from feeling…I don’t want to distract myself with meaningless things just so that I don’t have to feel the intensity of the meaningful things. I don’t want to numb my feelings or carelessly feed my emotions so that they grow out of proportion. I don’t want to diminish or exaggerate feeling and that’s something that I can easily do. I want the moment to be what it is. I don’t need to anticipate it ahead of time and hold that emotion, carry it out before and carry it out after.

This is the time in life when you start to realize how there are a lot of people around you that could be dying, a lot of people around you sick and becomes more and more evident. And I think it’s important to hold each one of those moments with the weight that they deserve while not carrying them too far forward anticipating bad things, while not dwelling on them too long afterwards punishing oneself perhaps for what you didn’t say or didn’t do. That’s something my husband and I talked about recently.

What is it that we feel like we really need to say to the people that we love? What do they need to know from us, to hear from us so that we don’t live without regrets? I wonder about that for you. Is there anything that you want to say to somebody that would help you to not live with regret? I think that’s probably one of these little buckets in our lives that probably need to continually be checked and dumped, if that’s how you want to put it; to look inside and say “OK, what now? Is there anything?”

Not necessarily because there’s stuff going on and like or some things specific that you’re concerned about. Though, it could be that. You could let those be triggers. You could let other people’s experiences be triggers for you to say, “Oh you know what, I’m going to do this now. I need to say this now.” But I think we also do that on a regular basis just because…so what do we need to say to live without regret?

So I want to explore. I want to dig dip, to uncover what I’m honestly feeling and why. I want to bring those feelings, those feelings to God and allow Him to turn them into power with love because I believe that’s what happens. I believe these feelings are fuel that they may not be structure, they may not tell us what to do, but boy they can sure fuel us through something hard or through something great.

So I don’t want to look at feeling and say it’s bad. I want to live passionately. So that’s basically it. I am confident that I don’t want to spend my life protecting myself, but I do want to live boldly and I don’t want to spend my life overwhelmed. I do want to think clearly. I don’t want to spend my life running from feeling because I want to live passionately.

To my question for you is how do you want to spend your life, your actual day-to-day life? What are you going to do to get there? You know what I hope you do; I hope you go for it. I hope you step out and do something bold and brave and then go do it again because your voice matters.

 

 

END

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How to Stop Being Afraid of Standing Out with Alicia Couri

Episode 61

Alicia Couri is a dynamic empowerment speaker, author, and personal branding expert who shares her message of how overcoming low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence has created massive opportunities that influence, transform, and impact lives.

Alicia’s books focus on self-development and self-care and, while simple, are incredibly profound.  Her mission is to influence, educate, inspire, and entertain with audacious confidence and to help her clients do the same with a strong personal brand.

In this episode, Alicia discusses why the core of her message is focused around confidence, the difference it makes for the world if people are confident, how to gain confidence, why we shouldn’t look for external validation to boost our confidence, the three P’s of personal branding, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alicia Couri Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me, Alicia Couri, a dynamic empowerment speaker, author, and personal branding expert who shares her message of how overcoming low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence has creative massive opportunities that influence, transform, and impact lives.

I personally benefited from Alicia’s abilities with personal branding especially in the area of hair and makeup recently at an event that I spoke at.  So I’m excited to share her with you today.  Her books focused on self-development and self-care and they’re really fun reads and they’re both very simple but profound.  Her mission is to influence, educate, inspire, and entertain with audacious confidence and she helps her clients do so with a strong personal brand.

Alicia how wonderful is it to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Alicia Couri:  Thank you so much!  I really appreciate how you introduced me.  That is so wonderful and I appreciated the opportunity to work with you recently.  Thank you so much!

Andrea:  Yes.  It was so fun. You were a delight.  You were very encouraging and I liked how I looked so that’s so great too.

Alicia Couri:  That turned out great, yes.

Andrea:  It’s nice to know that somebody professional has done the hair and makeup thing before you go up onstage.

Alicia Couri:  It makes a world of difference.  It certainly does.

[Off-topic conversation]

Andrea:  So Alicia what is the core of your message?  Tell us about what drives you in your message?

Alicia Couri:  In the introduction, you talked about me overcoming low self-esteem and low self-worth.  So the core of my message is really focused around confidence because everything that we do starts with being confident and it starts with having that confidence within yourself.  So for me that is such a staple and such a vital part of life so that is really what drives me.

Andrea:  What is it about that then?  I want to hear about your story then because it sounds like you have a pretty good story about why this is personal for you?

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely!  You know, I was born in Trinidad and I grew up in Australia.

Andrea:  You grew up in Australia but you don’t have n accent now?

Alicia Couri:  OK, so that’s part of my story.

Andrea:  OK, good.  I want to hear it.

Alicia Couri:  That’s also part of my story, because I was one of three black children in an entire school of 700 to 800 kids and so…

Andrea:  Wow that’s a lot.

Alicia Couri:  Yes, it was a really big school because it went from a kindergarten all the way through 12th grade.

Andrea:  And such a small percentage.

Alicia Couri:  And it was just one was a native Aborigines and other was my sister.  So it was three of us in the whole school that I’ve ever seen that were dark, at least as dark as we were.  So I got a lot of stares.  I got a lot of questions and as a 5 year old getting questions about your skin color and where you from and your accent and why do you talk like this and all of that, it was intimidating because I didn’t have the answers.  I didn’t know why my skin was different color than theirs.  I couldn’t answer that question intelligently, and so it has caused me as a rambunctious, really outspoken, outgoing little girl to become shy and kind of introverted.

It completely changed my personality.  It changed how I was.  I wanted to blend in.  I didn’t want to standout.  I wanted to be just like everybody else but the minute I look at myself, I knew I was like everybody else that I was around.  So later on in life, I realized that what impact that had on me, because when you’re in it you don’t realize what’s happening, but as I tried to step out and do things, I would realize that I would shy away and I would want to be in the background and I wouldn’t step up and I wouldn’t speak up and I couldn’t figure out why wouldn’t do these things.

So later on when we moved back to Trinidad, I looked like everybody else so I can fit in but the minute I open my mouth to speak, heads would turn again and people start asking questions and they start wanting to know “Can you say these words?  Can you say that word?”  So I started feeling self-conscious about even speaking.

Andrea:  Because of the Australian accent at that point?

Alicia Couri:  Because of the Australian accent.  Yeah, a heavy thick Australian accent from this little girl.  So my way of fixing that was “Let me just speak in a way that is clear and enunciate and so that people cannot identify me by an accent anymore.”  So that’s kind of why I speak the way I speak because I just didn’t want people to ask me where I was from and now I got it all the time because nobody could picture where I’m from.  I always hear say “Hey, where you from.  I detect something but I don’t know what it is.”

Andrea:  Yes, interesting.

Alicia Couri:  So yeah that’s kind of my story and so that’s why I so strongly believe in confidence because it erodes who you are if you don’t have it.  It erodes your worth, your value, your self-esteem, your ability to really go out and shine at the highest level that you can possibly achieve.  So that’s what I want for people to be able to realize.

Andrea:  OK, so what difference does it make then in the world if people are confident?  Why does this matter?

Alicia Couri:  Well, it matters, especially if you’re in business, it matters how you value yourself.  It matters how you show up.  It matters how you perform.  For instance, we love to watch world events and Dancing with the Stars and all these really great reality shows that are based in competition, say like Dancing with the Stars for instance.

When you put someone out of their elements and so you take someone who has never done ballroom dancing before and now you’re training them to ballroom dance and you see the process that they go through and how the lack of confidence at the beginning really holds them back from giving it their all to when they reached probably the semi finals or the finals and then you see that change in not just the way they danced but the attitude that they have when they danced because now they’ve got it.  Now, they’re confident in their steps that they’re taking and they’re no longer holding back.

