Finding Your True Confidence with Lisa Sun

We identified six forces that hold us back from confidence. They pop up between the ages of 8 and 12. It forms the basis of an inner critic that never goes away. So as adults, in order to really be confident, we actually have to make a choice to see ourselves the way a five year old sees themselves. To break out of these six forces. Because self confidence is a choice and a mindset before it becomes a behavior.

Hey there friends.

Welcome to Happiness Squad.

This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the squad. Hey friends, it's great to have you with Asha Shanai as we host guests who are industry leaders helping individuals and organizations unlock higher potential and flourishing. That's what we champion here. So let me ask you, what does Gravitas mean to you? If you're ready to grow your confidence language and embrace your superpowers, then get ready for our next guest. Meet Lisa Sun. She grew up in California as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrant parents. She was an overachiever at a young age. She actually graduated from high school two years early and funded her entire Yale education with six part time jobs, scholarships and financial aid. After 11 years at McKenzie, she took a solo trip around the world and started her own clothing line as a result and she called it Gravitas. She promotes body positivity and self confidence. She actually recently released her very own book sharing the same name, Gravitas and it was one of the key areas that we focused on in this episode. Why? There are six forces that can work against you as saboteurs and eight superpowers that you can embrace as you develop your confidence language. In this empowering discussion, Ashish, Lisa and I delve into several topics and share some personal anecdotes. What stood out for me and what I took away is how confidence truly is a mindset and a choice. You can not only own your superpower, but you can also own your moment to unlock this. It is important to cultivate your self awareness, something that we overlook and think we understand. This is our Very first hardwired for happiness practice and is at the center of our sunflower. We invite you to explore this as you rewire away from fear and survival. Lisa will actually go on and compliment and explain how this practice is actually an enabler for confidence. And having an understanding and belief in your own self is key as a mindset more than a behavior. So are you ready to intervene and shift your mindset to make this your competitive edge? Then join Ashish and I as we welcome Lisa to the Happiness Squad podcast.

Foreign.

Lisa, Ashish, it's a pleasure to be with both of you today. Lisa, you've done a number of trips on your book tour over the last few weeks. Number of podcasts, were great to have you. You know, as we just dive right in, our favorite question to ask all of our guests is what is your definition of happiness? Or at least what is happiness for you and maybe how has that changed since your younger years?

I would say happiness is very much about how I feel about myself and how I value myself and the ways in which I know I contribute to others and to the world. I think it's changed because in the past I would have tied most of my happiness to external markers of success. So I'll be happy when I lose ten pounds. I'll be happy when I get this job promotion. I'll be happy when I get this car, this house. And I think when you tie so much of your happiness to external markers, if you don't get it, you beat yourself up. And if you do, you just chase the next thing. And what I define happiness now is not looking at the summit, but turning back around and seeing how far I've come. And that has really changed my point of view in terms of really self soothing. I mean, as I like to say, things don't get easier, we get stronger. So acknowledging how much stronger you've gotten really is for me the definition of happiness.

I love that, Lisa. And it's a consistent theme, right? We are on our, I think close to the 60th podcast. This one we started a year ago and you know, it's our hope that as our listeners continue to listen to the same message echo back, right. These themes around happiness is an inner game, not an outer game. I think hopefully it starts to kind of really shift and really believe our mindsets because there's so much of us that we're still programmed. Yeah, that's nice to say. But is that really true? It is true.

It's nice to have goals in life. I'm not saying don't have high standards, don't have things you want to accomplish. But tying your self worth specifically to whether or not you accomplish those goals is different than I know I contribute to the world. You know, I'll give you two examples, which is someone in a book signing said to me, you know, this whole origin story that you were told in your 20s, that you didn't have any gravitas and then you spent the last 20 years looking for it. I don't believe it. I always thought you were a very confident person and I said I was faking it. And you can performatively be confident. But did I like myself? No. I was an insecure overachiever when I spent 11 years at McKinsey and Company. So, you know, that's a very clear example where you sort of say you can fake it, but I definitely tied a lot of my happiness and self worth to how other people saw me rather than how I saw myself. Another example is just being on this book tour about eight months ago. My agent, my editor and my book collaborator, we agreed not to talk about bestseller lists. We said, we're not going to say that we're going to hit any of these lists. I just want to take it on mine. If you change one person's life, if you make a difference, that's what matters. And about a week into my book tour, after the book came out, I did an event in Denver. And it was for 200 women at a big chemicals company. And the night I landed back from denver, it was 10 o' clock at night. And my agent said, please call me as soon as you land. And I said, okay. And she said, Congratulations, we're number 41 on the USA Today bestseller list. You should put it on Instagram. You should post it. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna post it. That's not why we wrote the book. But the next morning, my Speaker's bureau had sent the news to the 200 women I had spent time with. And they sent me a video congratulating me on the bestsellers list of all 200 women holding the book and cheering. And I said, okay, if I'm going to post anything, I'm going to post that. Because whether or not we made the bestseller list, they probably would have sent me some version of that video. And that meant more to me than hitting the list.

That's beautiful. And you know, it points to this notion that which is so powerful, which is, look, it is important to have goals, it's important to have high aspirations. But in the end focus on your actions rather than do you get the goal or not, right? And there are so many factors that play into that which can make us overly anxious. And the reality is there's so little of that we control. But it also allows you to focus on the journey and enjoy it rather than focus on the list.

