S5E5: Embracing Discomfort - Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone to Grow, with Joanna Kleinman

“If you're really tapping into your true potential as a human being, that's not comfortable. So you can either choose a life of comfort or you can choose a life of possibility, but you cannot have both at the same time.” - Joanna Kleinman

Uncover the unexpected power of overcoming self-doubt and achieving personal growth with a simple mantra. What two words can transform your mindset and change the energy within you? Dive into this candid conversation to discover the surprising twist that can revolutionize your approach to life. Ready to unlock the hidden potential within you? Stay tuned for this eye-opening revelation.

In this episode, you will find out about:

• Mastering the Mind Method: Unleash the power to overcome self-doubt and achieve personal growth.
• Discovering the transformative benefits of psychotherapy in unlocking your potential for personal growth.
• Uncovering the essential steps to successfully publish your own book and share your message with the world.
• Exploring the evolution of turning your passion for podcasting into a thriving business venture.
• Embracing the importance of self-awareness as a key to achieving your most meaningful goals.

Joanna Kleinman is a renowned psychotherapist, leadership coach, and best-selling author who empowers coaches, psychologists, and healers with her innovative M.I.N.D Method™. This transformative model elevates coaching practices and transforms lives by helping individuals dethrone their inner critic. Blending coaching methods, spirituality, neuroscience, and psychotherapy techniques, Joanna enables clients to live the life and build the business they truly desire.

With her guidance, thousands of women have learned to think in fundamentally different ways, achieving lasting success both personally and professionally. Joanna specializes in helping those who feel burnt out, stressed, and unfulfilled in critical areas of their lives—whether it's family, career, confidence, health, or overall well-being. She also "teaches the teacher," showing coaches how to enliven and expand their practices.

Free your mind, and joy will follow. Whether you have your own practice or are looking to become who you were meant to be, Joanna Kleinman is here to help you unlock your true potential.

Transcript:

00:00:03
Welcome to your next stop podcast.

00:00:08
Welcome back to your next stop season. Season five. I mean, how crazy is that? With an amazing guest who I absolutely adore, Joanna Kleinman. How are you?

00:00:19
I'm doing great. I am so excited to be here today. I know. So I want it, first of all, I want people to find, you know, be able to find you. We're going to get into the mind method, but then you're an author, podcast, and a cycle.

00:00:33
A psychotherapist. That's right. I love saying that because I always am like, oh, it's so, so cool, right? They can find you at dethroningyourinnercritic on Instagram. They can find you on LinkedIn under your name.

00:00:46
Your book is dethroning your inner critic. Your podcast is dethroning your inner critic. And we're going to get into the mind method, which is so fascinating. We connected years and years and years ago, and I feel like we've always, you know, we always keep in touch with each other through kind of social media, kind of keeping a pulse on what each other are doing. And you have been on your next stop before.

00:01:08
I believe it was like season two. Oh, yeah. I like it. Yes. And you also was right when your book was coming out, and you also gave your book to the event that I did at the Super bowl for the NFL women, which was a huge, everyone was so excited about that.

00:01:22
And I know you have evolved even more. And this is what kind of season five. There's a couple different angles I'm taking, and one of them is bringing back some of my favorite guests from over the years and just touching base with them to see where they are, because I love that evolution. I love that kind of that history timeline that we can do, which I think is fascinating in 30 years, that we can also just go back and be like, oh, my God, look where we are. That whole evolution really is cool, for sure.

00:01:50
We're so happy to have you again. So happy to see your face. And I want to dive into it. So take us. Take us really, you can give a tiny bit of background of who you are, but if people really want to get into the fullness, they can go back to your episode in season two.

00:02:07
But just a little bit of history kind of where you grew up on all that. And then I want to take it from, like, the book came out and then, like, where you at. Absolutely. So, you know, so everything really actually began for me at nine years old. Okay.

00:02:25
My mother still is a brilliant psychotherapist. My father was an attorney, but was sort of diving into the realm of self help and self exploration, mostly because, you know, the truth is my parents marriage was about to, to be kaput. So, you know, we're going back to 1979. Anyway, long story short, that was the beginning of transformational thinking. And I will never forget, I was 13 years old, and I was actually sort of in this seminar that was for adults.