So when you live in a world that you’re not holding back, that you’re actually giving it your all because now you’re sure of what you’re doing, you’re confident in what you do, it makes not just a difference in your performance but it makes a difference in your clients and customers in how they receive it.  They are able to celebrate it with you when you do a great job.  They’re able to be the beneficiaries of that great job, so I think it’s really important.

Andrea:  And it totally levels up what you can offer it seems like.

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely, absolutely!

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so how does someone become confident?  I’ve asked a lot of people on this podcast you know, “Have you always been confident, because they come across so confident.  And they’re like “Oh no,” and they kind of go back and then, “No way, I’ve always been confident.”  But I think that a lot of people are sitting there looking at people who looked confident and saying, “Gosh, I wish I was like them but I don’t really know how to get from here to there.”  So what do you tell people about that?

Alicia Couri:  So that is a really great question because so many times, people think there’s a formula to getting confident but we really have to start looking back at why you think you’re not confident or why you believe you can’t do this because sometimes it’s a universal belief that some people are born confident and others aren’t.  And so if you have bought into that universal belief then you’re always going to think that you can never be confident enough.

So think back to really what that seed that was planted that made you feel like either you couldn’t do something or you weren’t confident enough or you didn’t have enough skills, education, or whatever it is.  So for me when I looked back at my childhood and I recognized that it was that time in my life when I felt that I wanted to disappear then I can kind of shift back and I can say “Well, you know, that was my reality as a child, that’s not my reality now.”  So I don’t have to bring that baggage with me everywhere I go.  I am a choice now that I’m aware that that is where I came from, I am now a choice.

I think we even spoke about this when I was doing your hair and makeup that we can choose in this moment now how we are going to be.  So that kind of can get you out this idea that you think that you’re not confident enough or you think that you can’t do a good job is recognizing where it came from, being able to now make a different decision because now you’re a choice because you’re aware of where it came from and then just choosing it.  The other thing is recognizing where your skills, your talents, your gifts, and your abilities lie.

Andrea:  So big!

Alicia Couri:  Yeah, your talents, your abilities, your gifts, and your skills.

Andrea:  I like that tags.

Alicia Couri:  Yeah, your tags.

Andrea:  That’s good.

Alicia Couri:  If you know where your tags are, if you know that I am really good at this that is where you’ll shine and that is where you’ll be confident.  When I started doing makeup, it was a passion of mine.  It was something I love doing but I didn’t have all the skills yet, but because I love and I enjoy doing it and I was encouraged by the people around me that I was doing a good job, I got more training and more training until I felt that “You know what, I believe that in any situation, I can make this work.”

So I don’t need to know what everybody looks like before they sit in my chair because I understand now, you know face shape.  There’s a certain understanding of the technical aspect of it but I also know that I have a natural gift for it.  So I rely on my natural gift and I rely on the skill set that I’ve developed.  And so I’m confident when someone sits on my chair that I can do a good job for them.

Andrea:  I really like that you’re pulling up both the internal belief and where it came from as well as the need to develop the skills and to sort of level up where you’re already gifted because I think it’s definitely not enough to just say that I’m more confident.  Confidence has to be grounded in something…

Alicia Couri:  …in something, exactly.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely, absolutely.  Too many times, especially young women looked externally at everything.  You know, beauty was a big, big thing for me because I spent a long time not believing in my own beauty, again came from my childhood and not seeing a representation of what I look like as beauty in the world in the 70’s.  There weren’t really people on TV or in magazines that were portrayed with my skin color, my nose, or my lips.  It was more, blonde, blue eyed, light skinned.

My concept of beauty was cute because of my surroundings and I had to figure out what beauty really meant to me.  So when so many young girls are looking externally for validation and they’re looking externally for things to identify with, it erodes their confidence because they no longer have confidence in themselves but they’re trying to be like the image that they see out there.  And it’s really important to develop your own concept of beauty and confidence and all those things for yourself and then like you said, make it tangible and then match the inside of what you’re now believing for yourself and then make it tangible.

If you’re going to use, for instance makeup, don’t make up yourself to hide yourself or try to alter your features to look like something else, but use makeup to enhance.  Say, “You know what, I love my lips and I am going to put on this bright red lipstick because it makes my lips just look juicy and beautiful.”  So you know, instead of underlying your lips so that they look thin and more acceptable.  So trying to build and develop confidence in yourself comes from the internal but also you have to add the external to it but don’t add the external as a way to mask, hide, or alter who you are.

Andrea:  Hmmm.  OK, so I love that you just said that we need to find that within instead of basing it on other people and getting approval and basing our idea of beauty or whatever _____ that we’re trying to set for ourselves basing that on somebody else or something else outside of ourselves.  But how do we do that, really?  I think it’s hard to get those images or those expectations out of your head and kind of comeback inside to yourself to find those answers.

So, Alicia, how did that work for you?  Let’s use beauty as an example because you’ve used it.  So how did you decide what was beautiful for you and what made you beautiful when you didn’t have representation in media and you didn’t see people like yourself out there _____ this beautiful?  How did you find that for yourself and how do you recommend that other people look within to find some of those things?

Alicia Couri:  It took me a long time!  It certainly did because I did not like looking in the mirror.  I did not like my picture taken and if you look at my Facebook page or my Instagram page, you would never believe that in a million years because there are selfies everywhere, but honestly, I was hiding myself.  I would hide myself and people would say, “Oh you so pretty.”  “You’re so beautiful.”  I couldn’t receive it.  I couldn’t accept it.  I would just politely say, “Oh thank you,” but inside I was like “What are they looking at?”

But it took me a while to kind of make the shift and so what shifted for me was to start seeing myself differently.  I had to actually start looking differently at myself in the mirror.  I had to take pictures of myself and stop criticizing myself and putting myself down and looking for the beauty.  When I would look in the mirror, instead of saying, you know, pimples or oh my gosh, my nose is this way, you know, just finding everything that was wrong, I looked in the mirror and I thought, “You know what, you’re not too shabby today.”  You know, I have _____ a little bit of a compliment, “Not too shabby today.”

And then I started taking pictures of myself which is something I really didn’t do. When I started taking more and more pictures, I started to see myself differently because I looked at myself objectively as if it wasn’t me I was looking at.  I thought, “If I didn’t know this person would I think she was pretty?”  And I would look at each picture saying, “Yes, she’s got beautiful eyes and she’s got red lips.  Her face shape is very good.”  You know, just start picking little things and looking at different features and saying, “Yeah, she’s kind of pretty.”

Andrea:  Yeah and just are ____, I mean, you’re gorgeous.  So yeah, I can’t even imagine not realizing that, but it’s so interesting that you took the time and energy and effort to do that because I think a lot of us don’t put the extra time and energy into that kind of reflection and to that kind of awareness.  You know awareness of taking the picture and then reflecting on it and saying, “OK, what do I see here?”

I think we can do the same thing with other areas of our lives that we’re trying to grow in and or become more confident in but yeah, we don’t.  It takes so much effort or decision or permission or something to actually do that.  So what was inside of you or what’s outside of you, I don’t know what kind of got you to that point where you said “You know what, this is worth the time, this is worth the effort to take my pictures and start thinking about this and overcome this issue from myself?”

Alicia Couri:  I was just tired of not feeling great about myself because there are so many people always telling you something about you that you’re _____ and all the stuff and you don’t see it then what are you missing?  So I thought and really wondering, why am I always shying away from the spotlight?  When people say, “Oh my gosh you make a great speaker.”  “Oh my gosh you will do great camera work.”  And I kept denying that from myself and I finally said, “Why do I keep denying my potential just because I don’t see it?”  But obviously, other people were seeing it.

