Confidence

97 Humble Rising Transcript Dec 14 2023

[00:00:00] Arivee: We all deserve to have fulfilling careers and lives. We deserve to experience joy, peace, and freedom – all of those things that make us feel truly alive.

[00:00:20] Arivee: It takes a lot of courage for us to take the reins in our lives and take action that honors the deepest parts of ourselves. In this current season of life, it takes a lot of courage to lean into growing, learning, and to know when it's time to make a change. I'm Arivee, a first-generation Latina mom of three, and a life and high-performance coach to women just like you in this podcast.

[00:00:51] Arivee: This podcast is for all of us looking to grow, learn, and explore what a joyful and fulfilling life and career can look like. We're going to go deep and honor our truth in this podcast, and the best thing is, we're gonna do it together. So welcome to the Humble Rising podcast.

[00:01:23] Arivee: In this part one of a two-part series, we are talking all about confidence. I get asked so many times, "What is confidence? How can I be more confident? Why can't I be more confident? What do I have to do to get more confident?" And I wanted to take the time to address some of that with practical ways that you actually can build confidence.

[00:01:54] Arivee: But before I do, we must address, maybe it's not the elephant in the room, it's not an elephant in the room, it's just a fact that women are constantly told they need to be more confident. So I wanna address that verse because I'm not talking about that kind of confidence. Where nothing you do is ever gonna be quote-unquote, confident enough in the workforce.

[00:02:15] Arivee: I want us to talk a little bit about what the research has been saying and then move on to, okay, yeah, okay, I got that. And how can I build confidence for me, for myself, for my well-being not for my job, not for my employer, but for me as a person. How do I build that part of confidence? So we know that women are told to show self-confidence at work, that it's a key strategy for progressing in their careers, for climbing the ladder and just becoming successful at work.

[00:02:48] Arivee: We hear that a lot, right? Be more assertive, you know? Watch your voice. Watch your tone. And we do this knowing that we need to be careful, right? We need to be careful because we. I'm gonna say women, and I'm gonna say women of color, right? We can't afford not to be quote unquote likable. We have to still be quote unquote warm, right?

[00:03:15] Arivee: We can't appear, quote unquote intimidating. We can't be quote unquote too aggressive, right? And there's some really insightful research on this, um, that was published in. The Harvard Business Review. It's an article you can get online, and it was published last year, but it's based on this research where confidence was found to be weaponized against women.

[00:03:42] Arivee: We already knew that, but it's always affirming to have data to back you up. Always a good thing. Right Now, what these researchers found was that when women. Don't achieve their career goals. It's attributed to their lack of self-confidence. Right. And then if women show high levels of confidence, you guessed it, we risk going over the top and we're perceived as doing that.

[00:04:09] Arivee: Like it's too much. And if we doing too much or it's perceived as too much. Right. We're not too much. It's a, the perception said it is too much. Then that viewed as us lacking confidence because the view is that we're overcompensating for our lack of confidence by being too much. It's like you just can't win right now.

[00:04:30] Arivee: You can check out that HBAR article online. It is called How Confident is Weaponized Against Women. So go check that out. And I'm mentioning it very briefly because I don't want this to be a regurgitation of that article or the research. If you wanna delve deeper into that research, I don't want this to be.

[00:04:48] Arivee: That kind of episode. But I'm mentioning the research because here again, as we often talk about here on this podcast, there are obstacles and there are [00:05:00] challenges that we have to navigate where how you show up, how we show up is constantly judged. There are constant judgments about how we show up, how we talk, how we look, all of that stuff.

[00:05:13] Arivee: And so I want us to focus on ourselves. I want you to focus on you in this episode. We cannot control other people's judgments of us or their perceptions of us. We cannot control what they are going to say. We cannot control what they are going to think. We cannot control other people, people. We cannot do it, but we still have some agency.