00:03:02
I was, you know, sitting there with my parents, and I watched this woman, within a minute, have a fundamental shift of the way that she saw herself and her life that, that just opened up this possibility that didn't exist prior to her having this shift. And it was in that moment that I said, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. So I became a psychotherapist. And I, and long story short, I was, you know, I had a private practice as a psychotherapist for many years. But one of the things that I felt is that in traditional psychotherapy, and I think also in some forms of traditional coaching as well, people just, you know, they want to deal with the situation at hand.

00:03:51
They want to feel better about this particular situation. And I believe that any situation that we're dealing with is not the situation at hand, okay? It's way deeper issues that go way beyond just the tip of the iceberg. And if we're able to really understand the workings of what I'm going to call our automatic mind, because our mind just thinks automatically 50,000 times a day. Our mind just goes to the thoughts, and we think we're having new thoughts.

00:04:25
We're not. It's basically the things that really stir us up. My boss said this, my brother said that, my son said this. Whatever happens, there's something deeper. And when you can really understand the mechanisms, the machinery of your mind, you're never getting rid of that machinery.

00:04:50
See, that's the other thing. People want to fix their thoughts, change their thoughts, get rid of their self doubt, get rid of their lack of confidence, and that's where people get into trouble. So my, and we can, you know, certainly dive into the mind method, but the bottom line is, no, I definitely. Want to dive into that. Yeah.

00:05:12
It's about understanding that you have an automatic mind that will be with you forever. And when you intimately know it, what it says, why it says it, who triggers it, what triggers it, and what's the deeper underlying issue in that moment, you can unhook yourself and tune into very different thoughts that create different emotions that have you making different choices and taking different actions and engaged in different behaviors that have your life going in a fundamentally different direction in every important area of your life, from your relationships to your career, to your sense of self, to everything in between. Yeah, and it really is. I mean, that's the thing that's so fascinating. And I think as we evolve, we become a little bit more aware of our thoughts.

00:06:02
But I love that you as a kid, because of the way you're also wired and then your parents and the experiences you were going through with them, that you were able to kind of make that connection, because I think it's so important for people to be self aware. I mean, I think when you are self aware is when you're the healthiest. I mean, that's in my opinion, and I am not a psychotherapist. You are spot on. The way that I distinguish it is either you're living a life on autopilot, or you're living a life of consciousness awareness.

00:06:38
And by the way, we're always going in between the two, even if we're living a conscious, aware life. Right. We're always getting sucked back into that automatic mind. So that's really the work, right? There's no such thing as, I'm gonna be, you know, perfectly self aware, and I'm gonna be conscious all the time, and so I'm gonna live this great life, and I'm never gonna get triggered, and I'm never gonna go back into self doubt.

00:07:06
I mean, that. That doesn't exist. Yep. Sort of evolving, right? I mean, especially if we're evolving as humans.

00:07:14
You're gonna all suddenly be like, okay, I took off. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but, like, I I took a chunk off of this in my life, and I'm going over here, and then all of a sudden, you're building a whole new set of tools of self awareness. But what the better that you can be at understanding and feeling, oh, wait a second. This is happening in my body, or this is happening in my mind. We pause.

00:07:38
Right? Pause. Because I need to get back and get back on that path. It's almost like, you know, you're veering off here. You're veering off here.

00:07:45
So I think the work that you're doing is so important on so many levels. And I do feel like over the years, it has gotten. It has definitely gotten more prevalent. People are talking about it more. But then I also think there's more people in the space that are actually not as qualified to do it.

00:08:02
I agree. Totally agree. Yes. For sure. Yeah.

00:08:06
So if someone's listening to this right now and they're like, you know what? I kind of need this. I love what Joanna just said. What are some of the things that they can look for in the psychotherapist or a coach or something like that, that they can know? You know what?

00:08:19
I feel good, because not everyone, you know, people are going to connect with different people, but you want to make sure the person you're connecting with is actually legitimate for sure.

00:08:30
This is, you know, this is my opinion, okay. But I don't think that we can separate mind, body, spirit. Okay. So I think that.

00:08:42
Right. Certainly how I practice and how I would advise somebody to look for a coach or a psychotherapist is, do they have the awareness of not just transforming the way that you think, but also really understanding what's going on in your nervous system, what's going on in your body? What are the traumas that you store? Because we all have trauma. There's no human that escapes trauma.

00:09:11
Right. And so it's very hard to make fundamental changes in the most significant areas of your life if you're not really exploring. What I'm going to say is trauma from a very early age. And when I say trauma, okay, I mean, it could be your mother gave the last stick of gum to your brother. Okay.