So let me stop denying my potential.  Let me stop denying and saying, “Oh no, I’m trying to be polite or trying to be humble.”  You know, people think that’s humility when it’s false humility.  It’s really pride.  It’s not really humility, “Oh no, not me.”  So I really started looking at that and saying “Well, maybe I can speak in front of people and what will it take for me to stand in front of an audience and deliver a message without falling apart.”

And I thought, “You know, if I stand in front of an audience and I was nervous, what’s wrong with that?”  And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with that.  Nothing was wrong with that you’re standing in front of people.  OK, so my voice shakes, so if my voice shakes what’s wrong with that?  Will people make fun of me?  Maybe, but will I get my message across?  Yes!  OK, so just start trying, just start doing and the more I did, the more stepped out and I did, the more confident I became and the more proficient I became and the less judgmental I became of myself and the less critical of myself.

So I didn’t do it right.  I didn’t do it perfectly and I think that is another thing that does not go well with confidence is perfection, because if you think that you have to do everything perfect, and if you think that you cannot mess up or make a mistake then you will never get to that confident place in yourself because you’re always going to be afraid you’re going to mess up.

So I didn’t do it perfectly.  You know, I have my radio show and sometimes, I look back at the radio show and I think “What was I thinking?”  “Oh my gosh.”  But people comments and they say how much fun they had listening to the show or how much they gained and as a matter of fact my last guest, she was talking about the opportunity for it’s about everyone else instead of about you.  So when you start thinking what I have to share can be a value to someone else then you think less of yourself and all the things that you think are wrong with you because now you are in service to someone else.

Andrea:  Yes.  Yes, love that!  One of my recent guests, Neen James, said, it’s hard to be nervous when you’re standing in service.  That’s the way she puts it.

Alicia Couri:  Right.

Andrea:  And I remember distinctly a point in my life when I was getting up to speak and I thought, “I got to love these people more than I fear them, more than I fear their judgment, more than I fear messing up in front of them.  I got to love them more than that because if I do, I’ll be OK.”

Alicia Couri:  Right and all the ums and the ahs and you know it happens and that shows we figure real.  You know, there are some speaking programs that are trying to cut all those things out of you, kind of try to slap it out of you and I don’t necessarily feel that it needs to be taken completely out of you.  Yes, it can be curtailed a little bit so that your message isn’t modeled in the umhs and the umhs and the umhs.

So there is a balance that some of those things can be removed a little bit but you don’t want to be robotic.  You don’t want to be too stiff when you’re delivering something to someone, when you’re in service to someone because you want them to be able to feel you.  You want them to able to experience what you’re sharing with them in that moment and if you slip off here and there then it’s fine, at least that’s my philosophy.

Andrea:  I totally agree with you because I think that people get so obsessed with that sort of thing that they do, they lose their voice.  They lose who they really are in that like you’re talking about.  People can’t really feel me if I’m there trying to do a perfect job because I’m not truly connecting with them.  I’m not connected to my message because I’m so worried about it.

Alicia Couri:  Oh yeah that can really mess with your confidence too because if you don’t have it down exactly correct, perfectly then you don’t feel as powerful in that moment.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.

Alicia Couri:  But if you can let it go and just say whatever it is it is and I have a strong message inside of me and I’m just going to let it out, not that rehearsal isn’t important.  Rehearsal is a very important part of it but don’t get so locked into your script that you’re not making that connection.

Andrea:  Yeah and even your story or your message in general, even if you’re having a conversation with somebody if you’re not connected to it in that moment.  If you’re trying to make sure that it doesn’t get lost, I think that’s something that is definitely even frustrating for me at times.  If I’m not totally clear in what I’m trying to say, I get flustered.

Alicia Couri:  A little tongue tied.

Andrea:  Yeah and then I used to just give up and that doesn’t do anything for the person that you’re talking to and it definitely doesn’t serve your message at all.  So having a sense of what it is ahead of time is helpful.

Alicia, you also talked about personal branding and I remember when you’re doing my hair and makeup, I asked you, “what is your perspective?”  What is your points of view on personal branding and would you share that with us now because that is something that we talked about a lot here and I think it definitely ties into awareness of who we are so that we can build that confidence.  So what is your point of view on personal branding?

Alicia Couri:  I talk about the three P’s to personal branding; Posture, which is about building a solid core and the core, of the C in core is confidence so that is your foundation to your posture, so posture.  And in building your core, we have confidence how you’re oriented which is what you believe and what you value.  We talk about your results and your relevance to your industry and what your education and your experiences have been.  So that is core, you know, anytime I talk to anybody about core, those are the things that I’m referring to.

And then Presentation that’s the second P, which is so important.  When it comes to presentation, most people when they hear about branding, they think about presentation.  They think about your logo and your colors and your image and those things.  What is your website look like?  What is your business card look like?  So that is part of presentation but an important part of presentation as well is your performance, how do you actually provide your service to people and your story, your copy, all those things that represent you in your presentation.

So we want to make sure that everything in that part of your brand and the presentation of your brand is consistent.  You have a consistent message and you have a consistent look about you, not a cut and paste.  It’s not like your wearing the same thing all the time.  You know, every time people see, like “Yeah, I’m in my brand,” but everything has the same feel.  Everything has the same flow.  If you have a particular font that you use for your brand, you’re always using that font so that people get used to seeing that in your brand, people get used to seeing your brand colors in your presentation.

Most of the time when I speak, people know I’m going to show up in red.  When I’m on camera, they know I’m going to show up in red.  So people just come to know me in red and in red lipstick, so they have just kind of embrace that part of my brand.

Andrea:  Which is awesome because it’s like the opposite of holding back.

Alicia Couri:  Exactly!

Andrea:  It’s like you’re saying, “Now, I’m standing out and I’m not afraid to stand out, here I am!”  I love that!

Alicia Couri:  It’s so funny, I did a media interview sometime ago, not too long ago and one of the notes that they sent me, the producers, “Don’t wear bright red.”  And I’m like “She don’t know who she’s talking to.”  Of course, I’m gonna wear red.  Are you kidding me?”  So you just have to fix the lights and the tone and everything when I get there.

You know, some people says, better to ask _____ information.  But I did actually send them a picture of my dress ahead of time because I want to be respectful and they said, “No that’s fine.  It will work.”  Even though they said, I guess people wear this really crazy bright red that mess with the camera.

But anyway, when I have instructions like that, I try to be respectful of it and I send them ahead of time and if they really say no then I might tone down the shade or wear something different.  It’s not a big deal to me, but most of the time, yeah I’m in red.

So then the last P is Positioning and I think sometimes we don’t really pay attention to how we’re positioned in our brand.  Are we speaking to the right people?  Are we in front of our target audience?  Are we positioning ourselves as an authority?  Do we have these pieces in our marketing like media?  I need to get some of this myself some articles.  I need to do more writing and get some more articles in magazines.  And how you’re positioning yourself to be considered the expert in what you do, to be considered a leader in your industry, to be considered a thought leader.  Are you really positioning yourself correctly?  Another thing that people don’t really think about in positioning is who is coaching and mentoring you.  What sort of groups do you belong to?  Are you positioned correctly in those things?

So those are my three P’s for branding and that’s how I look at it.  I know there are so many people who do branding out there.  Everybody has their own unique point of view on how you should brand yourself.  So again, position yourself correctly, find the right person that you believe can develop your brand for your and make it stand out.

Andrea:  So how does, Positioning, Posture, and Presentation; how did these things relate to your core message of confidence then?