[00:05:39] Arivee: Yes, we do. We got a lot of agency. You know, that we can work on how to actually. Feel and be more confident, not for anyone else, not to appease someone else, not to feel better about someone else's opinion of us. It's not about that. We're talking about working on how to [00:06:00] actually feel and be more confident for ourselves, for our wellbeing, for our peace of mind, for us.

[00:06:08] Arivee: We're not trying to spiral into the depths of not feeling good enough, smart enough. Not feeling capable enough. Okay, so we're going to talk about what confidence really means practically, like how do you build that? Because I think it's a misunderstood term. Even though it may be weaponized against us by others, which it is.

[00:06:28] Arivee: It doesn't mean that we have to use it as a weapon against ourselves. We can use the term confidence and we can make it mean something to empower us. To empower us to show up exactly as we want, and in a way that is real and that is true for us, and in a way that makes our lives better, makes our lives better at work, at home, and our communities.

[00:06:57] Arivee: You name it. So [00:07:00] if you are one of those people. Who? Ask yourself, how do I become more confident? Or how can I be more confident? Or why can't I be more confident? Right? Those questions I asked a few minutes ago, this one's gonna be for you. All right

. This episode's gonna be for you. So let's start with a good old definition of confidence from, yes, you guessed it, the dictionary.

[00:07:25] Arivee: Let's just start there just to ground ourselves in something, some common language right from the dictionary. So Merriam-Webster defines confident as two things. One full of conviction, and they put a colon there and it says certain. And then number two is having assurance and self-reliance. Now think of those two things.

[00:07:48] Arivee: Think of those two things full of conviction, being certain, and having or showing assurance and self-reliance. How could you practice those [00:08:00] things? In real time, like tomorrow or today, like how can you actually make those things real in your life and feel them right? How can you feel more certain? How can you be more certain of an outcome?

[00:08:15] Arivee: How can you be, feel, and or be more assured or be or feel more self-reliant? That's confidence. So how could you get those? How could you practice those things? So I'm gonna share with you six ways. I'm gonna share three in this episode. Three. In the next ones, I'm gonna share with you a total of six ways to practice this.

[00:08:37] Arivee: The more you practice, the better you get at anything. It's not about perfection, it's about moving the needle a little closer each time to where you wanna be and how you wanna feel. All right. Don't come at me, you overachievers with this perfectionism thing, okay? And remember, there are strengths in perfectionism, right?

[00:08:58] Arivee: We [00:09:00] love that you're ambitious. We love it. I'm like that too, but we have to harness it so it does us good. So it serves us. We don't want it to be harmful to us. We don't want it to harm our self-esteem. We don't want it to be something that we use as a weapon against ourselves. Right? We wanna harness perfectionism and the strength of perfectionism for the good.

[00:09:21] Arivee: Right? So, are you ready? Here are three ways I'm gonna give you to practice and build. Confidence. Number one way to practice is to make and keep promises to yourself. Now, can I tell you how this comes up all the time in coaching? I mean almost every single client, I will say almost not every way, almost every is this concept of time.

[00:09:49] Arivee: I'm of time. I wanna take back control of my time. I don't do the things I say I'm gonna do because I don't have time. Right. Or I get lost [00:10:00] in the time I get lost doing something else. Something else takes longer. Okay. That could be a whole other episode on that, but I'm gonna focus us very specifically on making and keeping promises to yourself.

[00:10:12] Arivee: Okay? So say you wanna go for a workout, you wanna exercise, you made a date with friends to go out for dinner or lunch or coffee or something. Maybe you, I. In a break for yourself or to go for a walk, or you've decided, Hey, I have a cutoff time for when I want to be done with work every day. Or maybe it's three days a week, whatever it is for you.

[00:10:36] Arivee: And because I wanna go home to the kids or I wanna be done so I can go do something else with my life. 'cause work is not my life, it's just part of my life. And maybe it's, you need to schedule appointments to go to the doctor. All you people that don't even get physicals, like you guys need to get physicals.