00:09:34
But. Right. So it's not that some horrible, awful thing happened. It's the way as children that we process what goes on in our life and what we make it mean about us, and we don't even realize that we've done that. And then we're taking that with us throughout life.

00:09:51
So that's the most important thing to really understand, right? That whoever you're working with needs to understand.

00:10:02
How do you really see that deeper core pain that's getting in the way of whatever it is that you're dealing with in this very moment. I love that because that's one of the things that I talk about in my podcast with dyslexia, word blindness, is that we all have trauma. And sometimes when you say that to someone, they're going to think, oh, wait, you were severely abused as a child. People go to the craziest, gruesome trauma. Absolutely.

00:10:30
And we talk about it all the time. Like, I had, you know, my parents did get divorced, and there was stuff in our house, you know, that coming with that, that, you know, there was trauma, obviously, that we picked up. But then being dyslexic in school, the amount of times I had trauma. So then when you. When you talk about it.

00:10:46
And someone's like, oh, I see. And I'm like. And all that time when the trauma builds and builds and builds and you don't deal with it is when it becomes a problem. Like, you know, you have to talk about it. You have to work with someone to help you kind of navigate it.

00:10:59
And I think. I think we talked about this before, but if we didn't, I would love for you to touch on this as well, because a lot of times when people are thinking about getting into some sort of coaching, therapy, whatever it is, is that they think, okay, well, I blocked a lot of stuff out. Right? That's what happens when you have trauma. I always talk about the feeling.

00:11:19
Feelings, like, so the feelings that you have, like, when you think about, like, in a situation. Like, whenever I think about third grade, I get this, like, really bad. Like, and I wasn't aware. I was like, what the hell happened in third grade? Why do I keep getting like that?

00:11:33
Right? And I had to do to work to kind of figure it out. And that's really when everyone went to gifted and talented. I had to go to special reading. So it was like this big, pivotal moment in my educational world, right.

00:11:43
But it took me a long time to remember. I had the. The memory feeling, you know, so I had the memory, the actual visual memory of it, but I didn't realize the feeling was kind of disconnected. I disconnected the feeling from the memory so I could tell the story. And then when I was doing a lot of stuff with the podcast, which I didn't realize, I was actually doing some healing when I, you know, as I were still doing it.

00:12:06
But there's healing that happens because I was able to talk about some of these situations and be like, oh. And kind of do it through myself. But that's because I'm very self aware. Right. I've done a lot of the work on myself.

00:12:19
Right. But again, as you said, the trauma can be just as simple as something that happened in your house, that your mom wasn't doing that on purpose. Right. She wasn't doing a purpose, but you internalized it. So I love how you picture that.

00:12:30
So if someone's like, I would like to die into that. I feel like I have some unresolved stuff. It's kind of looking and asking some questions. Like, do you have specific questions that you think someone can ask a coach or psychotherapist off the bat? Well, so here's where I think my work is a little bit different, okay.

00:12:53
Because I don't believe that you need to go back and dissect what happened and spend all this time spinning in the past. You know, here's what we're interested. We're interested in. I need. I want to, I want to feel better and think better now because I got shit to do, right?

00:13:12
I've got to build that business and I've got to write that book and I've got to, you know, get my marriage back on track and I've got to be a better mom or, you know, whatever it is, I've got a vision and I want to get on with that vision. Okay? So I don't think that you really need to spend a whole lot of time going back. Okay? But what's interesting is when you start talking about what's going on now, okay, you start here, what's going on now?

00:13:40
And you start, I always think about it like a, like, you know, like a thread of a sweater. You know, you keep pulling the thread of this sweater. It all, it all starts to unravel. So you start here, you start in the present and you actually start from what do I want? What's the vision that I want?

00:13:59
Okay, so now we've got a, we've got, right? So that's what I would say. And this is where the questions that you're addressing, I don't consider myself to be a traditional. I think that my approach is psychotherapy meets, like life coaching meets NlP meets, you know, meets, you know, neuroplasticity. You know, it meets spirituality.

00:14:28
Okay? So again, I would say when you're looking for somebody, maybe also to not look for either somebody who doesn't go back to the past, right. Because we've got to have the past inform who we are now and what we're creating. But then you've also got to understand if you're a hiring a coach and you're not doing any of that deeper work, you'll get to where you're going. There's no doubt, okay?

00:14:57
If we've got a vision, we'll get there, but that's not the point. So most people want to get to there. They want to produce the results. Okay? Once I start this business, once I make my first million, once I launch the book, once I lose the weight, once I get there, that's going to be the thing that's going to make me feel the way I want to feel.

