Ditch the Doubt: 6 Simple Shifts to Step Into Your Power

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host DV Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on zvoparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have steps into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want.

0:47 You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life or vice versa. Learn more at WWWA. You don't divpork dot com and you can connect with TV ants contact eds gvpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, g w Park. Good morning listeners, It's Tuesday, and excited to be here with you. So it's it's just beautiful. And what I want to share with you is that we have a fabulous guest today and I'll be talking about the kind of circle somewhere in the middle of our conversation and so be on the lookout for that. And also I want to thank each and every one of you who have got our books Expert to Influencer, Entrepreneurs Gotten and many others that I've written in co authored, so really really appreciate you. For those of you who are still waiting in the wings, please get the box and I can guarantee you like you will get nuggets. Not only that, but the profits help us out to help entrepreneurs all across the globe through key a dot org. Malcolm Karen, thank.

2:18 You so much. It's great to be. Here, fantastic and to have you so tell us do you recall a moment or a person from your youth or childhood who have to pause. And mark on you? Oh, gosh, I mean, the people that come to my mind are my mom and dad. You probably get that answer a lot, but I can definitely say, I mean, there are other teachers and influences I've had in my life, but my mother and father who are still alive. They're in their eighties and they're doing great, so I still have, you know, many conversations with them throughout the week. It's kind of funny because a lot of my business development and my entrepreneurship comes from my father, and my mother will say, oh, I see so much of your father in you. And then when I talk to my dad, I have a very big creative side and that comes from my mother, and he'll say, oh, I see so much of your mother in you. So they see each other in me, and I definitely when I reflect on my own background and skills and superpowers, I can definitely connect it to them.

3:37 So as even growing up, what dreams did you have, like, you know, what did you want to become? Well, I can definitely say it was different than what I'm doing, and what I'm doing is perfect. So I just share that because I know a lot of times people may grow up with a certain vision that might not actually even be something that they want. It might even be something that they believe they have to pursue because of what they've been told or how they've been raised. And for myself, I envisioned when I was younger, I would go to college, I would get a good job, I would get married, I would have a family, and I would work in a job for somebody else, probably for my whole life. And that is definitely not what I'm doing. I did that for a while. I went to college, I went to grad school. I did work in both clinical health care and then corporate healthcare for about twenty years. And then I went to a yoga class in nineteen ninety nine and it changed my whole perspective on what I was supposed to be doing in the world. And while there's a lot that happened after that yoga clas in nineteen ninety nine, what I do now in the life I have now. I'm an entrepreneur.

5:06 I run my own business. I support people all over the world with my teaching methodologies, and I would I'm grateful for the path I've taken, and at the same time, I would never go back to that other life. It's in my memory but it definitely is not doesn't look anything like the life I lead now. Got it, So kind of let's revisit your time during clinical and the corporate healthcare. So while you were working, what would you say were some of the highlights of your career that you enjoyed.

5:47 Well, I've always been deeply interested in medicine and the body and movement and anatomy and all of the sciences. I was always very interested in that, and I originally thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. So when I went to undergraduate at Boston University I live in Boston, that's what I studied. And along the way, I decided, I don't think I want to just work with people's limbs. I think I want to work with the whole person. And so my initial clinical experiences were working in hospitals and rehabilitation centers as a social worker, a rehab counselor a discharge planner. And I loved that. I really thought that was my path, helping people who were injured or ill, helping them reach a higher potential. And I ended up getting recruited to work on the business side of healthcare, and I was really good at it. I was very organized.

6:48 I could present well, I could sell stuff. I understood software. So I worked my way up the corporate ladder in a consulting firm, and I enjoyed that. I really enjoyed managing a team. I enjoyed helping, you know, businesses reach their goals. I enjoyed the presentation side of things. The one thing that was missing, though, is I didn't always feel aligned with the goal of the company. And that was something that I really aspired to, but I didn't quite know how to. Did I just need to switch a job? What? What was What was my path to find that alignment?