The last decade I've run a fashion company as an entrepreneur and what I think is so fascinating about this is I did not raise venture capital money, I did my own money plus angel money and I don't need to be a unicorn. So much of the time we celebrate youthful entrepreneurs trying to be unicorns. I said, you know what, we did really good work. We're much smaller, you know, the brand is much bigger than the revenues but we employ people, we really make a difference in our customers lives. I don't need to have triple digit growth and IPO and a lot of people have been surprised by that. But I think the unicorn status is not something that I attach myself worth to. I am a billionaire in terms of how much value I've created for others, right? Whether I make a connection to someone. I connected someone with a retailer and they got the deal. I made a difference in people's lives and they've been able to go and get a promotion or the things they want in life. I said I think I don't need to be a billionaire in terms of cash on paper for myself, but I probably have created at least a billion dollars of value out in the world and I think that surprises people. Whenever you say you're going to be an entrepreneur, everyone puts these false attachments on you, like how much money did you raise? Are you Series A? Are you Series B? And I'm like, I'm no series. I am just doing good work for the last decade and I think that's good enough. It takes the pressure off too, frankly.

It absolutely does. In fact that's kind of at the heart you happiness squad. And when I started the company there were a lot of people like are you raising money? And I'm like, no, I actually don't want VC money and we never plan to go ipo. And the reason is very simple, right? You can't fight gravity if you live on earth. If you want to kind of create a conscious company and you want to do focus on the right things rather than just revenue and subscriber growth, then don't play the game, right? But if you're going to play the game, you got to live by the.

Rules, you know Ashish, I can Go there with you because I've known you in a professional context for a long time. I play a game with one of my best friends of name a good ipo. If you look at a lot of the venture backed companies in the direct to consumer or consumer goods space, they all IPO'd because the venture capitalists needed their cash out. And if you look at their stock prices today, one to two years post ipo, they're penny stocks, they're below a dollar, their market caps, they IPO'd at $17, but a lot of them are at 60 cents, 90 cents. I won't name names, but if you look, the pressure to exit really came from outside sources, but the fundamentals of the business weren't quite there. I'm not saying that I'm running a healthy, profitable business, right? The women's apparel category collapsed in 2020. I had to make hospital gowns and face masks for most of 2020. But I think that a lot of people who don't follow this space closely, I literally tell them, pull open your phone right now, go on Yahoo stock ticker and look up the stock price of your favorite hot consumer brand that IPO'd. And everyone is shocked. They're like, oh my gosh, their stock price is 60 cents. Their market cap is 60 million. That's ridiculous. I thought they were a billion dollar unicorn.

It is at the heart of this work. And in that journey, not only they create so much waste of investor money, right? The financials are not there, but also such a high cost of anxiety, stress burnout for the people who work there and the leader, right? So like everybody loses other than kind of the people who kind of came in early and cashed out.

I did this really fun event, shout out to the South Bend entrepreneurship group. I did this really fun event in South Bend, Indiana and they do this thing called the awesome Fund, where at once a quarter they just give money to small businesses in South Bend, Indiana. And it was really cool. I got to be a judge on their startup event. And what's fun is I looked at the folks that ran the group and I said, you broke three rules today. Like, oh my gosh, what rules do we break? I said, one. The three winners were all people of color and women. And so if you look at the small percentage of funding that goes to minorities and women, you broke that rule. The second is you funded nice, small, profitable businesses. We actually didn't fund the one that said that they were going to be the Uber of this or the, you know, the Unicorn of this, we funded the awesome food truck business that is run by this amazing couple. And the third rule you broke is you didn't over promise on where these things would go. All of these companies, companies that you funded today, contribute value to their communities. They make a difference. They're filled with purpose and heart. But the reality is they may not be the next mainstream brand in America. Right. But they don't have to be.

They don't have to be. They don't have to be. I love that. By the way, you know your mission of the billion. I want to give a call out and you should check this out and we should. I'll make the connection. Lisa, for you, for Gravitas, Barry Shore, he was on our podcast. We got it connected with him. He's kind of the ambassador of joy. He was on Oprah's show. He was one of the folks on Oprah's must, you know, end of the year list that he did. But he's on a mission. You know, he is trying to donate. He has this lovely message of trying to donate a billion dollars without costing a cent to anyone, any consumers. And he's built this platform. It's an amazing story. He became a quadriplegic at 40 because of a genetic disorder. Now he literally swims, I think close to two to three miles a day and is on this mission to make a positive difference. So I love the fact that you said, you know, I might not be a billionaire in my bank, but I've created a billion of value. That's a little bit of what Barry's trying to do. And his whole thing is around getting brands to actually come onto his platform. And he's got consumers and I think as they do transaction, I think he's basically giving 5% back to the consumer, 5% to a charity and 5% to run the platform. It's a beautiful, beautiful mission. But Anil, walk us through, my friend, to the next question around confidence and really get into the meat of what Lisa's created because it's, it's really beautiful.

Totally. And Lisa, when I hear you talk, right. And I'm sure that this is something that I don't have to, you know, I'm sure others would agree. Our listeners agree. You speak with incredible confidence. And I know your story. Our listeners may not. We're going to come to that in a second. But in writing your book Gravitas, you know, you define confidence. You define innate strengths that contribute to that in your book. Maybe could you share with our listeners what was that Journey. And how do you define confidence? What does it mean to you? And how are you able to speak? So if you might me say confidently with us?