Alice Couri:  Well, branding relates to my core message of confidence as a whole because finding your unique quality, finding what’s unique about you, what stands out about you and then being able to highlight that and having the opportunity to really to really allow that to shine is it can only come when you’re confident within yourself because then you’ll keep holding something back, like red for instance.

I did not even think red was my color because for two years, my graphic artist and I were trying to figure out my logo.  We’re trying to figure out my colors and everything that I came up with, she kept telling me, “Nope, I don’t see that.  Nope that’s not right.”  I wasn’t feeling it in and she wasn’t feeling it.

And then I did a photo shoot that was really just impromptu.  I really wasn’t expecting to do it so I looked in my closet.  I pulled out a top that was red.  I pulled out a dress that was gold that I had never worn and I said, “OK, I’m going to do this photo shoot and I’m bringing these three things with me, a black shirt, a red top, and this gold dress.

When I finished the photo shoot, I got the pictures, that red and that gold were just like, you know like when the light shines down from heaven and when I looked at the _____.  So it was just really by chance that I found those colors for my brand.  Sometimes, it will happen that way.  And because I had ran from red so much in my life, the only reason I picked that red top was because of the cuts.  I’m a stylist so I help people with their wardrobe.  It’s part of their brand.  I do a lot of image styling for people’s hair and makeup and wardrobe.

So the cuts of that top was really why I grabbed it because it was a very a flattering cut, not for the color.  So it’s very interesting that the color was the thing that actually stood out more in those photos and that’s what made people comment more.

Andrea:  Alright, Alicia, so what of all from today’s talk, what do you really hope that the listener would take with them this week?  What nugget do you want them to remember?

Alicia Couri:  Oh that is so great!  What I really want people to remember is that any point in time, they can choose to be more confident.  They can choose who they are in that moment.  You can make a decision to, let’s say climb Mount Everest for instance, that would not be me but let’s say you make a decision, “By next year this time, I want to climb Mount Everest.”  You can choose to not train and then last minute try to get yourself up to _____ or you can choose to do a little bit everyday to get to that goal.

But if you choose to do something every day to get to that goal, there’s a second decision that you have to make and you have to choose who you are being in that moment.  Are you going to be the person that procrastinates or you’re going to be the person that gets up and continues to march towards your goal?  Are you going to show up ready to work and give your best and your all, or are you going to phone it in?

You have the ability to make those decisions, to choose that action and then choose who you’re going to be in that moment.  When I was cast as a lead in a movie that’s filming down here, I thought to myself, I could choose to read the part and acted out the way I think it should be acted out or I can choose to actually put myself in this character and live this character and give a performance that is not comfortable for me, Alicia, but will fit and suit this character.

So I had to make that decision because I had never acted before and I’m doing this movie.  I’m casting this movie and I’m like “Well, how do I do this?”  I had to make the decision who am I going to be.  Am I going to be the person that they say, “Oh yeah, nice job,” and then cast somebody else or am I really going to turn into an actor and become this person?

And so that’s kind of the job that you have when you’re building your confidence, “Am I just going to phone it in and act the part or am really going to become who I meant to be?  Am going to become this person that I visualize that is awesome, great, wonderful, and everybody loves and it’s totally authentic to you because it’s coming from within from inside of you from within and it’s not coming from anything external.  So you choose who’s going to bubble up from me inside of you and show up on the outside.

Andrea:  Hmm love it!  OK, Alicia, I know that you have a free download for people, so can you tell us a about that?

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely!  It’s my first book.  Again, I didn’t know that I was going to write a book.  It’s the first book that I wrote and it’s called Your Signature Style:  Unlocking the Confidence, Style and Influence of the Savvy CEO, and also talked a little bit about my journey that I mentioned earlier from Australia and some of those struggles.

One of the most impactful chapters in that book is chapter 2 when we talked about overcoming fears and how to release step out and not consider the fear but do it, do what you need to do and do it in a very great way.  So I love chapter 2, so hopefully, you will enjoy chapter 2 as well.

Andrea:  How can we find that?  We’ll definitely link to it in a show notes, is that sufficient or do you want to give out another link?

Alicia Couri:  You can link it in the show notes and they can also go to my website, it’s www.aliciacouri.com and there will be a link to the book.  I know it’s available for a limited time since it is on Amazon.  I do make it available anytime I do a radio show, television show, or podcast.  I make it available for the listeners and the viewers.

So if you can go to my website, the download will be there but it will only be there for a limited time.

Andrea:  Gotcha!  OK and we’ll have it in the show notes at least for that limited time.

Alright, thank you so much, Alicia.  It was so great to _____ with you today and hear how you came into your own voice of influence.  We have so much in common and I’m just really grateful and I want to thank you for your voice of influence in the world.

Alicia Couri:  Thank you!  There are two things I want to say about what you just said, I know we’re _____, but one is that it’s so important when start sharing your voice and your story how much you realize how many people can relate to what you’re going through and so anytime you have an opportunity to share your journey with someone and how you’ve overcome and some of the tools and tips that you have, it is a value because they’re also going through some of that and they can benefit from what you have to share.

I’m also launching a podcast soon, so look out for that.

Andrea:  Yes that’s right and once that’s all ready to go and everything, we’ll definitely put that in the show notes as well.

Alicia Couri:  Perfect!

Andrea:  Awesome and yes good luck with that.  That’s exciting.  Alright, thank you so much, Alicia, and we’ll see you soon.

Alicia Couri:  I appreciate it.  Thank you, Andrea!

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Sell Like Crazy While Serving Others and Being Yourself with Jim Padilla

Episode 60

We’re all salespeople whether we identify as one or not. If we want to use our voice of influence in the world, we’ll need to become better salespeople and this week’s guest is here to help with that.

Jim Padilla is the Founder of Gain the Edge, a go-to guy for all things sales, and a master collaborated whose purpose is to help entrepreneurs leverage the power of collaboration to scale their businesses, so they can impact the world the way they intended.

In this episode, Jim discusses his core message, the powerful story that led Jim to create his core message and to use his powers for good, his “park bench” approach to sales, the difference between manipulation and influence, the first thing you need to say during a sales conversation, why Jim focuses more on helping people with unrelated issues than selling them his services, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Jim Padilla Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me Jim Padilla, the founder of Gain the Edge. Jim is known in the personal development and the business coaching world as the go-to guy for all thing sales. You’ll just be able to tell by listening to his voice that he’s passionate and engaging, and you can see why he would be really good at this.

He is a master collaborator whose purpose is to help entrepreneurs leverage the power of collaboration to scale their businesses so that they can impact the world they way that they intended and Jim is known for instilling it to his sales teams, “It’s not what you say, it is who you are being when you say it.” Uh I love that!

Jim, it is so great to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Jim Padilla: Hey, Andrea, I’m super excited to be here and talk to you and just the total alignment with your brand and your vision here and just a great way to be able to share and connect.

Andrea: I’m curious how you would describe your core message because there are sales involved but you also talk a lot about this collaborative kind of atmosphere. So can you share with us, what is the core of what you are trying to get across with your voice of influence?

Jim Padilla: Yeah, you just actually hit it. The rule #1, the thread that we used to everything in our company is that who you’re being is far more impactful than what you’re saying or what you’re doing. So we’re always checking that. It’s literally something that’s get tested and checked every day.

So anytime somebody reacts in a certain way or result happens, who you were being that led to that result or who you were being that generated that response? Who were you that were constantly focused on how do we stay at or pick elevated state as a human being because from there we make incredible decisions. We make great partnerships and we inspire people boldly. Everybody operates at their best and I just find that in life that it just not how most people work.