7:36 So this is a tough question, you know, So what if question? What if you knew what you're doing right now, do you think you would have left the corporate life earlier than when you left? I I don't, I don't know. I mean I probably would have. I don't don't know if that's the answer you expected, but I probably would have. It. Really, the spark that really lit the flame was going to a yoga class. I had never gone to a yoga class before, and because of my medical background, my clinical experiences, my experiences on the business side of healthcare, when I went to take a yoga class. It was this perfect blend of all these different things I had done, but for that class I probably didn't even I mean, this was nineteen ninety nine when yoga was not as popular as it is in the United States, and I really had just experiences in the gym, and so when I saw this person teaching this yoga class and I saw it was this whole blend of movement and psychology and empowerment and confidence building, I thought, this is what I want to do. And honestly, if I had been exposed to that earlier, probably would have left earlier.

9:06 So that is a very insightful statement. There's so many clients who kind of come to me as I do leadership and executive coaching. They will say that they want compensation. A lot of millennials and gen zs. Gen Zs are quite a bit of self starters. They want compensation and they want meaning as well, because they're very much a line like, you know, I've got everything, I've risen to the letter in the management, but I'm finding that something is lacking. What would you tell those millennials and gen zs how to blend the two.

9:51 Yeah, well, I can approach it from the practical day to day and I can approach it from sort of the spiritual or part centered approach. Let's start with the spiritual or heart centered approach. I think it's important for people to identify what their vision is for their life, and that's usually connected to their values. And it's difficult sometimes to feel connected to a company's mission if you don't actually know yourself what's important to you, what are things that you value, what are and in those values that helps define who you are. The other piece of that, though, is spending time to think about what kind of impact do I want to have in the world. And a lot of times we get caught up in the day to day and we lose sight of, you know, kind of the Stephen Covey begin at the end in mind kind of mindset. So that's one part. The other thing I think about, especially for the kind of person you're describing, is is there when you do that work and you identify maybe some difference between what you're doing now and what you want to do, is there a way that you can start to feed that part of you while you're working your full time job, to start to experiment with feeding that part of you that wants something different, rather than thinking I need to completely quit the lifestyle

11:21 I'm in and completely shift to this other lifestyle. There's a lot to be said from a practical standpoint, but even from a spiritual, heart centered standpoint to experimenting on the side with something else and keep the full time gig going. Yeah, oh, I can't hear what you're saying. That's definitely very powerful because what happens is I've seen a lot of my clients kind of just got caught in the moment of passion and purpose, you know, that's what they think, and when they go and when the reality hits, it's it's a hot and a bitter pill to swallow. So starting something on the side and experimenting with it makes so much easier to explore and not have that pressure. Because if you just jump all in, nothing wrong with jumping in. I mean there's no right or wrong. People can go whatever works for you as long as as you mentioned right, you're aligned with your values and you're willing to do what it takes. If you make an informed decision, it takes the pressure off because now you're so aligned with your why that the what and how don't matter. So yeah, I.

12:45 Was just going to add one little piece too. It sparked from what you said. A lot of times people have this vision of what they think they want to do, and until the experiment with it on the side, they don't realize, you know what, this isn't quite it. So that's just another advantage to trying something out rather than ripping the band aid off and going to test out. Is this really a good fit for me? Absolutely, because recently I have to share this story about this young gentleman. He did very well financially, you know, at a very secure place, and now he doesn't have the freedom to do what he wants to do because he's in the leadership position and you've got to like account for the finances and all that. And then he decided to go to a startup. But now he's used to making decisions right, and in the startup he was being driven by somebody else in his life. Yeah, gosh, what did I end up doing? And that's exactly like going back to the point that you shared, is like, you know you're not going to know, Yeah, grass is always green on the other side, So experimentation is so powerful. Now, what would you tell people and they have these doubts whether they're in the right job, whether they're in the right path.