Well, you know, it's one of those things of where you write the book you most need to read yourself. And what I think has happened is for hundreds of years, there have been so much ink has been spilled about confidence, and it focuses solely on behaviors. So when I tell you to be more confident, you stand up straight, you speak up, you're assertive. It's about bravado or swagger. But if you look up the word confident in the dictionary, it has nothing to do with bravado or swagger. It's an understanding and appreciation of your own abilities and a trust in your talents. It's a mindset before it becomes a behavior. And so in part, I wrote this book because over the last 23 years, I've spent time with people in boardrooms and dressing rooms in their most vulnerable moments. And so much of the time we're asked to fake it, to make it right. When someone tells you be more confident, you have a single version of what that means. So even when you said you speak so confidently, it's because one of my superpowers is performing. But you know what? There are a lot of people who are not the loudest people in the room who could be the most confident because they have other superpowers. And so I went on this journey to write this book because I wanted to create a paradigm shift. My life was changed by reading Dale Carnegie's book, which was written a hundred years ago, because as a Asian woman growing up in Western society, Dale Carnegie taught me how to shake hands, smile, remember people's names, ask good questions. But it didn't address the fact that I could be deeply insecure and just pretending it. And so I wrote the book first and foremost because I think we as a society need to create a new paradigm so everyone can feel confident without fitting a single mold or definition of it. The example I use is if you've ever been around a five year old kid, we're born fully self confident, okay? Ask any 5 year old what they're the best out in the world, they'll tell you they're the best at soccer, hugs, everything. And then in my book, in chapter two, we identified six forces that hold us back from confidence. They pop up between the ages of 8 and 12. It forms the basis of an inner critic that never goes away. So as adults, in order to really be confident, we actually have to make a choice. To see ourselves the way a five year old sees themselves. To break out of these six forces. And I wrote the book as a way for people to go on that journey of discovering just how powerful they are. And because self confidence is a choice and a mindset before it becomes a behavior.

So true. And so is happiness. Right. It's how self awareness is at the heart of those. We talk so much about mindsets in the hardwired for happiness work and the mindsets and the mental models through which we experience the world and through which we actually think about our place in the world. Things we have, things we don't have, and how important it is to shift that if we are really going to achieve what we want out there.

Yeah. And what I found though is because, you know, I can get into some of the approaches and philosophies, one of the things that I found was, you know, I own a fashion company and so I dress hundreds of women a year. Still, you can book an appointment with me. And I always say the dressing room as an analogy for your life. Every woman walks into a dressing room hating herself with pure self loathing. She walks in with all the six forces in her inner critic. She'll tell me, going to lose 10 pounds, she doesn't like her arm, she just had a baby. Talk about systemic bias. A mirror in a dressing room as a trigger because as soon as you see yourself semi undressed, you don't want to try on clothes. And what I do with women is for 10 minutes, I change their mindset before we can actually do the work. And no woman wants to do this right. They're, they're impatient. I'm like, no, you've brought a negative energy into this space. And if we can't see the best in ourselves, we can't do the work. I'm a dress whisperer. I get it right on the first time. I'll get you out of here in 30 minutes. But I ask her three questions. I ask her, what is she most proud of in the last year of her life? If her best friend was standing here, what would they tell me about her? And what is she the best at in the world? A question a five year old can answer, but it really stumps a lot of adults.

Can you repeat those, Lisa, just a little slowly? I think they're beautiful questions.

All right. What are you the best at in the world? If your best friend was standing in front of me, what would they tell me about you? And what are you the best at in the world? A question a five Year old could answer. But adults struggle at answering that question.

There was one Lisa, just what are you most proud of in the last year? And I love that because that's something that I don't ask myself that enough. So I'm sorry. Just wanted to jump in.

No sorrys. No need to apologize. I'm glad. You can emphatically validate me. Thank you. I love that.

You're welcome. No worries. Taking detailed notes here as we go.

So you know that first question for me is very important. If you remember that Pixar movie Inside out, you know, your brain is a fixed hard drive. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Your brain dumps most of its daily memories, and it can only remember the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. If you remember that movie, the little girl had these core memories. There were these little orbs that sat in her head. The golden ones were the happy ones. You could touch them and sadness could come touch them and turn them blue. But they form the basis of your character. And one of the things I do a lot with people is I ask them to recall a time in the last year that they were proud of themselves or they felt their most powerful. Because if you've already hit a marker of success in the past, it's fairly likely you'll do it again. And so much of the time, we don't trust in ourselves. And that's why at the beginning, I said, we look at the summit so often that we rarely turn around to see how much ground we've covered. And if you do this once a day, I actually do it in the morning and before I go to bed. If I just recall the one thing I'm most proud of from that day or the one thing I'm most looking forward to, it does change the way you take on the day. But where I was going with this is, you know, if I have a woman in dressing room, she starts telling me her story and she starts smiling and laughing, and I'm like a velvet knife. You don't feel it happening. I start getting her dressed, and inevitably she comes out of the dressing room and she goes, this is a skinny mirror. I'm like, nope, it's from Bed Bath and Beyond. Rest in peace. Bed Bath and beyond. It's 1995. We can't trick you. And she said, what did you do? I said, well, you made a choice that this was gonna work. We got you in the right mindset. And that allowed me to do the work that I do so well. And More importantly, if you think about the iceberg model of consciousness, only 10% of the iceberg is visible. That's the behavior. 90% is thoughts, values and feelings you have about yourself, which is below the water. And so when people say, oh my gosh, you're so good at what you do, I said, well, actually, 90% of the work I'm doing just getting you in the right mindset, you know, it's not really about the clothes, it's about.