[Off-topic conversation]

Andrea: So, who you are, how you’re being in this moment matters to everything else. I love that why that in particular…what is that have to do in sales, what is that have to do with your business? Yeah, tell me more about that? Where did this come from?

Jim Padilla: Yeah, you know, I have a pretty sorted past. My mom was 16 when I was born and she was in pretty unfortunate circumstances. So the way she responded in that situation was primarily with fear and anger. So I grew up getting abused on a pretty regular basis and pretty severely to the point that I was in a poster care at 13. I was on the streets at 16 and in jail at 19.

So it was pretty much then my first 19 to 20 years of my life spending all of my waking moments trying to figure out how to master my environment so that I can influence the people around me to feel safe around me so that they wouldn’t want to hurt me because that was my only self. That was my defense mechanism.

I was always constantly checking in on who might I’m being at the moment, who night being here, who might being there, or how am showing up to this person. It’s something that’s always being able to just regulate and it was mostly because I had to. And then you know, fast forward in 20 years and now I make a lot of money teaching other people how to master the art of the sales conversation by being able to influence the people around them to feel safe and to trust you and want to buy from you.

So we don’t focus on scripts and techniques and tactics, we focus on being-ness. We actually have a sales program called Sales Unscripted. That’s the whole focus of it. It’s all about who you’re being because everybody is selling something all day, all the time. There’s no human being on the planet that hasn’t sold something or influence their environment. It’s just you don’t do it in purpose. So we just try to help you get completely aware so that you’re doing it intentionally.

Andrea: Oh man, I love that so much. So you kind of went from…doing it as a survival mechanism to somehow turning it over the course of the years into business. When did that shift for you? Do you think it shifted or what was that transformation for you that took something that was really hard thing that you did just to survive and then turn it into something that is incredibly proactive and powerful?

Jim Padilla: Well, it’s interesting because there were actually two major shifts. One was that I learned I could do this on purpose and I could do this to my advantage but then you _____ and with the upbringing that I had and I essentially had this power that I could use to destroy people. And so I did, I build businesses. You know, I used to own a _____ company. I ran a mortgage broker shop. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life but I spent most of my time figuring out how to get what I needed from people by using these skills.

So I conquered a lot, made a lot, and burned a lot of bridges, learnt a lot of relationships because that was all about me. I was manipulating my environment so that I would win. Then in 2008 when the mortgage crisis hit, I was at mortgage at the time, I had put a lot of people into loan for they had no business being in because I made a lot of money doing it. And I met a woman where I coach _____ in a high school basketball team. Her grandmother came in to do loan and I put her in a loan, it was a gamble. I knew it was a high risk gamble she didn’t belong in.

So fast forward couple of months or couple of years in a gas station here in Sacramento and her mom comes up to me across the gas station and she was like, “You’re a crook, you’re the devil, and you deserve whatever comes to you.” So my mother was living in that car over there and I knew everything she said was true and accurate and right and I didn’t know what to do. Everything came flashing back, my childhood, all my skills, all the things I’ve done. And I said, “Okay, I’ve got to change who I’m being, because it didn’t get me anywhere.”

Ultimately, I made a bunch of money and end up losing it because we gambled it all the way. I filed bankruptcy and foreclosed on multiple homes. We were back down to zero. So everything I had gained through bad means, I lost. And In that moment, I was like “I have to stop. I have great skills set. I have ability to be able change people’s lives and it’s time that I start using it for others’ benefit instead of mine.”

Right at that moment, I started going to town and said, OK, all the things that I’m doing in the sales process and all the things about sales that I hate that make other feel bad, that make sales people feel bad, I stripped them all out. What was left was all the things that actually serve people and make people feel good and make me feel good. But it was all about the power serving others that leads to the outcome instead of the other way around and that’s how this whole thing got started in 2008.

Andrea: Wow, I’m in total goose bumps here. When I hear you say that in that moment with that conversation, the way that you were using it before us, manipulation, your skills, that you realized that that wasn’t the answer but it could be used for good. Did you ever have a point when you were saying to yourself, could this be used for good? Did you ever question that? Sometimes we have these really big awesome superpowers that can really look bad and feel bad and it’s hard to turn it around and see the good. But did you see that automatically or was that something you’ve ever struggled with?

Jim Padilla: I struggled with it that time. My challenge was I was this kid from the streets who didn’t have anything, who had a mother on welfare. I saw capital, money, and resources as a need. So I was like, “Well, I need to get it at any cost.” So many times, I put people in a loan and I would feel bad about it. We would get people into the mortgage loan.

We’ve shown something on the paperwork and it would still be a little bit different when they showed up to sign at the escrow. But they were irritated enough that they didn’t like it but they weren’t irritated enough that they want to start the process over so they would sign but then we would never hear from again. I never got referrals from them, follow-ups, and callback and ______ do with us and we were just you know chop chop.

But great values were high and my phone would ring all the time, I didn’t care about how I took care of these people because I have more business coming in every day. And I started watching this cycle go on. It was just like eating away and I knew I was doing stuff wrong. The real problem was, I was like in my own island because I couldn’t even share the stuff with my wife.

At the time, I was actually scheming stuffs from my own paychecks. If I had a $15,000 commission, I would bring home like 8 of it and I would take the other 7 and I would invest in some properties or do some stuff and my wife had no clue. She thought I was out doing work. I was living my own lie. I was like, “OK, how can I control this,” and it just started eating at me completely. But I just tried to ignore it because, otherwise, I just had to look at the _____ of who I was being and I don’t want to do it.

Andrea: Oh wow! OK, so how do you go from that point to the point…was there a period of kind of forgiveness and redemption? I mean, now look at your business and how much good you’re doing for people. I mean, it’s incredible to hear about all the different people that you’re helping and I know that the sales process that you have now is legit. So there’s such a huge redemption story here. But what was that in between, how did you get to that point where it was better, I mean even in those relationships or what was that like for you?

Jim Padilla: Well, unfortunately, I was not the guy who learned anything in my life the easy way. Every single lesson I’ve ever learned up until that point was always learned the hard way and including that one because ultimately what happened is my wife…our three daughters are all grown and through college and a couple of them are married now.

But at the time when they were going in college, my wife was also getting her degree and had to apply for ______. And whether you qualify or not, you have to apply. You know, we owned properties and we were debt free. And my wife was applying for loans and she was fully expecting for them to say, “Oh you don’t qualify because you make too much.”

Instead, they called us and said “Hey, we want to let you know, you’ve been declined because you have too much debt.” She was like “What are you talking about, debt?” Because I was planting the market and things aren’t going bad and I had $50,000 invested here and money invested here and I needed _____ credit cards taking cash advances to try to fraud them at these debts because we weren’t making money in the mortgage anymore because _____.

All of a sudden, we’ve got multiple six figures with credit card debt. And my wife said, “What are you talking about, we’re debt-free.” We separated. We filed a bankruptcy. We foreclosed on our homes and I was gone for a year and a half. Literally, I got an apartment. I was basically on my face broken before God every single day. I was like, “OK, I did the first 40 years my way and screwed it all up. I’m ready to do your way now.” It was just daily over and over.

Over the course of a year and a half, in 18 to 20 months, my wife started seeing a difference in me and a change in me. I was thankful because I never thought I would get her back. I was hopeful, but I never thought it would actually happen. She just decided, “Look, if we’re gonna be broken apart, we might as well be broken together.” So we started that next year.