00:15:21
So let me hire somebody to figure out how to get there. And that's our culture breeds that. And this is why so many people are miserable, particularly the people, right, that have checked off a lot of the boxes. I've got the beautiful, you know, house, and I've got the gorgeous car, and I've got the money and I've got the. All the things, but they're so fundamentally dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

00:15:51
Right. And that's. That's. I don't. I want to change that.

00:15:58
I want to fundamentally change how people understand how to consciously think so that they can design their dreams. Right. That's what the d step is, by the way. We'll get to that. But d step is design your life, right?

00:16:12
So designing your life from a place of wholeness now and gratitude now and fulfillment now, and it doesn't mean that your shame and your doubt and your lack of confidence aren't continuing to circle around in your mind. Right, but they no longer have to impact how you experience your journey moving forward. Yeah, no, I love that. So take us through the mind method, and then I want to get into why you started the podcast and the book and how that kind of ties into. But let's start with the mind method.

00:16:50
Absolutely. Okay. So first I want to say it's a four step process, but it's a four step process that is forever and ever and ever. Right. So it's not like I'm going to do these four steps, and then I'm fixed, and then I'm handled, and then that's it.

00:17:05
Right. So it's a method that just, like exercise, right? You got to go lift the weights. You keep engaging in this methodology. So the first step is the m step, meet your inner critic.

00:17:20
That is where you really understand. Exactly. Your inner critic and your ego. Okay? It's kind of the same thing.

00:17:28
We could say your inner critic. We could say your unconscious mind. We could say your ego. It's all the same thing. Okay, so you're really understanding what are those thoughts and beliefs that keep circulating, right?

00:17:43
Like a vicious cycle over and over and over. I had a seven year old version of the same thoughts. I had a 22 year old version of the same thoughts. I had a 38 year old version of the same thoughts, right? I'm 50, almost 54.

00:17:55
I have a 54, almost 54 year old version of the same thoughts. Right? So we really understand all of that. The I step is investigate the indication signs. I call those the blinking red lights that alert you that your inner critic has taken over your mind.

00:18:13
Your automatic mind is in control, okay? Those are the emotions, the body sensations, and the behaviors. Right? Like you want to, you know, polish off the bottle of wine or you want to just disconnect from everybody or you're exhausted or you want to, you know, lash out at your partner or your children or whatever, right? Or some things that are selfdeveloped, destructive.

00:18:34
So that's the I step. And also, where is that in your body? You know, when you feel that, like, where do you feel it? In your chest, in your stomach? And, you know, the end step is neutralize the never ending message, okay?

00:18:48
The never ending message is really the core pain that really serves as the lens through which we see everything and we don't know it. So when we're triggered, as I said before, by our boss, by our partner, by, you know, doesn't matter whom, when we're triggered, really triggered, that never ending message is at play in some way we think, right? And then we want to blame somebody else. How dare you disrespect me? How dare you treat me that way.

00:19:18
Okay? What we want to get to is even when somebody treats you in a way that's unacceptable and you need to set a boundary that you don't lose yourself self in the process, that you don't lose your grounding and your inner knowing that, you know, you're enough, you don't need anybody else to think you're enough, to think you're fabulous, to want you, to love you to, right? And that's. That's fundamental to human nature, right? We've got this DNA that wants approval and acceptance and validation, right?

00:20:00
Anybody that's walking around saying, I don't care at all what people think somewhere you do, because it's human nature, right? So the end step is really understanding. Your trigger is yours. And if you keep blaming other people, how dare this person trigger me? You can.

00:20:16
You'll be right about what a jerk they are. That's fine. But you're the one that's going to suffer. So when we use the m and the I and the n all together, okay, we understand the thoughts, we understand the beliefs, we understand the emotions, we understand the body sensations, we understand the behaviors, we understand the deeper core triggers. Now we start to practice unhooking ourselves from that automatic mind as soon as it grabs us by the throat.

00:20:47
And what starts to happen is you start to have more access to gratitude, to peace, okay? You start to show up in the world differently. You start to handle situations and circumstances differently than you did. And the last thing I want to say about the design, the design, your life piece, is that everything is energy, right? We're made of energy.

00:21:16
People are made of energy. So when we are in the energy of gratitude and joy and peace. That's a very different way to go through life. And, like, energy attracts, like, energy. So when you are accessing that energy in your body, because you are intentionally plugging into different thoughts and beliefs in everything that's going on in your mind, six months later, you're not the same humanity, and something shows up in your.