14:08 And then, well, what I've found in working with people I work with my primary area of expertise is training yoga teachers in a very specific way. The focus is helping them build their confidence, and that's a blend of skill based methodology and mindset, and this sort of thing comes up a lot in the context of that. What I've found in working with people, and this even harkens back to when I worked as a social worker and reob counselor, is the beliefs that we have about ourselves often drive the doubts we have. And oftentimes the beliefs we have about ourselves aren't necessarily something that we created.

14:52 It's something that was borne out of maybe a negative experience we had or something we were told. And so in a way, there's sort of a reclaiming of your power that becomes possible when you conquer a self doubt. It takes though self inquiry and introspection, and really I find working with someone because when anyone has self doubt, it's sort of this cycle of thinking and acting and being that is hard to break unless you have someone else, not even giving advice or sharing perspective. It's not that it's about someone else asking you questions about how you're viewing yourself in the world, and without that outside voice, it can be very difficult to break the cycle. It's almost like on a neuroscience level, there's like this sort of loop, this neural pathway that it's just ingrained in your brain. And that's why for myself and my own personal growth, I've had the biggest advances or breakthroughs when I've worked with a coach because it's someone else to ask me questions about how I'm operating in the world.

16:21 Well, that is so true, and you're absolutely right on that, because that's the first thing. Like when I took my first coaching class, Angela, like you know, my teacher first class, and she said that, like, listen, just because you're going to become a coach doesn't mean that you don't need growth, that you don't need guidance, Like you have blind spots today, you'll have blind spots thirty years down the road. And so I took that too, Hart And even today I've got my own coaches because who'll set me straight? So it's not just important to have somebody who's going to question, but it's also about somebody challenging you because, as you mentioned, with the brain, right like, we get so caught up in the comfort zone that we don't want to knock on the door of discomfort and brain loves to avoid the pain. So we talk about six part framework for building continents. Do share?

17:22 Yes. So over the years, when I've been working with against primarily yoga teachers in my program, I've found that there are different patterns of thinking, different common belief structures that people have. And most of the people I work with are women, and most of them are i would say, between the ages of maybe thirty five and sixty five, So just to kind of give you, give you an age and kind of an avatar of sorts. And the interesting thing is a lot of the challenges that they face really aren't necessarily just about teaching yoga. It's something about teaching yoga that brings out these limiting beliefs. So earlier this year I set down and I thought, there's a common thread here that I'm finding and working with people that really transcends the yoga teaching and really is more, as you're saying, a confidence framework of sorts. So I started to create and here's what I came up with.

18:23 If the idea is to move through your life feeling more confident, what I've found is there's a number of different practices that you can integrate into your life to begin to build and boost your confidence. And I call it a practice because it really is a practice, because every day we might have something that triggers us into feeling less than or feeling like we can't do something. So it really is just like a yoga practice. It's a confidence practice that we're practicing every day to be the kind of person who fill in the blank. So the first part is having some sort of daily yoga or movement practice. And I'm not going to say it has to be yoga. It could be anything. It could be going for a walk every day. There's so much, and I can go into it, but we probably don't have time. There's so much from the perspective of what happens in the body on an endercin level, a cardiovascular level, so many different systems of the body benefit from daily exercise and that affects our mood. So if I want to be the kind of person who is more confident, I must have some sort of daily movement practice not only to affect my inner biology, but also to affect my perception of myself, which is part of how I feel.

19:41 So yoga or daily movement is one. Number two is experimenting and giving yourself daily challenges. This has to do with what you're saying before these doubts, bumping up against these doubts. So let's say you're the kind of person who never thinks she could go to a movie by yourself or go out to dinner by yourself. But there's a brand new movie and you can't find anybody to go with you, and you say to yourself, you know what, I'm going to go to this movie by myself, and I don't care that it's something I don't typically do. That's an experiment and an experimenting. We bump up against these beliefs and we challenge them in real life with real experimentation and see what the outcome is. It's not to say we have to have it be a great experience, but just in the act of doing it, we start to chip away and dismantle those beliefs. Number three is self inquiry. Being the kind of person who's curious all of what we're talking about. When you were mentioning before, you know, kind of these neural pathways and the brain likes comfort. That's the sort of thing, especially if you want to feel more confident, that can hold you back.