This is why it’s so powerful in the story because it went from me being the financial ruin of our family. My oldest daughter didn’t talk to me for six years and for my wife to be able to say, “OK, we’re gonna do this together.” This really finally pulled our finances together. We never had joint account, nothing before this. I was always running my own stuff then the next year, she was a retail manager for Target _____ in corporate management, she came and said, “Jim, I’m retiring from my job and I’m gonna count on you.”

So for her to come full circle to me being the cause of the problem to now I’m being the sole support of the family. Business was huge because she had to come full circle in my character and who I was being to be able to say, “Yes, I’m in this with you.”

And then that next year, she jumped in a business with me and we did nothing but explode and go skyrocket through the roof. And now, we’ve got this amazing business, this incredible marriage and an amazing family. My daughters are back in fold. My middle daughter didn’t talk to me for about three years after all this. I officiated her wedding last year. It’s just been amazing.

Quite honestly, I wish I had a better answer for this but I’m not out conquering business. I’m just out changing lives and business comes. I promise that’s how it works. I mean, yes, we got some strategy. We’re not just throwing stuff up in the air, but our sole purpose is helping people overcome their challenges because we have overcome so many things to get where we are. There’s nothing that you can’t overcome. You just have to be totally clear on who you need to be to make it happen.

Andrea: Oh Jim, thank you so much for sharing that story. It’s so powerful. I saw Jim at a conference just recently and not just Jim, Jim and Cindy. You guys together were just adorable and powerful. You’re both very engaging, powerful and you were holding hands and all that. It’s so cool to hear the back story on how much work it took and how much brokenness it took to get to that point where now you’re living just such a triumphant kind of life.

Jim Padilla: Very much so!

Andrea: Oh man! And now the core of your message, it sounds like there’s so much about that. It’s so much about this who you are and what you’re bringing in who you’re being. So do you incorporate, I don’t know who you’re talking to if you’re talking to using this message with more than your sales team or with the people that you’re serving, but do you talk about this kind of brokenness? How does that play into the influence that you have with people and how you encourage other people to have influence?

Jim Padilla: We’ve never done a ton of marketing and visibility because we’re pretty well connected and we get great results for our clients so that’s where a lot of our business comes. But this year, we just started to start really getting visible and it’s about sharing that. We’re in a position to hold a lot of the industry accountable because we see things that are going on behind the scenes. I’m like “Look, stop doing it that way, do it this way because this is the people are seeing of you.”

But I haven’t been sharing as much of myself in that publicly and that what’s just starting to happen now. I’m actually launching a podcast next month so I want to start being able to put my message out there and start getting people in tune and holding people accountable to a higher level.

You know, Cyndi and I see ourselves as leaders of leaders. We haven’t been necessarily called to reach people one by one, we’ve been called reaching by the masses and we do that by really reaching influence centers. Most of our clients have massive reach. The more of them that we can impact, the more people we can impact indirectly through them.

Andrea: So true. I mean, if you can have an impact on their message on who they are, they’re being then that impact all these other people, absolutely! Wow! This is really powerful. How do you see this for other leaders, other message-driven leaders like yourself, people who are listening to this podcast to have a vision of some kind?

They have a message and they’re struggling with this I guess balancing or understanding when they’re being manipulative or when they’re not? So they don’t want to be manipulative because who listens to this podcast don’t. They don’t want to manipulate but they do want to influence and that line can get really blurry. Do you have any advice for people on how to differentiate their message so that it is on the side of influence and not on the side of manipulation?

Jim Padilla: It’s interesting because the skill set is the same. The mechanics are really the same thing. It’s all about the intention and this is where people have to really get honest with yourself because we all like to say, “Well, I’m not attached. I really just want to help this person. It’s not as important if I make the sale.” Is that really true? Is that really true, right?

You have to get to the place where you can separate it and say, “I want to impact the person. I want to change that life,” and then watch the results come, I’m telling you. People go, “It’s always easy for you to say, Jim. You guys make millions blah, blah, blah.” I didn’t start making money like this until I started helping people first.

Andrea: So when you’re saying helping people, does that include the sale? Or how do you look at that because I think that’s one of the struggles is we have that internal struggle, but you’re saying get honest with the fact that you do want to sell to somebody?

Jim Padilla: Right. But here’s where it comes down to, I remember you’re posting something about the super problem in the group that we’re in, here’s the key. When we talk about our problem and we talk about what people do and we talk about how we help people, if you’re selling an idea, if you’re selling a vision for something, if you want people to donate to your cause or buy your program whatever, the only thing that you should be talking about is why it matters to them because that’s what they’re going to resonate with.

Here’s an example when I was in mortgage, I wanted everybody to be able to call me to get their solutions for whatever it is. We had tons of people who would move to the area, relocate, get a loan, whatever; and I said, “Look, if you’re looking for a school, a babysitter, a place to get your oil changed, or the best restaurant to go to, call me and I’ll take care of it. I don’t want you to have to look up on things.”

So people would call me for all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with mortgage. But because they knew I’d care about making sure they got whatever they wanted, I got referrals, I got introductions, or I get invited to barbecues. I was in the people’s community. I was part of their lives and I do the same thing in my business. I make it a point to know what everybody around me does, who does it well. If they don’t do it well, how can I help them do it well, even if they don’t hire me because I want to be able to send people to you, right?

I have all kinds of people come to me because of who we are and because of the positioning we have and I hate turning people away without a solution. So if I can’t help you or you can’t afford us for whatever it is, I want to be able to say, “Hey, look, I know exactly who can.” I don’t want to have them to go anywhere else to look. I want them to come to me and maybe we can help them solve their problem.

The people that we do that for like our best referral sources in our business have come from people that we thought never been our clients. But because they appreciate in how much we value them and respected them in the process that we weren’t trying to sell them anything. We’re trying to help them solve the problem.

Andrea: There you go. So it’s not necessarily about the sale but you’re also being honest about it and it’s ultimately about helping them solve their problem and a genuine desire to be that resource for them.

Jim Padilla: Completely, and I will make this two _____

Andrea: That’s alright. Go right ahead.

Jim Padilla: We ____ with Jesus around here.

Andrea: Yeah, so do we.

Jim Padilla: Okay. We all have gifts. We all have a very specific gift that God has given us, some of us have multiple and most people have it hidden and buried. We need to be breaking that out. All the tumultuous childhood and upbringing that I had was the greatest gift that God has given me because that I know that you can literally overcome everything and that everything is possible to go from where I came from where I am now never should have happened.

I see everybody as a finished product and most people don’t see themselves that way. So I see that’s my job to inspire people to overcome and then help equip them with a skill set to be able to make it happen. Will you just work with me on this for a second, everybody just close your eyes for just one minute and visualize just your immediate community would be like.

If everybody you personally know was doing everything to the best of their abilities, your wife, your husband, your kids, your mailman, the teachers at your kids’ school, your pastor at church, or the police officers in your community, whoever; and if everybody was literally doing their absolute best that they’re capable of, how different will your personal life be? How different with the world around you would be? That’s just in your community.

Imagine the world like that. All of a sudden, we don’t have poverty. We don’t have the crime that we do. We don’t have all of the crazy political turmoil. We literally have a political environment whereby we’re just trying to help each other. We are shining and we become the _____ change in the world as a country. This may sound altruistic but it’s possible if we can just get people there, right? That’s my big mission. That’s what I want and I know that I can impact that kind of change as I see it happen every day.

You know, I was listening to one of your earlier podcast about pain can change because it’s all about perception. It reminds of the book that I read often. I actually just read it again last week and I recommend it to all of our salesman and clients. It’s called Zen Golf by Joseph Parent. Everybody should go get that book. It literally has nothing to do with golf. It has everything to do with how you perceive your environment and it’s all about visualization. He actually calls it imaging because visualization is more about eyes. Imaging is about using all the senses to bring it in.