00:21:46
In your life, and all of a sudden, you're like, wow, six months ago, I would have handled that fundamentally differently. And that's growth. Yeah, so true. It's so true. And I.

00:22:01
And I love that. And you. And you really painted that really well, because that is, like, exactly what you can picture yourself going through, that. So when did you decide, okay, I'm going to start a podcast, and. And then the book that I know came out, you know, years later.

00:22:18
But what was the thoughts behind those two avenues? The thought behind those two avenues were, I am not good enough for any of this.

00:22:30
I was not good at technology. You know, when I remember, like, literally unwrapping the Yeti microphone and, like, sweating and my. My heart was, like, racing out of my body. Like, I don't know how. Like, what am I doing?

00:22:46
I don't know how to do this right? And, you know, the same thing I had for years and years and years. I wanted to write a book, but I'm not an author. Like, okay, I'm a pretty good writer, but what am I doing, right? And so the mind method kind of came about from my own journey of, I'm scared to death, and I'm going to just be afraid in the horrible, you know, that.

00:23:20
That feeling of self doubt and dread, and I'm going to fail, and this is not going to go well, and people are going to think this and that and the other, and just taking each step, each step, each step. And, you know, I wrote my book in 2020. I think I started the podcast maybe the year before, or I don't even two years before. Well, I think. I think we started our, like, the podcast.

00:23:45
I feel like we're similar, and I don't even remember. I have to go back and listen where we connected. I mean, it must have been on LinkedIn, or was it clubhouse? No, you were Juliet. I have.

00:23:58
You know, it's. I mean, obviously, we were meant to be. I mean, we were, but I cannot. I remember having conversations with you. I have zero idea where we.

00:24:07
I know. I want to go back and listen because I think. I want to say it was maybe clubhouse, because I feel like you were in that in that group of amazing people that I met in clubhouse. Right. And one of the things that's really fun is my journey has been the same kind of as yours in just a different way, where I just kept taking the steps forward and being like, I don't think I should be.

00:24:25
Be doing this, but, okay. I feel like this is what I'm being pulled, right? And I'm gonna just do it because I wanna help more people be able to do it as well. And as my podcast kinda evolved, it was really me turning a passion into a business. And so then it just kept going and going and going, and it's still evolving.

00:24:46
I mean, as, you know, my listeners know. I mean, now, you know, I'm the chief communications officer for Vet Tech, which I was not going to be working for anyone else. My storytelling business was doing really, really well, which evolved from the podcast. But then Danielle and I, you know, obviously, we have a connection from high school, but then when we reconnected, we just brainstormed, and then she hired me as her storytelling consultant, and then was like, wait a second. No, I need you to work for us.

00:25:07
So it's just this interesting kind of path, and that's where the self awareness and the. And the also, like. I mean, I know there's people that we. We both have talked to, right, that are like, I just don't have the same balls as you. I could just never do it.

00:25:23
And I'm like, yeah, well, no, it's not like, yeah, I mean, sometimes it's still where, I mean, I'm on, you know, especially with fed tech talking designists in the government. Wow. Yeah. I have, you know, someone else would say, you would have. You have no business doing that.

00:25:41
But I know what I can bring to the table. I know what my strengths are because of being self aware. I also know that I have a lot of weaknesses because of my dyslexia. However, some of my strengths are now because of my weaknesses and dyslexia because it's things I've worked on. So it's the self awareness of knowing.

00:25:57
You know what? I don't know. But I also know that I have confidence in myself that I'll figure it out. Yes. That is the path that I'm supposed to be on.

00:26:08
Absolutely. You know, there are people out there that. Absolutely. They're like, I do have a. I do have a set of balls on me.

00:26:16
Right? I. You know, I am not one of those people. Okay? And so.

00:26:22
And by the way, I work, that's. That's who. That's. Those are the kinds of people that, that, you know, come into my programs. Right.

00:26:31
Is, you know, I know I have a bigger vision and I don't. I really am scared and. Right. And I don't believe that there are some people that are, you know, destined to do things and some people that aren't, because you really can develop fundamentally different neural pathways in your brain that have you thinking fundamentally differently about who you are and what's possible for you. You know, our sense of self is really just well worn neural pathways in our brain that we've had the same thoughts and beliefs since we've been, like, four or five years old, and we don't recognize it.