20:49 So having a sense of self inquiry where you're naturally curious about what would be possible if I fill in the blank. Number four is meditation. And I know people are going to hear this and say, I can't meditate. My brain's too busy. So if the word triggers. You, that's very true. As we kind of continue the conversation, I'm going to kind of take a stop there and ask you. You said that meditation I can do it, and I hear that from so many different people. What's your you said, like experimentation and self inquiry? What would you like, you know, guide them, what would you tell them like, you know, even if it is like faminutes or some tricks of the trade that would help our audience.

21:40 Yeah, So I would say limiting the time is probably the best thing you can do if the concept concerns you, alarms you, doesn't brings up thoughts that you can't do it. So meditation Number one doesn't need to be something that's twenty minutes. It could be ten deep breaths. If the word is something you associate with something you can't do. What if you went for a walk without your phone, Like what if you drove home from work without any podcast on in the car, any music or anything. Like what if you lay in bed and the first moment you open your eyes, you just noticed your body. There's other context for meditation that don't have to match that person sitting cross legged for twenty minutes. It's a place, yeah, place to start. It's a pose to start.

22:39 And so what I'm hearing is at finding that silence because I'll share it to you. Usually I do take my phone with me. I make a point and not look at anything. But sometimes if it call comes through, or if it's the time, you know, I kind of break it out. I break off my walk into like segments that, Okay, there are friends, like sometimes you just don't have time to catch up with so you know that time you kind of catch up with them, and then twenty twenty five minutes is to just commune with nature. So one day it just so happened, like driving my car and it says that oh, we cannot connect your phone. I'm like, huh, what happened? Why it's not connecting? And then it struck me, oh, I don't have my phone with me, So it was my first instinct. It's amazing, like even though I'm an evid meditator for multiple, multiple years, and still my first instinct how our brains are trained, was like, oh, let me go back and get my phone.

23:42 And then I said, you know what, this is such a good experiment. I'm just going to go yeah, And it was very interesting to see how many times, like you know, as I'm walking, like it has just become a habit, you just kind of check whether the phone is in your pocket or like but you know, the I don't know what is it called that the belt or the little pocket thing that you kind of put it on your waist when you're going out with you to put in your phone and your keys and all of that. So that was very interesting and now I just kind of do it. I do have the phone, I leave it in the car and sometimes I'll take it, but I make a point not to just touch it.

24:26 And it's amazing how we can train our brain and become comfortable with it. Yeah, I think you know. Again, as a yoga teacher, I can say silence is probably one of the most powerful spaces for people to be in. From a nervous system standpoint, We're constantly stimulated with so much noise and so much stuff that to simply be in silence is for so many people something they very rarely experience. And whether it's by half instance, like what you describe, or whether it's something that maybe they don't have control over, like they're sitting in a waiting room in the doctor's office, or they come to a yoga class and the teacher's not using music and there's a few minutes before class where the room is quiet. It can have such a profound effect on the nervous system on the body simply because there it's just so different from what people typically experience.

25:33 That is true, And I like what you're saying, is that just kind of experimenting, even if it is one minute, and sometimes it's so important to have that silence and taking that pause because that pause can help your brain to reset. And that's a practice that I do myself, like you know, throughout the day, if I can at the top of the hour or like whenever're like, you know, okay, if I'm in the flow, I do it, but then take a break and just kind of unplug. So working on it throughout the day. So tell us one of the remaining.