You can start actually seeing yourself, hearing yourself, feeling yourself in the future, in the moment as a completely processed in winning. Your mind down sees that it can happen and then you start focusing on it. It becomes the new target. It becomes reality because you’ve seen it happen in your mind. You literally recreated reality and now you have to do is just follow the steps and go make it happen. That’s exactly what we need to be doing on a daily basis. That’s what you’re doing in the sales conversation.

Before I got on this call, I visualize, “What would be the mountaintop experience for this call? How can I impact people who would read this? How can inspire Andrea? How could I just say something that people just go “Wow, that’s awesome, I can use that.”” And I do that with every call, every single call. I don’t take anybody for granted.

I have this crazy sense of self-delusion that I believe that every room I walk into is better because I’m there. The conversation I’m in is better because I’m in it. As a result, I have the most…what I said when we first talking today, I live in a dream, right? I have the most friction-free life of anybody I know because I don’t look for it. I see the best in everybody and I do everything I can to help them achieve it.

So I have this circle of people, I have everybody in my life who just, you know, even if you don’t like me, I never see it because people don’t share it because it’s no benefit. I’m not like the center of attention and the life of the party but I’m just like, “I just love people and I love life so I put it out and I get it back all day long.”

Andrea: Gosh, I love that! So Jim, pick me apart for a minute.

Jim Padilla: OK!

Andrea: Because I’m not the only one that struggles with this and this is certainly something that I’ve struggled with in the past. I’m starting to get over it. I think a lot of people out there struggle with this and that is simply just not believing that they’re going to get the sale per se or that they’re not going to have a voice.

So people who want to have a voice for example, they want to have their message make a difference, but they don’t see it happening or they don’t feel like it’s going to happen. They can’t see it. They haven’t seen it before. You know, you’re talking about this visualization and that sort of thing, how do you coach somebody over that into actually feeling like “You know what, this gonna happen and actually make it happen?”

Jim Padilla: Well that one thing that gives us integrity with ourselves. You know, we always hear the _____ fake it till you make it. It’s funny, it’s interesting but it’s _____ that the inner you knows it’s not real so he doesn’t buy it, right? So you need to get into action as fast as possible and only focus on the things that you actually accomplish, right?

Andrea: Yeah.

Jim Padilla: Because every time you’re actually accomplishing, you give yourself real true credits so now you have integrity with yourself. And you say, “Hmm, I was gonna do that and did do it and I was able to do it.” Instead of going, “Oh man, I did 80% of that wrong.” “It doesn’t matter, you did this far right?” So now, how can we do 20% right, 30% right?

You have to learn to give yourself credit in life. “Did you get the right person show up on the phone?” “Yes.” “Awesome.” Okay, maybe you didn’t close them but your messaging was right, you’re in the right ballpark. Now, we just got to focus on who _____ being that led them to believe that you weren’t the person to buy from or today wasn’t the time to buy.

Now this is the key. This is where we focused on the most is you have to stay in action. Action is going to be vital to everybody part of their success because the more you accomplished, the more integrity you have with yourself. And then when you can be standing in that place of, “I am the expert. I own my expertise even if I’ve never had a client. The reason I’m doing this is because I’m great at it and I’m passionate about serving new with it. So whether I can sell this or not, I give myself total permission to screw this up as much as I want.”

And I tell everybody, if you’re talking to people in a sales conversation, the first thing you have to owe them is the truth and that truth can be everything across the board. I’d be first and foremost, “Hey, look I’m just learning how to sell but I’m phenomenal at what I do. Please don’t let the fact that this sales conversation might be a little bit cranky because I’m kind of nervous but I’m a bad-ass coach and I absolutely know how to solve the problem. This conversation is gonna be about how do we help you figure out the problem. Now, you just give me a self permission to screw up everything.” How do you think the person on the other side of this phone is going to respond to that?

Andrea: Uh-hmm absolutely!

Jim Padilla: You’re doing great.

Andrea: They’re falling for you now.

Jim Padilla: Totally. You could _____.

Andrea: Yeah. Try being honest by not being manipulative but by being honest.

Jim Padilla: Exactly and then that honesty has to come out throughout the conversation. I literally have a contract with myself that says, if I get to a place where I have to ask myself should I ask that question, I now must ask the question. Because the only time we ask that is that when you’re nervous about asking it. And usually, those are the most important questions.

So if you’re about to call somebody else on something and you’re like, “Oh I don’t know if I should say that?” Guess what, that might be the most important question you can ask them or the most important piece of insight you can give them and you just caused them the opportunity to take that and nobody else was going to tell that to them, right? And that’s how they buy from you. It’s not about the scripting and your seven-step process, it’s about being super connected and genuine with them and being able to tap into somebody.

The thing that I get a lot when I’m in conversations is I can hear people breathing patterns, you know, you connect with people energetically, right? We are all energetic being that’s on the phone, over Zoom, whatever; we are connected. You know, maybe _____ they’re trained. If they’re going to do _____ attack with somebody with a knife to not look at the person. They’re trained to look at the crown behind the person that’s going to attack because if you’re looking at the person, they can feel you looking at them and then you blow your surprise.

It’s the same thing. You can feel and read people as long as you’re focused on them and not you. When you’re worried about losing the sale, you’re worried about not sharing the message properly, you have to abandon that. You have to abandon that because it hasn’t work for you at this point. So get rid of it and start focusing on the other person and you’ll be amazed because you’ll start hearing them, “Oh they’re talking faster, or their mood has changed.” A lot of times we missed that stuff because we’re so focused on getting to the next part of the script.

Andrea: Totally! It’s interesting because I think I can hear people just sort of settle in and their energy comes up and their rhythm is just so natural and all of a sudden they’re just being themselves, like you’re talking about, just being, how does being is. You can tell when people are motivated by fear or by love and that’s essentially what it comes down to, isn’t it?

Jim Padilla: Totally, and you know, the most enrolling thing you can ever do is being yourself. People buy you all the time; they don’t buy your stuffs. They don’t care about your stuff. They buy you because they trust you to be able to help them get what they want. So you just have to be yourself.

We’ve all experienced this. We’d be on the phone or you’re at the store, whatever and somebody was trying to sell you something and you left the conversation, you’re like, “You know, I like him but there was just something about him, I don’t know what it was.” People don’t know how to identify it but they can sure feel it. So you want them to leave going, “I don’t know what it was with that guy, but I have got find a way to work with him because I love how I feel around him.”

Andrea: Yes, yes!

Jim Padilla: And that’s what I get a lot when I’m working. When I’m talking people on the phone, people get like super inspired. I get them grounded. I get them elevated. They’re like, “Hell yes, I can do this.” People will be sadly disappointed if they listen to my sales call because it’s not a bunch of magic. It’s just me being me. I don’t have a bunch of magic formulas, I’m just totally connected to the person I’m serving and I truly don’t have any concern or the best interest in the outcome, except that I want you better at the end of the call than you were at the beginning. I want you to have crystal clarity on what it is you’re trying to accomplish, why you want to accomplish it, what’s the cause of not accomplishing it and what’s in the way?

Andrea: That was really powerful _____. Can you say it again?

Jim Padilla: Yeah.

Andrea: OK!

Jim Padilla: I call it a Park Bench approach to sales, a Park Bench Philosophy; you as a sales person, which all of you are by the way, you should be able to sit down on a park bench with a random stranger. It didn’t come through a phone, _____, random stranger on a park bench and inside of 30 minutes, you should know what they want, why they want it, what’s the cause of not getting it, and what’s in the way? That’s by having a conversation about somebody you care about.