00:27:16
Right. And so when, when you're, when you're doing this work and you're plugging into different thoughts and beliefs, by the way, it doesn't feel normal. It doesn't feel natural. It feels really uncomfortable. What feels way more comfortable and familiar is, all right, that well worn neural pathway.

00:27:35
And so this work, it's not. It's. It's hard work, right. But we're designed as human beings to stay in comfort. Right?

00:27:50
That's, our primitive brain wants to keep us in a state of comfort. Okay? And if you're really tapping into your true potential as a human being, that's not comfortable. So you can either choose a life of comfort or you can choose a life of possibility, but you cannot have both at the same time, I'm sorry to say. And by comfort, what I mean is predictability, because we all know that many people, they may be taking the safe path, right?

00:28:24
They're just staying in the job because, well, I don't love it, but it's comfortable. Or, you know, I'm. Oh, well, you know, I'm just. I'm not going to really do anything in my relationship. It's fine, you know, and that's, that's a, that's a fine life.

00:28:38
But I wouldn't say just kind of coasting through life is a comfortable life. It's a familiar life, just not necessarily a happy. I was gonna say, right. If you're not happy, like, people that just kind of go through the motions because it's like, what they do like, to me, that's boring. But that's also because, you know, I am someone with a little bit of some balls, and I do sometimes jump in with 2ft and being like, oh, wait, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I'll figure it out.

00:29:12
But that's, again, because of my dyslexia and having to always figure things out. But that's a neuropath. Right. That's something that I've put in my brain. It's like, okay, I maybe can't, you know, I can't kind of put my faith in a teacher helping me.

00:29:28
This teacher doesn't get me. I have to figure it out myself. So even though you could say, oh, boohoo on the teacher, well, you know what? Maybe it wasn't the worst thing for me because then I realized, okay, I can do some of this myself. No one really understands me in this, in this world.

00:29:42
I have to figure it out myself. Right. And so I love all of that you said. And I know when we originally talked because it was right when the book, I believe, came out and you had said, like, this was scary. This was really hard.

00:29:57
This was really, really hard. Yes, yes. And I'm not, you know, and now it's, I don't know, I think I've sold, like, you know, several thousand books worldwide by at this point. And, you know, I mean, that's like just on Amazon. Right.

00:30:12
And that wasn't predictable. Right. And it is just, you know, and I've got a lot more things that I'm working on now, right. I'm sort of at the bottom of the next mountain. And what's fundamentally different now is because I've climbed certain mountains, now that I'm at the bottom of the next mountain, I can just keep going and I can let my life unfold.

00:30:42
How? Whenever it's going to unfold, of course I need to keep taking actions that are in alignment with where. Right. With my vision. But the biggest breakthrough, and I don't mean just for me, this is the fundamental part of the work that I do with people in the world, is that while you're taking actions, your automatic mind, that inner critic mind, has a lot of attachments and demands about how all of this should go.

00:31:14
A lot of ideal pictures, right? And that's the very thing that causes us to stay in a heightened state of anxiety and unhappiness because we can be taking these amazing actions, but our automatic mind keeps the focus on, okay, you've got to keep making sure that it goes exactly the way that you want it to so that you won't feel that fundamental pain going all the way back to childhood. You won't feel that pain that you've been running away from for your whole life. Right. So it's almost like while we're building this amazing life, we're continuing to run away from what I think is a deep sense of.

00:32:10
I mean, it's shame, basically, right? Like, I don't want anybody to think that I'm stupid or I'm not good enough or I don't have what it takes or I'm not lovable or I'm unworthy. And if that still is so unbearable, then that's the thing that's running every part of your life. So embracing the wholeness of you, right? The warts, the.

00:32:42
The parts of you that you don't want anybody to see. Right. Like, so for me, that was, you know, I can be selfish. I can be self centered. I can be forgetful.

00:33:01
I can be scattered. And if I couldn't integrate, yeah, that's me too. And I just needed everybody to see how accomplished I am and how successful I am, and I couldn't let anybody see into the real me. Right.

00:33:23
That part of me would run my life. And that's what so many people are doing. Yeah. And they don't know it. They don't know it.

00:33:31
No. 100%. They don't know it. So can you take us through a little bit of what you're. I mean, I know I've been.

00:33:37
You've been doing a lot of speaking, so can you take. So someone that's like, okay, I want to take a dive. And I always wanted to speak, and I always wanted to do this. Can you take. Take us through what.