[00:10:51] Arivee: You ladies need to get physicals. We all do. We need to take care of our health. If we don't have our health, we have nothing. Okay? Schedule your dentist appointments, all those things that, and, and for your [00:11:00] kids, right? Where you're like, oh, oh my gosh. Another week went by and I didn't schedule what I had to schedule to take care of the things I had to take care of.

[00:11:07] Arivee: Right? Now, what I'm saying is those are all things sometimes you need to do. One, you don't put it in your calendar. You're not making the time for it. No one has time for these things. No one. We all have 24 hours in the day, okay? All of us have a lot going on. You gotta carve out the time in your calendar to make these things happen.

[00:11:29] Arivee: You gotta write 'em down, put 'em in your calendar. Always put more time than you think they'll take, because it always takes more time. Often times it does, and then you keep that appointment. You hold yourself accountable and you keep that promise to yourself. Right Now, some of them that I mentioned, some of the things I mentioned are more about you moving your body, getting a mental break.

[00:11:50] Arivee: You go with friends and actually set, you know, when you say, I'm gonna meet up with you next Friday, actually text them and say, Hey, are we meeting up on Friday? Like, what [00:12:00] time? Like actually go through those steps. So you're fulfilling that commitment. You're fulfilling that promise to yourself. And in that case to a good friend, right?

[00:12:10] Arivee: When you say you want to cut off work at five-thirty-six pm whatever time it is for you, but you consistently don't do that, it doesn't feel great. So instead you have to actually set that time and be like, Hey, okay, maybe I can't do five days a week, but three days a week I am off the clock at five. Hey, if I have to jump online later, if there's something urgent coming through, sure, I will do that.

[00:12:33] Arivee: But my routine now is three days a week. I'm off the clock at six P.M. or five 30. Again, whatever time it works for you, you have to think about the things that work best for you if within the context of your life. But don't tell me nothing will work. Don't stone, don't come to me with that if you have not experimented with something, okay?

[00:12:54] Arivee: You have to try something and be open. To trying something, and then if it doesn't work, tweaking [00:13:00] it instead of throwing it away, right? So the point here is that you become more certain of an outcome. You become more self

-reliant, more self-assured. When you actually hold yourself to your own commitments, you make them and you hold yourself to them, you keep your word to yourself.

[00:13:17] Arivee: That's how you become to trust yourself a lot more. After you come to really trust yourself more deeply because you know you will do what you said you would do for your, especially for yourself. You know, you will do what you said you would do for yourself. You're building that trust with yourself. And again, like I mentioned, this does apply with your commitment to others, right?

[00:13:45] Arivee: Don't be the flaky friend. Please don't be the flaky friend. Like don't. Don't, don't do that. And you know, I say that because this is a very long time ago, when I was a junior associate in my first year at a law firm, I was that flaky [00:14:00] friend to the friends who weren't doing that. Like to my train suits were at law firms.

[00:14:05] Arivee: That's like you saw each other whenever, but my, my friends who weren't, I totally would be like, oh, I can totally meet up at six P.M.. And then I would flake and be like, can't make it because I was at work. Right. Can we just do our best not to be flaky friends, though generally, I know things come up, but let's just do our best to be there for our friends, because you want to continue that two-way relationship, right?

[00:14:29] Arivee: Just don't do it. Please don't be a flaky friend. Keep your word to your friends. Keep your word to yourself. Show up for yourself over and over and over. That's how you'll increase and strengthen that self-assurance. Make yourself, make yourself the priority here and just practice the SHIT out of that.

[00:14:55] Arivee: I'm telling you, if you do that over and over, it gets easier to do. It [00:15:00] gets easier to do. The more you do it, the less discomfort it causes, the less. Mind drama. It causes. I'm telling you, the more that you make commitments to yourself and hold yourself to them, the more you believe you can do it the next time and the next time, and the next time, and the next time.