26:14 Yeah, so number five, there's two more, number five. And is very quick check like you could you kind of check like your mic is just having a lot of. Distributed Okay, yeah, I haven't better. Okay, that better? Uh yeah, so there's two more. Uh. Number five is one of my favorite ones visualization. You know, when we were little kids, we would dream all the time. Matter of fact, I can distinctly remember when I was little, I wanted this doll, and I used to go for a walk every day to the candy store and I used to, uh think really hard in my mind. If I think hard enough, when I go around the corner to the store, the dolls going to be there. I just thought I had this superpower that I could will this item into the three D. You know, when we grow up, we don't do that anymore. But yet, when we were talking earlier about changing jobs and what we want in our life, starting that as a visualization is a way that we can start to bring that to life and start to materialize. What are the steps we need to take. When you watch any world class athlete, what do they always say when they win the thing?

27:33 They always say, I saw this in my mind. I saw myself doing this. I mean there's so many examples, not just athletes, but so many examples of people who excel and they speak about that in those moments of right after the win or whatever it is, I saw this. So visualization super important. And then number six, the last one is healthy habits. And I know people are just going to think, oh, die in an exercise, and to a certain extent, yes, but there's so many other things we can do throughout our day that allow us to build almost like the infrastructure of someone who is living in a healthy way. And a lot of what we've talked about here, I mean, if we just and this is speaking for myself, not as giving advice or anything, but just these ideas of movement, every day experimenting, having a mind that's open and curious to self inquiry, daily meditation or being in silence, visualization, and healthy habits that are meaningful to you that would build a sense of self worth, self value, and with that comes confidence. I am confident as I move through the world, because I have created this lattice work of steps that I take, of ways that I operate that allows me to tap into this empowered way of being.

28:56 Absolutely some very wonderful nuggets over there, Karen. So now there may be a new mom, there may be a busy executive, there may be a busy entrepreneur, and they may say that Karen and Dvia, you know, this is all val and good what you're talking about, But what if I only have twenty minutes time or not even that much time during every day? What if I'm working thirteen forteen hours or you know, there are a lot of circumstances when people don't have time. So what would you. Tell that. Person, like, you know, what infrastructure could they build in that limited time and the constraints?

29:41 Yeah, so you know, even even in our busyness, so even the busy mom, the busy executive, there's an approach to doing that can be infused with a lot of the themes we're talking about here. So you know, I can even again speaking for myself, on days where I have a lot of things going on, I can wake up in the morning and just throw myself at all those things and by the end of the day completely collapse. Or I can wake up in the morning, see I have a full schedule and move through the day in a mindful way that almost in a way prioritizes my energy in service to all the things I need to do.

30:26 Now I can certainly say I have done both things, and I definitely on the days that I do the latter, I get to the end of the day and I feel fulfilled instead of depleted. So that's just from a high level something I can suggest. I mean mindfulness. We haven't really talked about that in particular, but that is a way of being that infuses all that we do, and it allows us to move through our day without constantly feeling like we're frantic and we're just running out of energy. There's a way to do it, but it's really, at its most basic, it's really just awareness being aware.

31:12 You know, I think about that busy executive. I was that busy executive at one point. I can sit with my laptop wolfing down my lunch, or I can take ten minutes, turn off my laptop and eat my lunch mindfully. Like that's just one small example. The only other thing I'll say is even though we're talking about these things and it might sound like it's a lot of time, it's really not a lot of time. When you start to build these things into your life, that's how something becomes a lifestyle, not just a habit on its own. So if I wake up in the morning and I do a little meditation or visualization that takes two minutes, and the more I do it, the more it becomes part of my life. So now I'm not looking at things saying I don't have the time. I'm looking at things and saying I've integrated these things into my life because that's the kind of person I am. And that's how we shift our identity.

32:13 M So bringing awareness into what you're doing. And when you bring the awareness, then it's not that like, oh, you're passing through the life. What you're doing is in service of rather So for example, you may be you know, it may be busy that oh I don't get to sleep, verses I'm blessed if you're talking about the mom I'm blessed to have my child and being grateful about the blessings that you have. And similarly, like if you're an executive or if you're a professional or entrepreneur that at the end of the day, what I'm doing is going to benefit someone. My input could be the output for someone, and then that's being in service really really hits home.