The right mindset and it's amazing. And that's why we wanted to have you on this podcast, Lisa. That's what we focus on. Almost 90% of the work we do is on the inner mindset and the confidence and awareness. Right. That at the heart, like the inner journey, all the things below the iceberg, the thoughts, beliefs about ourselves in the world, moods, how we feel inside is what we focus on. And we say, listen, you know, there is so much that you already have. Don't look for validation out there, don't look for validation from other people. And don't, you know, it's really hard to live into that.

But I think that's very hard for people to do. And so why I wrote the book in part is I wanted to create a framework for people to be able to answer those questions, like, what are you best at in the world? A lot of people really undervalue themselves. They'll say, oh, my superpower is so boring. I get things done on time, like, that's amazing. And so what we did was I enlisted Sally Dancer, who's a former partner at McKinsey, and she did a thousand person quantitative study for me on confidence in America and 32 focus groups. And what we realized is confidence doesn't come in one form, it comes in eight. There are eight different types of superpowers that underpin your self belief. And what was fascinating about going on that journey is it created a framework for people to essentially be able to answer my question. Because if you ask people to go on a self discovery journey with no Sherpa, with no guide, it's very challenging because those six forces that are in our inner critic, they're real. And they will hold you back from being able to articulate exactly what your talents are. So most of the book is around how do you discover your superpowers, channel them, build new ones, connect with others based on that.

So talk us through those eight, give us an overview to our listeners around what those eight are.

Yep. So we found eight superpowers. Most of us have two or three. My mom took the quiz. She has all eight. You can take the quiz for free at my confidencelanguage.com. she took the quiz. She's like, I'm all of these. I'm like, yes. 2% of our data set actually has all eight. It's not a personality test. It's a self affirming inventory of your strengths. So it can change over time. I actually started with three. I have four and a half now because I've been working on myself. It's also not like Pokemon. You don't need to collect them all. You don't need all eight really. But here are the eight. The first is leading. I set direction. I'm in charge. I inspire followership. I'm in command. The next one is performing, which is what I'm doing for you today. It's what Aneel complimented me on. Extroversion, charisma, exchange of energy between two people. These two qualities of confidence are the most often written about, but they represent 20% of our data set. And so what was really important in constructing the other six types of confidence is they cover the other 80% of the world. And I think that's really important is that just because you don't fit society's mold of leading and performing doesn't mean you don't deserve to feel good about yourself. The next two are achieving, which is I get things done on time. I have a winner's mindset. If I set a goal, I will exceed, I will meet it or exceed it. Practice makes perfect. If I fail, I get back up on the horse and I try again. Knowing is I'm the most well researched, most thoughtful, process oriented, smartest person in the room. I always say you want to build IKEA furniture with someone who has knowing as their superpower. The best example of these two superpowers in the world is if you've ever seen the Disney movie Hidden Figures. It's a true story about three black women who worked at NASA and did the calculations to send a man into space. And I think it's really important that they didn't fit the classic mold of leading and performing. Why did they have the gravitas, quote unquote to be in the room? It's because their superpowers were achieving and knowing. And my mom when she saw this data set was like, oh, that makes sense. When a tsunami happens, men make speeches and I clean up the beaches. Thank you. Finally, quiz that gives me credit for cleaning up the beaches. The next two in the eight are giving and believing. I Support others. I'm empathetic, I'm collaborative and believing. If you're a Ted Lasso fan, if any of your listeners are Ted Lasso fans, believing was his superpower. And in optimism, positive intent, seeing the best in others and situations. If things don't work out, they weren't meant to be. And if you remember, in season one, he actually says, I was underestimated my whole life because I'm not a classic command and control coach. I'm not here to be in charge. In fact, I don't care if we win or lose. I'm here to help these people become the best versions of themselves. And by the third season, you realize how powerful believing is as a route to self belief. Because I don't want to ruin it if you haven't seen the third season. But really, belief is like his fourth attribute of total football. The next two are creating, which is my number one. A lot of immigrants have creating as their superpower. I believe in things before I can see them. I can will an idea into existence. I create something from nothing. I always say it's a writer who looks at the blank page and gets excited rather than gets nervous. And then self sustaining, which very few people in our data set had. But essentially the whole book is an exercise in self sustaining. I like myself. I don't need to impress you. I know my value. It's the quality most needed to overcome criticism and objection without spiraling and to ask for a favor or raise. Because if you need to ask for a raise, you need to say, this is my market value. If you say no, somebody else will give me that market value. You really have to believe in that. That's different than asking for a promotion, which we call achieving. Because you need to say, this is why I need to deserve more leadership and accountability and a different title versus money is what's my market value? And how do I pin it? But together, these eight qualities. Reframe and double click on the idea of confidence. The best example I can give you is when Janet Yellen was nominated to be the first woman head of the Federal Reserve. There were hundreds of articles about why she didn't have the gravitas to lead the Fed. And Ezra Klein at the Washington Post said it's because the pervasive view of gravitas does not stretch to include her. She's more soft spoken, she's collaborative, but she's the most qualified person for the job. Just because she doesn't lead and perform like men do doesn't mean that she doesn't deserve this job. And I love that. I love that we're changing the scorecard by which we measure confidence.