And then you say, “Hey, I know someone that has that solution.” Or you’ll say, “Hey, I can help you with that and here’s how.” That should be your approach to everybody you talk to. It shouldn’t be about, “Let me see if they’re a good client for me.” I was like, “No, let me see how I can help you solve your problem.”

Andrea: I love that. I do and I know that that can be totally contrary to what can be talked about around these ideas of sales and sales conversation and things like that and yet, there’s something very freeing about that, isn’t there?

Jim Padilla: Yes. Yeah, because your only outcome and agenda is to help them, which is what we’re designed for. So it’s right inside all of our will house, every single one of us.

Andrea: I think that one of the difficult pieces of that is getting to that point where you see that you can help them but then having to put a price tag on your help for them. And maybe that’s a different conversation but I think that there are a lot of people that do actually struggle with this. When do you share something and just share it and help people and when do you put a price tag on what you’re offering?

Jim Padilla: Well, it’s interesting because we just started this Facebook drop-in coaching membership group and it was formed from this idea. I get on the phone with people a lot. There’s a lot of people in our industry that are seven-figure, eight-figure people and they kind of live in the castle on the hill. They’re not accessible to the average Joe and I don’t like that. I totally understand protecting your time, I absolutely get it. But I want to help as many people I can.

So I’ll jump on the phone with somebody who’s expressing that they have specific challenge, “No, I can help you with that. Let’s get on the phone for 10 minutes.” And then we do it but it’s hard for me to do that randomly. So we’ve started this whole membership group just last week and it’s like 47 bucks a month and you get a dollar for the first 30 days. The whole objective here is to just drop in and ask the question and then we can help you. It’s mostly discussed with the admin running the group. But I cannot make money on it, I’m just happy.

And then in that the more we have dialogue and you can go, “Hey, I really like the way he thinks. I like his team or I wanna work with them.” That’s when we started pulling people into something bigger. You can do the same thing. You don’t have to have membership but we can do the same thing. You know, get into groups, get into discussions online or figure out networking.

Start listening instead of talking so much and listening for people’s problem and you got to have at least this one key problem or three areas that you can speak into and say, “Hey, I can help you with that.” And just talk to him. Don’t say, I can sell you that. Just say, “I can help you with that or I know somebody who can. Let me talk to you a little bit more.” The key is when we start worrying about wasting our time, because what happens is, I promise you guys, most people who buy it for me have to pull it from me.

I’ll get on the conversation with them and I’m like “Oh this is great. Oh I’m super excited about that. Here’s how I see this working. Oh, we could totally do that. Here’s what I see you need to do.” And they’re like, “How would we do it?” “Well, here’s how we do it.” “How do we pay for that?” That’s all a lot of my conversation and it’s just because I give this genuine, 100%, sincere passion about helping people. They feel it and they see it.

So you really have to check yourself. If you’re not getting those types of responses because you’re showing up in a way that’s not you, you need to be crystal clear why do you want to help this person or do you want to help them? If not, why not? This is a place you got to do some soul searching and how can I help the most on the people.

Like the event that we were at last week when we met each other there, I had a specific objective. Over the course of two days, I wanted to connect a dozen people. So over the course of two days, I was looking for, “OK, you are a copywriter, you need copywriting, awesome!” “You’re looking for bench members over here, you’re looking for someone else to serve, awesome, let’s connect you here.”

So it has nothing to do with me. It was, how can everybody else get help and then people go “Man, Jim is awesome. He’s a great guy. He really helped me.” And you know what, it leads to referral or at least a phenomenal relationships and leads to people going…

You know, I was on interview last week and the person who was interviewing me, she said, “You know what the first time I met you three years ago were at a Mastermind group, I walked into the room and I was like “Yeah, I got a table with 10 people,” and I said, “I’m really struggling with my sales. I need some help.” She said, “All 10 people at the same time _____,” right? That’s the power of being able to serve and everybody knowing what you do.

Andrea: Oh gosh, Jim, that’s so great. What a beautiful redemption of your story and to see you living in such a…I mean, it’s not totally selfless, I mean, it’s not totally selfless. I don’t mean it be like I don’t know, but it is in the sense. It’s that just giving and desiring to help and all of that. It’s just totally different in your experience before and it’s really beautiful and it’s exciting. I’m just so happy for you and I’m happy for all the clients that you serve and the people of the world at large and for the voice of influence that you have in this area.

Jim Padilla: Thank you! Yeah, I appreciate that I honor that quietly giving my track record in the past. These last 10 years has been whole different life and the first 40 was done my way, the next 40, I wanted to do the God’s way. So that’s really what has been about. I speak a lot, I get interviewed a lot and I’m on a lot of stages and I always get one particular piece of feedback, a 100% at the time. It used to bother me because the macho male ego in me wanted to get something bigger but people always say to me, “Man, I can feel your heart,” or “I could sense so much you care.”

It used to bug me because I want them to say, “Man, you rock,” you know or whatever. But that has subsided. My ego is gone and now I valued us so much and I want people to know that I care. I’m authentic. I’m real because I stopped trying to be Jim the dad, Jim the mortgage broker, Jim the sales person, or Jim whoever. I’m just Jim now. I’m just Jim all the time. I represent time. This is me. If you don’t like this version of me that you’re hearing right now then you don’t like me because I don’t have another version.

Andrea: Hmmm love it! Alright, Jim, so how can people connect with you?

Jim Padilla: I’m in two particular resources on; one, we just talked about it with the membership group. I really recommend it if you’re looking for any kind of influence sales support. Again, it’s in the Facebook group. So basically what we have is if you go to Gain the Edge now, which is our company, gaintheedgenow.com/influence-lab.

I know it’s a mouthful, but gaintheedgenow.com/influence-lab. That’s the membership drop-in coaching group. It cost you a buck for 30 days. Ask as many questions as you want. We’ll you answer stuff. We’ll post videos for you. You can network with other people who are on the same journey, great place to just get connected and get support without having to spend a whole bunch of money on coaching.

The other thing I wanted to include is a resource that, you know, our team does a lot of back of the room sales at live events. So basically, we help people in crowded rooms make powerful decisions, which is not an easy thing to do. I did a video and a PDF on Seven Keys to Making People feel Comfortable in a one-on-one room, so did you feel like you’re alone? It’s about reading people and being able to help them feel like it’s just the two of you ____ 150 around you and you’re freaking out. That’s powerful. I don’t care where you’re at, _____ relationships in your marriage, with your team, and with your clients.

So that one is gaintheedgenow.com/sevenkeys, and that’s a download. Check in, you’ll get on a list. You can opt-out if you want after that but just get the resource, check out the video while you’re there. Check out our YouTube channel that will take you there. What you’re hearing right now, that’s what I do in my videos. It’s just me sharing whatever I can. I’m a content machine so I always have new ideas. I just try to give out as much as I can and get on our world and you get a lot.

Andrea: Love it! So Jim, thank you so much and we will definitely include all of those links in the show notes. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “I’ve got to get back to this,” then definitely go back to voiceofinfluence.net and you’ll find the show notes for this episode and Jim’s resources.

Thank you so much for spending time with us today, inspiring us for the way that you have really embraced this life of beauty and redemption and the way that you’re influencing others. Thank you so much!

Jim Padilla: Definitely! Thank you and just one last word to everybody, whatever it is you’re thinking that you can do your wrong, don’t make it happen. Go out and take your responsibilities. Just scale yourself up wherever you need to so that you can go out and do the work that you’ve been called to because the worlds need it. I need it. My soon-to-be grandson needs it. Go out and change people’s lives.

Andrea: Thank you, Jim!

Jim Padilla: Awesome!

 

 

 

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