[00:15:18] Arivee: That is confidence because you're building certainty. You're building self-assurance. You're building self-reliance. Okay? The second way to build confidence is preparation, because preparation is queen. Notice I did not say king. Because I'm done with the patriarchy, like I'm just, I'm over it. So preparation is queen.

[00:15:43] Arivee: Now, I could do, again, I could do a lot of episodes on just preparation and all the different kinds, but I'm gonna really focus us here in this episode on just a few aspects of how preparation is key for building confidence in [00:16:00] life, just generally in life and for and for work. So. If we take the general life bucket first, preparation could be, you know, sometimes you get, you get overwhelmed or you are feeling a little stressed or there's some dread or some uncertainty about the week ahead, right?

[00:16:37] Arivee: What if you decide, you know what, I'm gonna prep for the week ahead. I'm gonna prep for my week, and during the week I'm gonna prep every night for the day ahead. I'm gonna see what's on my calendar, but I'm not gonna stop there. 'Cause a lot of people do that. They just check what's on their calendar for the next day, or they check what's on the calendar for the following week, but they don't take it a step [00:17:00] further.

[00:17:00] Arivee: When I say preparation. I'm not talking about just checking the calendar to see what's coming. I'm talking about you're checking your calendar to see what's coming, and then you're setting an intention for, for example, the week ahead. So if you see your calendar and if you have children, you have a bunch of kids activities, you have some work deadlines, you have some critical meetings, maybe you wanna think about your week a little differently and set some intention around where you're gonna focus your energy each day.

[00:17:29] Arivee: If I have an important kid activity, um, from three to five or from five to seven, or whatever it is, whatever it is for you, like, how am I going to manage my energy that day so that I can show up from five to seven the way I need to show up? Or how am I gonna manage my energy through the day so that when I'm, I had dinner time, I'm not freaking exhausted, and then I have a short fuse with my children?

[00:17:55] Arivee: How can I manage my energy for that day? Chances are you're gonna wanna have some [00:18:00] you alone time in there somewhere in your day, especially, especially if you're coming home to children, especially if you're coming home to young children who over touch you, who over touch you and everything is mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy.

[00:18:17] Arivee: And even when you respond, it's Mommy, mommy, mommy. Right? We need to be managing our intentions for the things we do each day. The energy we have to do them and the energy we need to keep so that we have something left for the people that we love when we get home. Now, if you don't have children, oh my gosh.

[00:18:40] Arivee: You come home and you just lay on that couch and you're, oh, I just breathe a sigh of relief. You know, which is great too, right? One is not better than the other. They're just different. But for you, if you don't have children, how are you gonna manage your energy so you don't burn out? You may not have kids, but you have a personal life, right?

[00:18:58] Arivee: You have deep relationships [00:19:00] with people. You wanna keep those up. You wanna keep prioritizing your own. Well-being, how are you gonna manage your energy so you don't burn out? Right? But the key here is preparing for the week ahead. Seeing what's ahead, seeing how am I gonna manage my energy? How am I gonna manage my time?

[00:19:16] Arivee: How my goal to manage my intentions for each thing that I have. Like if there's a meeting on Wednesday and you're like, Ooh, I actually have to double check with someone about something about that meeting, you gotta do that on Monday or do it before then. Like this is what I'm talking, we have to take a step further than just checking the calendar ahead to quote unquote prepare.

[00:19:37] Arivee: That's not preparation, that's checking. Preparation is going deeper. It's going much deeper than that. Okay. The other piece that I wanna talk about, that's the first aspect of preparation I wanted to mention to you. There. You could go a lot deeper there, but I want to get to the second point 'cause I think it's important.

[00:19:55] Arivee: Now, when we talk about work preparation, meaning you're preparing for a presentation, [00:20:00] you're preparing for, maybe it's a really important meeting and you're presenting at it. Maybe you have slides. How many of you all create slides? I do. All of us do, right? Like if you have a presentation, you hand slides.