33:02 Yeah, And I mean there's even science around gratitude and tapping into gratitude and how that affects our cardiovascular system, our underconsistem And at the same time, I don't want people to hear that and think I don't even have time to be grateful, or of course I'm grateful that I have a baby, how is this going to help me? So I totally support anything any of us can do to tap into gratitude. And at the same time, I also appreciate that people are stressed, people are tapped out, people are super busy. I do think about moms a lot because I think being a mother, especially if you're a mother that works, but even if you're a mother that stays home, that's a very unique role where you're always putting yourself second or third or fourth, depending on how many kids you have. So it's not just about the rose colored glass, approaching on rose colored glasses and saying I just need to walk around and be grateful.

34:04 It really does though, start with having an honest conversation with yourself about what's missing, what kind of life do I want to lead? What kind of things do I value? And starting with something I mean. One of the things I talk about a lot with the women that I work with in my program is the magic of momentum. When we start to do something, it could just be one thing, we start to build momentum. And when we build momentum, we feel like we're making progress. And when we feel like we're making progress, we tend to stick with whatever it is we're doing. And that is why it is magic. It just takes that one or two step process to get started, and pretty soon you know, we can start to change absolutely.

34:52 And self inquiry is the key that annoying you know what you want, and when you're bringing that awareness, it also kind of tells you. Like so one of the stories, like you know, one of my client moms like a mom client, or like you know, she was an executive and she was like, I'll ever get meantime. It's like I'm always putting everybody first and never get me time. So then as you started out, like you know, talking about values, when we talked about values, right, there on the top of the list were her kids and her husband and her work. So then it was when she aligned with her value, she was able to see that the time she was spending with them was her may time.

35:45 It's and that's the definition, like you know, like you were talking about the rose colored classes, it's it's about being very clear, having that clarity, that bringing that awareness that meatime just doesn't have to be like, you know, a two hours spend by myself. It can be in the moment when you are in that moment, and when you're experiencing life. To mean, that's the best gratitude that you can have, because you're not passing through life, you're living your life. Yeah, very much. So. I mean, similarly, I've worked with women who want to enroll in my program and then they'll say, oh, but I can't spend the money on myself because I could otherwise be doing something for my kids. And so while yes, I see that, I also ask them, you know, well, if you were to do this thing, how would that would that help you in some way be better for your kids? And for a lot of these women, the fact that they haven't really invested in themselves from a time or some other perspective for a long time to think about doing that actually helps them realize that it would make them better for their family because now they're feeding a part of them that maybe hasn't been tended to for a long time.

37:13 Absolutely, because now it's building them up. And it goes back to I think so one of those Zen stories that when your cup is full, then you can pour for somebody else, but if your cup is empty, you can pour from it. So invessing on oneself is such a powerful thing, and that goes back again to finding your values and finding even that twenty twenty five minutes of time or even fifteen minutes of your time, and then once you get started, you have the momentum. So do how can people connect with you? Where can they reach you? Yeah? So my website is bearbones Yoga dot com, just like it sounds, barebones yoga dot com. I'm on both TikTok and Instagram same thing and bare bones Yoga, and I do have a podcast, and of course most of my content is directed towards yoga teachers. So if someone is watching listening that is a yoga teacher, you're going to find a lot there for you and At the same time, a lot of what I share is about mindset and confidence and personal development, so there's always content there as well for people who are not yoga teachers.

38:26 Would you like to share any last tasks with her audience? I guess the final thing I would say is to believe in yourself really starts on the inside and has nothing to do with anything you're seeing or comparing yourself to anybody else, And that we all have such amazing potential and tapping into it really is our birthright is to be out there in the world in as bold and as confident a way as we can be. That is, you don't need anybody's permission to do that. That is one hundred percent absolutely what you were born to do.

39:14 Thank you so much, Karen, Thank you everyone for joining, and thank you on for the making the show technically possible be veiled. Thank you the lost time, Thank you, thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence. With your host d V Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Dvpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dotwpark dot com and you can connect with w at contact at dwpark dot com. We look forward to you're joining us next week.