00:33:47
How, you know, how it came about for you, but then also, you know what you're doing so people can also follow. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you can probably relate to this, but life just sort of presents these opportunities, right? And we have to do all of the prep work before, but we never know where life is going to take us.

00:34:13
Okay, so I've spoken. I've been the keynote speaker for Microsoft about three times. I've. I've been the keynote speaker for NFL films twice. I just finished.

00:34:26
A few months ago, I was the keynote speaker for Sanofi Healthcare. And this is all because people have heard of me. And many years ago, that was a dream, right? And I had no idea, like, how am I even gonna do that? Okay.

00:34:46
And when we think about, how am I going to do that? Okay. Like, if we're standing here and it's like this dream, that's what stresses us out. We can know what is the very next step to take, but we can't know what's the fifth or 6th or 7th step to take. And many people think I have to have the whole plan figured out to get from point a to point q.

00:35:17
Right. That's just not how it goes. Okay. So how I got into Microsoft was I was working out with somebody next to somebody, not even somebody. I wasn't working out with her.

00:35:29
We started up a conversation, and she invited me to come speak for something, and then the rest is history, right? Sanofi heard of me through this person. This person. This person. NFL films.

00:35:41
Actually, I led a retreat in Costa Rica, and one of the executives from NFL films happened to be on the Costa Rica retreat and said, I want you to come in. This is how life goes. And so the bottom of the mountain that I'm on now is this October, I'm going to be launching the mind method certification program for people who want to understand how to take the mind method into their I businesses. Right. Whether in their corporate business or as a coach or a therapist or.

00:36:18
Right. I have nutritionists that are interested in incorporating anybody that wants to take this idea of integrating a four step approach to transforming mind, body, spirit. And I'm, you know, I mean, I. I've got a big vision, and I'm just like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, right?

00:36:46
That's what I'm doing. And it's scary and it's exciting, and my automatic mind pulls me into doubt and fear. But the difference is, now I know what that is, and so I don't go down the rabbit hole with it. Right. And that's.

00:37:07
That's really the difference. I used to go down the rabbit hole with it. I don't do that anymore. Well, and that's the thing I think is really important because, as you said, you have this big vision. And some of the things that I also think that people get caught up in, and you, you touched on it, is they have.

00:37:23
They want it all planned out here. Right? They want. They want the answers here. And also, I'll take you, for example.

00:37:29
When I started the word blindness podcast, so it's been last August, we're 46 episodes, and we do. So we're in season two. So one of the things that, when I started it, I approached Brent and I said, I want to really want to help you with the foundation, the dyslexia. How can I help? I can.

00:37:49
I can give my time, but I actually am pretty good at podcasting. I know what to do. You know, I've now been doing this since 2019. So let me, you know, can we start something? And he was like, no, I don't.

00:38:00
You know, no, no, no. Finally, he was like, yes. And he is more of a realist. Some people want to call it negative, but he really talks about the real side of dyslexia and the hard times and all of these things where a lot of stuff out there with dyslexia is talking about the positives, the higher iqs, the billionaires, the CEO's, all that's great. Like, you know, when you have a kid that's getting diagnosed, you want to show them the stories, but when they're in the weeds of it, you also want to show them what.

00:38:28
Yeah, you know what? There's other people that are going in the weeds, right? There are other people that are having these situations. It's not just over here. You want all of it.

00:38:35
So when we started the podcast, I remember, and I don't do this often. I am pretty, pretty good because, again, of all the work that I've done internally on my own, you know, just because of who I am, but I started to be like, oh, okay, am I taking on too much? Is this a smart idea? Is this a good idea? This is before I started with vet tech, but right before, you know, I have, you know, you know, I'm doing the coaching, and it's the storytelling consultancy.

00:39:02
This is really, like, working well. Why am I adding something else? I needed to kind of question myself. Cause sometimes I do that, I'll take more things on sometimes when I'm in a really good spot, but it's cause I'm, like, a little bit bored that I'm like, oh, let me take something else on. And that sometimes is not healthy.

00:39:18
Like, I need to be like, okay, no. Focus on what you're doing now. See it through, and, you know, and not add too many things to your plate, because that's not. That's not healthy. You can't do it.

00:39:28
All right, so I've had to do that work. So all of a sudden, I remember sitting there and stopping, and I had just started hot yoga, and which I've done now with my age and hormones and all of these different things. I was kind of in that, like, kind of spinning, and I was like, oh, my gosh. And I remember I stopped and I was like, don't put any pressure on yourself. Don't put any.