[00:20:14] Arivee: By the way, I secretly love slides. I'm just saying. I know it

's kind of weird, but I secretly do love slides and, and I did not like them like nine years ago. I will say that. But I, I do like them now, so I'll, I'll put a pin in that for now. But just FYI, like, I'm a little, I'm a, I'm a slide, I savor the slide type of format, but the presentation, you have a bunch of slides.

[00:20:35] Arivee: You better be practicing what you're gonna say in that meeting. Right? That's preparation. I. You practice what you're going to say. You practice how well you say it. You literally practice the words you're going to say in the meeting. You make yourself a script girl, a script. Maybe it's bullets. What I do is I'll write down in like a sticky note.

[00:20:58] Arivee: Number 1, 2, 3, like the three things I [00:21:00] have to hit, right, like words to myself and the words trigger what I practiced. Like the words trigger my brain to say, oh, remember those? That sentence, those two sentences, those that, that one takeaway. That's how I do it. Other people do it differently. The point is you are practicing.

[00:21:15] Arivee: You are basically in the meeting before you're in the meeting, you are replicating that feeling of being on. You're replicating that feeling, Replicating it over and over and over and over and over and over. And I know I'm being repetitive and over and over. So when you get to the meeting, you know that like the back of your hand.

[00:21:34] Arivee: You are not going to be the person that is unprepared. You may not know the answer to every question. That's all good. That's okay, but you've prepared for that meeting. You've done your best to anticipate the questions you would get because you've done the whole work to ask other people, Hey, what do you think I might be asked?

[00:21:53] Arivee: What do you think I might be asked? And you do that because you have relationships with [00:22:00] people who care about you, right? So not only are you practicing the actual art of giving that presentation and the science of it. You are preparing for the meeting, also the content, the questions you could be asked.

[00:22:13] Arivee: You're doing that all in advance. Again, to build the certainty that you will be giving your best and you'll show up as your best. You are sure that that meeting will be successful. You're increasing those odds in your favor when you practice and you prepare in that way, right? One other example I can give you is.

[00:22:33] Arivee: Sometimes, and a lot of people experience this where you're giving a presentation to a senior group, some kind of senior group, whether it's partners or whomever, and you are just getting peppered with questions like you have this beautiful slide deck, you've prepared all your talking points, you say a sentence, and it's just question, question, question, question, question, question, question.

[00:22:55] Arivee: Right? In that case, what do you do? You've prepared, oh my gosh. But you don't get to [00:23:00] actually practice what you prepared, but you are practicing what you prepared. Because in those situations, you did all the work so you could answer those questions and you did all the work. So you could maybe say, what I do know is X,, right?

[00:23:13] Arivee: What I do know is X.. So you can be confident in what you do know because your preparation and if you're being rushed and being prepared with questions and you feel like, uh. I have not gotten to like a key takeaway here. Like I need to communicate at least one or two things that I need them to know.

[00:23:31] Arivee: Then you have prepared that in advance. You got your top three, you got your top two, you got your number one. Or if you have like no time you have, you literally have 20 seconds. You have to explain and stay that key takeaway, right? You don't just rush through the rest of the slides. You don't have time for that, and that just is rushed.

[00:23:48] Arivee: That's not how you wanna end that meeting. You're being rushed. You are not going to feel rushed. You've practiced narrowing it down to one takeaway, maybe two or three [00:24:00] depending on how much time you, you are given at the end of that presentation, you've practiced that. So when it's like, oh, we only have 20 seconds left or 30 seconds, or I'm mindful of time, we have only women that left.

[00:24:10] Arivee: You are like, I'm ready. I got my one, two takeaways. This is what I need from you, from this group and this is why it matters. This is why it's important and this is what I need. So you get what you need to get outta that meeting so you can go do your work. That's practice that is. Practice to prepare for that kind of meeting, right?