Hi friends. We hope you're enjoying the tips discussed in this episode. If you're on the career treadmill, seeking the next promotion, experiencing stress and anxiety, or reached the top of your career and wondering if the sacrifices to get there were worth it, Ashish and I have been there and we're ready to support you. The Happiness Squad rewire program is designed to integrate the nine hardwired for happiness practices into your day within five minutes form proven habits to experience more success, resilience, satisfaction and creativity. You won't be alone in your journey. Check out the rewire link in the show notes. Make happiness your competitive edge to achieve your goals. Now back to the episode. Just thinking about that and there were two that stood out for me by the way of them and that was giving and self sustaining. But let me come back to that. You know what I'm taking away from that is just because a textbook definition of confidence may or may not be what we think it is. To your point, it can come in different forms and we have to be open to embracing what form that can be. I mean, today I was in a meeting and somebody was given a compliment and they said, sorry, I don't take compliments very well. You earlier just acknowledged like Anil complimented me on that. Thank you. And it, you did it with such kindness and confidence. But again, it was respectful, it was humble. And I think people struggle with that. And I do find it fascinating that when you said self sustaining is one of them, I'm thinking to myself, how many people actually fall into that bucket? Because I just imagine the majority are the opposite. They're self deprecating more than anything else. We have an amazing ability, I would call a joke, a strength to cut ourselves down rather than really focusing on that superpower of raising ourselves up and really acknowledging our worth, our ability to give, our ability to sustain ourselves. So I just want to say those two of the lot stood out for me and I just before we go to the next question, just what is your take when you think about giving and self sustaining as superpowers?

Well, they're all equally valid. And actually you said two things there that I just want to parse out a little bit. One thing I do want to say is at the beginning of this session you said, Lisa, wow, you are so confident. And what I would now ask you to say is, Lisa, your superpower is performing. And I think that's really important because when we tell people to be more confident, now you can say, hey, I need you to be more self sustaining. I need you to not spiral or take this personally. It doesn't mean I don't like you or value you. You should value yourself. I'm giving you this feedback because I care about you. So be more self sustaining. So one, I do want to pull this back full circle to where we started, which is I am confident. From a classic definition of I'm great at performing, I'm great at being incredibly articulate and whatnot. The second thing is, you know you can't receive a compliment until you've paid yourself one. And I'm on a personal mission. I've done a ton of op eds, a ton of interviews about we need to stop saying sorry when we're not really sorry when people say sorry. Of the six forces that hold you back from confidence, in chapter two of my book, there are two forces that make people self deprecating. One is called the deficit mindset, which is you only see your weakness or what's missing over your potential and your strengths. This is like when you look in the mirror, do you look for your beautiful eyes or do you look for the wrinkles? The second one is called shrinking effect, where you shortchange yourself or underestimate your own abilities versus others or a standard. So this is why women will only apply for a job if they're 100% qualified, whereas men will say, oh, 60% pretty good enough, let me throw my hat in the ring. And because of deficit mindset and shrinking effect, we default to sorry, we think we are less than. And so if you take a day and you count the number of times you say sorry as a default, oh, sorry I was late, or sorry I took up so much of your time, or sorry I don't take compliments well. And you subtract out the number of times you're genuinely sorry. If you spill coffee on someone, you should say, I'm sorry. Okay, you really did something wrong. And you count that and you go, you know what? I can replace it with thank you or great catch. It won't happen again. If I said to you, thank you for waiting for me, I do value your time. I did not intend to be late today, or thank you for all that time you gave me. It means so much to me you'd invest in me. It allows you to be in control rather than feeling like you're less than or you did something wrong. Most of us sit in this deficit mindset or shrinking effect and so it's more about how do you break out of that? You break out of that by seeing which of these eight, you really are valuable. Again, people will say, you know what? My superpower's boring. I get things done on time. I'm like, no, your superpower is achieving. I don't have that. I actually lack that one. Please come work with me, because I can't get anything done on time. I value that. It changes the way we think about ourselves.

I love that, Lisa. And I think you highlight two really important things, right? One is it's words. It's little differences, but there are huge differences, right? We can just say, well, sorry or thanks. But what you're saying is, like, say sorry when you want to say sorry, but when you're saying thank you, you're appreciating them without pulling yourself down. Right? It's. That's important. I think you are acknowledging that, you know from their side, yes, if you showed up late, they're waiting for you, but you're thanking them rather than just, you know, beating yourself. And it's so important because so much of the media as well, you know, you get constant messages of not enough, and you're messing up and you're screwing up. You don't need to add to that inner chatter on top of what you get from the outside. Right. So I think that was powerful. And the second one you highlighted was also an important one, which is recognize those who are different because their superpower allows you together to create a beautiful dance. Right. A symphony. It's the magic in bringing these together that create great outcomes.