00:39:54
There's no.

00:39:58
There's no goals with this. Just go with it. Just enjoy it. Have fun. Don't have any expectations.

00:40:06
Don't put expectations on this. You don't know what. You know, what you want it to be. You want to help people and all that, but don't put the expectations on it. And when I said that to myself, I just breathed, and I was like, you know, what?

00:40:19
If we just start recording and it doesn't go well, I learned something, right? If it goes well and we do five episodes, that's what it's meant to happen. But I'm not going to put the expectations of, like, oh, my gosh, I have to do this. I have to do this. And that was a really big thing.

00:40:36
I just remember just feeling the weight lifted, and. And then anytime I would start to spin for a second, I would be like, no expectations. And it was like, great. And isn't that amazing that two words, no expectations can literally. My zoom.

00:40:57
My zoom. I swear my zoom likes to send balloons when it likes something I say. That's so funny. I love it. I don't know how to turn it off.

00:41:07
Right. No expectations. The minute that you say that, your body, your physical nervous system expands. Right. You can feel it physically and emotionally.

00:41:21
Just those two words, right? Yeah, but it's not even zoom. This is riverside, so I think it's. Your computer likes to hear, I will get sometimes this weird thumbs up, or, I've gotten balloons sometimes. And sometimes I'm like, hey, how about you don't do that?

00:41:37
Like, I'm having. I'm recording a podcast, but it is kind of funny. Yeah, it is funny. And it. Because it does it.

00:41:44
Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, I like that. Yes, yes. But that. That's a beautiful illustration of what happens when you intentionally and consciously plug yourself in right there. That was a pattern interrupt.

00:41:59
Yep. Okay. That's the. I step right there. You caught yourself in the familiar, you know, thoughts.

00:42:09
That's m step. Familiar body sensations. Right. Tightness, restrictiveness, familiar emotion. And you said, up, nope, not going there.

00:42:19
And you intentionally plugged yourself into that mantra, which is no expectations, and all of a sudden, you single handedly change the energy inside your body. Yeah. That's amazing, right? The power that we all have to be able to do that. That's it right there.

00:42:38
Yeah. I love that. Okay, so we're coming up on the end. Take us. Is there anything you want to add?

00:42:44
Anything you want to leave? Anything where people can find you? I know you have your website again. They can find you on LinkedIn, Instagram, dethroning your inner critic, Amazon for your book. They can find your podcast, dethroning your inner critic on all podcast players.

00:42:57
Anything else you want to kind of leave people with? I do. So, I mean, you can also find my book on audible, but. Oh, I, yeah. But I created a free assessment called the inner critic assessment.

00:43:11
You can find it at innercritic assessment.com. and what it does is it walks you through an assessment that will break down your specific pattern of thoughts and beliefs into five different inner critic types. And you'll get a whole report about what percentage of the time you're in that specific inner critic. Right now. I will tell you the percentages some people are in.

00:43:38
I'm in 75%, you know, guilty and 75% inadequate. Right. So it's like it gives you out of the hundred percent, how much of your time are you in that particular inner critic? Five different inner critics. You know, why is it there?

00:43:56
What possibly first triggered it? Right. How does it impact you? How does it impact others? It's a really comprehensive report.

00:44:03
Intercritic assessment.com. Perfect. Perfect. Well, thank you. And it's free and right.

00:44:08
I love that. I love that. And this will be also in the show notes. So everyone that's like, please don't, as you're driving, stop and pull this. You can pull it up later.

00:44:16
You'll, you'll see it. Right. So, I mean, Joanna, thank you again for joining your next stop. Always amazing. Always love what you're doing.

00:44:24
I love being surrounded with people that also are just not sitting around being like, well, I guess this is life. This is like you're exploring. You want to be better. You want to make other people's lives better. And that, you know, that's another reason why you and I just connect, because that's what we, that's what we're about.

00:44:40
It's not just, it's like we're doing the work on ourselves sometimes not even realizing it, but it's because we want to impact a greater audience to be better people, for sure. Thank you so much for having me. I love just listening to all the incredible things that you're doing with your life, too. And you're such an inspiration. It's amazing.

00:45:02
Thank you. You guys know what to do, like rate, review and share. You don't know who needs to hear this. You don't know who's sitting there kind of being like, I'm stagnant in my life. I don't know where I need to turn here.

00:45:12
This episode can actually change the someone's life. So don't forget to, like, rate, review and share. And thank you again for joining another episode of your next stop.