[00:24:28] Arivee: And your confidence of that meeting will go well, increases exponentially when you do that. You prepare for the meeting, prepare for the meeting, prepare for the meeting, and practice what you're gonna say. Practice the key takeaway, practice the different scenarios. It sounds like a lot, but once you do it repeatedly, it becomes not simply nature, but it, but it becomes more predictable.

[00:24:51] Arivee: Like, you know, you know kind of what you need to be doing, what you need to be focusing on. So one example for you that I'll share that's more personal is I [00:25:00] recently took up singing and piano. With my daughter, who is six, who has also taken up singing and piano. She's been asking me for the past two years to put her in singing and piano, and I've been avoiding it just because, um, well, one is, one of her instructors said she, she was too young.

[00:25:18] Arivee: This was the first year that she could actually do voice lessons and then piano. I said, no, she had the attention span, but she, she does absolutely does. We both, I decided that instead of me just waiting for her in the lobby while she was taking lessons, I said I was going to take them too. So they offer adult and children's lessons, and so I take singing while she takes piano, and then when she takes piano, I take singing.

[00:25:45] Arivee: I, we have the singing teacher now. I will tell you that we

decided to do the recital. There's a recital four months after you start. Yeah, there's a recital each semester. So we started in September and there was a recital this past weekend and the weekend [00:26:00] before that, and we decided that we were gonna do the recital and for piano for that first recital, I played Jingle Bells, not the whole Jingle Bell song.

[00:26:11] Arivee: Maybe just like a few lines of the Jingle Bell song. But can I tell you something? I practiced the SHIT out of Jingle. Bells, like I, I practiced. So much like I have a keyboard and I practice on that keyboard constantly so I could memorize where my fingers had to be, how it was supposed to sound, my pace, my cadence.

[00:26:35] Arivee: I practiced so much that by the time I got to the recital and I also had people watch me, like I had my kids watch me, I had a few friends watch me like play, so I could used people watching me play, so I could get used to that feeling, that little bit of nervousness and when I performed it, I did fine.

[00:26:51] Arivee: It was great. I remember getting to sitting down at that piano at the recital. And remember, I'm an adult, okay? I am an, I'm a [00:27:00] full on adult. I'm a mother, I'm an adult, and I was sitting next to six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eleven-year-olds who are playing long pieces, mind you.

[00:27:09] Arivee: Very long pieces, very long, beautiful pieces while my name was called and I sat down. At that bench, at the piano, I had sat down. I had practiced how I was gonna sit. I practiced. The first thing I would do is I would lift my hands up so my palms are facing like to the opposite wall, and I would gently press my hands and my fingers on the keys that I needed to be playing for my first set.

Here's the proofread transcript:

[00:27:34] Arivee: Right? And you know what? Once I felt that piano and I touched those keys, like I felt confident because I had done that so many times. I had practiced that exact thing so many times I would be at the keyboard and be like, again, talking to myself again, again, again, again, because I wanted to make sure that when I got [00:28:00] to the recital I felt really good and prepared for that recital.

[00:28:05] Arivee: The same thing with singing. We did a singing duet. My daughter and I sang "Once Upon a December" from the movie Anastasia. When my singing teacher gave us that song, I was like, what? That is high. And the last line is really hard. I was like, can we get like a, take a song or like something like an R&B ish Beyonce from back in the day?

[00:28:26] Arivee: Nope. "Once Upon a December." And my daughter likes it, so I said, "We'll do it." I really never sure east. So my daughter and I practiced that song a lot, to the point where in the car, my son would be like, "Oh gosh, this song again," like he just was done with the song. We practiced incessantly and we had to practice the last line of the song, the key changes, and it goes higher and higher.