When you can see the value in someone's style who is different than yours, you actually make them stronger. So I'll give you a piece of data from my book. Kelly Hsu at Yale School of Management, she's a professor there. She released a report last year that looked at 30,000 employee records, and she said men were consistently rated lowest on performance and results, but highest on promotability. Women were rated the highest on actual delivering of performance and results, but the lowest on promotion potential. And when she double clicked on promotion potential, it was extroversion and charisma. It had nothing to do. It was completely subjective. And she said that actually explains a huge portion of the pay gap that is related to promotability is we're not recognizing the incredible strengths that are at the table really driving performance and results. Why do we have to add this additional layer of extraversion? It was kind of an interesting way of saying most of my team has an opposite confidence language to me, if we all led and performed all day, nothing would get done. And so what I often say is, I value that you're achieving or knowing or believing. There's so many other qualities that I see in people. When I do need you though, to speak up in a meeting, I will say, hey, this is a moment where I need you to be uncomfortable and bring your performing superpower to the table. And someone will go, okay, good. I've been working on that. I'm never going to be 100% at that, but that's something that I know I want to do and it's because this situation requires this of me. But it changes the way we value people, right? If I can say to you, you get things done on time incredibly well. This is why you're always my go to that person's quote, unquote. Confidence level rises because they see themselves in a stronger light. Things don't get easier, we get stronger.

I love that. I, you know, I'm just thinking to myself, if it's. If you both agree, I'm actually going to jot down these eight and I'm going to keep them handy. And tomorrow when I come back into work, I'm actually going to identify colleagues I work with and as they speak, I'm actually going to share with them, hey, you know what, what you did was blank. That was incredible. And I'm actually going to see how that react, how they feel about that. Because you know, one thing that we talk about in the happiness practices, Lisa, is gratitude. But what I'm also really reflecting on as we're talking right now is awareness and self awareness and how we cultivate that. Because what you're talking about here is something I would invite our listeners to think about, is take a moment and pause. You know, Ashish mentioned earlier, words that we use can be incredibly important. Even while I'm recording with you, I'm even reflecting, like, wow, me saying what I said earlier, okay, but what are other words that I can use that can actually be more powerful, actually more applicable and like you said, raise not only you, but others up. And that's something we need to be thinking about as we again grow our gravitas.

Hey, Anil, in fact, even better than you printing those eight out, send a link to Lisa's website because everybody, I did mine.

Yes.

I have six of those eight. Have everybody actually do their link, do the quiz and actually have a share maybe over lunch and just say, hey, what are your superpowers? Which of those do you really rotate, because it'll be a beautiful share. Because remember, awareness is about knowing yourself, but it's also about knowing the other. And in that you'll value, you know, you'll be able to play back all of a sudden. And that's strength based development right there.

Yeah. And what I'll say, I love that. Thank you for hyping my confidencelanguage.com. it's really fun. I love that you have six. I would have thought no less. But you know, one of the things that happens when people take the quiz, I'll tell you three different reactions I get to the quiz. One is, oh, my gosh, do I really have five or six? You said people on average have two or three. I said, yes, you've been underestimating or undervaluing yourself. You really do. The quiz is not wrong. It's developed by a former McKinsey partner. Okay, there's, there's no way. Statistically it is incredibly valid. And maybe you've been under leveraging yourself or underestimating your abilities. The second thing that happens is, well, why don't I have this one? It says that this is my opportunity area. And I would say, okay, can we just first of all, pause. Let's not jump to the opportunity. In chapter six of my book, I take 30 situations in life and we correlated in the data set which superpower you need for which situation. So I said, are you ever going to start your own business? Yes or no? No. Well, then why do you need creating as a superpower? Are you ever, you know, and so sometimes we focus on those areas we don't have. And I, like I said, it's not like Pokemon. You don't need to catch them all. But I just really want people to stand in the power of their confidence, change the superpowers they do have. But if there is something you want in life, the third thing I tell people is, okay, go to chapter six of the book, which superpower do you need? Oh, my gosh, I already have it. The quiz says I have it. So can you trust yourself the next time that happens and not say, I don't know how to do that or I don't, you know, there are four superpowers to start your own business. And I said, well, if you don't have them and you really want that in life, you have to develop them or go hire people who have them. Right. And I think we don't have to be all of them. I again, as you heard me say, I'm a work in progress. When I took the quiz the first time. My number one's creating, my number two is performing, and my number three is leading. Kind of makes sense. That's three out of the four. You need to start your own business. It also means I didn't fit in at McKinsey. That is not a classic McKinsey profile of success. Let's be clear. This is why, you know, square hole, round peg. I could have seen it earlier if I'd taken the quiz. If I'd gone in the DeLorean, back to the future style, given myself the quiz at 25, I probably would have left earlier. And then the second thing I said to myself is, wow. I want to be able to overcome criticism and objection better. I really spiral outta control. I care what people think. I'm a people pleaser. So I want to work on self sustaining. And then I realized that I can come across as incredibly hard charging. And so I've been working on anil, I have been working on giving, and I take the quiz every six months. So now my confidence language is leading, performing, creating, giving, and I score half on self sustaining. It's a strength and not a superpower yet. But for me, it allowed me to control my learning journey. I am never ever going to be someone who has knowing as a superpower, you do not want to build Ikea furniture. I cannot believe I built financial models. As a business analyst at McKinsey, it drove me crazy. I hate process. I hate, you know, some people get a lot of energy out of deep diving on content. I don't. I shoot from the hip. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm never going to be the highest on achieving. I know this. And I was raised by a tiger mom, so achieving was built into me, but I never enjoyed it. I don't enjoy blue ribbons and believing. Again, raised by a tiger mom. So it's hard for me to be an optimist. I usually see the worst in situations, but I'm working on it. Like, I know when people need me to do that. So I see this as a tool for us to like, you know, just see where we are. It complements Myers Briggs, it complements discs, enneagram, whatever you're doing. Strengths finder. But what I love about is it's not static, it's a dynamic. Look at yourself. It is not just this is who.

