My Journey to Self Leadership

When I think about, you know, every single time I have to introduce myself or, you share my bio.

Um, when I go to, to do a talk or something like that, I always, I don't know if you have moments like this, but I always feel like I'm kind of looking at myself from the outside in.

And, you know, when people are like seven time published author, five time bestselling author, you know, life coach for female founders and, ambitious women and hosts of this podcast and, you know, insert all of the really incredible things that I have accomplished and that I'm really proud of.

I don't always connect with that person because I'm like, I feel like there's still an element of me that is just like, what? Like, is that actually all of the things that I've accomplished? And then I check myself and I'm like, yeah, actually it is.

And the 17-year-old me couldn't even imagine the life that the almost 40-year-old me would have created.

But I want to tell you a little bit about her because she is a big part of why I am the way I am.

And her initial decision is what led me to where I am.

And, you know, sometimes our life doesn't always fall in the path that we think it will, or sometimes we're put in a position or given an opportunity or, you know, in some sort of scenario where we're like, I'm not sure that this is what I want or if this is going to get me closer to where I'm going to be.

But as I sit here and reflect back on all of the roles that I've had, all of the jobs that I've had, all of the stepping stones that I have been on, they actually all have led me And it's likely that all of the experiences that you've had, whether you've taken time to reflect on them or not, have gotten you to the place that you are now.

And so listen, I'm 17 years old.

I'm trying to decide what I want to do with my life.

And I've, I always knew that I had this like deep desire to help people.

And people often came to me to share their problems with me.

And I love, you know, I love to be that, that safe space that comfort space for people you know I didn't always feel like I had that growing up and and so I wanted to create that for people I wanted to be needed and liked and all of these sorts of things and so I actually pursued a career in social services when I was 18 I applied to college I went to college for two years and that was like really the start of my self-awareness journey and We learned lots of different courses throughout those two years, but there was a few that really stood out for me and I think actually serve quite well in the work that I do with my clients now.

But I took, you know, a psychology course.

I took a counseling course.

took a family dynamics course which was really really powerful to learn about family dynamics and how they show up in our lives and you know how what we've gone through as children how that impacts how we show up as adults it's actually everything when it comes to how we show up as adults in our relationship and also how we show up in our business you know what we believe about our ability to be successful or what we're worthy of.

I also took a sociology course, which was really cool.

I learned a lot about society and how different cultures and society, again, impact how we see the world.

And one of the things that was really actually powerful that I wanted to just like share with you really quickly is is I learned about this concept of like the agents of socialization that exist in our society.

And there's actually five agents of socialization that basically are like the spaces in where we learn how to show up in the world, and for lack of a better word, the places that teach us and that unintentionally teach us what our inner script is and what we believe about success and ourselves.

So there are five of them.

And the first one that we are exposed to at a very, very early age is family, right? So we are socialized by our immediate and direct family, our mother, our father, if we have siblings, if we have friends, close relationships with, you know, grandparents and other caregivers, like our caregivers and our family unit are like the first places where we learn about ourselves, and where we learn about the world.

And then simultaneously, kind of at the same time, there's also media, right? So this is mass media, so like newspapers, I mean, you know, digital newspapers now, but magazines or TV shows or, you know, like any sort of technology that we're exposed to and learn from it are all a part of media.

And then we go out into the world and we are influenced by our peers and we're also influenced by the education system.