[00:28:54] Arivee: And it's really difficult for someone like me. You know, I have an upper range, but [00:29:00] it's a challenge for me, right? Like I have to know when to take my breath and control my breathing so that I can hit those notes and my daughter too. And so we practiced that so much and we actually went to take a last-minute lesson with our voice teacher to make sure we had it right.

[00:29:19] Arivee: So we practiced it as if we were performing that day. And we practiced and practiced. And then the day of the recital, we sang the song together and it was so much fun. It was a lot of fun. We nailed that last line, but we hadn't been nailing it like a month before. We had to practice to get that right.

[00:29:42] Arivee: And it just came together really nicely because we had prepared and practiced so many times. So that's just, these are just some examples to give you a sense of what I mean when I say you practice to prepare. This is what I'm talking about. Right. I'm not, you don't, you don't have to be taking voice lessons or creative lessons.

[00:29:58] Arivee: Right. But [00:30:00] it is the same idea because when a lot of those kids who had been at the piano recital playing the piano or singing, the owner of the studio, or rather the music academy, she had said, "I remember, you know, the ten-year-old who started when they were six? And she's like in the progress, oh my goodness, how much you've all grown in your capabilities and your skills is amazing."

[00:30:25] Arivee: And I believe that because they're practicing piano every week. They're coming in for voice lessons. They're showing up for themselves because they want to get better. And they know that if they got a recital, they gotta practice. They have to practice. So when they get to the recital, they feel assured, they feel certain that it's gonna go well and it will 'cause they've prepared and they've made it.

[00:30:52] Arivee: So, which brings me to the last way to build confidence in this episode. I'll share three more in the [00:31:00] next one. It is practicing getting out of your comfort zone. So you may feel like your whole job is a stretch. You may feel like your whole job is outside of your comfort zone, and I want to address that right now.

[00:31:18] Arivee: I want you to do something for me. No, no, not for me. For yourself. For yourself. I want you to write down everything about your job that you do. Everything you do in your job, the tasks, like what's in your job description and then what are the things you do? Because we, you know, that so many of you do way more than what's in your job description.

[00:31:38] Arivee: I want you to write it all down. What do people go to you for? What advice are you giving? What meetings are you in? Like, what are your contributions and what do you do every day? So once you do that, like literally write that down. If you've never done this exercise, this is something to do so you can appreciate yourself, right?

[00:31:54] Arivee: And be like, "Damn, I do all of that." Yes, you do. Sometimes you don't get credit for it, right? But [00:32:00] you know, you do it, you know, you contribute and you know what you're doing is significant and that's important. Write that all down and then tell me if based on that list you have, is all of that, is all of that really a stretch for you?

[00:32:12] Arivee: Is all of that really outside of your comfort zone, or is only some of it outside of your comfort zone? Maybe none of it is honestly, but I'm talking to those of you who, when I say get outta your comfort zone, your immediate reaction probably was, "What are you talking about? I'm always outta my comfort zone at work."

[00:32:26] Arivee: I'm talking to you. Write down what you do. Even the things are not in your job description. Write them down. Then based on that, tell me, is all of that outside of your comfort zone? Is all of that a stretch or is only some of it a stretch? We have to be really careful about the stories we tell ourselves and what we catastrophize in our minds.

[00:32:47] Arivee: We gotta be really careful about the mind drama. Really careful about that. That thing can spiral and can throw you on your behind. Right. We don't want you to get off your game. [00:33:00] I'm not passing judgment. I am asking you to stick to facts, okay? I'm not passing judgment, and I'm asking you to stick to the facts, not stories that you might be telling yourself when you spiral, okay?

[00:33:18] Arivee: Because even if some of your job is out of your comfort zone. I want you to do something because you're exercising that muscle of being outside of your comfort zone at work already exercising a little bit. But to amplify the practice of being outside of your comfort zone, I am gonna invite you to

do something.

[00:33:36] Arivee: I am going to, it's an invitation, obviously not a requirement. I'm not holding into anything. I, it's an invitation for you to go pick something else. Go pick something and get outta your comfort zone with that thing. So typically it could mean you trying something new, you know, trying something new that you know you're not gonna be good at.