You are, you know, and just in that language, you know, Lisa, you bring to life, you know, the practice. One of the practices we have, the nine hardwired for happiness practices is, you know, in addition to awareness, knowing yourself and knowing all your parts, your strengths as well as opportunities. Not overly focusing on just opportunities because that's where we go. But also the practice of self compassion and intention. Right. Both of those. Practice nine is the intention. Practice six is self compassion. Look, you don't need it all. What you have be compassionate and you can jointly build that. You can focus on that. And I like it because it's not about your quiz. I love the notion of every six months and almost using it as a wayfinder rather than kind of, you know, here's who you are. This is your, you know, your genetic makeup. You can't change it. Right. You can run the whatever, 20. What is that? 24 me or whatever. Right. You get it. That is who you are. You can't change that. But you can change which strengths you choose to focus on and how you focus on, you know, building up the other ones. Trends into superpowers or things. Where are opportunities into strengths. Yeah.

So Anil's gonna report back to us.

Yes, I am. I'm gonna share the link. I'm gonna actually have them do it and then we're gonna have a lunch on it and then I will come back.

Indeed.

I'm actually really excited about doing that.

Yeah. I have to tell you. So someone wrote me after Thanksgiving in the US this year and said I had my whole family take it because I wanted to know my family's superpowers. And she said, you know what? I think I've been taking away my youngest son's power his whole life. And she has two sons, and the oldest one is leading and performing. Right. Just classic extroversion. And her youngest is achieving knowing and believing. And she said we would go to parties when they were growing up and I would say, oh, my older son, he's just going to have you laughing in stitches. He's going to be life of the party. My younger one, he's shy. So if he doesn't talk to you, like, just don't worry about it. He's just shy. He's going to sit in the corner. And she said what I should have said when they were growing up is my oldest will have you laughing in stitches. And my youngest, he just finished reading a book on pandas. If you want to ask him anything about pandas, he is the smartest kid on pandas. And he will engage you one on one. And it will just delight him to tell you every fact he knows. And she says, I think while they were growing up, I probably made him feel bad about himself that I called him shy publicly to others. And so, you know, this kind of tool is a little bit broader than just how you work on teams.

I think that's beautiful. And in fact, I think that's something I'm going to ask our listeners to think about because, you know, parents, professionals, all alike, whether it's your kids, whether it's your team members. I think just having that mindset I think is a shift because I wouldn't have thought of it that way. And I think sometimes we don't. That was a beautiful tip, by the way. You know, there's something else that you talk about in your book, which is owning your moment. And I just wanted to ask you, you know, could you describe what it feels like to be in the zone and how our listeners can rewire away from that negative bias and actually actively own those moments, whether it's in a personal or professional context.

Well, I love when you feel that you're in the flow of things and I love when you talk about your happiness, practice. And I know flow is probably very likely a part of it. I would say there's two main components to it. One is knowing what the gas you have in the tank, right? So knowing your superpowers, knowing the strengths you're bringing to the table, and secondly, being able to approach ups and downs, knowing that you are strong enough to handle it. So the example I use of owning your moment is in March of 2020. You know, I make women's workwear that people go to the office or events or parties. And the sales of our company were not zero. They were negative. We have a 30 day return policy. And so if you bought something, you sent it back to us. And as opposed to focusing on the negative cash register number, I asked my team, I said, what are our superpowers? What do we have in this moment that no one else has where we can make a difference? And from April 3rd of 2020 to July 13th of 2020, we made hospital gowns for Mount Sinai and we made face masks for the front line. And it was very interesting. I said, everyone goes, you're a little fashion company. How did you do that? I said, well, we had gas in the tank so we could be a speedboat when everyone else was an aircraft carrier. And you know my superpowers, you now know them. I put out on LinkedIn. The sales of my company are negative. I have nothing to hide. Right. If you have a company that needs face masks, DM me and UE Voss, the CEO of HelloFresh, who's an ex McKinsey person. He said, we need 2500 face masks for our Newark distribution center. Two other ex McKinsey people said, I need 800 cause I wanna send out gift packages and care packages to all my employees. Cause no one could get face masks in April of 2020. And literally these people wire transferred my company money to make face masks. Cause I was like, we could sell $24 one on one online and we're on the today show for this and whatnot. But really I need bulk orders, right? I need the big orders. And my superpowers are creating. I can create something from nothing, right? I can will an idea into existence. I'm a performer, so I can put it out there and blast it out and be unapologetic. And from a leading standpoint, guess what my team is achieving and knowing. So they were like, okay, here's the process, here's the spreadsheet, here's how we're going to make 2,500 face masks in a week for hellofresh. I couldn't execute that, by the way. My execution skills are not at that level. And so, you know, when I say own your moment, it's not about the moment, it's the own part of it. It's how strong are you? And then what can you put into action based off of it? You create a new solution space when you know how strong you are and what your capabilities are.

Awesome. I'm actually thinking about how I'm going to discuss this with my wife this evening. Because we had a chat yesterday. She had a bit of a low day and I want to actually approach this with her tonight. So you've given me a few things. So tonight's homework with the Mrs. And tomorrow's homework with my team. So I'm looking forward to it.