[00:33:54] Arivee: Don't be like, "Oh, I'm gonna go try hockey when you play field hockey." Like, come on, don't kid [00:34:00] yourself. Like, do try something new. Try something new that is safe. By the way, please be, please be safe. Try something that is new that you are not likely gonna be good at the first try, or the second, or third, or fourth or fifth.

[00:34:15] Arivee: Maybe you won't be too good at it at first, but you maybe could get good at it later, right? You just gotta pick something that you're not good at. Okay? People, which is really hard. I know because we like to be good at everything, but we can't, and this is the way to practice that. So for me, I'll give you an example.

[00:34:30] Arivee: I went to this wellness center, like this outdoorsy center and we decided to do hatchet. Throwing a hatchet is like an ax, but it's like a little smaller I think. And let me tell you, the first time I threw that thing, it bounced right off of the target. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna kill someone because some of these hatchets are coming back towards the line of people that are throwing the hatchets.

[00:34:55] Arivee: No, it was fine. But I was really frustrated and [00:35:00] I was like, why can't I just like nail this target eventually throughout the hour or you have an hour to do this, there are different challenges you get and you obviously get better throughout the hour, but you're still not great at it because what?

[00:35:12] Arivee: How could you be? You have never thrown a hatchet before, so you get used to like the discomfort of like, oh, I'm not good at this. And the frustration and you learn to lean in a little bit and to let go of expectation, right? A little bit, you know, it's not totally, but just enough for you to feel the discomfort and then you're getting a little bit better, and then you're gonna get a little better at the hatchet throwing and you're, you're still uncomfortable because like, you're not great or not good, but you get a lot of the better.

[00:35:42] Arivee: So you have some momentum, right? The same thing when I took archery. This was the same trip I took archery and I was, I was really bad, y'all. I was really bad. Uh, it was bad. It. And I was getting frustrated, but again, really getting outta your comfort zone, trying something new and [00:36:00] going through those feelings of frustration, of needing to still focus, of needing to really practice.

[00:36:05] Arivee: This doesn't feel good to me, and I'm not great at this, but I know I can get better at it because I saw it each time. I, I did another round. I saw me getting better. I adjusted certain things so that I could get better. So this is what I am talking about. You have to exercise the muscle of moving through discomfort so that you can strengthen that muscle and apply it to different areas of your life.

[00:36:31] Arivee: Everything is transferable. We talk about transferable skills all the time in the work context, right? This is the big one. Can you navigate complexity? Can you navigate the unknown? Can you navigate discomfort to figure it out? Can you do that? When you exercise that muscle, you're damn right you can do it 'cause you've done it so many times.

[00:36:52] Arivee: The more you work out a muscle, you know, don't overdo it. You can injure yourself. The more you work out a muscle, that muscle gets [00:37:00] stronger. It has memory for a lot of us, especially if you had children. If you've had children, your muscles, remember if you worked out before you were pregnant and then you worked out, you worked out to stay active but not as hard obviously as you did before you were pregnant.

and unsure and more empowered and fulfilled in your career and your personal life, join my Women Empowering Women email community by going to at avvargas.com to sign up.

[00:42:48] Or you can click the link in the note of this episode. Don't forget to also grab my five-step guide on how to get clarity on what needs to change to feel good [00:43:00] about your life in this season, and how to make that change happen. You can get it at avvargas.com or scroll down on the notes to this episode and click on the link.

[00:43:12] Finally, if you're loving these episodes. Let's spread that love by reviewing and rating this podcast so we can get more women feeling heard, feeling seen, inspired, and empowered. Until then, remember that you have way more power than you can imagine to create the change you want and deserve in your life.

[00:43:35] To live a life you feel good about. You're powerful now. So harness it. Now is your time.[00:44:00]