One thing I often tell people is if you had a bad day, it's like you don't ask kids, are you sad? You say, like, what happened? So one of the things I often have people do is I have them take the six forces that hold them back. And I say, which of these six forces are you feeling? And so I had a friend the other day, I said, which of these six forces? One of them is called satisfaction conundrum, where you tie your happiness to an external marker. And she mentioned to me that she saw her friends win a gold medal in a tennis tournament without her. And because she was injured, she couldn't play. And she said, I really wanted to be a part of it and I'm really bummed I wasn't in the photo and I tied my happiness to being in that tennis tournament, but I physically was not able to play. And I said, but how much do you have going on in your life? And we talked about all the fun things happening in her job and all the things she was doing personally. And I said, you have so much abundance in your life. She goes, oh, you're right. Why was I so tied up in this marker of success? And I said, what are you going to do now? She said, I'm going to go like that, post reshare it, text my friends who and congratulate them. I can be happy for them now. And so I don't know why your wife had a bad day or a low day, but I think really digging into what was the force that was working against her. Right. I think helps. You can't fix it until you diagnosed it.

I love that. And I actually don't like fixing it. You know, once you diagnose it, it's great to give her the opportunity to go, right, this is how I'm going to approach it and take it forward. Which reminds me. So again, back to your point. Once you recognize that and you own that, that's the key. Like you just said, it's about owning more than just the moment.

Everybody just wants to be seen, Right. I'm going to give you two other fun facts from my book. Everyone wants to be seen. So first, data point is people over the age of 55 are the most powerful in our data set. And we as a society have become ageist. It's because as you age, you have more superpowers than when you were younger and you have time, talent and treasure. And so that's like an example where I'm like, people just want to be seen. And I wish we could as a society see the strengths in that. The other group I'll talk about is full time parents. Full time parents were the least satisfied in our data set. And it's because there are no external benchmarks of success. And we did a lot of focus groups with full time parents who took the quiz and they're like, wow, I really needed to see this today. And this explains why I'm unhappy at times because achieving is my number one superpower. When I was a corporate lawyer, the latter was so clear. But now that I'm a full time parent, what do I have to show for myself every day? And so it's very interesting when you see different groups go through this process because I think it's changing the way we see ourselves regardless of what stage of life we're in.

Agree with you. I have a few quick questions for you as we wrap up. Lisa, what is your favorite song that you love to listen to when you want to turn your frown upside down?

So I have a couple. I do have like a playlist when I have to do events. Awesome. I love Stuff Special by Lizzo. That's usually my hype up song because it is celebrating how special everyone. I do think Lizzo of all people really does not underestimate the immense amount of work self love requires. It's not a corporate slogan to her. She genuinely talks about how hard it is to see ourselves as special. I really love anything by Beyonce. So I do listen to Diva. I do listen to that one. And because my last name is Son, I always say if I were ever to run for president, I have a built in playlist. There's so many songs that have sun. So like Walking on Sunshine or Here comes the Sun. There are so many songs that would be on my presidential playlist. My walk on music. Nice.

You know, if you were stuck on an island and you could only take one book with you, what book would you take?

I will say the answer I give publicly, but I'll tell you all the real answer. So I usually say it'd be something like and I love this book, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston because it was the first book that really, I think spoke to my Asian American identity and is just so beautifully written. And I love her as an author. But then I would say really, I'd probably bring like the complete works of Jane Austen because I reread Jane Austen every year. I mean, what woman doesn't love Jane Austen? So if we're stuck on a desert island, I really had to entertain myself for that long. That would probably be the book that I would bring. The complete works of Jane Austen.

Awesome. And the last one is your favorite comfort food.

Oh, my mom's dumplings.

Nice.

I feel like there's nothing like the dumplings your mom makes, right? I think anything mom makes carries like an extra special dash of love, even if they're not good to other people. But these are really good. These are definitively good Pork dumplings. Pork chive dumplings by my mom, Lisa.

This was absolutely incredible. So first off for our listeners, definitely check out her book Gravitas. It's amazing. And just the way you described it today. The six forces plus the eight superpowers. It's great for folks to know about the website that you mentioned to know what their superpowers are. Myconfidencelanguage.com, we're going to add all these to the resources, including the books that you mentioned earlier and at the end, as well as your songs. We're creating a playlist and we're going to be celebrating and sharing that with our listeners here in the next few weeks. So, Lisa, from my bottom of my heart, thank you for giving, for knowing, and for performing.

Love it, Lisa. It's such a joy. My dear friend, after connecting with you after such a long time, it's amazing what you're doing. And the next time you come through Denver or Boulder, let us know. Let's get together. Thank you for being with us.

That would be great. Thanks for having me.

We hope you enjoyed this episode on the Happiness Squad podcast. Make sure to hit subscribe on your chosen platform that you listen to us on. If you enjoyed the tips discussed looking to combat stress, burnout or seeking deeper fulfillment, or navigating life transitions, then our Rewire program is designed for you. Rewire is your key to unlock your full potential to experience more success. Resilience, satisfaction and creativity make happiness your competitive edge. Check out the show notes and learn more about how you can benefit by rewiring away from fear in between episodes. Follow along on Instagram at myhappinesssquad for tons of tips, insights and short videos designed just for you. Until next time.